by Gwynzer » Tue Jun 11, 2013 11:12 am
The thing with game development is not everything happens at the same time. The most simple example is map design. For a map to be made it requires 3 steps minimum - 1: An object library (staticobjets, vehiles, terrain textures, etc), 2: a map, 3: QA.
You'll have you modelers and coders and artists working on step 1. A mapper can begin shaping his map as to where the hills and drops will be. Once he's got the artists are done with their bit what are they going to do now? Thankfully the people who handle those tasks are often multidisiplined and can take on many different roles on a project, and will sometimes be constantly involved in tweaking and optimising their previous work, also once the lirbrary is created it can be continually expanded and used in other projects, meaning you don't have to start from scratch all the time. The mapper now has his objects library and can now actually start populating his bare map. Once it's complete, it goes to QA and they spend a long time testing. The devs may be assisting here, but it is MUCH cheaper to have a QA guy do QA stuff, than to get your expensive Dev to do QA instead of doing more Dev work. The mapper will certainly be involved as he'll have to make tweaks based on feedbacks, as will some of the artists in the case such as being able to clip through objects, however it won't be their primary roles.
QA can take ages, what is the mapper and artists going to do in this process? sitting twiddlign their thumbs isn't cost efficient. Instead while this QA and optimisation is going on for the final release, lets have those devs work on the next set of maps. It's time and cost effective and allows them to release more products to the public in a shorter timespan.
I imagine they are already quite far into these DLC maps already, and I'm glad they do it this way. For a long time game studios ended up sacking a lot of people towards the end of crunch or just after release, as they no longer had a position for those people to hold. Working this way keeps these people in a job and gets us product faster.
The thing with game development is not everything happens at the same time. The most simple example is map design. For a map to be made it requires 3 steps minimum - 1: An object library (staticobjets, vehiles, terrain textures, etc), 2: a map, 3: QA.
You'll have you modelers and coders and artists working on step 1. A mapper can begin shaping his map as to where the hills and drops will be. Once he's got the artists are done with their bit what are they going to do now? Thankfully the people who handle those tasks are often multidisiplined and can take on many different roles on a project, and will sometimes be constantly involved in tweaking and optimising their previous work, also once the lirbrary is created it can be continually expanded and used in other projects, meaning you don't have to start from scratch all the time. The mapper now has his objects library and can now actually start populating his bare map. Once it's complete, it goes to QA and they spend a long time testing. The devs may be assisting here, but it is MUCH cheaper to have a QA guy do QA stuff, than to get your expensive Dev to do QA instead of doing more Dev work. The mapper will certainly be involved as he'll have to make tweaks based on feedbacks, as will some of the artists in the case such as being able to clip through objects, however it won't be their primary roles.
QA can take ages, what is the mapper and artists going to do in this process? sitting twiddlign their thumbs isn't cost efficient. Instead while this QA and optimisation is going on for the final release, lets have those devs work on the next set of maps. It's time and cost effective and allows them to release more products to the public in a shorter timespan.
I imagine they are already quite far into these DLC maps already, and I'm glad they do it this way. For a long time game studios ended up sacking a lot of people towards the end of crunch or just after release, as they no longer had a position for those people to hold. Working this way keeps these people in a job and gets us product faster.