KZ2 and game budgeting in general *spin-off

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The difference is Sony can do this because they're not spending money buying out Exclusive DLC / Games / Publishing Rights.

Funding your own development studios means you get to keep all of the technology, the IPs, and the profits are higher. If Sony ends up getting in a big[ger] financial bind, they can sell off those IPs to other publishers and make considerable money off of them.

I think the assumption that their titles have to sell 5+ million copies to be a "success" is short sighted. Success is relative.

If KZ2's engine work goes on to help 3rd parties better understand the PS3, and helps Sony pump out some more stellar looking 1st Party exclusives that don't cost them as much money (since the technology grunt work is done) then they've "succeeded" and that money will have been well spend, especially if future titles turn a good profit (and 3rd parties start pumping out better games because of Edge Tools).

Hopefully some of you see where I'm coming from.
 
I don't know, is Sony getting as much licensing revenues for their tools as say the UE engine?

It wouldn't have hurt to have a GeOW-like hit to make the technology more attractive to potential licensees for the tools.

Sony may be somewhat snakebit. Halo3 and GeOW are big hits and all Sony has is critical acclaim for Uncharted, LBP and KZ2.
 
Sony may be somewhat snakebit. Halo3 and GeOW are big hits and all Sony has is critical acclaim for Uncharted, LBP and KZ2.

Well, they almost certainly money on the first two Sony titles -- they're million sellers with budgets no doubt smaller than that of KZ2. But no, they're not nearly the same class of hit.
 
Which small, Sony-owned studios do you mean, though?

There are studios like Guerrilla and Naughty Dog that Sony own and fund 100%. Then there are other studios that they don't own, yet they still fund them 100% to create PS3 exclusive content. It's this second type of studio that is more at risk, and incidentally the ones I'm considering :(


tha_con said:
The difference is Sony can do this because they're not spending money buying out Exclusive DLC / Games / Publishing Rights.

It's way cheaper and risk free to buy exclusive dlcs rights, etc. Funding entirely new tech and ip's is huge risk (ask Neversoft about Gun sometime).


tha_con said:
If KZ2's engine work goes on to help 3rd parties better understand the PS3, and helps Sony pump out some more stellar looking 1st Party exclusives that don't cost them as much money (since the technology grunt work is done) then they've "succeeded" and that money will have been well spend, especially if future titles turn a good profit (and 3rd parties start pumping out better games because of Edge Tools).

The problem with your logic is that KZ2 doesn't help third parties that much. Edge helps because they are useful libraries that were very cheap for Naughty Dog to make, and small enough to make them useful to other projects (with some integration work). There is little we can use from KZ2. It's its own tech, it's own set of tools, etc, designed to solve their specific situation and meet their specific goal. Their tech is not necessarily applicable to all games, and even if it was it's not like Sony is just giving all that code away to anyone with a PS3 dev kit. All we get are some pdf's describing what they do, we still have to code everything.

So far 1st party PS3 studios are in a similar boat, mostly reinventing the wheel. Uncharted uses one set of code/tools, Motorstorm another, KZ2 another, etc. For all the money poured into supporting all these parallel tech lines, what we mostly get out of all of it is little nuggets of info here and there from gdc slides. For example, Guerrilla had a solution regarding shimmering cascade shadow maps. Cool, we can swipe that (in some cases). But is this really a good bang for the buck, especially when some of these nuggets of info also benefit the competition (ie, 360 games can do the same shadow shimmer fix)?

Plus, in some ways the KZ2 experiment backfired. Try recommending switching to a deferred renderer and you now get a resounding 'no', partly because others at the table will point to how much time and money it took Guerrilla to do it. If a 1st party took that long and that much money, then what hope do 3rd parties have?
 
The problem with your logic is that KZ2 doesn't help third parties that much

Guerilla Games was credited in Uncharted, as far as I know, the shadow tech used in Uncharted was from GG, and that's long before KZ2 is even completed. Also it was mentioned several times that how GG was working closely with studios like Insomniac Games. At least, the Sony first parties seem to share their technologies.

BTW, I thought the Edge was constantly being updated by techs created by the Sony first parties. Is it not? Wasn't KZ2 created by the Edge to begin with?
 
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Yap, joker454 is just plain wrong when he claimed that GG has to do everything in-house. According to their tech slides, the KZ2 animation system is done on top of Edge Animation. Culling is done via early shared SPURS work. Parts in the AI looks reusable too although it is proprietary. Perhaps someone can port it to enhance Edge's path finding. Sony's cross platform PhyreEngine also has deferred rendering, and may be able to benefit from some of KZ2's work too.

GG also use third party tools such as Illunimate Lab's solution. We may be able to find more if we look hard enough.
 
The hype did fit the game (going by the reviews).

The reviews ARE part of the hype and influenced by the hype, not some cold rational analysis from another planet.

Why would anyone root for companies to NOT invest big in some games?

I thought we were having a rational discussion about the game industry here, not "rooting" ?

They were also spread too thin across many projects.

Yes, exactly what joker454 fears - you correct "spreading too thin" by cutting less important projects and studios.

According to their tech slides, the KZ2 animation system is done on top of Edge Animation.

Edge Animation is very low level, you have to build a lot on top of it to achieve what is arguably the best animation/movement/hit reaction system in the industry right now.
 
Yes, exactly what joker454 fears - you correct "spreading too thin" by cutting less important projects and studios.

...reallocating resources to left over projects and studios, not just cutting. But the first party strategy remains intact. That's what Shuhei did for 8 Days. Cutting alone doesn't solve "spread too thin" issues. It solves overhead issues.

Abandoning the strategy doesn't solve the issue too. It implies "I don't know how to solve the issue".

Edge Animation is very low level, you have to build a lot on top of it to achieve what is arguably the best animation/movement/hit reaction system in the industry right now.

Yes, and other companies cannot benefit from KZ2's work if they are based on the same Edge Animation ? (given that a lot has been built on top)
 
Plus, in some ways the KZ2 experiment backfired. Try recommending switching to a deferred renderer and you now get a resounding 'no', partly because others at the table will point to how much time and money it took Guerrilla to do it. If a 1st party took that long and that much money, then what hope do 3rd parties have?

According to their recent GDC document, KZ2 has had about 1 year preproduction period, and 18 months of full production, which adds up to 2.5 years of development as patsu mentioned above, which I don't think isn't much longer than a development time of the other games of similar caliber. GG has about 140 people, and additional 50 Sony people helped making KZ2, for a comparison, UBI Montreal had about 280 people working on Far Cry 2. (and how many did it sell in its first month at NPD?)

Considering how KZ2 is the first game in this console generation to make use of deferred renderer in full scale, I think the time and the resources took to complete it, isn't so bad as many people here seemed to believe, and, as early as the next Sony game is benefiting from KZ2 'experiments' as Infamous is using deferred renderer for its lighting model.
 
Wow, that's faster than I thought. They will pay a premium for that kind of compressed schedule.

For worthiness of deferred rendering, I much prefer a more detailed response like Sebbbi's:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1271144&postcount=119

i think the budget thats being thrown around comes from here http://ps3.qj.net/Rumor-Killzone-2-budget-doubled-because-of-Guerrilla-Games-/pg/49/aid/112518

the article/rumor says it was at 42 million euros which put it roughly around 60 million dollars at the time...doesnt read like it included the marketing either

Ok, so SurferGirl is the authority on KZ2 now. Those numbers, if true, could also be for multiple Killzone games (since they invested so much in the assets and technology) ? We should just take the official and/or validated numbers.
 
...reallocating resources to left over projects and studios, not just cutting. But the first party strategy remains intact.

(It's not that easy to shift resources from studio to studio, but let's ignore that.)

As an overall first-party strategy, it might be intact, but from the point of view of someone thinking about applying for a job at one of the smaller studios, it's till a risk.

Yes, and other companies cannot benefit from KZ2's work if they are based on the same Edge Animation ? (given that a lot has been built on top)

If Sony have in place a good technology sharing scheme (which other, supposedly "engine companies" don't have), the KZ2 animation work can and will be reused by others, especially in related games (FPS/TPS).

However, they have done so much work on top of Edge Animation that just having Edge Animation in another studio's tech base won't mean they automatically can use everything GG have done. To pull some arbitrary numbers out of thin air, if KZ2's animation is 20% EDGE and 80% GG know-how and code - which I'm fairly certain is a good ballpark - reusing it in another title will be only 20% easier if it's already using EDGE.
 
(It's not that easy to shift resources from studio to studio, but let's ignore that.)

Might want to ask how Shuhei managed it. Sony world wide studios seem to share technologies and co-develop stuff all the time.

As an overall first-party strategy, it might be intact, but from the point of view of someone thinking about applying for a job at one of the smaller studios, it's till a risk.

I am not aware we are talking about job security here. We still see people coming out to start their own studios. It's probably a separate thread.

If Sony have in place a good technology sharing scheme (which other, supposedly "engine companies" don't have), the KZ2 animation work can and will be reused by others, especially in related games (FPS/TPS).

However, they have done so much work on top of Edge Animation that just having Edge Animation in another studio's tech base won't mean they automatically can use everything GG have done. To pull some arbitrary numbers out of thin air, if KZ2's animation is 20% EDGE and 80% GG know-how and code - which I'm fairly certain is a good ballpark - reusing it in another title will be only 20% easier if it's already using EDGE.

For complex stuff like that, you'd need someone to generalize the solution first -- like how they generalize their culling, AI, animation, shadow, ... work. Perhaps the PhyreEngine or Edge guys will take a look. Also I don't think you can share 100%. Some small percentage spread across multiple games is already a good return.

Not sure what it has to do with whether other engine companies share or don't share technologies.
 
There are studios like Guerrilla and Naughty Dog that Sony own and fund 100%. Then there are other studios that they don't own, yet they still fund them 100% to create PS3 exclusive content. It's this second type of studio that is more at risk, and incidentally the ones I'm considering :(




It's way cheaper and risk free to buy exclusive dlcs rights, etc. Funding entirely new tech and ip's is huge risk (ask Neversoft about Gun sometime).




The problem with your logic is that KZ2 doesn't help third parties that much. Edge helps because they are useful libraries that were very cheap for Naughty Dog to make, and small enough to make them useful to other projects (with some integration work). There is little we can use from KZ2. It's its own tech, it's own set of tools, etc, designed to solve their specific situation and meet their specific goal. Their tech is not necessarily applicable to all games, and even if it was it's not like Sony is just giving all that code away to anyone with a PS3 dev kit. All we get are some pdf's describing what they do, we still have to code everything.

So far 1st party PS3 studios are in a similar boat, mostly reinventing the wheel. Uncharted uses one set of code/tools, Motorstorm another, KZ2 another, etc. For all the money poured into supporting all these parallel tech lines, what we mostly get out of all of it is little nuggets of info here and there from gdc slides. For example, Guerrilla had a solution regarding shimmering cascade shadow maps. Cool, we can swipe that (in some cases). But is this really a good bang for the buck, especially when some of these nuggets of info also benefit the competition (ie, 360 games can do the same shadow shimmer fix)?

Plus, in some ways the KZ2 experiment backfired. Try recommending switching to a deferred renderer and you now get a resounding 'no', partly because others at the table will point to how much time and money it took Guerrilla to do it. If a 1st party took that long and that much money, then what hope do 3rd parties have?


All of these points are based on assumption. We know that KZ2 used Edge, we know Edge includes tools that will be made available to 3rd parties.

It doesn't matter what "percentage" of those tools help 3rd parties, the point is, those libraries help 3rd parties. By Helping 3rd parties, you make the games better, you get better sales, you make your console more lucrative for development, etc. Do you see where I'm headed with this?

Also, it's ill-informed of you to think that KZ2 is "all it's own technology" considering it's well known (and documented) that many folks from MANY STUDIOS were brought in to help, etc, as well as folks from GG helping other studios. The fact that you would write it all off and say that none of the studios have any interaction, and they're all on "parallell lines" is a bit over the top.

Edit: Also, it's inaccurate for you to say it's "way cheaper" to buy DLC, publishing rights, etc, when the only evidence you have is those titles being successful. In this one situation, yes, but if Sony were the one buying these exclusives, and still seeing slow sales, would you be so quick to say that? Do we know for a fact that $50M spent on Lost and the Damned was "worth it"? That cutting a deal for Tomb Raider DLC was viable? Fallout 3? We have NO NUMBERS on this stuff, from price tag to sales. How can you say it's "way cheaper"?
 
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joker454 said:
There are studios like Guerrilla and Naughty Dog that Sony own and fund 100%. Then there are other studios that they don't own, yet they still fund them 100% to create PS3 exclusive content. It's this second type of studio that is more at risk, and incidentally the ones I'm considering

Well, if those studios lose exclusive status with Sony, why won't they just make a deal with another publisher and go multiplatform? I doubt studios like Insomniac or Sucker Punch will have trouble finding new work based on their strong reputations.
 
However, were there any outsourcing costs, like art perhaps?

The E3 2005 trailer was about $1million just in itself. And there was another separately made intro movie as well, although that was probably a bit cheaper (there's been a lot of advancement since 2005 in CGI as well).
 
What was Lair's budget? Or Heavenly Sword's?

Lair: go read Factor5's GDC presentation on next gen production, they've been very keen to idnicate that Lair was a $20million+ project.

As for HS - they've hired Andy Serkis to do mocap for them on New Zealand, they've had the audio (or music?) team behind Crouching Tiger, they've had a huge production team... it's a pretty safe guess that it was around $20 million as well.

Just for comparision's sake, Call of Duty 2 was about $14 million back then, although that included all platforms' costs.
 
Which would be completely nonsensical, unless you truly believed they did virtually no work before the CG teaser trailer?

They've had no development work done before the CG trailer.
Maybe a rough design doc with bullet points but that's all. They've been working on the PSP KZ game at that time.
 
patsu said:
Yap, joker454 is just plain wrong when he claimed that GG has to do everything in-house. According to their tech slides, the KZ2 animation system is done on top of Edge Animation. Culling is done via early shared SPURS work. Parts in the AI looks reusable too although it is proprietary. Perhaps someone can port it to enhance Edge's path finding. Sony's cross platform PhyreEngine also has deferred rendering, and may be able to benefit from some of KZ2's work too.

The dream is that all of this tech is usable by everyone with little work. The reality is that it's not. Makes no difference what pr firms will say in public, there is still little reusable tech out there, and the stuff that is shareable represents a minuscule amount of code in the grand scheme of things, and still requires piles of additional work to make it even remotely functional for coders, artists and tool people. Both of the PS3 exclusive studios I'm talking with are using none of the tech people here love to mention, not even Edge. One place can't afford the time needed to make some of it work, the other simply can't make it work in their existing code/tool chain. Neither one is even considering a deferred renderer. If it's so easy to share all this glorious tech, then why are these two Sony funded studios not using any of it?

The clues are real simple, once someone comes up with something easy to use and share, you will instantly see it everywhere. If you don't see it everywhere, then it's because it was deemed either not worth the time/money, or it was simply not possible to use. Everyone wants to save money and we will all jump at the chance to reuse code of value. It's simply no where near as plug and play as it is claimed to be.


MazingerDUDE said:
Guerilla Games was credited in Uncharted, as far as I know, the shadow tech used in Uncharted was from GG, and that's long before KZ2 is even completed. Also it was mentioned several times that how GG was working closely with studios like Insomniac Games. At least, the Sony first parties seem to share their technologies.

There is no GG 'shadow tech', they use cascade shadow maps like everyone else. What GG did was a small tweak on their usage to eliminate shimmering, albeit with another side effect. This is what Uncharted swiped from them. Ideas are shared, but tech for the most part is all created in house and customized to each game. Insomniac does things somewhat differently than Naughty Dog and GG. Likewise, GG and Naughty Dog have different approaches to their differed renders. In the end, each company has their own engines that are incompatible with each other.


MazingerDUDE said:
According to their recent GDC document, KZ2 has had about 1 year preproduction period, and 18 months of full production, which adds up to 2.5 years of development as patsu mentioned above, which I don't think isn't much longer than a development time of the other games of similar caliber. GG has about 140 people, and additional 50 Sony people helped making KZ2, for a comparison, UBI Montreal had about 280 people working on Far Cry 2. (and how many did it sell in its first month at NPD?)

So that means they started KZ2 in late 2006? That would imply that they totally guesstimated for the E3 2005 demo, then started started work on the game ~1.5 years later. It's hard to believe they waited that long to start considering PS3 third parties started earlier than that, but if that's what they say then I guess we'll go with it.

You can't compare staff numbers with UBI Montreal. GG makes only one product, so it's safe to assume everyone there is working on KZ2. UBI makes lots of stuff, meaning they can get creative with their 'team size' numbers. There may very well have been 280 working on Far Cry 2 at some point, but many of those same people likely worked on other games at the same time. In other words, it was not 280 people dedicated 100% of the time to just Far Cry 2. EA does the same thing, they have massive teams but the same people will work on multiple projects over the course of a year, but they still get credited on all games resulting in team sizes that appear astronomically large.


tha_con said:
Also, it's ill-informed of you to think that KZ2 is "all it's own technology" considering it's well known (and documented) that many folks from MANY STUDIOS were brought in to help, etc, as well as folks from GG helping other studios. The fact that you would write it all off and say that none of the studios have any interaction, and they're all on "parallell lines" is a bit over the top.

They are parallel lines. The games are incompatible with each other. Some ideas are shared and that's about it. There is still an 'engine group' at each company working on their unique tech.


tha_con said:
Edit: Also, it's inaccurate for you to say it's "way cheaper" to buy DLC, publishing rights, etc, when the only evidence you have is those titles being successful. In this one situation, yes, but if Sony were the one buying these exclusives, and still seeing slow sales, would you be so quick to say that? Do we know for a fact that $50M spent on Lost and the Damned was "worth it"? That cutting a deal for Tomb Raider DLC was viable? Fallout 3? We have NO NUMBERS on this stuff, from price tag to sales. How can you say it's "way cheaper"?

Funding your own studios is the epitome of risk. You don't know when they will finish the product, if they will finish the product, how over budget they will be, or if it will even sell when they are finally done with it. You have to pay rent, health insurance, and a million other costs in the process. It's high risk.

Buying DLC exclusivity shifts all the risk away from the person buying it, that is the beauty of that strategy. Plus you have foresight to help better determine the value of said DLC. With a new studio/ip, you are working blind, with no clue if the final result will payoff. This is not the case with DLC. You buy exclusive DLC for games with successful history, like Fallout, to minimize the risk and maximize the reward.


Brad Grenz said:
Well, if those studios lose exclusive status with Sony, why won't they just make a deal with another publisher and go multiplatform? I doubt studios like Insomniac or Sucker Punch will have trouble finding new work based on their strong reputations.

Yeah Insomniac has nothing to worry about, but some of the others might. It depends on how much cash a studio has on hand. If Sony pulled support from a studio, then the studio will still have to maintain payroll while shopping their project around for a new publisher. If their game was only 25% complete when funding was cut, then shopping it around will be even harder. Plus, from what I'm seeing behind the scenes, Sony is willing to throw around more money than other publishers are. So...if a studio was burning through X dollars a month with Sony, that 'X' amount may likely not be acceptable to other publishers, which would necessitate staff cuts.
 
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