This is due to the whole "we need to model the physics of light passing through each bead of sweat" graphics and everything needing to use original assets mostly right?
That's a lot. There's also a lot of project management bloat, churning the same work over and over because the direction of the project keeps changing. And it's also a whole lot that it's become normal for AAA games to have absurd scopes, 70 hour play times, open worlds, every mechanic anyone has ever heard of, etc.
The physics of light thing is handled by the engine so unless they're making one from scratch (which no one does given that in-house engines are shared across teams) it's not a time sink for the studio
Unique assets are a bigger problem yes
Bug fixing when the game has a poorly defined scope is a big one too
I'm fine with that, AAA games should be leading the way on solving the rendering equation in novel ways. Luckily they get so excited when they find something that it's published in detail and they do dozens of SIGGRPH presentations on it and after a while everyone else gets it for basically free.
Spend 8 years and millions of dollars building out engines and tools for mediocre games so good games can selectively use those tools in fun ways on tight budgets.
This is due to the whole "we need to model the physics of light passing through each bead of sweat" graphics and everything needing to use original assets mostly right?
I wonder howany people even want such a thing.
That's a lot. There's also a lot of project management bloat, churning the same work over and over because the direction of the project keeps changing. And it's also a whole lot that it's become normal for AAA games to have absurd scopes, 70 hour play times, open worlds, every mechanic anyone has ever heard of, etc.
The physics of light thing is handled by the engine so unless they're making one from scratch (which no one does given that in-house engines are shared across teams) it's not a time sink for the studio
Unique assets are a bigger problem yes
Bug fixing when the game has a poorly defined scope is a big one too
I have heard some of it is due to trying to prevent crunch, but I'm sure that is minimal, but yeah, most of it is from absurdly complicated graphics.
I'm fine with that, AAA games should be leading the way on solving the rendering equation in novel ways. Luckily they get so excited when they find something that it's published in detail and they do dozens of SIGGRPH presentations on it and after a while everyone else gets it for basically free.
Spend 8 years and millions of dollars building out engines and tools for mediocre games so good games can selectively use those tools in fun ways on tight budgets.