Are stunning AAA graphics significantly cheaper for game developers nowadays than in older days?

Yanocchi

So, look at this.

All textures, objects and assets to build a whole medieval town being sold at Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace for $80.
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/medieval-town



An amazing looking fantasy dungeon for $120.
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/fantasy-dungeon




Need forests and outside areas done? A pack for $180 allows to create breathtakingly beautiful landscapes.
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/landscape-auto-material




These are just a few examples. UE4 Marketplace has a lot of stuff like that for sale. Small indy companies must be having a good time being able to buy AAA quality graphics really cheap these days.

Was it also like this many years ago?

rawfox

Its quit a few years already, imagine, how mutch time was spend in the Unreal engine.
That might also have driven the Pathfinder Online people to switch to exact that Engine.
Smart move, still

Its the engine and the tools created to make big output with low input.
Wonder whats available for Cryengine, but that is well mutch more expensive i think.

When you remember back to Amiga's on the asm-parties, what some guys created was breathtaking 30 years ago, but it was just plain source, a handwork.

It started early due to the nature of programming often a lot of the same.
Modular programming, Object's came, so came editors for them.

My fingers getting itchy when i see that, made me want to spend time into that shit again, but meh ..

Yanocchi

rawfox said:

Its quit a few years already, imagine, how mutch time was spend in the Unreal engine.
That might also have driven the Pathfinder Online people to switch to exact that Engine.
Smart move, still

Certain other games have switched from CryEngine to Unreal Engine 4 too. Unless CryEngine has a similar marketplace, it might be an additional incentive for game developers to use UE4.

 

Kiyoris

Getting a basic engine running is super easy nowadays compared to the past.

In the past, to get even a basic engine running, you had to write complex occlusion algorithms like back-face culling, frustrum culling, occlusion octrees, etc..to make sure the engine didn't come to a crawl. I still have a lot of code like that which I wrote for physics simulations, not game related. It was the same for game developers. You used to have to start from scratch and it took months to even get a basic engine running that actually was somewhat optimized.

Now  you can buy an engine that can do this, or share code easily between projects. Even developers between companies often share code.

Vermillion_Raventhal

I would hope MMORPG engine like similar to this would help the genre tremendously.

Quizzical

If you're willing to build "your" game from a hodge-podge of random assets that you were able to buy cheaply, then yeah, it's a lot cheaper to do that with a fixed level of quality of assets taken in isolation now than it used to be.  Don't count on various assets meshing well with each other if you buy things based largely on what you can find for cheap, though.

There's nothing wrong with licensing someone else's artwork or code when it does exactly what you want.  But if you try to build a game almost entirely from stitching together pieces created by others, your game is going to be terrible, if you can even get it to run at all.  If you want to make a good game, then plan on doing for yourself whatever key portions you hope will make your game interesting as opposed to some generic, mediocre clone.

Using someone else's source code can be trickier, as figuring out exactly what someone else's code is doing often takes a considerable fraction of the time that it would to write it yourself.  Use someone else's code without understanding what it's doing and you run a serious risk of getting weird bugs that you can never fix because the code isn't quite doing what you think it's doing.  It's much safer to use small, well documented libraries that do clear, simple tasks than to try to grab off-the-shelf code to implement higher level things for you.

AAAMEOW

but does the engine makes it easy to create "player made content"?

or is it just easier to make another generic themepark game.

better and cheap graphic does'nt equal flexible.  

The engine is probably why all the game on the market are all too similar.

Cleffy

If I were looking at the elements involved here, there are different benefits depending on your games need and budget. If you want to make your own game, I would definitely spend $500 and grab an engine with some assets. Try and get the game working on your own since you will be the one most committed to it before you try bringing in other people who are not committed to your project.
If you are a small team, then buying assets and using a pre-existing engine saves months of time and money.
For these 2 examples, the selling point of the game will be in unique game play experiences. The art style and technology does not matter so much as long as you can code. Imagine working on a small team of 5 to make an mmo without an engine or assets. It would be impossible and you are asking each person to dedicate thousands of hours for no pay on a project that probably will be perceived as amateurish.
For the artist who makes the assets or the coder who makes the scripts its also nice. You make something like a nature pack and sell it for $40 each. Normally you would work a week to a month on such a project at $30 an hour so the assets can be used on 1 game for the cost of $1200-$4800. Its much more efficient and profitable selling these assets which are usually interchangeable to dozens of games without even having to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The real problem with using these packs is making them fit your vision of the game and make them not appear out of place. There will be scaling issues, texture depth issues, and palette issues. This is why if you have a larger budget you should opt to make them from the ground up. That way the art has its own vision that is carried out.

Kilrain

DMKano said:

Quite the opposite - AAA game development budgets have ballooned to ridiculous amounts over the years.

To be fair there is a distinction between AAA and AAA quality. The op is specifically referring to the graphics, which if done/implemented correctly it is possible to purchase very high quality, AAA even, graphics and make a game with it. The problem here is that everyone has access to those same assets and can make any game they choose with those same assets.

like DMKano is saying though, if you want custom made stuff, it's going to be very costly in one form or another. 

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Kilrain

Xodic said:

Big companies that have developed multiple games throughout the years have a stock pile of assets that only need to be re-tweaked instead of creating everything from scratch. This is one of many reasons why Blizzard and Bethesda stick to a certain art style.

Buying assets is a path of least resistance that could be a major flaw for indie developers. If an indie developer pieces a game together without ever coming into their own through creating policies and procedures, start to finish, then it's more than likely that it will be their first and last game. These assets make it too easy to jump head first into a  3D project that's way outside your scope and abilities.

As far as "cheap stunning graphics" , I'm not sure that has been the problem in the last decade. It's fairly easy to throw high res textures on a million poly model and make it look realistic, hell all you need is Gimp and Blender.. I think the problem is having the experience and know how to make it look good without killing performance. That's why I believe indie teams should start and finish smaller projects until they have the proper resources.

I'm not sure how much of what Blizzard or Bethesda reuse of their old assets. Unless it's the same game (expansion) then I doubt much really is. Just speculation though.

I do have to disagree with your second statement though. I don't think there is anything wrong with purchasing assets to get your game rolling. Sure, no one is going to complete a game by simply purchasing and pasting without some work of your own, but the ability to bypass hundreds of hours of work by selecting the right assets is a great decision. Often times these purchased graphical assets can be used as placeholders to create proof of concept or alpha stages that investors can get their hands on sooner to get a real sense for the game. Once more funding is in the real assets can be created. This is just one of the advantages.

Once you are able to create a high poly "stunning" model, creating a low poly version is a walk in the park (subjective I know, but for the most part true). So making a good looking model that is also good on performance isn't more difficult that creating the actual high poly version.

Cleffy

Its actually more difficult to create a good looking low poly model than a good looking high poly model. In both cases you make the high poly model. Reducing it while preserving most of the high poly look takes a bit more time.

Scot

This sort of thing might be good news for indie developers, but not even sure that's the case. You can't cut and paste a game together from such diverse sources.

Gdemami

....the reason why asian MMOs look so "cheap", because they are made cheap and in high quantity, the result is they all look the same - bought assets.

Kilrain

Xodic said:

Kilrain said:

I do have to disagree with your second statement though. I don't think there is anything wrong with purchasing assets to get your game rolling. Sure, no one is going to complete a game by simply purchasing and pasting without some work of your own, but the ability to bypass hundreds of hours of work by selecting the right assets is a great decision. Often times these purchased graphical assets can be used as placeholders to create proof of concept or alpha stages that investors can get their hands on sooner to get a real sense for the game. Once more funding is in the real assets can be created. This is just one of the advantages.

Of course, there are circumstances. 

Mainly, I think it's the make or break difference between an indie development team pasting together one game or having a future. Lets face it, your an indie team because you lack experience, money and resources. Skipping any step in the process will not make your game better and it will certainly not make you better, which is the most important part of it all.

(strange it posted without any response so... edit)

Shroud of the avatar is using purchased assets. At least one major asset was used in the creation of Hearthstone. I just can't agree with what you're saying. Indie developers wouldn't be skipping any steps, they just have a way to get around some difficulties to get the product finished. Finishing a project is by far the most important part. Get a few copies sold then you might be able to fund the creation of your own assets in the next iteration/expansion/revamp.

Quizzical

The critical difference is between:

1)  I want to make a game and could do everything myself (with other people as part of "my" development studio) on some budget.  But 20% of that budget is stuff that has already been done by others very close to what I would have done, and I can buy and use those assets for 2% of my budget rather than 20%, so I'll do that and save some money, while still doing the other 80% myself.

2)  I want to make a game but don't have the in-house capability to do everything myself.  I see lots of assets available for cheap, so I'll try to buy completed code and assets from others that do all of the hard work, and cobble them together to make "my" game.

There's nothing wrong with (1).  But (2) is very unlikely to lead to a completed, working game--and if it does, it's going to be terrible.

As for developers sharing code and assets among their own games, that's easier to do if you know the next few games that you're going to make and can make some of your stuff general purpose enough to be used by multiple games.  Doing that with very much artwork will be obvious and likely look wrong to players, but it's easier to do that with source code.  If you wrote code yourself for one game, you're already familiar with it if you want to re-use it for another game, so you don't have the learning curve of trying to figure out what someone else's code is doing.

Yanocchi

Thanks for the insightful discussion.

There is some evidence that services like UE4 marketplace really help indie developers and freelance model artists. There are a lot of generic assets that fit any game of the same genre. For example, every fantasy game will have some medieval weapons or medieval furniture and decorations. I've been following development of Revival and Chronicles of Elyria and know that developers of Revival have bought and used some generic small object/furniture assets made by Bump Workshop, which sells assets at UE4 marketplace, and creator of Chronicles of Elyria has described UE4 Marketplace as awesome.

dmaas4

@Yanocchi Do the assets have to be AAA for a game to be playable in today's standards ? 

JDis25

It's all relative. A game that looks significantly better than the competition today probably costs proportionally as much more to create as a game that looked significantly better than the competition 12 years ago.

BigRambo

Stunning graphics on a MMORPG?  "Runescape" ... the only word needed to bury this thread.   Runescape has more people online at this very moment than most MMORPG's released since 2010 with "stunning" graphics.  Maple Story ... MineCraft ... these 2 games makes "stunning" graphic MMORPG's look pathetic. It's all about game play, if the game play sucks, doesn't matter how real life you put the graphics.  You want a bold prediction? I predict that by the end of 2016, Runescape will have more active players than BDO and B&S ... oops, did I just blew a fuse on most of you?   Why even bother comparing games to WoW anymore? Comparing them to Runescape is overkill enough. 

AAAMEOW

You don't need to make a prediction.

No one even know how many people plays Runescape now, I dont' know how people can perdict how many people it will have at the end of 2016.

I guess no one have any clue how many players B&S or BDO have anyway.  And even if this games die in the US, don't mean it die in Korea.  

SEANMCAD

The tools to create very high end graphics are nearly a levels most businesses would call free.


Given game development cycle is around 3-4 years I would expect to see over the course of the next 3-4 years more indies gmaes with high end graphics and less and less indie games with low end graphics to the point where low end graphics being associated with indie games will be a distant memory, much like people actually reading newspapers is today

cameltosis

From my limited knowledge, there are three "primary" things involved in the creation of AAA graphics:

• The engine - eg Unreal, Cryengine etc
• The tool - the actual bit of software that artists use to create art
• The asset - e.g. a door, a house etc

The last few years have seen the developers of graphics engines opening up the doors to the public, either making the engine free for non-commercial use or significantly reduced. Off-the-shelf engines usually come with tools to interact with the engine (so you can make assets that can be loaded). The result has been that, recently, a lot more people around the world have started creating assets that can be used by the most common engines, in theory, creating a decent virtual market for assets. 


For developers, if they choose to use an off-the-shelf graphics engine, this can reduce costs. It removes the costs of developing your own engine, allows you to reuse assets from other games using the same engine or purchased online. It also offers access to a wider talent pool of artists. 


However, AAA devs probably wont use an off-the-shelf engine, especially in the MMO world. In my experience, most MMOs tend to take an off-the-shelf engine and then branch off, developing it further for their own needs. They can still re-use assts if they want. 


Actually creating the assets though.....I believe it is more time consuming now. Whilst the tools have improved and made it easier in some respects, the continued improvements in graphics means it is massively time consuming. A quick search revealed the following:

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/yes-but-how-many-polygons-an-artist-blog-entry-with-interesting-numbers.39321/

Looking at some examples, the characters in the original Virtua Fighter had roughly 2000 polygons per model. Compared to Resident Evil 6 which had 20,000 per character, even if the tools are more efficient, the artist still has to add 10x more detail to the model which is very time consuming. In addition, most modern games (especially PC) add in graphics sliders, meaning the artists have to produce more versions of the same model. 

When I worked for a AA developer, it took the artists roughly 2 months per vehicle. This was because they had to create the vehicle, then 3 levels of damage for each part of the vehicle, then 5 versions for various levels of detail. 



TL:DR - It is more costly now to develop AAA graphics than in the past

SEANMCAD

cameltosis said:

From my limited knowledge, there are three "primary" things involved in the creation of AAA graphics:

• The engine - eg Unreal, Cryengine etc
• The tool - the actual bit of software that artists use to create art
• The asset - e.g. a door, a house etc

The last few years have seen the developers of graphics engines opening up the doors to the public, either making the engine free for non-commercial use or significantly reduced. Off-the-shelf engines usually come with tools to interact with the engine (so you can make assets that can be loaded). The result has been that, recently, a lot more people around the world have started creating assets that can be used by the most common engines, in theory, creating a decent virtual market for assets. 


For developers, if they choose to use an off-the-shelf graphics engine, this can reduce costs. It removes the costs of developing your own engine, allows you to reuse assets from other games using the same engine or purchased online. It also offers access to a wider talent pool of artists. 


However, AAA devs probably wont use an off-the-shelf engine, especially in the MMO world. In my experience, most MMOs tend to take an off-the-shelf engine and then branch off, developing it further for their own needs. They can still re-use assts if they want. 


Actually creating the assets though.....I believe it is more time consuming now. Whilst the tools have improved and made it easier in some respects, the continued improvements in graphics means it is massively time consuming. A quick search revealed the following:

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/yes-but-how-many-polygons-an-artist-blog-entry-with-interesting-numbers.39321/

Looking at some examples, the characters in the original Virtua Fighter had roughly 2000 polygons per model. Compared to Resident Evil 6 which had 20,000 per character, even if the tools are more efficient, the artist still has to add 10x more detail to the model which is very time consuming. In addition, most modern games (especially PC) add in graphics sliders, meaning the artists have to produce more versions of the same model. 

When I worked for a AA developer, it took the artists roughly 2 months per vehicle. This was because they had to create the vehicle, then 3 levels of damage for each part of the vehicle, then 5 versions for various levels of detail. 



TL:DR - It is more costly now to develop AAA graphics than in the past

let me help clean that up a bit.

The Engine and tools are for the most part the same thing.
When you download Unreal or Unity that is the engine/tool. Now some firms have custom tools that work in the environment but on a whole those 'tools' do not represent a major difference in the overall games development and some of those tools can be gotten by indie companies just as well for nearly nothing.

Some companies make there own game engine but that is a bit like saying 'I dont want MS Office I am going to just make my own office software' you can. its expensive but you really dont gain much by doing so.

so..unreal used to be very expensive, now its basically free. all they ask for is a cut from your game sales.

I would expect to see a lot more high end graphic indie games

CrazKanuk

There are some fantastic options for graphics these days. For that matter, it's actually quite easy to roll out a game that is relatively inexpensive, as long as you're willing to compromise on customized graphics and functionality. 

The name eludes me now, but I was looking into an art service at one point and I think it had 30,000 models w/ animations, etc., etc., etc. for like $10,000, plus annual maintenance, which is ridiculous. HOWEVER, that being said, as amazing as these assets are, you might be able to get away with trees, grass, buildings, etc. which are the same as 20 other games. You may even get away with CopyPasta NPCs. However, once you set this level of quality for all of your other assets, it means that you're going to be hiring someone to do custom work to that same quality, exclusively for your game. So now you might be looking at a few thousand per model, or more. All depends on how many main story characters you want to customize. 

Essentially, unless you're willing to create a game entirely from these assets, no, it's still going to start to get wicked expensive as soon as you want to customize anything. 

Same goes for systems. It's quite easy to find cookie-cutter systems for games. It's difficult to customize those games inexpensively. 

Gdemami

SEANMCAD said:
let me help clean that up a bit.

The Engine and tools are for the most part the same thing.
When you download Unreal or Unity that is the engine/tool. Now some firms have custom tools that work in the environment but on a whole those 'tools' do not represent a major difference in the overall games development and some of those tools can be gotten by indie companies just as well for nearly nothing.

Some companies make there own game engine but that is a bit like saying 'I dont want MS Office I am going to just make my own office software' you can. its expensive but you really dont gain much by doing so.

so..unreal used to be very expensive, now its basically free. all they ask for is a cut from your game sales.

I would expect to see a lot more high end graphic indie games.

Tools are used to create assets(art) - 3dMax, Photoshop, Maya, etc.

Engine is what put assets together along with other layers - database, physics, etc


You can surely buy some assets for some neutral settings/environment or just textures but by doing so you are losing one important factor of art in games - identity.

You will still likely need to create lots of assets by yourself anyway - characters, items, distinct locations, etc. and that will still take more resources than you can imagine. I would even say that assets you want to actually buy are the ones that are "easiest" to make yourself.


Not all engines are the same thus creating your own may fit your game better. Whether it is more expensive than to go with commercial one or just adapt your design/development is purely case by case basis.


I think even today we can see indie games with large disparities in graphics - landscape vs characters, objects, animations, etc. that is a result of bought assets.