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Over 2000 developers and 13 outsourcing studios worked on The Last of Us Part II
- Thread starter Raigor
- Start date
Now imagine if Naughty Dog decided on making an open world game..... Woof that number would take quite the jump
What's equally impressive to me was what the resources were in service to:
A game about a gay protagonist that takes some major risks narratively and artistically.
Know sales are great, but Hope the alt-right shitbin backlash doesn't prompt Sony to ever get more conservative with their investments. It's pretty neat that Sony(unlike a some like Ubisoft) is willing to give developers such resources to take such risks with central franchises like this.
A game about a gay protagonist that takes some major risks narratively and artistically.
Know sales are great, but Hope the alt-right shitbin backlash doesn't prompt Sony to ever get more conservative with their investments. It's pretty neat that Sony(unlike a some like Ubisoft) is willing to give developers such resources to take such risks with central franchises like this.
They started outsourcing with Uncharted 2 and continued to rely on it more and more with each iteration.
I think they will never do it because they don't want to sacrifice detail, unless they grow to Rockstar level.
Nothing weird really, I think every major AAA games gets outsourced nowadays. There are just way too many assets that needs to be done and doing all of them in-house in US or Europe or Japan even can be prohibitively expensive.
That's why they get outsourced to outsourcing studios or support studios in (usually) Asian countries.
What's weird is not outsourcing lol.
That's why they get outsourced to outsourcing studios or support studios in (usually) Asian countries.
What's weird is not outsourcing lol.
A lot of the development of Halo MCC was outsourced. Its a lot more common than you think.
It won't, don't worry. The game is breaking sales records, will win tons of awards, and will show other devs that being progressive can be a success too. They don't give a fuck about bigots on reddit whining about it.
This. Ubisoft is massive and don't even risk a AC game without a male protagonist option.
No it's not. Outsourcing is always why it's ridiculous to say "Oh x studio made x game with only the 100 or so people at the lead studio."
Hope you're right, and not really just the alt-right shitheels, but just in general.
I know this was a proven franchise, but you just don't see many major corporations in media invest this type of money into what are not easily identifiably mass appealing stories. And I hope that doesn't wane.
No, Ubi has 18k people across 40+ studios working on all brands and games. It is interesting to see that the number of studios involved in a project is often perceived negatively by gamers with Ubisoft's games, but that doesn't seem to be the case with other studios :)
Expected.. is a technological marvel and a masterpiece of gaming.. is not all about quantity anyway.. you need the talent to make a thrilling story and to make everything feel grounded and real.
This game is above anything else we have seen in gaming.
This game is above anything else we have seen in gaming.
Guerilla Games [and many other big studios] outsource a lot, they had few GDC talks about it. Modeling is also a seasonal work, it is not needed at every stage of the game production.
"Our core business is making games, not assets"
Great article about outsourcing for Horizon Zero Dawn https://theoutline.com/post/3087/outsourcing-blockbuster-video-games-made-in-china-horizon-zero-dawn?zd=1&zi=s4ib4eu3
"Our core business is making games, not assets"
Great article about outsourcing for Horizon Zero Dawn https://theoutline.com/post/3087/outsourcing-blockbuster-video-games-made-in-china-horizon-zero-dawn?zd=1&zi=s4ib4eu3
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yep .
The days of working out budget or just look at the studio number to see how many made a game long gone.
That is not even counting assets packs .
I hope this thread kills the implication that games with large workforces, (aka the vast majority of modern AAA games), are "soulless" productions on top of killing the "too many developers=unfocused game" brand of misinformed hot takes about game development. 😃
It is extremely common, and everyone does it for games of this level. There are art outsourcing companies in countries like China or Vietnam that do themselves have hundreds of employees that only provide support to AAA studios.
If that is weird to you, then quite frankly you haven't been paying much attention to how video game development works.
Yeah and it shows, the game is a masterpiece through and through and you can see all the work put in by every single one of these 2000 people. They can afford it with how huge the game is/ will be too. It'll be another game that flies past 10 million sales for Sony.
Why does it involving a lot of people make it unsustainable?
I'm used to hearing of teams of nearly 1000 staff, but twice that and a game that was in development for a while surprised me.
Outsourcing is normal now, but hope budgets don't balloon to unsustainable levels. Last of Us can afford it but mid budget games on next gen probably can't.
Outsourcing is normal now, but hope budgets don't balloon to unsustainable levels. Last of Us can afford it but mid budget games on next gen probably can't.
Polyphony were like the last AAA studio I could think of that didn't outsource, but thankfully they've even started doing it with Sport's additional content.
We're already in the simulation. This is for the simulation inside the simulation. Maybe we're a million simulations deep.
Hopefully they are outsourcing with GT7, it needs to have more content at launch than Sport.
Reading the above article dieh@rd posted, it seems like there is definitely a shaky foundation here.
As a lot of this outsourcing seems to be a pipeline that allows studios to use low cost workers in countries like China to do a lot of the time consuming stuff like asset creation. Therefore keeping budgets down.
Which if things with China go south and/or there aren't any low cost alternatives(or the low cost alternatives start achieving better wages in their countries), it will be very difficult for this type of game to sustain itself I imagine. As if you take those 4000 people and pay them average US industry salaries, the numbers become eye popping.
Almost all AAA games you play today are outsourced in some form.
Even for a seemingly "smaller" project like Spyro Reignited Trilogy, there was literally dozens of studios that had a hand in the making of the game. Toys for Bob might be the primary studio known for making the game and the one that gets top billing, but alongside them you had Airborn Studios, Sledgehammer Games, Beenox, Sanzaru Games, CounterPunch Studios, Forge Studios, Lakshya Digital...the list goes on. All responsible for important aspects of the game such as concept art, character design, environment art, animation etc.
There's a reason why the credits sequence is over 18 minutes:
very common, remember listening to an interview or podcast with someone who worked on Forza who talked about how the in-house modellers will run a QA and optimization pass on assets they receive from their outsourcing partners.
Character and weapon skins in games like Fortnite and Overwatch are usually outsourced (some studios have even done assets for both), given the quantity of those type of asset needed to be made for each update.
Even though is a very flawed game the amount of effort that went into it still shows. The flaws are directly related to the creative direction and not say, the wordlbuilding.