Master log, Stardate 20588.6
Tags: Technology
When I was a teenager, my hobby was doing game dev in online forum groups. You know, the groups of people who are always posting online about how they want to do this or that game, but somehow never end up going anywhere. Except, I did want to go somewhere. So I worked in a bunch of different of groups trying to find the few groups that actually went anywhere.
In one of the most rare and exciting projects, the lead designer had access to some of the latest game development technology and they actually knew something about how real world game development worked (which at the time was about as rare as finding a bear brandishing a machete). So of course, we on the team were ridiculously excited about this project. I think just about everyone commented something to the effect of "Finally, a chance to make something like the big studios!"
To make this ambition a reality though, we needed to be sure we were using the technology as fully as possible. Otherwise, we'd just be making another low quality game with high quality technology. So with a lot of guidance from our experienced team lead, we came up with a nice process to ensure we were using the new tech to it's full potential.
In total, there were 9 steps in the process.[1] It usually took ~20 hours of effort to go from nothing to something in the game if it was a static object. Animated objects usually took closer to 40 hours.
Pop Quiz: Given our rate of art production, the fact that almost no one was putting more than part time effort into this project, and the fact that it's hard to get more than one or two sufficiently talented artists to join a hobby project at once, how much art could we realistically produce in a year?
Solution: Well...
Bottom line, one year later there were maybe 10 objects in the game that were of the quality we originally envisioned. There were many more unfinished objects, none of which could be used because they would clash with the "nice" objects if they were used.
Frustrations were high, morale was low, and the whole team gradually became more interested in more productive projects. Ultimately, the project dissolved and nothing ever came of it, just like most other forum hobby projects.
What went wrong? In this case, the standard of quality created an all-or-nothing problem: Either an idea could be realized to a certain visual quality or the idea couldn't exist at all, regardless of it's other merits. Our game couldn't be realized to our ideal visual quality, so our game couldn't exist at all, regardless of it's other merits.
Moral of the story: Production value has a high hidden cost. Namely, anything that cannot be created at the production standard given the time, budget, and manpower constraints simply cannot be created at all, no matter what other value it would offer. I call this issue "The Tyranny of Production"
In contrast, the most productive projects I've ever worked on have almost universally been with older technology. On those, it's not too uncommon to finish a new object in 20 minutes rather than 20 hours. In fact, nearly anything worth doing could be done in a single day.
The reason is simple: If technology is 10 times as powerful, then it takes 10 times as much effort to utilize it to the same level. Technology may be bigger and better than ever, but human limits are the same as they were a thousand years ago. If a person can just barely max out a certain technology in an hour of effort, then they will never be able to max out any more powerful technology in the same amount of effort.
There's an interesting lesson here about whether we'll ever truly be able to see the full potential of our current technology, much less future technology, which I'll leave for another time.
Instead, I'll make a more interesting comparison: Imagine there's a technology which is 10 times more powerful but doesn't make 10 times the difference. What if instead it it's only, say, 20% of a difference? Or 10%? It will still take 10 times the effort to realize that benefit, even if it's only a 10% or 20% difference in the final result.
At some point, it will be more valuable to spend that 10 times effort making 10 times as many things rather than 1 thing but X% better. In other words, there's a point where adding further production value to a work is less valuable than just creating another work. I call this point the "Production Event Horizon" because past that point your effort is effectively being sucked into a black hole with insufficient justification for doing so.
This is an area where for now, old technology still completely dominates newer technology. Old technology is physically incapable of doing more than a certain amount, which is one way of solving both the Tyranny of Production and the Production Event Horizon.
On the other hand, that's definitely not the optimal solution to these problems. What's a better way of handling these issues to still get the benefits of newer technology while avoiding the Tyranny of Production and staying clear of the Production Event Horizon?
More in Part 2...
Tyranny of Production - Anything that cannot be created at the production standard given the time, budget, and manpower constraints simply cannot be created at all, no matter what other value it would offer.
Production Event Horizon - The point where adding further production value to a work is less valuable than just creating another work.
[1] The Full Process Our Team Used.
For any new idea, create concept art. There wasn't a formal specification for how detailed the concept art had to be, but in practice it had to be reasonably well detailed to ensure the rest of the process captured the idea. This usually took ~4 hours per draft of concept art.
Discuss and refine the concept art. There was no point in having beautiful artwork if none of the art fit together, so we discussed new works to ensure it fit the vision of the team. Usually this resulted in some agreed changes, which meant another draft or two of concept art before everyone was happy.
Create at least two, preferably three, orthographic views of the concept art (that is, a view from in front, from above, from the left, etc.). Usually this only took about an hour, maybe two.
Create 3D geometry based on the orthographic views. Usually this took a few hours.
"Unwrap" the geometry so the texture artist can create textures for it. Usually this didn't take a notable amount of time, but could take an hour or two in some tricky cases.
If the work was animated in any way, then create any animation controls for the new 3D work. Usually took another few hours. If it involved skeletal rigging, it usually took longer.
Create the texture for the work. The time for this varied. Often it took a few hours if it needed to be done from scratch. If an existing texture could be reused with minor edits, then this went fairly quickly. If it was a complex unwrapping (e.g. a character), then this could take much longer, especially if the character used a lot of novel textures and involved much detail.
If the work was animated, this is when the animations would be created. For us, this usually took at least 8 hours. On the other hand, we didn't have a lot of simple animations so most of the things that required animating required a good bit of work.
Export the result, put it in the game, and discuss the result with the team. Come up with changes and refine. There was no real limit to this process; pretty much everything was refined over time.
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