Bare bones AAA team

7 hours ago, RickBaker said:

I am curious if a crew of 10 could make a triple a game in 2 years the pool of applicants would be very well experienced.

Yes, it's possible. Low likelihood, perhaps, but possible.

7 hours ago, RickBaker said:

I think this could be a cool discussion.

Possible.

1 hour ago, Tom Sloper said:

Yes, it's possible. Low likelihood, perhaps, but possible.

Possible.

I am curious, low likelihood how? This is all speculation at an imaginary game studio. Would it need a year or more? 15 employees? What makes it possible with a low likelyhood?

AAA expectations are for high content. Takes time to create all that content.

Below is a video showing the credits of Battlefield V. It's almost 15 minutes long to put it into perspective. It will also show what the different positions are. Two years for a AAA title with only ~15 people... Not sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJv98I6eY9E

The Witcher 3 development costs were 306 mil. PLN - if you would convert that into USD that is $81 million. Witcher 3 is one of the largest open world RPG games I have played in past few years. I would say that it was a AAA experience.

The Witcher 2 development costs were around 40 mil. PLN - about $10 million. I would dare to say that Witcher 2 was also AAA experience, despite being much shorter and not open world like its successor. It is considered as one of the cheaper AAA games.

These games were developed in Poland, the costs for employees and living are slightly lower compared to Western Europe, and a lot lower than in F.e. California. You also need to take this into account.

4 hours ago, AtomicWinter said:

Below is a video showing the credits of Battlefield V. It's almost 15 minutes long to put it into perspective. It will also show what the different positions are. Two years for a AAA title with only ~15 people... Not sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJv98I6eY9E

That’s why it’s hypothetical I have never come up with a good number in my spare time playing with it.

I understand the pipeline of development. I know about assets, polish, the amount of time just those two take, again that’s why I say hypothetical and what would change if needed.

Gta series runs around 600-700 employees at rockstar north. I also know about the costs of motion capture, the scoring for the sound track, the process times on rendering, that is real world I am trying to think of a solvable unsolvable question in an imaginary world.
I am not meaning MMO here, I am referencing triple aaa type like diablo, torchlight, final fantasy, Zelda, civilization, total war, etc. although Zelda is locked by Nintendo so it’s always going to look horrible.

6 hours ago, Vilem Otte said:

The Witcher 3 development costs were 306 mil. PLN - if you would convert that into USD that is $81 million. Witcher 3 is one of the largest open world RPG games I have played in past few years. I would say that it was a AAA experience.

The Witcher 2 development costs were around 40 mil. PLN - about $10 million. I would dare to say that Witcher 2 was also AAA experience, despite being much shorter and not open world like its successor. It is considered as one of the cheaper AAA games.

These games were developed in Poland, the costs for employees and living are slightly lower compared to Western Europe, and a lot lower than in F.e. California. You also need to take this into account.

Yea that is why the imaginary 2 year startup fund is at 80,000,000usd.

I guess imagine a company that gets 40,000,000 a year regardless. Let’s add that “cheat code”. That isn’t there total budget but garenteed, add to that which will never go away on top of any money coming in on future titles and expansion of the team to larger and larger say running 3 IPs.
the characters are well designed using psychology to hook the player. The hypothetical of all the designers, programmers, leads, qa is all in the top of their field. Let’s set their salary at $200,000. That’s 2-5 million a year on salary’s for 10-25 people.

Have fun with it.

37 minutes ago, RickBaker said:

Let’s set their salary at $200,000. That’s 2-5 million a year on salary’s for 10-25 people.

I will just input salary for my country (Czech Republic, next to Poland) - for software developers, so you get the picture. For senior developers the statistics says that on average they require $40,000 per year. For junior developers it is $18,000 per year. These are netto - as it is reported salary by the employees. (Source: Startupjobs.cz)

So, your income budget would be (our taxation is around 45%) at $73,000 for seniors and $32,000 for juniors. As senior we generally count somebody with at least like 5 or better 10 years of experience. Often also working for foreign company for few years. Of course the salary heavily varies based on the branch where you work.

Of course, you can also try luck in India, which may be even a bit more cheaper - forming even bigger team.

The problem is, bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. And when you have to aim at qualified people (often with university degrees and experience) that know what they are doing, the costs difference tend to decrease.

1 hour ago, Vilem Otte said:

I will just input salary for my country (Czech Republic, next to Poland) - for software developers, so you get the picture. For senior developers the statistics says that on average they require $40,000 per year. For junior developers it is $18,000 per year. These are netto - as it is reported salary by the employees. (Source: Startupjobs.cz)

So, your income budget would be (our taxation is around 45%) at $73,000 for seniors and $32,000 for juniors. As senior we generally count somebody with at least like 5 or better 10 years of experience. Often also working for foreign company for few years. Of course the salary heavily varies based on the branch where you work.

Of course, you can also try luck in India, which may be even a bit more cheaper - forming even bigger team.

The problem is, bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. And when you have to aim at qualified people (often with university degrees and experience) that know what they are doing, the costs difference tend to decrease.

Awesome, thank you for playing along with the scenario.

ok, let’s say your a billionaire and you just want to blow money not caring about the costs but you can’t build in North America.

To give my background in real life I am currently an executive for an a-list production studio for movies, that loves to program algorithms to solve problems. I also love video games. I also love to come up with imaginary scenarios that are hard but possible.
my personal life doesn’t matter for this though as I’m just having fun with a made up scenario and love using my imagination.

I always came up with around $100,000,000 budget for 3 years with 50 on the team, still excluding hr and what not. With wiggle room to 5 years. I am curious what others come up with. A distraction per say and enjoy theoretical scenarios. Theorycrafting but instead of at a game, at the studio itself. For example if you wondered what made a game that could easily be aaa but shipped as a. Or if they used this tool instead or that tool. Did they throw away the white papers? Where did they find this non standardized library referencing pascal code etc...

Just a fun game. I am curious to see what others come up with. If no one wants to play that’s cool too.

45 minutes ago, RickBaker said:

I am curious what others come up with. A distraction per say and enjoy theoretical scenarios.

Here's one I came up with a few years back. Okay, so 18 years ago.

41 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

Here's one I came up with a few years back. Okay, so 18 years ago.

Awesome, 18 years is a few years long time for a kid2 seconds for an older person. Ignore the gray in my hair.

There's no one-size-fits-all, but it is something you can estimate: Look at similar projects and use them as a guide.

These days a AAA game costs on the order of $500M to create, with about $200M spent on development costs.

Full-sized big games (that aren't quite AAA) cost on the order of $50M-$100M in development costs.

If you want to say "a game like ${A} or ${B} or ${C}" you can get closer, go do some research on those titles. If you can't find firm numbers, look at the size of development teams and multiply by salaries, look at published operating budgets for publicly traded companies, look at financial statements you may find online, look up estimates from aggregators like VGChartz. If all three are similar to what you want to make and they cost $75M, $45M, and $60M each, then you can use that for your own estimates.

Don't forget that a startup has additional costs since they don't have a large library of resources to rely on nor existing piles of hardware, nor a history of working together in productive ways. Each of those has more costs.

Game credits can be quite revealing.

3 hours ago, frob said:

There's no one-size-fits-all, but it is something you can estimate: Look at similar projects and use them as a guide.

These days a AAA game costs on the order of $500M to create, with about $200M spent on development costs.

Full-sized big games (that aren't quite AAA) cost on the order of $50M-$100M in development costs.

If you want to say "a game like ${A} or ${B} or ${C}" you can get closer, go do some research on those titles. If you can't find firm numbers, look at the size of development teams and multiply by salaries, look at published operating budgets for publicly traded companies, look at financial statements you may find online, look up estimates from aggregators like VGChartz. If all three are similar to what you want to make and they cost $75M, $45M, and $60M each, then you can use that for your own estimates.

Don't forget that a startup has additional costs since they don't have a large library of resources to rely on nor existing piles of hardware, nor a history of working together in productive ways. Each of those has more costs.

Game credits can be quite revealing.

Thank you.

On 10/15/2019 at 5:43 PM, RickBaker said:

I am curious if a crew of 10 could make a triple a game in 2 years the pool of applicants would be very well experienced.

That's a triple-I team, not a triple-A team

Don't forget about editor software, content production pipelines. Even if you use an existing 'engine' which supports dragging 'standard' assets 'into the editor' somehow, for an 'AAA' game you'll find yourself in need of building very custom data pipelines. That involves some more engineers, tech artists, and a lot of time, plus a crystal ball so they design and implement it in such a way that ART rework will be minimised. You can't avoid custom technology for a big, original game.

Also don't forget about platforms. Even if your 3rd party 'engine' claims to support all the various consoles and whatnot, chances are you'll still need your own engineers doing a lot of platform-specific work and fixes.

I don't think it's even remotely possible to create what we all very vaguely understand as an AAA game with 10 people in full-time developer roles in 2 years from scratch. For a second game of the same genre, almost unchanged technology, and well established pipelines, it'd still say that 10 people and 2 years won't cut it, still an order of magnitude below reality.

9 hours ago, pcmaster said:

Don't forget about editor software, content production pipelines. Even if you use an existing 'engine' which supports dragging 'standard' assets 'into the editor' somehow, for an 'AAA' game you'll find yourself in need of building very custom data pipelines. That involves some more engineers, tech artists, and a lot of time, plus a crystal ball so they design and implement it in such a way that ART rework will be minimised. You can't avoid custom technology for a big, original game.

Also don't forget about platforms. Even if your 3rd party 'engine' claims to support all the various consoles and whatnot, chances are you'll still need your own engineers doing a lot of platform-specific work and fixes.

I don't think it's even remotely possible to create what we all very vaguely understand as an AAA game with 10 people in full-time developer roles in 2 years from scratch. For a second game of the same genre, almost unchanged technology, and well established pipelines, it'd still say that 10 people and 2 years won't cut it, still an order of magnitude below reality.

What if you are already using a pipeline for CGI assets in Houdini and those will be the main art assets with anything extra need being shot in the studio? If you already have the offices and motion capture and sound stages?

10 hours ago, Hodgman said:

That's a triple-I team, not a triple-A team

This is hilarious!! Triple me team, time to get the robots out.

Those off-the-shelf 'CGI assets' might not perform well enough and you might not be able to have as many of them (on screen) as you'd like for your specific game

You're still implying that everything's ready. It never is, things evolve and what worked 5 years ago isn't often enough today. Your team will have to constantly accommodate for that continuous change. That requires people and time. Even if you throw really a lot of money into it (buy a lot of 3rd party/outsourced solutions and assets), you might need a surprising number of your own people integrating it.

I'm not sure if I'm making much sense or just sound too pessimistic, I just see how much man-time things seem to take in a AAA studio...

The way I see it is that even if you have one development team preparing all the tech, pipelines and workflows and then you suddenly start your other team, the A(AA)-team which you're talking about, to make you a game in 2 years, you'll still have to have that first team upgrading the tech, pipelines and workflows in the meantime for the next game. And 10 people will suffice neither of the two teams and also they'll never work well in separation.

15 minutes ago, pcmaster said:

Those off-the-shelf 'CGI assets' might not perform well enough and you might not be able to have as many of them (on screen) as you'd like for your specific game

From experience - the performance isn't really that big problem anymore (or at least what it used to be). The off-the-shelf assets have different, huge problem. Composing scenes out of those tend to be hard - they often don't match each other, or simply don't fit together - and you may end up reworking some of those assets. In ideal scenario you would have one artist (or generally the fewer the better) who would make you the whole world, as that would keep art consistent throughout that world (of course that is not really feasible for AAA ... but in indie studios this is much more common, and it often ends up having more consistent art than AAA games).

This issue happens quite regularly even without off-the-shelf assets and within AAA studios, more often than you would expect. Do you remember The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? Not sure if you played it - but going around the world you can recognize that certain parts were made by different graphics people and art isn't as consistent as one would expect (of course, due to scale of the game, it is far beyond scope of single artist to create it within short time ... if you have never played it - compare environment around Anvil and around Imperial City).