“Game development is getting more expensive”

-This article will have a lot of technical information, but I will try to present it with the most simple language.

In early summer, many advanced developers of AAA Games stated that the development of games is getting riche and the price tag does not change, so let’s raise it.

1) someone claimed that the industry could get rid of annoying microtransactions;2) Someone claimed that the standards of AAA projects, as well as the appetites of players are growing, which requires more human hours to develop projects, 3) Someone referred to inflation. Well, let’s figure it out more details.

Transactions

Let’s look at the next releases:

And we see widespread various games of games with pre -baking content from a whole product. And no one thought about driving the same sports simulators and various games. I do not want to say that all games use such a strategy of monetization, there are games from studios caliber less than which have not raised the prices of games. However, the increase in prices did not affect the presence of microtransactions.

About the standards of AAA projects and technologies

Over time, in the race for the consumer of the AAA, the studios are really trying to make their project more ambitious and expensive. Better graphics, more special effects, more directed symptoms, more location for game interaction. And here I would have no complaints if with the development of games, the tools for their development would not have developed in any way. If earlier everything was done manually, and even the textures were drawn earlier with handles in Photoshop, today you can often hear such a word as “procedural-executed”. Now there are a lot of tools that noticeably simplify the work of artists, which I want to tell you about.

– Let’s start with something easier. Suppose you need to make a game in an open world where all various vegetation is full and it will take a lot of work to study each tree in each bioma, if not for our magical word “procedural generation”.

Now there is such a magnificent utility on the market as Speedtree, which many studios are already being used. In it you can create various vegetation in a couple of clicks, randomize various parameters, and unloading trees, herbs, vines and other vegetation ready for playing. In which optimization is taken into account, and therefore it can also be created in it for your asses.

Let me explain what Lod’s is. Lod – Levels of Details, which translates as levels of detail. A special system that automatically, depending on the distance of the character from the object, reduces or increases the details of this object.

How does this work? Here we run by the location and at point -blank we approach our rabbit in order to make out it, and then the engine gives us the first rabbit for 69k triangles. We run away from him at a short distance, on which we can no longer distinguish minor detail, and now the engine gives us a second rabbit by 2.5k triangles and the further we move away from our rabbit, the less we can consider it, which means the less detail we can show and we will not notice any difference, and the FPS growth is significant.

-But there will be few trees alone, you also need a landscape. Well, and here the magic of procedural generation acts. There are many tools in various 3D packages and available engines, but let’s talk about specialized software. I will list only the most famous:

World Creator

In short, these programs allow you to generate photorealistic landscapes. Yes, these programs have a very large entry threshold, but with proper skill, these packages eliminate a very large amount of manual work, which significantly accelerates production.

-So we have made our environment biomes and we need to fill the locations unique for a specific project with architectural buildings and various objects. It would seem here to definitely have to do everything from scratch. But they came Quixel Megaskan and gathered a huge library of scanned materials and asses.

Please, here you have photorealistic materials with which you can paint your environment, and here you have a large library of photorealistic assets of various surroundings. Yes, for gaming projects it will still be necessary to optimize them, but all this already greatly simplifies the artist’s work.

-So we drew our environment, now we need various characters for which we will play and with which we will interact. I will not go into the jungle of sculpting a character now, although incredible tools appear there every year, they still require manual work, but the tools to facilitate work, the industry still represents.

I present to your attention the utility Metahuman, in which you can collect characters, as in some editor of characters from MMO, only much more in-depth. With configured Riga, textures, and lodami, ok we said above. Maybe at some projects of this tools there will be not enough for the main character, but it is quite possible to collect ordinary NPCs with a much greater variety than in the games in which everything was done manually, where you met the same passers-by.

So we have made the characters, now we need to put them on. You can draw clothes manually, which is sometimes even easier than somehow otherwise, but there is a tool with the name Marvelous Designer, which allows you to collect the desired costume by patterns, and using the instruments of simulation of physics, to realistically mole it without lining each fold with handles.

Yes, after Marvelous Designer, you need a lot of work to add a suit to the game, but it has already saved a lot of time for you, and physics simulation works well not only with clothes, but also with any fabrics, in principle, whether it be curtains, tablecloths and other assets made of fabric.

-We made our character, put on, now we need to make him move, and so that it would also look natural. Well, here you can already walk around with the budget: with expensive technologies Moushen Capture and hiring the actors. But games are not a movie, so you still have to work out interactions with objects, and the same animations of movements will be striking. But then artificial intelligence comes to the rescue. Many studios were invested in the development of neural nets, which generate and adjust the animation depending on the circumstances.

Also, we must not forget about animation programs, for example, a program CASCADEUR From the domestic studio Nekki.

An amazing program with a bunch of instruments with which the artist puts up the approximate animations, and Cascadeur thinks out for the artist, and the artist remains to correct the program.

The neural networks, in principle, greatly facilitate the development, which Alexei Makarenkov in his video has already told in detail, I advise you to watch.

-Here our character is already moving freely and realistically, he has a cool outfit, but he is painted monotonous. It’s time to draw textures, and if earlier I had to draw everything with handles in Photoshop, how our grandfathers were still painted, now such a technique is suitable only for stylized objects, because there are such programs as for example: for example: Substance Painter and Substance Designer .

Here you can both in 3D clock, and draw in 2d texture. And many magical procedural solutions that greatly simplify life and literally draw for you.

But this program frightening with its interface, although complicated in mastering, provides a huge tools for creating procedural tila textures.

Tayl texture is a texture that can be repeated in all directions, an unlimited number of times without seams.

You can still briefly affect the flings jackpot-joy.uk that will appear in the near future. Probably there are no more people interested in games who have not heard about the Unreal Engine 5 Kieler Fitchi. I now want to talk about Nanite and Lumen.

-Nanite
A stunning system that works as a system of Lods already known to us, only it does everything automatically. The artist does not need to draw individual levels of detail, but simply load the object into the engine, and the rest of the program will do everything itself, and will reduce or increase the details of the objects depending on the distance of the camera from these objects. What allows, as promised Epic Games, at their presentations, to build scenes from a prohibitive number of landfills.

I want to assume how easier it will become to live with this technology. If the restrictions on the number of landfills in the scene are greatly blurred, then you can leave honest geometry, and not fake it with norms cards.

Normal cards – in short, then this is a flat pattern, voluminous geometry transferred to the texture of the object.

For example, on the left we have a flat rectangle with the same texture simulating details, and on the right is an honestly blurred recess.

To obtain such cards, we honestly draw all the bulges, cavities, chips and other fine details, and then roughly speaking we photograph and transfer to the plane of the same object only without detail, which significantly reduces the number of polygons, not very losing as a picture. But if with Nanite technologies we do not look much at the number of landfills, then a huge layer of drawing cards can simply be ignored, and the quality of the picture will only become better.

-Lumen
In short about Lumen, then this is an analogue of reiteraining, only much less resource -fitting and does not require special video cards, but Lumen’s functionality is slightly less than the reiteraining.
Lumen makes it possible to make light sources dynamic.

For those who are not familiar with the development, I will explain. In the program, you can calculate a realistic light, as in life with a renegade from objects, which gives us soft shadows and partial shade, but if you give such a task for the program, then 1 frame will be imprisoned for several hours, and to play games we need at least 30 frames per second. Therefore, in order for the shadows to be beautiful and it is possible to play, these same shadows are baked in textures (or, if easier, draw them at the objects), which causes a number of restrictions. So if we draw a beautiful shadow from the object, then when moving this object, the shadow will remain in place.

Therefore, we get 2 extremes, either the object can move, but its shadow is as rough as possible, not having halftones, or the shadow is beautiful, photorealistic, but the object should always remain in place. And this problem volunteered to solve Ray Tracing. However, he needs special video cards, and he is very resource -consuming. And here Unreal Engine 5 is provided by Lumen, which does almost everything the same, but not so picky to the iron, and eats less fps. And most importantly in our topic that this technology significantly reduces the amount of work for level artists.

This is not all technologies significantly simplifying development. The main thing is that they allow you to do even one person more than before they made whole teams. What proves a project that at one time entered a lot of noise.

The game which was originally made by 1 person. He alone gathered the first chapter, in which there were, though linear, but beautiful locations, a combat system was implemented, Katsets were set up, and even a fight with Bos in the final of the chapter.

Inflation

I am not strong in the economy, but it would be foolish to deny the existence of inflation. The currency is depreciated and really conditional 2000 rubles earlier cost much more than 2000 now. But when the developers talk about all the rise in the cost of development, for some reason no one says that the video market itself has become much more. Selling information is not the same as selling material items. From increasing the number of copies sold, raw materials are not increased. Unless of course physical media. But here none of the developers gives statistics, about how often they bought wheels earlier and buy now. And do not truncate about how they try to fight the secondary market, releasing versions of consoles without a disc with a much smaller price tag, unlike the version with the drive.

All this is a very difficult topic, and it is difficult to talk about the rise in price of development without all the numbers on the hands, but it is very convenient to talk about what has risen in price, not to mention what has become cheaper.

Conclusion

“The people are worthy of their rulers” is a very good expression describing the situation.
All these microtransactions, endless DLCs in which the content cut out in advance and sold separately, the lutboxes, the impudent Reyuz of the Assetes, when the EA in its sports simulators simply changed the name, and the complete stagnation of the genres in the AAA sector. We get all this because we buy it. Until people stop buying endless additions to The Sims 4, 5, part will not work until we stop buying additional characters in Mortal Kombat, they will be cut and sold separately, until we stop justifying the boring plot of Borderlands 3 with the words: “They say, the game will be opened in the DLC,” the main version of the games of this seriesThere are less and less strength, while each new part of the FIFA is sold without serious improvements, the developers will sell one and the same game with different numbers in the title. Value your time and money.

P.WITH.
I’m just a novice artist
And I try to get to Gamdev
Here is my page on art:
https: // Onewhoseestars.ArtStation.Com/
I will be glad of any support or criticism

The best comments

In the main part of the article, which states about graphic programs, one can notice one trend – most of these programs have a very high entry threshold. From here the question arises – how much does a person need to study in order to master them properly? And how much such a specialist will request for work?

You can also raise the question of how compatible all these programs are – both with each other and with game engines (the same Unreal Engine)? Because it is one thing to create a separate model, and another is to put it in the game world. If, for example, it turns out that the trees in a strictly defined region should be two times thicker and for this you have to generate this region for half a day, and then import the same amount into the engine ..

In the main part of the article, which states about graphic programs, one can notice one trend – most of these programs have a very high entry threshold.

What? Now everything is open guides, relevant accompanying materials, tutorials from developers, a bunch of active community where if they tell me that. This is not to teach you 3DS MAX at the beginning of the zero, when the only learning material is a printed textbook of 4 years ago, in which even the description of the menu does not coincide with the current version, open/easy-toerated game engines or not, or no one heard about them, and therefore if you want to develop the game, you write it on C ++ from zero, even if the final product is some kind of somewhatLada Racing Club level. This is partly why there was such a fierce Modder community – it was impossible to download a free unity/ue and to cram the Asset Mountain in them, so there was the only option for people who were not ready to make their own bike, passing through all the stages, starting with the mining of ore for this in the mine.

Most of the article does not apply to the raised topic at all.

with ZP at 300-50 dollars per month

Well, a scatter … But, if you take it on average, then 10 Indians are cheaper, although not much. 😉

But in any case, everything rests on the salary. If, relatively speaking, in the first game you have 10 biomes, on which the special for procedural landscapes will spend a month, then if in the second game there will be 20, then it will generate them for 2 months. And you have no costs for 2 months of work instead of one you will not reduce.

I do not want to be a devil’s lawyer, but the article is enough only. A huge article will be fully disassembled to completely disassemble or the analysis will be like several videos from Makarenkov.

If in short, then this is why the blog answers little to.

Procedure does not give full control over objects and often there is a need to do everything with pens, especially for plot places. For example for a tree: hollow, chopped branches, a shape set by a director or artist (I see so), bones for wind animation, scale, a copy of the real, is not visible in the mass when the forest is needed. Gives simplification, but not always and not everywhere. The same chip with terrain generators. It all works great on the background and for the mass. And to create what you need for the scene/director/artist requires a lot of correction, which will not give so much winnings in time as we would like. There is a big plus for textures, but also not without minuses.

License. Need a cool epic piece? There is only in their storage? If you don’t have anil, then you go a fuck. A year ago it was so, now xs. With licenses a whole layer of individual problems. Hello Rubber 4.

Animations. Neurons are a black box, you can run into a problem that cannot be solved by knowing the algorithm. Network training is not a quick lesson. They are still far from. Another moment, stylizing animations can become more difficult.

The subte’s is cool, but there are more tasks, like layers of materials, PBR all things. The same Tyling bricks from the example for AAA is not good. Too distinct pattern, then we need editing and material. We can say that a game with a zero amount.

Nanite. I doubt the unambiguousness of the pluses. Well, ok, we exchange normal for landfills, with Lumen, AO card will disappear, but how are the rest of the cards? And how they like to write in these videos “100 million training grounds! Omagad!”, Cunning and only, the same boats only in profile and there is only one model. I can put objects with a bunch of boats, and the only difference is that the boats made the engine and how it is more convenient for it. For films Vari Hood, but for games not so much. At least I don’t want a game the size. And the aspirations for “brackets want the polygons so much and put it” ..

But Lumen is much more interesting, but there are a lot of noise artifacts and when moving quickly. For fast jutans, not very.

In general, I would like to see a slightly more detailed approach or views from different sides. And so the norm)

Here it is necessary to indicate what is “value”, “costs”, “salary” and other terms, because without them the consideration of this issue does not make sense. And it turns out that the development of technological means of production with all its buns can not at all affect the final financial balance.

Well, the result, where “the people who buy it are to blame” is the top of the schiz. It works individually, but what are the chances that there are not many people among the whole masses who still buy all this, especially when so many resources are spent on promoting the very idea of ​​the need for such a purchase that the costs of direct production of a particular game with this did not even stand nearby?

Well, it was interesting to read about the tools, yes.

This is not to teach you 3DS Max at the beginning of the zero, when the only learning material is a printed textbook of 4 years ago, in which even the description of the menu does not coincide with the current version

I wouldn’t be so sure of that. For example, I tried to study Unreal Engine – there are quite a lot of tutorials where instructions and descriptions do not coincide with how functions work in the current version of the engine.

For clarity – I do not deny that it has become easier to study software today. And even if you don’t find something in materials and tutorials, you can always ask the community online. However, spending a year (or even not one) on the development of all the nuances of 3-D modeling is still to spend a year on the development of all nuances of 3-D modeling. For example, I studied the materials and went through tutorials on Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, and several programming languages. However, my skills after all this did not automatically become professional, and the level of my Unity-System is unlikely to allow me to drill something cooler than the same Lada Racing Club.

I can say to you regarding compatibility from my experience, Quixel and Metahuman bought epics, and they made plugins for export from one environment to another, and everything is conveniently exposed to Blender, and the blender can be tied with Unreal Engine, there is also a Quixel Mixer – analogue SubstancePainter, which is also connected with Unreal Engine. Regarding Speed ​​Tree, he has a separate version that exports a spark in Unreal, the same separate version for Unity, and a separate version that is the source of the FBX or other format to exhibit. Regarding the metrics, they are discussed even before the modeling stage, and even if someone has passed it with this, then it is aimed to throw new ones much faster than manually, and if they need to simply be increased, then this can be done in the engine itself. He himself did not work with the instruments of generating the landscape, but he attended various conferences where the artists made presentations, and demonstrated work in all these programs, and the export of the finished Landskape in Unreal, the same without any problems. If you take Marvelous Designer, then in it you will create only High-Poly, and in any case you will throw it into an ordinary editor, where you still need to finish it to the game model.
Regarding the threshold of entry, but for many programs it is not small, but in the first time and specialists, not all these programs teach, but only related to them, those who draw the environment, they will generate landscapes, those who are engaged in animation, they will pick up the cascaders, and the pro -cancer will torment the Disigner with Disigner. And secondly, it’s cheaper, they will hire one professional with a rate of 2k dolars per month, which will be processed as a procedural landscapes or 10 Indians, with a salary of 300-50 dollars per month, which will make the same locations for the same time, but the whole brain will be taken out to you?

I understand for constructive criticism, I understand that I simply spread my hands on the water with these reasoning, because I do not operate with specific numbers, I just wanted to show the other side of the question, and for the most part I reasoned where I understand more, there were simply arguments that the projects are growing and I needed more effort and money for their implementation, and then I look at a full -fledged playing location with a photo realisticGraphics, thanks to the very tools, and at the same time, in some The Lust of US 2, they work out 10-30 minute animations of ordinary NPCs, which will see less than 1% of players because they will simply run by, and in the Red Dead RedMption 2 they work out testicular testicles in horses and a system of compression during frost.
And regarding the fault of the people themselves, but no one canceled the factor of individuality, I myself am in a hurry to buy all these DLCs and microtransactions, but they are popular. But let’s just take a look at different platforms and genres. Mobile market, there is initially the nursery of donate garbage, because casual players, whom most of them use all this there. Sports simulators from EA, let’s say the same FIFA, simply change the figure from year to year, and in some version they even forgot to change the figure on the ganer in the nutrition and release, but crowds of people who play only these simulators buy them. Now let’s remember the scandal with Star Wars Batle Front 2, when the same EA introduced the Lutboxes with Pay to Win with mechanics, how much noise was raised, and the situation became easier, you can also remember how Mortal Kombat 11 began and all the cosmetics were obtained either by a donation or an unbearable grind, how much heit was towards the game, and they are literally in a couple of weeksincreased the amount of currency received. Scandal with Warcraft 3 Reform, as a game was shut up, now they got a high -quality Diablo 2, and if everyone had a lazy third warcraft, the second devil would not have given another studio, it would have been concocted on the knees. Here the situation is very different even in different genres, because the target audience will say strategies, it will not accept the policy of monetization of disintegrated blogbasters using the example of witchcraft or battles.

It is clear that even now outdated tutorials exist, but before, in principle, only they were, unless of course you live in the same country as the author of the textbook and do not speak the same language with him. Yes, to learn how to make games as a “professional” – it is still not easy, but the whole point is in dynamics – before it was much more difficult, and the games were less worth. Therefore, there are no real reasons for raising prices. Even devaluation cannot be considered such – because the devaluation of peripheral countries is much higher than central, due to which outsourcing in the same India and Eastern Europe flourishes in the industry, thanks to which the price of development in dollars is again reduced.

Games already as a separate art. I would take a slight comparison with the cinema. Like cinema – games are becoming more complicated and technological. And the number of people who participate in development or shooting is already comparable or the general fund for the SP will be similar, all the same, conditional pair of programs and those who make animation are more expensive than a dozen people who configure the light in the stage (rude rude example, but I think it will be clear).

Conditional large blockbuster in the cinema costs 5-7 bucks for 2-2.5 hours and further along the falling (of course, depends on the cinema). AAA Games can be 10 and 50+ hours if you look at each corner. Let’s take them for 20 hours (you can come to such an average figure). If we take the same cost as in the cinema, 2 hours / 7 bucks-we get 50-70 bucks for a major game.

And if the game enters and you ride it and ride it, then the cost of pleasure is reduced in an hour.

If you take such gross logic – then yes, increasing price is justified.But only for some projects, others still do not cost their money. Fortunately, there are discounts

And another thing is that they shove any slag in games or sell at this price of the game with donat . Or DLS at the price of the game itself ..

PS I looked at your models – I would say I need to work with the lighting, for their presentation, otherwise even if they are good, they look boring and simply

I agree, I do not have scientific work, and this is only my point of view, which I wanted to share. And regarding the procedure, I agree only partially. If you take corridor projects, as say God of War, you won’t have a lot of landscapes there, some levels can of course be taken from the heights in the real world, but they can also be finalized, and the same trees can be assembled on the Speed ​​Tree, however, it regarding the huge open worlds, no one is bursting with handles anywhere, and you are no longer bursting with handles, and you can do any kindIn any case, the procedural generation is rule, but to correct a little, still faster than to do it from scratch. Regarding buildings, recently saw an addor for Blender, which generates Soviet panels, so for a non -playing environment you can use.

Regarding the pheny from the epic, Megaskan is integrated into Unreal, but it can also be used separately, in Unreal it is just free. Metahuman is most likely the same, but not sure. If you take Fitchi UE5, like Niagara, Nanite and Lumen, then Epicians developed them to capture the market, but for me it is worth it.

PBR for me so soon a task was simplified, it became much more understandable how to make it beautifully. And the example of TILINLING BRIGHTS, it was an example of TILINLISING, and not a high -quality texture, I am just learning to the designer. Although if you take one tile texture, as do not do it, and Tyl will still catch your eye, for this several textures can be mixed on one object, by Veretekalor or Haitmap, + decal.

Here’s about Nanite, there really the engine can take hundreds of millions, tested itself, and the quality of this automatic boiling in Nanite geometry, just amazing. Regarding the weight of games of hundreds of millions of landfills, here the question is controversial, yes, there are a lot of policies = a large file of the file, however, if the engine itself compresses the model, it does not need to load the boats in advance, this will decently reduce the weight of the game. Then – cards of normals in all sides, and cards of normal for the frequent are the most capacious, because they use all 3 RGB channels, and they usually have more bitterness, this is still a minus of a large amount of memory. The next factor-Nanite converts the bags into some format, if you imported into the engine in the engine, say in the FBX, which weighs a conditional amount of MB, then in the engine you need to convert into the format specifically for nanite, I myself did not compile projects, did not look, but I saw the articles and tests in which the geometry weighs much less. But of course, they will not score for optimization at all, in any case it is not convenient to work with a dirty net, many things will be done in Midle-Poly, especially the whole Hard-Surface.

Regarding Lumen, yes, I wrote that this is a cheap rating, and is very inferior in quality, there are artifacts, the lighting itself manifests itself with a slight delay, and emisivs processes only if the camera looks at them, but this is still dynamic lighting, with soft expression shades. If we take into account dynamic jester, there is no time to consider artifacts, and the jambs of lighting, if we take online jokes, so the chiaroscuro is generally reduced to 0, so that it would be easier to look at the enemies behind shelters, and if you take calm boils, then I prefer a dynamic lumen to static lighting, which will also significantly reduce the volume of the game, since there will be no shadow maps and cardsSveta.

I also agree in many ways about AI, only very large companies can afford it, to train it for a long time, and you will most likely have to get the result, however, the AI ​​already shows something unimaginable. By the way, there are achievements posted in open access to the source on GitHub.

In general, thanks for the opinion, for me it was the first experience of writing articles, recently finished making a test in the studio, I was very tired of 3 children, I wanted to be distracted, change my activities. So I killed all day, but I cleaned my head.