Just now, Kylotan said:

Even a great developer will still get more hours of player fun in a game where the player can re-use the content than in a game where the player cannot re-use the content. Reusable content gives more hours of enjoyment than linear content of equivalent quality. So that part doesn't depend on the developer.

As for development, it seems clear that budgets and team sizes are having to grow and that the complexity of it all is going up. That's a massive topic in itself though.

 

I see. So the kind of game I'm proposing is too ambitious and not practical then? I guess I can accept that. But will there ever be hope of anyone doing it even if it's not practical? Such things do happen many times in other industries like the movie industry. Avatar was quite ambitious and payed off immensely.  Then again you do have failures like Valerian. If only entertainment didn't have to be constrained by profit. 

5 hours ago, Dinocorpshunter4 said:

I see. So the kind of game I'm proposing is too ambitious and not practical then? I guess I can accept that. But will there ever be hope of anyone doing it even if it's not practical? Such things do happen many times in other industries like the movie industry. Avatar was quite ambitious and payed off immensely.  Then again you do have failures like Valerian. If only entertainment didn't have to be constrained by profit. 

I think it may be more accurate to see it constrained by cost rather than by profit. The reason for this distinction is that there are lots of artists who do what they do purely for the love of the art.

However, everyone has limited time and will have to end a project at some point. But yes, for artists who are running businesses they do need to ensure that profits exceed the costs.

Another point about the re-use of content being more cost-effective. This isn't just because more content does not have to be made. Another issue is that while making games a lot is being iterated and thrown out if it turns out it doesn't match the design. So, if you are making a 60 hour linear game and part way through development you realise that the content around hours 40-50 isn't fun, it could impact how that's made, the story and therefore the deadlines and budgeting etc.

Finally, there is a statistic (I can't remember the exact details of this), but it goes something like "only 10% of people finish a given game". This is VERY dependent on the game, so take that with a pinch of salt. But if you browse earned achievements for games and look up how many earned the 'finished' the game achievement you'll see it tends to be around that value. This tends to be why games tend be front-loaded with content.

However, there is always room for new games to break the mould  

That and many games, unless they were to add drastic amounts of new content, would cease to be fun.  Take your Halo example.  Fighting the same three or four alien types over a course of a 15 hour adventure.  Okay.  Fighting the same three or four alien types over a 60 hour adventure, that's a boring slog.  

Also, if a developer / publisher can already get millions to buy a game with an 8 hour single player campaign, I'm not sure what the incentive is to make that campaign 10 times as long?  That's what DLC is for.  It's less upfront risk, more reward.

18 hours ago, Dinocorpshunter4 said:

or Fallout.  Each one can give 200+ hours of gameplay

It is all about re-use of content.

Did you know that in Fallout 4 any screen where you can see more than 10 meters has 2 copies of an object? Just look at any screenshot from a Fallout 4 game. There will always be at least 2 3D models that are the same.

A linear game needs more set pieces because it will have less repeating parts. So half the content will only be seen once.

15 hours ago, Dinocorpshunter4 said:

How difficult would making a game equivalent to the novel The Naked God be? 1,174 pages, still high quality. 

For a story driven game like Halo it takes a AAA team +/ 600 people over 2-3 Years to make a game that lasts 25 hours.

So to make a game that is 100 hours long it would take more than 8-12 years for a team of over 600 people. Yet that won't happen because the changes in game technology would be to extreme for such a game to be possible.

The word next gen means just that, it's art made for a game that will be released 2-3 years later.

So unrealistically all you would need to do is form a team of 2400 people to make a 100 hour long game. If you payed them only $1200 per month that is +/- $10800 per person each year just so they don't starve while working for you(A month with no food will kill them, something a lot of revshare games forget).

$10800 * 2400 = $25 920 000 * 3 = $77 760 000.

So if you had 2400 professionals willing to work for minimum wage and around eighty million dollars. You could make a game that lasts 100 hours and then players will complain about how money grabby you are because you are trying to make back the eighty million dollars you spend making the game.

14 hours ago, Dinocorpshunter4 said:

If only entertainment didn't have to be constrained by profit. 

Yes if only humans didn't need to eat and could all live outside in the cold, that would indeed cut production costs.

Without profit there is no money for a next game. People won't work on your game that takes years to make if you can't keep them alive for that time.

That is why so many AAA companies died out and there is so few left, making a game is a billion dollar gamble for most AAA companies.

16 hours ago, Dinocorpshunter4 said:

But would the resources used to create a game with parallel acts be more demanding than a game like GTA V?

Yes but it's a lot faster, it also allows the game to pay for it's own development.

If you plan on making a linear game focus on the story and telling it to the player. Don't try something grand, just get your point across to the player.

Journey is a realistic look at what a small team can do.

1 hour ago, Scouting Ninja said:

It is all about re-use of content.

Did you know that in Fallout 4 any screen where you can see more than 10 meters has 2 copies of an object? Just look at any screenshot from a Fallout 4 game. There will always be at least 2 3D models that are the same.

 

A linear game needs more set pieces because it will have less repeating parts. So half the content will only be seen once.

For a story driven game like Halo it takes a AAA team +/ 600 people over 2-3 Years to make a game that lasts 25 hours.

So to make a game that is 100 hours long it would take more than 8-12 years for a team of over 600 people. Yet that won't happen because the changes in game technology would be to extreme for such a game to be possible.

The word next gen means just that, it's art made for a game that will be released 2-3 years later.

 

So unrealistically all you would need to do is form a team of 2400 people to make a 100 hour long game. If you payed them only $1200 per month that is +/- $10800 per person each year just so they don't starve while working for you(A month with no food will kill them, something a lot of revshare games forget).

$10800 * 2400 = $25 920 000 * 3 = $77 760 000.

So if you had 2400 professionals willing to work for minimum wage and around eighty million dollars. You could make a game that lasts 100 hours and then players will complain about how money grabby you are because you are trying to make back the eighty million dollars you spend making the game.

Yes if only humans didn't need to eat and could all live outside in the cold, that would indeed cut production costs.

Without profit there is no money for a next game. People won't work on your game that takes years to make if you can't keep them alive for that time.

That is why so many AAA companies died out and there is so few left, making a game is a billion dollar gamble for most AAA companies.

Yes but it's a lot faster, it also allows the game to pay for it's own development.

 

If you plan on making a linear game focus on the story and telling it to the player. Don't try something grand, just get your point across to the player.

Journey is a realistic look at what a small team can do.

The "If only entertainment didn't need to be constrained by profit" remark was not literal my friend. And simply throwing more people at a problem doesn't lead to a solution or a quickened outcome, if anything, it can be a hindrance. Brook's law for example. I doubt that the behavior of game development is that linear.  Metro Last Light was made by what, eighty people? Took three years and its longer than most fps games on the market. Halo 4 took around the same amount of time ( if not longer), had around 350 people, and was no where near as long(granted it had multiplayer with ten maps). And Metro Last Light managed to maintain consistent quality. I understand that creating games is a huge investment for companies. Plus, 100+ hours is a bit much for any story. Not even rpg main story quests are that long. By long I mean around say 40-50 hours. 65 hours at the most.  

6 minutes ago, LorenzoGatti said:

Assets that need to look good only once or twice, in specific conditions, are probably cheaper than assets that need to look good in many possible situations.

 

The problem is that they are rarely cheaper enough. 

If an artist models a building to look great as you walk past it down the street, they have to do probably 75% of the same work they'd have to do to make it look great on all sides. So you save 25%, but need to produce 5x or 10x as many assets like this.

(This is also discounting the fact that the artist will probably be inclined to not cut too many corners; because producers have a strange way of coming back to you a few months later saying, "can we have another building just like that first one, but a bit different", and you don't want to make it from scratch again.)

There are other assets which arguably become more expensive - players expect voice acting for Random Shopkeeper #7 in an open-world game to be bland and uninteresting, or even to be unvoiced. But in a game where you meet every character only once or twice, they're going to notice when one of them sounds worse or more badly acted than the others.

5 hours ago, Kylotan said:

The problem is that they are rarely cheaper enough. 

If an artist models a building to look great as you walk past it down the street, they have to do probably 75% of the same work they'd have to do to make it look great on all sides. So you save 25%, but need to produce 5x or 10x as many assets like this.

(This is also discounting the fact that the artist will probably be inclined to not cut too many corners; because producers have a strange way of coming back to you a few months later saying, "can we have another building just like that first one, but a bit different", and you don't want to make it from scratch again.)

There are other assets which arguably become more expensive - players expect voice acting for Random Shopkeeper #7 in an open-world game to be bland and uninteresting, or even to be unvoiced. But in a game where you meet every character only once or twice, they're going to notice when one of them sounds worse or more badly acted than the others.

Well, at the very least this has been a learning experience so far.