Is small beautiful?

[zoombapup]

I was thinking of Chris's last blog and thought to myself that maybe what he's feeling is that in many respects Introversion is a bit sales heavy. What I mean is, from what I can gather, its basically two guys doing the development and two or three doing the sales and marketing? Is that correct?

Now, its a great idea in terms of sales. But I can imagine it gets quite lonely in terms of being a creative and developing things. So I wondered, what would be the ideal mixture of creative types to sales types?

I think Chris feels the pain of not having an artist, which is definitely rational. I've always loved working with artists as its a nice creative combine (1 programmer and 1 or 2 artists). Getting a healthy ratio of programmers, artists and sales/business is a hard part of any companies life, but I think right now Chris is feeling the pain in terms of not having the right balance.

Or am I completely wrong?

[martin]

Yeah, IV isn't many people.

I think there isn't really an ideal mix - I mean while the programmer is doing early work the artists won't have much to do, and when the artists are building levels etc the programmer may have less to do.
I guess if you really wanted a good mix I'd say 3 programmers, 1 artist and maybe a sales person or two - not sure on that, because my games get to the programming and art stage but never sales ><

[xander]

...3 programmers, 1 artist...

I think you have that mix almost entirely backwards. Content (i.e. art) is often more difficult and time consuming than the engine itself. Look at Defcon, for instance. Defcon is already basically a 3D game projected into 2D. It is basically running the Darwinia engine. It probably wouldn't have been that hard to make it more 3D (emphasis on the "wouldn't HAVE been", past tense). For instance, to put mountains where they belong, texture the ocean a bit more, and use 3D units. However, someone would have needed to create all of those units and mountains.

In IV's case, much of the content creation in being done procedurally, which is really cool, and limits the need for artists, but I still contend that content creation is, in general, more time consuming than engine creation. I believe that Chris said as much not long after Darwinia came out -- something to the effect of "content kills".

xander

[Stewsburntmonkey]

I have to agree with xander, graphics and design are generally far more time consuming than the programming. I know that is certainly true for my work in web development. The CGI code is generally close to trivial, but the graphics and CSS work can take weeks to work out.

[The GoldFish]

Artists don't really make levels; level designers do

Currently IV appear to work full time with programmers and sales (The guys are still working on selling Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon even now, and it *is* working) - outsourcing to 3rd party artists for music, models, etc when necessery - there's almost no point in having artists full time in IV since, as martin says, they'd be sitting around not doing much. The problem is, not having a pocket artist to help you visualise what a piece of code or an early engine will be capable of or will look like - you lose a lot of feedback which can be incredibly helpful. You can see why procedurally generated content is proving valuable for what's being done right now.

[martin]

good god TGF agreed with me

Anyway, in a normal company I'd agree with having more than a 3:1 programmer artist ration - however I personally like procedural stuff a lot, it's used in my games wherever possible, also luckily enough both me and the other bloke I make my games with have some artistic talent, he usually does level designs etc while I do photoshoppy stuff... which means that we rarely need to call on another of our friends who is really good at the art stuff.

[zoombapup]

Its not just that artists help visualize, although I agree there. But having an artist around generally lifts the mood a bit, or at least it did for me. Programming can be a real grind, so having someone a bit more.... erm.... whats the right term thats kinda poncy but not... "artistic" can be a real boon.

I guess same with a designer, although I really dont trust "designer" as a title unless they have a ton of previous knowledge or are good artists/level designers also.

I agree that having procedural code is a good idea for indies. No doubt about it, none of us can afford anywhere near commercial art spends. But there is a certain aesthetic that comes out of programmer minds that just doesnt look nice. Hell, I remember my artist buddies having a huge pissing match about how a colour I'd selected (just threw some value in for testing) was "typical programmer" like. I protested!!!

If they give that much of a crap about a colour choice, they certainly will about everything else. It can definitely help.

[KingAl]

martin: Hmmm... I suppose it depends on what you define as an 'artist'. Many games use a fairly stock standard engine and focus upon creation of objects, levels etc. - naturally making the role of those who create such things more important. Thus, the type of game ultimately decides what ratio of certain skills is optimal.

Now, I don't have industry experience, but I'd imagine - as The Goldfish has said - that having artists who can help to visualise the end product gives programmers an idea of what they're aiming for, which not only serves a practical purpose, but is also beneficial for morale.

[martin]

martin: Hmmm... I suppose it depends on what you define as an 'artist'. Many games use a fairly stock standard engine and focus upon creation of objects, levels etc. - naturally making the role of those who create such things more important. Thus, the type of game ultimately decides what ratio of certain skills is optimal.

I suppose my views are because we're still in the process of building engines for graphics and physics, so any games we imagine we think "yeah, we could procedurally generate all that" - so maybe when we get into more detailed design of the procedural algorithms rather than just idly coding examples in VB6 we'll start appreciating artists a bit more

[Star*Dagger]

I love what IV did with Defcon... but its a minor title and "it is what it is".

Playing AAA titles like EVE Online and Supreme Commander makes one really appreciate well done, high quality games with big budgets and staff.

Defcon kept me interested for a few weeks and then i "cracked the code" and it wasnt for me anymore. EVE I will be playing till theys shut down the server and SupCom until a better game comes out in that genre (or another for that matter)

Yours in AAA Plasma,
Star*Dagger

[xander]

Defcon kept me interested for a few weeks and then i "cracked the code" and it wasnt for me anymore.

Unless you can consistently beat the best players around, or are willing to share this esoteric knowledge with us unwashed masses, I doubt the intellectual honesty of the statement "I 'cracked the code.'" Put up, or shut up.

xander

[Covak]

I love what IV did with Defcon... but its a minor title and "it is what it is".

Playing AAA titles like EVE Online and Supreme Commander makes one really appreciate well done, high quality games with big budgets and staff.

Defcon kept me interested for a few weeks and then i "cracked the code" and it wasnt for me anymore. EVE I will be playing till theys shut down the server and SupCom until a better game comes out in that genre (or another for that matter)

Yours in AAA Plasma,
Star*Dagger

My excitement for SupCom didn't last long after first playing it. I like it, but it immediately felt way too familiar to me.

DEFCON, on the other hand, is still fresh and exciting. SupCom is the minor game in my book.

[martin]

yeah, I spent ages raving about supcom, but the unit balances make it way to easy to just turtle - now a lot of people know I turtle but me as a turtle Vs the rest of the entire world as a turtle makes supcom really boring

[zoombapup]

The obvious difference between DEFCON and SUPCOM and the ilk, is that IV could actually CHANGE defcon if it were unbalanced or wasnt offering a challenge.

Indies in general have the advantage that changes can be a shot in the arm for sales. Changes can be seen as a good thing rather than a burden or a cost.

I'd certainly consider altering a strategy game if a particular strategy started to become dominant. Almost like an arms race, you adapt strategy to meet the available forces. So having some mechanism to bring in new forces seems like it would win. So for instance, adding additional "unit definition" abilities to defcon and allowing an automatically downloadable unit thing (like the old days of cavedog when they had a new unit a week) would be useful for an indie. To a commercial dev, it'd be simply seen as leeching profits.

I guess I view indie development as a service. Albiet a slowly moving, but at least human thinking service.

[martin]

yeah, in my games I usually try to add in some automatic self balancing systems, so for example when we were designing a space ship / space empire combat game I suggested a long term self balancing system:

-> every battle won decreases the award for winning a battle by a bit (proportional to the number of battles played)
-> every battle lost increases the award for winning (again, proportionally, so probably very small changes in each battle)
-> every certain unit bought increases the overall cost of that unit and decreases all other units (so in total buying on of every unit will always cost the same amount)

In fact thinking about it it's a bit like the weapons cost thingy on Counter Strike now, anyway the point is that because we wouldn't have time to properly balance prices ourselves this would make a self balancing economy to the game.