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“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

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Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#101

Post by atmosx »

dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

You made 'Crash B' ? Boy you're a myth! It was one of the few games I wasn't bored to death while playing :-)

congrats!

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#102

Post by chazu »

dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

Was that title developed using lisp? If so (or if you worked on other Naughty Dog games which did use lisp) do you feel that it was a force multiplier in any way?

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#103

Post by ChuckMcM »

forgetsusername wrote: post #86
ChuckMcM wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that term 'meta ignorance'. It is important to realize that ignorance isn't "bad" it can be fixed by learning, but its good to know that you have it so you can start fixing it. The other aspect of this that I see, even in seasoned engineers, is the 'presumption of simplicity'. Some things look really simple, but inside they are actually quite complicated. A smart phone is just a screen, a computer, a battery a…

> It is important to realize that ignorance isn't "bad" it can be fixed by learning In the parlance of Mr. Rumsfeld, you can learn from the known unknowns, but often you don't even discover the unknown unknowns (the "meta-ignorance") until it's too late.

Except that Rumsfeld had a different problem, he had people who didn't want him to know what he didn't know, because it was a tactical advantage for them.

This, like most engineering tasks, is more straight forward. You have to know what its going to take to build each piece and assemble them into the final product. So if you are making a AAA indie game, it helps if you can talk with the project manager at a company that made AAA games and go through their list of deliverables, and then think about how you're going to deliver the same thing. Sometimes you'll be tempted to say "we won't need to do that" but like Chesterton's fence, you need to understand why they did that so that you can really say you won't need to do that thing.

It is always ok to start with "how hard could it be?" but that starting point requires you educate yourself on exactly how hard it could be. For game development I think pretty much all the questions are knowable (except for consumer reception of course)

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#104

Post by marrs »

bko wrote: post #38

> But we have literally no money whatsoever to pay for stamps, let alone print the artbooks and dvd-cases. How did this happen? Shouldn't that money have been allocated earlier? Did they spend every dollar thinking that this is the dollar that turns everything around. Maybe I just don't get the mentality of those looking to fund projects on Kickstarter.

You can allocate it as early as you like, but if you declare bankruptcy then all of your assets are seized. The administrator doesn't much care what you intended to spend them on, they are now going to your debtors.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#105

Post by jeremiep »

TomGullen wrote: post #79
dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

What does "AAA Game" mean anyway? I'm a bit lost on the definition. Wikipedia says: > In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers. By definition, a budget of $75k + 6-10 people wont make an…

Its easy to underestimate the scale of AAA titles today. Even a few millions dollars with a team of twenty isn't nearly enough to cut it. If that wasn't enough, they also go for the top talent and expertise the industry has to offer in order to manage the massive complexity of these projects. Its also easy to underestimate how much a difference it makes to have experienced developers for projects of such scale. This has to be by far the most important factor when determining the success of these projects.

This is both good and bad news for indie developers. Bad in the sense they'll never reach that scale and level of graphics without serious investments. Good in the sense the triple-A giants are anything but flexible and indie developers can therefore differentiate themselves through innovative gameplay and storytelling, which is very much lacking in the AAA scene nowadays.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#106

Post by robotkilla »

vimota wrote: post #83
TomGullen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "AAA Game" mean anyway? I'm a bit lost on the definition. Wikipedia says: > In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers. By definition, a budget of $75k + 6-10 people wont make an…

It seems like they meant AAA- quality game, with a budget of $75k + 6-10 people

I think you're correct... saying that you created a AAA title means that you can compete with major game studios... I think.

However, in my opinion AAA doesn't apply to scope or budget but quality of experience. Super Meat Boy is one of the best games I've played in years and it doesn't come anywhere near the scope of say GTA 5 (which is also awesome).

I don't think anyone calls SMB a triple-a title though... so I'd say wikipedia's definition is correct.

So then, I think the real issue here is aiming to make a game that compete with major studios who have budgets of $50m and employ hundreds of specialized team members.

These devs claim it was a passion project, but then they throw in the towel on the entire concept of running an indie studio after the negative reviews come in. I understand the bankruptcy move, but if I were the founder's shoes, I would move somewhere cheap, take a side job and keep making games on the side. If I still loved the Wolfie project, I would fix it for free and I would find a way to send my KS backers whatever I owe them. I would read every negative review of my game, try to bucket the feed back (something like: legit, semi-legit, ignore) and then fix the game. I would also print my favorite positive reviews and hang them up around the house for motivation. If I no longer believed in the game, I would build something new but smaller. 13 years is a long time to wash down the drain due to one failure.

Currently I'm trying to make indie games along with my gilfriend. She has no formal 3d art training but has been teaching herself via the internet. I learned Unity and have been teaching myself c# / cg and all the other shit that goes with 3d game development (I come from a python / js background). We will most likely fail hard but I don't understand the concept of quitting when you got into something for fun in the first place.

edit: it also sounds like these guys tried to build their own engine... or something. If they did, that was a bad idea. If they didn't, I don't understand why they had so many issues with collision detection. Haven't played the game though... its just odd to hear that they had major collision detection issues.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#107

Post by wisty »

TomGullen wrote: post #79
dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

What does "AAA Game" mean anyway? I'm a bit lost on the definition. Wikipedia says: > In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers. By definition, a budget of $75k + 6-10 people wont make an…

The only way to make a "AAA" game on a low budget now, competing with the massive asset libraries AAA games build up, is to create some kind of easily modded game, where players can build their own assets.

Minecraft does this, in a way. Instead of a villiage-sized Barbie / GI Joe playset (with everything perfectly designed), you get a giant bucket of lego bricks.

Not that Minecraft / df style games have done much better on Kickstarter.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#108

Post by RogerL »

wpietri wrote: post #67
themoonbus wrote: post #3

"But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall development cost (we found out a little too late)" Not to pile on, but this was very surprising to me... how could you not know that this would have a major impact?

> how could you not know that this would have a major impact? Anybody starting a major project will be ignorant about some important things. It's impossible to do anything interesting and know everything up front; if you could know everything, then that would mean it had been done a zillion times before and therefore not be interesting. There's also a strong selection bias. The kinds of people who don't take chances?…

All you have to do is look at the budget, schedule, and people count of any game ever. This is not secret information (big picture numbers, anyway). Okay, so maybe EA is non-optimal due to corporate hoo haa, and a lean team can do more. That doesn't begin to account for a budget of 50K replacing a 100+ person, 1+ year death march effort.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#109

Post by grok2 »

themoonbus wrote: post #3

"But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall development cost (we found out a little too late)" Not to pile on, but this was very surprising to me... how could you not know that this would have a major impact?

One thing I've learned over the years is that sometimes people who succeed are sort of ignorant about the scale of the problem they are trying to solve -- they succeed over tremendous odds. It's not correct to think everyone sees things rationally every time and should've seen the obvious.

Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”

#110

Post by lewisjoe »

dmbaggett wrote: post #10

I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…

You are the guys who made Crash Bandicoot? Thanks for making my childhood awesome.
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