.:Out-of-the-box:.

Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid on game development few years before he revealed his game to the world

In 2004 Jonathan Blow, few years before we all could recognize him as the genius behind Braid game, wrote an interesting article about game project’s complexity. It was published in ACM Queue. Jonathan in that article said that “the hardest part of making game has always been engineering”. This point is very important. Braid’s father in the article added very nice diagrams with typical game architecture from 1994 to present time. I recommend to take a look at it. In 1994 components are just a few, we were in pre-3d era still. 1996 is interesting because with PSX and Voodoo on the market we had switched from 2d to 3d in the mainstream gaming experience. From 1996 to 2004 (another diagram) what I’ve seen and I agree with Jonathan, projects were growing in size and complexity in tremendous speed. 2004′s modern game architecture including Massive Multiplayer Online scenarios shows the challenge a single indie developer can’t afford. There is no single person who can beat the market in masterpiece 3d skill, networking vision for 10 million gamers and all those remaining pieces of the puzzle. Current games we see in retails store are highly complex projects involving hundreds of people in different roles to make it possible. Referring to role-playing game. I remember article in Gamasutra somewhere in 2000 with Baldur’s Gate II post-mortem. I can’t find it now on their pages, but I remember some numbers very well. Ray Muzyka wrote that project’s timeline was about 3 years long and involved 250 people working on the project at peak times. That simply triggers my imagination. I wonder how it looks like for Dragon Age. This example shows another thing. If I wish to make game which includes so many different aspects I would like to reuse as many components as possible and try to avoid re-engineering the wheel as much as I can. This argument goes back to technology and engineering. From many commercial leaders to open source alternatives, very good gaming technology is already available for evaluation. Havok for free in most scenarios. Latest Unreal Engine free to learn what it is. Very unfair pricing if you think to switch from free to commercial project but I think Epic Games would be more than happy to discuss individually every serious opportunity for further adoption. For community games, Xna proves itself at least for prototyping. Xna is double powerful if I consider using if with XSI|Softimage’s free edition called Mod Tool. Cut strongly, still much more powerful than any other alternative I have found for the same “price”, if I consider game project. Lesson here before first code of line is made is to make serious research on what’s available. If you’re a person who wants to make game, why to stuck and frustrate yourself with first projects where outputs are just engines, not games. We have a few stars in the industry who have strong technical background and achievements, we have plenty who are known because they made great game-play experience. I’m big fan of game production close to maximally 2 years of development. This is average period of complete PC replacement. If game development of a PC game takes longer, I see it as great risk to completely change the technology behind. I know many examples of games which were developed like for 5-6 years. These guys had to have really strong arguments given to their sponsors. 2 years is is also solid but still reasonable part of game console life-cycle. Creating games in 2 years gives a chance to get familiarized with the platform in more than a one project before that technology change dramatically.

Recent debate on IP shared over Internet reminds me another thing related to technology. This is especially true if you target smaller platforms (as for hardware requirements) where retro gaming is still attractive. Seems that technology itself in those projects is outdated by design. So while looking for components you think that you should be able to find many options for free over Internet. Latest lesson with id software shows that with huge attraction of these platforms commercial giants might consider withdrawing their IPs from the so called open and free world. Mind carefully whom with are you partnering not to pay double.