Would you be interested to watch 'behind the scenes' development of AAA games?

Hey guys,

I like those behind the scenes videos about guys programming AAA games. What about you?

 

It depends who and you define AAA.

That term is thrown a lot around by Indies to describe their games when there aren't many doing it.

 

I'd like to see a documentary about making a game that is huge, like maybe a COD game, a GTA or a Zelda or something... It shouldn't be so much a marketing thing for the game but to show how the development works. I want to see it documented from day one and have a bit on the programming, a bit on the art, a bit on the design a bit on talking with publishes etc.

 

I'd like to see how they deal with burnout seeing that some AAA devs work on a single game project for 2+ years.

 

No no no. Not a documentary.

A reality TV show.

Each episode should touch on each of the major areas, and all end on cliffhangers. Plus you could then dedicate whole episodes to things like the inception phase, prototyping, early development and the first playable build, crunching for deadlines, nearing release, the post release patch...



I think I'd actually watch that.

 

They had a show on the BBC in the early 2000s about an internet start-up company. Yawn. LOL, Dalziel Pascoe it wasn't.

 

Have you watched GAME_JAM (or what was left of it)?

 

I have not. Should I?

 

Ok, wait sorry. I'm not even sure if there were footage released in the first place. But here's a recounting: http://indiestatik.com/2014/03/31/most-expensive-game-jam/

EDIT: Oh wait, check this out http://indiestatik.com/2014/05/22/super-game-jam-documentary/

 

I've yet to see a single behind the scenes video that showed anything of any real value.

 

Hmm that's true. A lot of it is really marketing to get you to buy the game. Not really made for a developer in mind.

The one I liked was that Portal 2 Final Hours even though it wasn't a video documentary. It wasn't a "we explain our process in detail", but at least, it was comparatively honest, and told a lot of the history of the people behind it.

 

Precisely. It's all about selling the product and the glamour, not about telling the actual story of the people as they made it. Of course it'd be far more difficult to get everyone involved to agree to telling that story, because almost any prolonged endeavor is going to have bits that make people look bad. (And making people look bad is why reality TV is so popular, right? It's just that nobody wants to be that person.)

 

The Last of Us documentary was really good, and is now free on YouTube. It was made by the old 1up team that did the 1up show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0l7LzC_h8I

 

Not to mention it's a hassle to be mindful of cameras and whatnot all the time, when the kind of work you're doing is already highly taxing on your mental faculties.

You're gonna like this (if you haven't read it already), it's some brutally honest interviews on the making of Defense Grid 2: http://www.polygon.com/the-making-of-defense-grid-2

 

I love those behind the scenes too!

But I wonder if people would be interested to watch indie developers program a game.

 

The amnesia fortnight videos seem to be pretty good(I've only seen a few)

I've always wanted to make a dev show. I think it would be awesome.

 

That's a "real" problem. The most "Behind The Scenes" maybe show some programmers talking about some stuff, but almost never show lines of code and what these lines actually do. Instead they interview the directors, the artists or the composers and show some stuff you are able to make something out of it, because the normal person can "understand" an artwork or a song.
Show someone your code and I bet he/seh is like: "Cool..I guess...what about the graphics?"

Behind The Scenes? Love them. But I would like them to have a focus also for other devs.
For example: how do the engine programmers fight with CPU/RAM-specs on the consoles?

 

I think it would be interesting and impressive and perhaps a little helpful but I'm not sure how I'd relate to it personally, in terms of the huge gap in `scale` between what they're doing and what I can do by myself.

 

I think the general viewer is more interested in the human element than the technical specifics. When you watch reality shows like The Block or whatever, while there's enough renovation content to give it a distinct flavor it's mostly about interactions between people. And the technical and/or time consuming stuff is typically done by a quick how-to or some tips followed by a vignette or montage of the actual work happening, because while that stuff is important for the show's flavor it's not actually entertaining in and of itself.

The theme is just for context. The entertainment comes from the people.

I think game dev would have to work in the same way if it were a show. It's not about coders writing code and solving bugs, or about modellers modelling, or whatever. It's about the human journey of making the game.

Edit: In the context of the thread being about "AAA" games, I actually wouldn't be too interested. I'd be far more interested in small to medium sized teams working on projects measured in months rather than years.

 

Something similar to Indie_Game: The Movie I imagine but AAA? IG I thought was ok, follows some of the thought processes going into Super Meatboy, Fez, and Braid and the interesting parts were the dramatic conflicts mainly revolving around people like angrypenguin said.

It's sort of like all the hacker movies, no one in their right mind would be interested in watching someone actually hack, but throw in cool soundtracks, hip hairstyles, sexy people, and compress the actual work to small one line commands and all of a sudden it is a good watch.

 

I love seeing game dev documentaries. If we are talking about AAA behind the scenes stuff, can I recommend the Making of "The Last Of us", a lot of you probably already seen it if you are fans of the game. But here you go.

It was actually sold separately but sony has made it free on their youtube channel not to long ago.

but yeah, I love seeing behind the scenes stuff. I tend to watch stuff like this often. I have been checking out some MGSV behind the scenes stuff on youtube recently.