That's fine. 20 to 30 hour single player games are annoying. Especially if they're open world grind fests where you do the same thing. 10-12 or maybe 15 hours is perfect.
I myself noticed 90% of my favourite games past couple years are 8-15 hour story games. For a story RPG 30-40 hour is perfect for me ( New Vegas and ME2 come to mind).
Been wanting more smaller games for years now. I miss small scale singleplayer games that were around 15 or so hours with a complete story. More focus on game mechanics with high replay value, games kinda like Prototype and DMC are a good frame of reference for what I mean
I think it is wise to greatly reduce development time. Games were already great when it took 10 hours to finish them. I prefer 10 short games that are different from each other over 1 huge game that takes me two years to finish😅
@ I was using SE as an example of a dev that does it properly. I could say the same thing with Santa Monica Studios because they release a high quality game like God of War Ragnarok only within 4-5 years after its previous entry. Staff retention and skill save development time especially if the whole team knows from the start what to do next and how to do it.
@@Duckman8213who knew that running a company in a healthy/well rounded way would lead to better results. I think this is the prime example of what's wrong across the board in the industry. I mean Bethesda had more producers on star field, than the whole team that worked on Skyrim, apparently it was a producer for every 6 or so people.
I find it funny that higher ups are looking at AI as the magic solution to cost cutting, when mismanagement is by far the biggest drain on budget from my experience. Re-writes/pointless changes are so damn common in game/film/tv etc.
I think until games can be a lot more interactive or destructible, we're all set with huge games. It's no fun playing on a huge map unless it's either a real with unique art style or allows you to actually change the map. In some ways no one has come close to outdoing Minecraft with us kinda sad. I thought by now we'd basically have a GTA-Minecraft hybrid game. Besides Unreal 5 has had problems with large seamless maps that they've never solved so a map made up smaller hubs is already better stability wise.
I do feel that studios can be to bloated and that in conjunction with management not having a clear vision and plan in place along with massive amounts of red tape for simple things to be done can lead in a lot of time being wasted...and time is money
you are correct, jason schreier and veteran devs have stated that studio size is an issue >CDPR grew to 400 people and realised they needed to change/adapt. >Bethesda grew to 350 people and decided to stay the same
I think the idea of smaller games is great, to be honest. Baldur's Gate 3 was awesome, but it could have honestly been just as awesome if it was the size of acts 1 and 2. Divinity: Original Sin 2 was much the same way. The Witcher 3 is another game where the size of it was awesome - but the maps didn't need to be that massive and there didn't need to be as much filler content as there was. A map the size of Blood and Wine that has a ton of interesting concepts and complexity to it can be just as good (if not better) as two giant maps that have a bunch of random filler in them just for the sake of being big. In RPGs in particular the depth of choice, consequence, writing quality, characters, builds, gear system and different paths to take are significantly more important than just some massive world full of random stuff, IMO.
@@Max1990Power They said this is one of the reasons that they made Cyberpunk's main campaign shorter. Will be interesting to see what approach they take with Witcher 4.
HELLO CRAZY IDEA GUY HERE! Maybe JUST MAYBE if we didn't have all of the excessive personal who don't directly work on games it would lower cost significantly. Big companies have psychologist on staff so they can figure out how to make microtransaction addictive so let them go, get rid of most of the executives, stop hiring "diversity" consultants, and get rid of some of the middle management, less employees means less HR personal, and last but not least is to take companies private, and keep private equity/venture capitalist to a minimum. All of that excess is what i like to call parasitic capitalism. Paying humans is the biggest cost in any business, and in a lot of game companies they have a lot of staff who isn't directly making the game, or is getting paid too much many to make decisions about a product they don't consume. Also the duty to the shareholders to CONSTATLY have profit growth and constant expansion is impossible, and in the pursuit of this goal will kill the soul of any company. But no one will ever do that, because they want that 'Big payday'. TLDR: The people running these businesses, don't understand their business, or their market.
How about all hands on deck for 1 project at a time instead of everyone working on different things? Another thing I’m sorry I’m not paying $75 for a 10/15 hr game that is just getting over on the consumer big time. 👀
If we look back at the past 15 years (2010 to today), I’d argue there were only five studios that managed to create an open world game that took the industry by storm. - Rockstar (GTA 5, RDR2) - CD Projekt Red (The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk) - Bethesda (Skyrim, maybe FO4?) - Nintendo (BOTW / TOTK) - FromSoftware (Elden Ring) Obviously plenty of other open world games released, I’m not saying other games weren’t good, but from what I can tell those seem to be the biggest ones that got everyone talking and are still heavily beloved to this day. I suppose you could maybe also count Minecraft, but I think people view that game more as just a sandbox than as an open world title.
I didn't think the writing part had a significant headcount. I thought the largest headcount is the grunt work. AI technology can be developed to do that. AI can certainly be testers.
If we are talking AAA development then a big cost is graphics chasing. Graphics are nice but chasing 100k visuals is diminishing returns. Consultantation firms are giant waste for no value. SBI on unkown 9 copy pasted locals going on about chicken in the most stereotypical and racist way possible. DEI departments are redundant HR. DEI also creates toxic workplace of rats who try to get boss fired so they can take over positions leading to inexperienced people running studios. Longer dev time comes from that. This also create contractor jobs which are much more expensive than staff. Even movie studios spend hundreds of millions for just an hour of top end cgi.
I rather the industry go back to Xbox 360 graphics. I don't need realism, just don't make things look like potatoes. The cancelled Battlefront 3 is a pretty good graphic quality. Focus on gameplay.
Smaller games not needlessly inflated to appease size snobs who think money to time is a useful measuremnt of value and dont even beat the game anyway? I see nothing wrong with this.
This is why I really loved that Astro Bot got GOTY. Like, while it's not that big of a deal of an award opinion wise, something that fun and charming and SHORT is so ideal because then they can put focus on quality over quantity, and make it in such a way where it's very replayable rather than a one and done game or one that tries to keep you engaged for years and years with post-launch support, if if there is post-launch support, make it free unless it's a good sized DLC of some kind. And something like Astro Bot winning at such a big event is going to attract new players and potentially set a new precedent of some kind like how Elden Ring spawned basically a new genre of gaming at this point. Astro Bot might set a precedent where it tells studios that it's okay to have shorter games.
That's fine. 20 to 30 hour single player games are annoying. Especially if they're open world grind fests where you do the same thing. 10-12 or maybe 15 hours is perfect.
I myself noticed 90% of my favourite games past couple years are 8-15 hour story games. For a story RPG 30-40 hour is perfect for me ( New Vegas and ME2 come to mind).
Been wanting more smaller games for years now. I miss small scale singleplayer games that were around 15 or so hours with a complete story.
More focus on game mechanics with high replay value, games kinda like Prototype and DMC are a good frame of reference for what I mean
I think it is wise to greatly reduce development time. Games were already great when it took 10 hours to finish them. I prefer 10 short games that are different from each other over 1 huge game that takes me two years to finish😅
also if the game is smaller they need to reduce the prize cause u know noone is gonna buy a game that he will finish for 4-5h for 70$ or more
well, ther is quite a gap between 30 and 4-5 h. Some Title, if i make Platin, is more likelly 80-100h like the horizon games
FF7 Rebirth was made and released so fast because 90% of the devs worked on FF7 Remake. Also the game was started before Remake came out.
That only really applies to tight knit studios who actually keep staff. Most AAA have core team then contract work for a lot of development.
@ I was using SE as an example of a dev that does it properly. I could say the same thing with Santa Monica Studios because they release a high quality game like God of War Ragnarok only within 4-5 years after its previous entry. Staff retention and skill save development time especially if the whole team knows from the start what to do next and how to do it.
@@Duckman8213who knew that running a company in a healthy/well rounded way would lead to better results. I think this is the prime example of what's wrong across the board in the industry. I mean Bethesda had more producers on star field, than the whole team that worked on Skyrim, apparently it was a producer for every 6 or so people.
I find it funny that higher ups are looking at AI as the magic solution to cost cutting, when mismanagement is by far the biggest drain on budget from my experience. Re-writes/pointless changes are so damn common in game/film/tv etc.
I think until games can be a lot more interactive or destructible, we're all set with huge games. It's no fun playing on a huge map unless it's either a real with unique art style or allows you to actually change the map. In some ways no one has come close to outdoing Minecraft with us kinda sad. I thought by now we'd basically have a GTA-Minecraft hybrid game. Besides Unreal 5 has had problems with large seamless maps that they've never solved so a map made up smaller hubs is already better stability wise.
I do feel that studios can be to bloated and that in conjunction with management not having a clear vision and plan in place along with massive amounts of red tape for simple things to be done can lead in a lot of time being wasted...and time is money
you are correct, jason schreier and veteran devs have stated that studio size is an issue
>CDPR grew to 400 people and realised they needed to change/adapt.
>Bethesda grew to 350 people and decided to stay the same
I don’t plan on buying mafia, no open world no buy
GTA 6 $2 billion budget
I think the idea of smaller games is great, to be honest.
Baldur's Gate 3 was awesome, but it could have honestly been just as awesome if it was the size of acts 1 and 2. Divinity: Original Sin 2 was much the same way.
The Witcher 3 is another game where the size of it was awesome - but the maps didn't need to be that massive and there didn't need to be as much filler content as there was. A map the size of Blood and Wine that has a ton of interesting concepts and complexity to it can be just as good (if not better) as two giant maps that have a bunch of random filler in them just for the sake of being big.
In RPGs in particular the depth of choice, consequence, writing quality, characters, builds, gear system and different paths to take are significantly more important than just some massive world full of random stuff, IMO.
I didnt mind the size of witcher 3. But it took me 2 months to play. And according to steam only 25 %(2021) of the players actually finished witcher 3
@@Max1990Power They said this is one of the reasons that they made Cyberpunk's main campaign shorter. Will be interesting to see what approach they take with Witcher 4.
HELLO CRAZY IDEA GUY HERE! Maybe JUST MAYBE if we didn't have all of the excessive personal who don't directly work on games it would lower cost significantly. Big companies have psychologist on staff so they can figure out how to make microtransaction addictive so let them go, get rid of most of the executives, stop hiring "diversity" consultants, and get rid of some of the middle management, less employees means less HR personal, and last but not least is to take companies private, and keep private equity/venture capitalist to a minimum. All of that excess is what i like to call parasitic capitalism. Paying humans is the biggest cost in any business, and in a lot of game companies they have a lot of staff who isn't directly making the game, or is getting paid too much many to make decisions about a product they don't consume. Also the duty to the shareholders to CONSTATLY have profit growth and constant expansion is impossible, and in the pursuit of this goal will kill the soul of any company. But no one will ever do that, because they want that 'Big payday'.
TLDR: The people running these businesses, don't understand their business, or their market.
I want good stories. To care about the characters. Like. Uncharted or the ezio trilogy
How about all hands on deck for 1 project at a time instead of everyone working on different things? Another thing I’m sorry I’m not paying $75 for a 10/15 hr game that is just getting over on the consumer big time. 👀
Good. Maybe the quality will improve. And hopefully, less room for the bullshit
Even though I love open worlds there are only a small handful that I have found compelling enough to explore and consistently go back to.
Far cry
If we look back at the past 15 years (2010 to today), I’d argue there were only five studios that managed to create an open world game that took the industry by storm.
- Rockstar (GTA 5, RDR2)
- CD Projekt Red (The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk)
- Bethesda (Skyrim, maybe FO4?)
- Nintendo (BOTW / TOTK)
- FromSoftware (Elden Ring)
Obviously plenty of other open world games released, I’m not saying other games weren’t good, but from what I can tell those seem to be the biggest ones that got everyone talking and are still heavily beloved to this day.
I suppose you could maybe also count Minecraft, but I think people view that game more as just a sandbox than as an open world title.
@@Phirestar i will add recent AC Games to that list
@@Phirestar That's pretty much my exact same list. Not exactly open world but I also go back to Classic WoW a lot.
@@christonchev9762 I enjoyed the heck out of Ezio trilogy but got old for me after that.
Smaller is okey. Tighter well written experiences are much better than massive open worlds where nothing happens.
I didn't think the writing part had a significant headcount. I thought the largest headcount is the grunt work. AI technology can be developed to do that. AI can certainly be testers.
Larian studios set the new standard with Baldur's Gate 3 in how incredible writing, passion and pure talent can be shown.
Nah
And i expect to payless
If we are talking AAA development then a big cost is graphics chasing. Graphics are nice but chasing 100k visuals is diminishing returns.
Consultantation firms are giant waste for no value. SBI on unkown 9 copy pasted locals going on about chicken in the most stereotypical and racist way possible.
DEI departments are redundant HR.
DEI also creates toxic workplace of rats who try to get boss fired so they can take over positions leading to inexperienced people running studios. Longer dev time comes from that.
This also create contractor jobs which are much more expensive than staff.
Even movie studios spend hundreds of millions for just an hour of top end cgi.
Smaller games is ok to me. A lot of modern game developers are trying to fly and they can't even walk
I'd be ok with smaller games
As long as the price is smaller, I'm fine
@@kevinlist3330 I am speaking for myself...
@@aaront8609 I personally want more quality out of the price but I also understand wanting more playtime.
I'd rather have a 'Far Cry: Blood Dragon' than a 'Far Cry 6' any day
I rather the industry go back to Xbox 360 graphics. I don't need realism, just don't make things look like potatoes. The cancelled Battlefront 3 is a pretty good graphic quality. Focus on gameplay.
Smaller games not needlessly inflated to appease size snobs who think money to time is a useful measuremnt of value and dont even beat the game anyway? I see nothing wrong with this.
expect less sales
Every game dosnt need to be open world, im sick of bad open worlds. Theres only a handful of good ones.
And out of those handful of good ones, I think those are bad too. That’s just me though. It’s all padding
This is why I really loved that Astro Bot got GOTY. Like, while it's not that big of a deal of an award opinion wise, something that fun and charming and SHORT is so ideal because then they can put focus on quality over quantity, and make it in such a way where it's very replayable rather than a one and done game or one that tries to keep you engaged for years and years with post-launch support, if if there is post-launch support, make it free unless it's a good sized DLC of some kind.
And something like Astro Bot winning at such a big event is going to attract new players and potentially set a new precedent of some kind like how Elden Ring spawned basically a new genre of gaming at this point. Astro Bot might set a precedent where it tells studios that it's okay to have shorter games.