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They Quite Literally Don't Make Games the Way They Used To (theguardian.com)
The days of two developers making games in a shed are over, an article on The Guardian says. Spend any time with your grandparents and at some stage the age-old phase "they don't make them like they use to" will pop up as nostalgia gets the better of them. Usually it's just the rose-tinted glasses talking, but for video games it's a fact: they quite literally don't make them like they used to. Back in the 1980s, when the industry was in its infancy, games were often created by two-person teams consisting of one programmer and one artist. In the 1990s, sprites gave way to 3D modelling, and development teams mushroomed in size, hoovering up specialists in disciplines across animation, level design, character modelling and artificial intelligence. Today, creating the most advanced, triple-A games has become too big a task for a single developer leading to the rise of what is best described as a modular approach, where different developers work on different parts of a single game. The article adds: One developer that is pioneering the modern modular approach is no spring chicken. Set up in 1984, Newcastle-based Reflections swiftly established a reputation for bringing cutting-edge graphics to side-scrollers such as Shadow of the Beast and the gloriously named Brian the Lion. It then morphed into a driving-game specialist, thanks primarily to the Destruction Derby and Driver franchises. French publisher Ubisoft acquired the studio in 2006, expanding its remit way beyond its previous practice of churning out a new Driver game every three years or so. Reflections is crafting the vehicle components of the upcoming Watch Dogs 2 and Ghost Recon Wildlands and has just finished the Underground downloadable content (DLC) pack for The Division. It's finishing Grow Up, the sequel to 2015's Grow Home -- ironically, a small, innovative download game made by a 90s-style 10-person team.
Are we forgetting that indie game developers are still frequently one programmer and one artist? Fez, Terraria, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Shovel Knight and Undertale are all games made by unbelievably tiny teams.
I call hyperbole.
Unity has allowed me to develop games on my own just fine. Easily portable across multiple platforms.
Our studio uses a contemporary coding process thats actually quite simple.
1. check out the code in git.
2. make your changes
3. screw something up, or not, delete the entire directory and copy it from a friends laptop at a bar
4. sacrifice an intern to the code goblin that now unaccountably lives in the ceiling.
5. did that copy thing fail? okay, uh, do 'man git' and let your eyes just glaze right over...bill in design says thats how he gets it to work.
6. no worries, probably just a very minor thing, im told the goblin is gone and the second story window near the parking lot is completely blown out.
7. have a stand up scrum down burn through meeting with a swimming pool lane change and a shift merge from your branch goal. Does GIT do that? did it ever?
8. check the microwave in the breakroom...donnies had that hot pocket in there for like 8 minutes and its causing a lot of anxiety...
9. management said the software is done, so uh, tidy up what you were working on and stop dicking around in GIT.
10. there ya go, codes out and the software is a huge success. the next upgrade should OH CHRIST ITS THE GOBLIN SOMEONE GET THE AMULET!!
Good people go to bed earlier.
And more often than not, those AAA games turn out to be fast-food McVideo games with all the bullshit that comes with prioritizing revenues over gameplay.
There's plenty of examples of indie hits not made by AAA studios, this article is just a Ubisoft puff piece for that abhorred thing called a Watch Dogs sequel and their other less than exciting franchises.
Seriously, what happened to Ubisoft after Assassin's Creed 2?
I'll grant that the small team is no longer the industry norm, but suggesting they don't make them like that any more is just preposterous. The biggest game launching this month, No Man's Sky, was originally developed by a team of just five developers. It wasn't until a year or two into development (well after the game was announced and the first trailer shown) that they brought in five more developers. And I was just looking at Prey For the Gods the other day. It's being made by three guys working out of a basement or garage, as I recall. Braid was a two-person job (programmer + artist) with music that was licensed from others. And how could I forget mentioning Cave Story, which was entirely developed by a one-man "team" who did all of the artwork, programming, and music himself?
Pick an indie game, and it's likely built by a small team. They may not all stay small (e.g. Minecraft), but you can only suggest they don't make games like that any more if you start by ignoring the entire indie scene which is doing quite well for itself.
...They do make them like they used to ... then they become larger, then they sell out to a large company
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
We don't manufacture cars the way we used to. We don't build houses the way we used to. That and a million other things. Time marches on, methodologies and scale changes, sometimes for the better. Sometimes not.
Silence is a state of mime.
Yeah I too preferred the old computer games that eschewed CGI in favor of hand painted and animated models.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Most old computer games sucked. Just because you can remember the ones that were good doesn't mean those were the only ones they made back then. Just like most old movies sucked.
Yeah I too preferred the old computer games that eschewed CGI in favor of hand painted and animated models.
I wonder how many people realize you're not joking: the original Doom and Doom II models were literally clay models that were shot from various angles to make the final sprites.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.