Seropian on Outsourcing

I visit the shack a lot more than I used to, for these posts. Good job Chris!

That Seropian guy is cool and outsourcing looks like evolution just waiting to go mainstream.

I completely disagree with outsourcing in game development.

Game Development isn't manufacturing.

You can't create a 'drawing' or 'Spec Sheet' for a supplier that your outsourcing to detail exactly what you want. Game Development is WAY to dynamic for this

Communication between Programmers/Artists/Designers is the biggest time consumer in this industry.

By outsourcing, taking the work outside of the workplace.

This leads to alot of

1) miscommunication
2) People Idle as they wait for response via phone/email instead of just walking across the hall
3) People doing projects that other people are already working on, and neither knew the other was already doing it. Because they are not in the same place to see what everyone is doing.
4) Projects being completed and no one caught the project 1/2 way to inform them 'Hey! thats not gonna work because this happened'


Outsourcing works great in a manufacturing model. aka the Auto Industry.
Where clear laid out plans are created, and the supplier creates them.

It wont work in a Game Development model. The development is way to dynamic to just outsource stuff.

The word outsourcing implies globalized labor done for desperation wages, so reading something a headline like "outsourced games" is kind of cringe-inducing.

The upside:

This kind of "outsourcing" may not even mean leaving the US. They're essentially hiring freelance artists rather than tying to tie them exclusively to one company. This has it's benefits and minuses. The benefit being that you don't have to keep paying a bunch of artists you aren't using. They can go work for someone else when you don't need them.

The downside:

Walt Disney Co is currently doing this to their famed Imagineering division and while it means they don't have to pay a bunch of Imagineers, it means those people are taking their ideas to Universal Studios theme parks and as a result Universal parks are beginning to feel a lot like Disney.

The same applies to games. If more of the process is done freelance, a company's reputation for quality is only as good as the availability of the people they hire. Imagine if Shigeru Miyamoto worked for himeself and could be hired to design the gameplay and controls of anybody's game. Nintendo would have been sunk by now, most likely.

I'm really starting to warm up to this model. It's the way a lot of creative big budget projects work. People come together to create something and then disband leaving the core team small enough to take the time planning the next venture.

Not every artist wants to live in huge cities like L.A., Dallas, New York, and San Fransico. I applaud any studio willing to outsource for that reason alone.

"asset traffic"

Sorry, I've read it five times and I keep reading it as "ass traffic."

Shows me right for going to Stileproject.

Alexander Seropian is THE MAN!

Pathways into Darkness, Marathon 1&2, Myth 1&2, Halo, etc.

Wideload games is comprised mostly of a lot of the cool people who left Bungie post-microsoft buyout.

I like to refer to it as "Distributed Design"

No! Outsourcing is the devil! Keep everything in America! Don't hire cheap labor in a third world country!

oh wait..

sorry. Knee-jerk reaction. I'm sure this form of outsourcing is fine.

Oh, and feel free to outsource some of it to me :)

Maybe it's Apples and Oranges but Marketing and Design does this all the time. As long as you can get consistant work from a firm throughout the project, it doesn't bother me too much. This way you can have specialized firms that take care of aspects of a game so the primary studio can run a little leaner and be even more versitile in the types of games they make (as some of the art assets would be modular and no longer dependent on the talent or tendencies of the in house guys).

I think this model could prove to be very interesting.

Seems sound, lets them focus on the gameplay and let others do a lot of the gruntwork. Probably cheaper too.

And the game does in deed look tasty

The change in author names confuses me.

Chris,

Outsourcing absolutely makes sense for game development. If components of a game can be implemented (or even designed) in parallel, it makes sense to do this. Given the rising time necessary to create games, outsourcing components of games so they can be created in parallel decreases time to market.

Studios that house some of the most talented developers outsource: Id, Valve and Epic to name three who I respect a great deal, and I'm sure you've enjoyed their products as well.

I don't see any particular problem with dev houses paying other companies to make generic art assets. You need desks. You need lamps. You need chairs. Maybe some of the textures. Things that are easy to produce effectively without completely throwing the feel of the game out of whack.

I believe this is the same approach Bizarre used on the modelling for the cities in Project Gotham Racing 3. Just so huge and complex there's no way for a comparitively smaller developer to get it done quickly in house without a huge and very expensive staff.

who are you, andy hanson?