Could there be a AAA game industry apocalypse?

No, I theoretically want AAA Assets/code so that i can show my work. Does the Writer question the engagement of a director when he is offered an opportunity to make a movie? Whilst code of course is notoriously easily to copy why shouldnt a "AAA" level Art Director be able to purchase AAA quality Software Engineering ? The greatest strength of digital assets IMO is the ability for them to be easily shared, copied, modified and iterated upon. The communicating of idea's, hypothesis, solutions and feedback is the key to any human works endeavour. Computer code, as an asset just happens to be embodiment of this.

Every business in the world answers yes to your second question, no one buys assets not to make money, it is why they are called an asset. Trash asset flips using ill put together content are just that, trash. The same happens in all media, particularly online journalism. I have seen "news articles" which are little more than hastily cut and past excerpts from other websites, some even literally don't make sense, being little more than twitter updates. I can also go to the national chain newspaper and read the exact same paragraph, verbatim as the sports blog that i read an 1hr before. Cut and Pasta is everywhere and everyone uses it some degree and although people will try to sell anything, discerning consumers will always pay for quality.

If i take solely flipped assets and manage to create a fun game with a coherent design and properly support it then i have added something of value to the project and deserve to be rewarded, if the programmer, artist etc prefers to be paid a lump sum upfront, so be it.

There is more to development than just assets and design documents. The assets on the store dont do S*** until someone is willing to commit the resources, the time and the risk to make something of them, why waste that potential? Why remake the wheel when you have a perfectly good one right there.

 

I probably could. But my background is somewhat unique. We still wire circuits directly to relays in many cases, it's often more reliable then putting in fancy chips or a PLC. Although that is changing now.

Of course it would still take me six months to build Pong from scratch. And I also am building on knowledge that the game worked in the past, not trying to break new ground in game design. I'm no genius of that level.

But it wouldn't make much sense to do that when there are tools like Unity being given away. That would be as crazy as trying to ride to work in a horse and carriage.

 

AAA games development is exponensial costs because graphics and physics will be pushed forward and will be lot more detailled and realistic with new hardware. Only few companies will have the money to develop high end deep solo games, it is already the case in some way because the production costs and lenght are bigger , if you look at Mass Effect Andromeda for example.
I don't think one guy alone will generate all unique 3D content , all AI, all tools , all polishing phases and will make all debugging and all testing.

You got to be bale to have great story, background, great designs skills that appeal to people, not generci characters but unique ones, not generic randomized terrain , but terrain with unique places.
One guy can't compete with several team work people like veteran characters artists, level designers, highly skilled AI coders, game programmers, Interface designers , special effects coders and designers , specific tools coder.
A Team will always be more productive and will do greater work than one guy whatever the automation tools you could have.

 

It *still* wouldn't be as difficult today as it was back then. My wife and I screwed around with arduinos for awhile and while it isn't quite that low level (but not really that far off), the speed with which we made progress wouldn't have been possible without the Internet. Unless "wouldn't know what to do" includes having to labor under ALL of the same conditions -- become an EE first or whatever, and then it probably looks like a less-daunting problem.

This is a great point.

 

True.... but how many people are ready and willing to do that? How many will take those assets and just flip them hoping for some quick bucks?

And again, neither your non-sucky game with AAA assets will come anywhere near to playing with the big boys (you said it yourself... AAA games are more than just nice graphics, even though there are asset flippers in the AAA space, they at least have the name and marketing budget).
Nor will the asset flippers sell many copies.


And still there is the concern that a good game (yours?) might get overlooked because it uses the exact same assets as 1000 asset-flippers that managed to burn all potential customers.
Your game might be as good as it gets, if everyone looking at the images thinks "that looks just like that sucky game I paid 2$ bucks last week for, but was so bad I regretted paying even that!"... how many chances will you have to prove their first impression wrong?

This is were looking to much alike another game is going to be a burden, no matter how high the asset quality of this other game is.
1. People disliked game A. Game B looks just like game A. People will assume they will also dislike game B.
2. People liked game A, but played it until they got fed up. They are now looking for something different... but game B looks just like game A. People are going to assume game B is quite similar to game A.


Wow-factor is important, true. Good asset quality can help build that wow-factor. But a unique look and feel is even more important if you ask me. You want to have a USP, to separate yourself from the pack.

 

Sure, but there were good resources available back then just as we have good resources now. Popular Electronics comes to mind. The April 1976 issue had a section dedicated to creating some ball-and-paddle games. It gave schematics and an explanation for how they worked. It even came with the layout for the PCB. You can still find the article online too.

http://www.pong-story.com/pe0476.htm

Honestly I feel like the people most likely to run into problems are the same people today who show up and apparently have never heard of Google or never thought to try visiting the official learning section despite the link being right next to the one for the community. I'd hate to see how they would fare when they're struggling now.

 

You would have been roughly in the same shoes as the developer of Pong. It wasn't an original game either but was simply a slightly more capable clone of "Table Tennis" for the Magnavox Odyssey. There was even a lawsuit over it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey

By the way the original predecessor for Table Tennis was the real genius work. It was analog and used an oscilloscope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two

 

What's crazy about that? you can arrive late to work everyday and hold up traffic while doing it, that way everyone is late win win to me.

 

So we would need procedural configurable assets that can be re-used and customised.

Actually have you noticed asset flipping in Movies and TV series, once you start to see rayguns (it's probably most common in sci-fi), body armour and laser beam machines appearing in multiple shows and movies.

 

Yes while simultaneously not being as ugly as Mixamo.

 

I think people are mixing up conversations. This thread has two concurrent ones:

- more and more assets you can use
- full AAA or AA game shell

I accept the asset one, but I haven't been talking about that at all. Everyone uses props and assets right now. That is not a big deal. The issue I am actually discussing is the AAA or AA game shell being proposed by some people. I think that would cause problems with essentially just modded work or flipped work being regurgitated non stop.

And I struggle to see the value in why people would try and sell that.

 

To the OP - no. Because although there are ways and means to make it easier, it's still years of back-breaking labor, and most people are not even able to stick to a 5-minute zumba routine every other morning. And to top it off, most have little to offer in the way of group management skills or monetary compensation.

Show me where all these games are, show me all these WIPs that are anywhere near AAA class that has at least 2 hours of gameplay and are not missing any essential features. They aren't there. Almost all I see are half-baked first person controllers and terrains leveraging parts of the imagination of the developers which we as players unfortunately don't have access to.

If you think you have to beat Uncharted 4 to get into the top 99.9% of indie game developers, take another look.

 

The interesting thing I get from this thread is most folks here actually find it easier to use Unity in the standard way and not just program everything from scratch. I am exactly the opposite. I find just programming it all is very logical, very fast and straightforward.

 

A lot of people in this thread are misreading the OP. This isn´t about Indies catching up or what quality of games we can create, it is about AAA developers struggling to sell games.

I honestly do not think AAA games thrive because of technical advantages they have, it is more about marketing money to spend. I think there are some exceptions, but in my experience indie games can be just as high of quality, and AAA games have just as much chance to blow up ( Assassins Creed Unity type stuff). There is just a profit return on the money they are spending on marketing that an indie game can´t approach. If they spend $10M and sell $15, that is still $5M ahead. An indie game of equal quality would not get to $5M in sales.

My original thinking was that making all the DLC garbage and other money-grab techniques the AAA developers were doing would ultimately be their undoing. At some point players would wise up and just say ´finish the game and I will buy it´.. But the flaw in my thinking is that there are always a new group of young players entering the marketplace. So while gamers like me avoid games with day-1 DLCs, there are, every day, young people being pulled in by the marketing that accept it as the norm, until they too get sick of it, but are also replaced.

I do not think it is possible for AAA games overall to have an apocalypse, the amount of marketing money they have to spend along with the constant entering of ´naive´ buyers just makes it too profitable. Which is why stuff like DLC´s and cash-shops in $60 games is only getting worse.

 

That is because you're not actually doing anything much, not trying to be offensive to you. Try and do that with 3D and make that work out for you. Try a small new zelda clone, where you run around, do basic things, swordplay etc. The amount of polish required to get even a simple 3D title off the ground is astronomical.

Practically have no choice but to lean on existing resources. I did it mostly manual with my 2D stuff, it wasn't hard, in fact with 2D, it kind of is beneficial to have tight, simple control because anything else leans toward overkill.

 

Ignoring that, an indie cannot, and will not *ever* be able to do the level of polish AAA does if similar amount of content. Polish requires serious manpower (possibly more than actually making the thing to begin with) and it is required even more so when the assets aren't made specially for the title. So basically the whole concept of an indie throwing a few bought prefabs together to emulate AAA actually pushes them further away from AAA.

A lot of people don't get it, they don't understand it. Hell, they don't even finish anything.

 

The thing is I first dropped down to this approach in my 3D game project with Unity. It's all the same thing in the end. Whether 2D or 3D you have a world, objects in the world and are controlling them. Collisions are handled nearly exactly the same way. The only difference is I had an extra property on my 3D game objects for player and enemy that held the Character Controller. Of course the math changes slightly for some things. You've got an extra variable for the 3rd dimension. Other than that I approach it exactly the same as 2D.

I'll get back to a 3D game project at some point and we'll see how it goes. But I didn't run into any problem with it before. Like I said, it was actually working in 3D which made me think man there has to be a simpler way. I want to just program this all plain & simple. So I kept stripping things out and eventually ended up with the current approach which works beautifully.

 

Sure, but it would not be AAA or AA quality, right? I mean this thread is about actually achieving a super high bar of quality. You're not going to do that reinventing wheels. In fact I don't think thread is possible. You can give someone all the parts for a formula one car, but they're not going to put it together particularly well, and even if they did follow a manual and finally achieved that, it would require expert level tuning to perform or even drive well.

Things that are a high bar of quality are so much more than the sum of their parts.

 

Well that is true. Graphically nothing I produce will ever be close to modern AAA so yeah I probably shouldn't have posted in here. My goal is eventually make something quite deep and involved but it won't ever look like AAA, AA or even A as far as the visuals are concerned. That's just not something I am interested in and especially not interested in the massive amount of work involved to get such a presentation.

I suppose... if... the day comes and like @frosted is saying I can go to the Asset Store and find every thing I need for the content then it is possible. I just don't see that happening really. And even if it did it seems like it would be a case where I would then need to spend time or hire an artist to create new textures for everything. Because I think if a AAA or AA shop goes out of business and through liquidation somehow the assets end up on the Asset store Steam would be filled with dozens if not hundreds of WIPs that are never completed but all showcasing those graphics assets.

It just seems like if something is available to everyone then everyone is going to be using it, right? So at the least some retexturing would be required.

 

meh, polish is overstated. Diablo3 is more polished than Path of Exile? Assassins Creed Unity was polished? There is a long list of games that have released broken by AAA developers. It doesn´t matter, because they spend enough on marketing to sell enough games to be profitable. There is nothing indie developers can do, even if the game is equally polished ( heh ) as AC:Unity to put a dent in the sales of AAA developers.

Being an AAA developer has nothing to do with quality, it has everything to do with having enough money and knowledge of marketing to churn your marketing dollars into first day sales. I can´t think of the game right now, but it recently went F2P after launching last year broken and selling for $60. The developer is getting praised for making the game free, but why should they care, they got $60 from a million players last year to release an unpolished game.

And you are completely missing my point. AAA games are going nowhere. Even if Unity suddenly allowed us to produce high quality polished games.. we still coudln´t compete with the marketing money and knowledge of the big development houses.

 

I think there's 2 things people call polish. One is the actual polish (tweaking stuff and making sure it's not broken) and then there's all the 'little things'. The 'little' things being stuff like cutscenes, voice acting, sound effects etc. AAA take these things for granted - they know that they have to include them, they know people who can do them, and they have the money to pay them - whereas we often think that putting anything other than a footstep, explosion, gunshot and grunt sfx is polishing.

 

My point is that aiming for AAA content is stupid and probably has something to do with mental illness. I happen to think Unity as an engine is more than capable of producing AAA titles. We are not, even with assets.

The key take away I want people to have is to focus on small titles that are brilliantly polished. Seems like I am not listened to, and everyone wants to try and take on AAA. It's just mental illness at this point.

 

@hippocoder I haven't been around the game scene for long, but I wonder what the market would be like for high graphical quality 'AAA-style' 15-20 minute game bites? It's an idea I've had for a while since I realized that I was always going on steam looking for demos, and thinking to myself that a nice demo would definitely be worth $0.99 or so. I find it hard to get down for hours on end with a new game considering all the stuff I need/want to get done, this would be perfect for me. It's also a way to have a game experience without a lot of 'fluff' imo, like short stories vs novels. Might not be a generally popular idea though, what do you reckon?

 

By the way the AAApocalyspe already happened, where is THQ and the many like him?

http://kotaku.com/5876693/every-game-studio-thats-closed-down-since-2006

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/...pers-lost-during-ps3-and-xbox-360-era-says-ea

 

They will learn.

 

The AAA apocalypse? Sounds like a byproduct of the zombie apocalypse... I just had an idea for a game!

 

You'll find that's what the smart indies are doing. They're doing small slices or experiences that are highly polished. Firewatch isn't big.

 

No. You're overly pessimistic and your line of reasoning doesn't make much sense here...

I can't see any apocalypse, though I see a radical shift. Steam for example will look very different in 2-3 years. Expect most games to be VR focused and most will be free+inapp. I'm looking forward to test free+inapp on mine when I improve it.

Assets won't make anyone a solid AAA developer. Hasn't happened, will never happen.

 

OP:
"Is there going to be a point where even a mildly talented team can produce a class A game? Followed by AA and AAA games being created by small highly talented teams?"

It's about AAA devs struggling to sell games because of indies... so, a little from column A, a little from column B.

But I do agree with you, name-recognition and marketing budgets go a long way towards staving off any possibility of true-AAA apocalypse even if the OP's scenario were to somehow come to pass. Whether you like, say, EA or not, when you see EA on the label you know it wasn't made in some guy's mom's basement with Asset Store downloads glommed together...

 

Really? you expect the majority of the steam userbase to own VR hardware, and the majority of developers to race to the bottom?

So you're expecting the *majority* to have $600 for a headset yet $0 for a game? In 2 years? As predictions go, that's beyond absurd.

I'd expect 20% adoption of VR with a view that VR might be here to stay (at most). As for freemium on desktop, sure. Just don't expect AAA to ever want that. They want you to buy the base game then pay DLC on top. And I want that to stay too, because it's by far preferable to the fiasco of mobile where even AAA won't invest much more than a million. That's a far cry vs 100m+ desktop / console budgets.

When you ask for freemium, you ask the developer to take minimal financial risks, and this does drive down what is possible to achieve.

 

While VR is cool, I'm not convinced it will ever go mainstream.

 

Kind of reminds me to one of the few wrong predictions about technology (that I've made some 5 years ago): "Mobile apps will never get popular". I am rarely wrong about tech predictions but that time I was kinda...way off .

 

You dont seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed, so it doesnt surprise me you would think that.

Im betting you thought 3D TV/Movies was going to be big as well eh?

 

3D TV would be a big deal - without glasses so it might come back once tracking multiple heads is a thing. Nintendo does this with its refresh 3DS, apparently its very well done.

 

To be frank people betting on 3D tv didn't thought that through, it has massive usability issue that were not solved. I'm using a new 3DS and I see all sort of way of why it didn't take off (not only but all display had more or less the same problem).

The tech wasn't ready at all.

 

Yeah exactly, it's a bit premature, does not mean people don't like 3D content or enhanced depth as I'd consider it.

 

this..

3D could be massive if it didnt require glasses. Anything that requires you to wear a headset/glasses is never going mainstream. There is a significant portion of the population that simply cannot even use a headset.

 

Yeah and frankly while VR is wonderful and all, I still don't see the majority of people wanting full immersion for long periods. Seems like most would consider it a fun gaming session for up to around 45 mins - which tends to be the bite size for the west. In the east it seems to be 25 mins (taken from average TV show episode length). Assuming zero discomfort.

I mean we're talking about mainstream, not hardcore gamer. Cos hardcore gamer isn't the majority, and the majority have the cash.

Beyond this, people tend to get restless...

 

I think VR is half-way in the right track.

It kind of has what it needs, but comes short just a bit.

VR does cover some demand, which is enhancing gaming experience, but it's kind of a niche demand.

It appends to existing technology, that's good, but it's a very expensive peripheral.

It's a gradual improvement of a market that's established, which is good because many developers are able adopt the technology and create content. But it also comes with a fair share of confusion and challenges, having to deal with both living room experience and sitting down; gamepad and touch controllers; what does consumer prefer? Should a game have both? How do we have both types of gameplays? Does it affect the game negatively? etc.

And it needs much better games. Current content is not enough, plain and simple. the best (or one of the best) game in terms of "AAA quality" yet is The Climb. When it should be the BASE quality...The Climb should be the "Wii Sports" of VR, so to speak. But most other games are low budget indie games, even if some look like a lot of fun, it's not nearly enough to create the necessary impact.

When VR solves the price and content issue, masses will take the leap and adopt VR into their daily lives.

 

I don't think glassless 3d would have took off, not without some sort of "lightfield" like projection.
1. you have a depth cost with flat 3d, ie the eye is trying to focus on stuff and there is no depth of field, it cause visual stress. The new 3DS track your head and I'm having problem with too strong depth effects.
2. It still looks like superposed planes due to lack of rotation parallax. It's wose if you aren't exactly right in front of the TV.
3. the effect look unreal and flat, it does not integrate well with the continuity of reality. XHD is mandatory, but does not lessen the angle problem.
4. It does not adapt well to multiple viewers at the same time, decreasing social benefit.
5. Correcting those flaws is basically rendering even more xhd image for every angle and every distance (lightfield) which is impracticable as now with current format.


I wonder if holography will be ready before 3D display lol, though it's another can of worms entirely, which kind of holography? I bet on lightfield holography.

I think VR, even cheap VR, is better than 3D right now.
1. mobile are everywhere and are teh basic hardware, I expect them to work the prerequisite inside hardware by default, helping diffusion.
2. it does not have any problem 3d is having except social sharing of the experience.
3. It does not actually need hi quality visual, though adoption is pending on the dream of image fidelity, past the honey moon period, strip down experiences and uses based on media literacy will start to take off.

 

I think to have any chance at becoming mainstream, 3d would require no glasses, VR the equivalent of current 3D glasses, at a price thats not prohibitive.

 

Yeah and the hardware problems of VR aren't addressed yet. Simply going higher framerates isn't enough, there's restrictions on the kind of content you can create, and that alone prevents adoption, never mind domination.

 

Oh, he's not the sharpest- not by a long a shot. He made the game featured in this video.

 

It's really a game classification. For the most part a AAA game is a game that one that from the start is planned, produced, developed and marketed as mass-market game with the intention of being hugely sucessful. It is a game that is treated as a huge bet right from the start. Like summer blockbuster or a world wide stadium tour. Usually with budgets that factor in some level innovation, leveraging next-gen platforms/tech hardware, and wrap in some new software tech. (which is a way to amortize development costs). A AAA studio is one that has produced AAA games, but not everything the produce is an AAA title.

AAA is not a mark indication of quality, it is a category of development. It is development that is where the level of investment in every area is done to yield the highest results. That is why they are typically some of the highest level of visual quality. They don't "buy" assets, they can spend years just concepting art, sometimes having to change direction. Often having to invent, co-develop or work with hardware developers to achieve their goals. They hire not only a lot of artists, but some the best available. That is where the quality comes from, attention to detail and the resources to get it right, not having constraints.

AAA games push and drive the hardware and the tools/ideas behind the tech. The idea that they are going away is completely laughable. They drive the tech and the industry. All the tech innovation comes from that segment. Next gen stuff is already being pioneered, built, tested for AAA games slated for as far as 2020.
If successful, the massive investment and risk will be potentially available to indies for some level of cheap or free after that. Every piece of tech (and most tools) that are available to indies/hobbyists and pretty much any game developer that isn't AAA, came from innovations invested in and developed for some AAA title. (and porn). From video cards, to processors to fast ram, broadband, consoles. AR just became a "thing" to the rest of the world because a huge company with resources to map the freaking planet made a game and used one of the most popular ips on the planet. While not a traditional AAA game development process, it amounts to the same thing.

Point is AAA titles will always be thing. Someone has to move the edge forward.

But as said, AAA != designation of quality. It is often the case that quality is a key piece of it, for obvious reasons. But not being developed as AAA title doesn't mean they can't be hugely successful or have amazing quality. The example of Skylines and SimCity is a perfect example. Skylines is not a AAA game. SimCity is. AAA production isn't a guarantee of success, nor is it a requirement. EA did create a lot of amazing tech on the way to SimCity, and that may surface in other games or as tech, so even despite not making a great game or a massive hit, the development of AAA games still moves the field ahead is some fashion.

Also, as folks like the hippo pointed out, the idea of competing on scope or quality is just pointless. AAA titles have resources and skills in quantity that always put them ahead. Not only that their marketing/BI/planning is a skilled machine. You are not only not completing in same category, you aren't even playing the same game or even in the same state. And indie's best marketing effort is still going fall way short of the fact that an AAA title is on the shelf in game stores, department stores, on every platform and e store. That doesn't even get into IP, advertising, UA and promotions. It's like running on to the field of the Superbowl, by yourself in swimming trunks with badminton racket, thinking you can compete and win because you have a dream and believe in yourself.

Small/Indie developers have a huge advantage of not having to guarantee a positive return on hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs. As such, they can be more risky with design, and even can focus on much smaller markets to create original and unique or specific game experiences (though in reality this rarely happens), it is possible. That is where you want to compete, a really well done game can do extremely well, regardless of budget. If are making a small budget game, focus on (obviously gameplay first) a decent visual style that won't detract from gameplay. If you want to base your game on have high visual quality, create a strong style that is within your mean to produce (Monument Valley is an example of a game with high quality visuals, but within the scope of a small budget project. Using assets from the asset store isn't a bad thing, that is what they are there for. But if the focus of your game is high quality visuals, asset store art detracts from that. In other words, if you are making a game that has really unique game play, using K4 assets is smart. looks good, and lets you focus on gameplay. If you are making a generic rpg/fps and focusing on making it look as good as possible, K4 would be a fail. They are easily recognizable and therefore generic. It all depends on what you are actually trying to accomplish.

Try to leverage your strengths and keep the scope within your resources.

 

Regarding the Asset store providing "AAA" assets here or in the future, that is already shifting.

While I am still a firm believer that VR will be a niche gaming/entertainment experience, But it will be a strong one, and one fun to develop for. I have spent the last several months doing a deep dive on it. Among other aspects of it, it is a massive increase in content and assets, high quality assets. Given the experiential nature of the interactions, the quality bar is not only much high, but different. Crappy/over-used/generic assets, are drastically much more so in VR. If you build a dungeon game using a generic dungeon builder pack that a hundred other games are using, it feels just like those other games, despite lighting or camera. Generic is vast more generic when you are standing in than looking at on screen.

Its a great opportunity for 3d content developers of all flavors to a bunch of work as it progresses. The volume of content is massive, and all the sudden ambient props cant be low poly cheats anymore. Its pretty fun building for these types of games. If you are a good modeler, it could be a great time for work. The asset store won't fill enough gaps for commercial games.

 

Unless the government stepped in and put controls on things, then the low bar becomes the high bar...

 

I can't wait for AAA to enter procedural generation properly, what happen when you put 100 artists to create modular bit to feed a character generation? What would no man sky looks like and play like with the horde behind ass creed? What problem 100 engineer can solve? Imagine no man sky with the density of ass creed or the witcher!

 

You mean the game that had atrocious performance when it launched?

 

I agree with this. It's just unfortunate that not everyone is on the exact same page as this, before starting to argue a point of "indie vs AAA". It's like asking, can a dog ever be a cat? Well, no, but a dog can behave like a cat...

 

Maybe I should have titled this thread "Procedural Game development assets and tools when will they hit AAA quality?"

It was supposed to be about the rise of more advanced game development tools!?