How many games will be modern combat fps games with the same trees, same vehicles, weapons, soldiers? I'm assuming that publishers don't do this because I have never read otherwise, but why don't they share assets across game studios that they own or give money to, or why don't game studios simply share assets with each other. I mean GTA basically made every single car you could want. Any game that needs a car, just share the assets from GTA etc. Obviously as time goes on you build newer higher poly stuff, but how many times have we seen a Russian Hind helicopter: of just the few games I play: MW series, Battlefield series, Uncharted, World in Conflict, (maybe medal of honor).

Is there a reason NOT to do this? I mean everyone is bitching about costs to develop games and timelines but it seems so stupid to not have a developer portal even if its not free but just to re-sell your assets.

Indeed, having your game look just like your competitors is a great idea

complex things like trees are often handled by middleware solutions like speedtree these days (Which makes it really easy to create unique trees that have the look you want).

Publisher-owned studios often do share code, assets and man-power among the 'family' of same-owner studios.

As for selling this stuff outside of the family -- pretty much any type of business would avoid doing stuff that directly helps the competition.

As for selling this stuff outside of the family -- pretty much any type of business would avoid doing stuff that directly helps the competition.[/quote]
But realistically, if MW sells assets to Battlefield, 1) They make more money on their work and 2) Battlefield will come out anyway and have basically the same exact asset. Its not like the BF version is going to be so awesome and give it better ratings.

As for selling this stuff outside of the family -- pretty much any type of business would avoid doing stuff that directly helps the competition.

But realistically, if MW sells assets to Battlefield, 1) They make more money on their work and 2) Battlefield will come out anyway and have basically the same exact asset. Its not like the BF version is going to be so awesome and give it better ratings.
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They are still helping to get Battlefield out to market faster which leaves less time for Modern Warfare to be the only 'top' FPS on the market which means they are losing out on sales. If all of Battlefield's art looks like Modern Warfare why are people going to pay for two versions of the same game? You would be surprised how much more important graphics are instead of gameplay to a lot of people. Besides art is only a small part of the total cost of making a game.

As for selling this stuff outside of the family -- pretty much any type of business would avoid doing stuff that directly helps the competition.

But realistically, if MW sells assets to Battlefield, 1) They make more money on their work and 2) Battlefield will come out anyway and have basically the same exact asset. Its not like the BF version is going to be so awesome and give it better ratings.[/quote]In order for it to not count as "helping" Battlefield, they'd have to sell the assets for the same or higher than it would cost Dice (BF dev) to make them from scratch - and at that point, Dice may as well make them from scratch.

Outsourcing art like that isn't as simple as it sounds. You don't just buy a Hind model and chuck it in your game. You need an art director to assess it to ensure it fits stylisticly, and a tech-artist to ensure it fits the tech requirements, which is almost always going to result in some re-work (either by an internal artists, or by sending it back to the contracted source), which implies extra work for your art team or for your outsourcing-manager (a whole job that you don't even need if you don't outsource).

Seeing that this two-way communication is required, and that communication with external parties is much more time-consuming than communication with internal parties, outsourcing work often isn't as cheap as it first appears.


However, all that being said, there's a lot of games studios that specialize entirely in providing outsourced content to other companies, rather than making their own games! If you look in the credits for a number of AAA games, you'll be surprised at how many companies appear, besides the main developer and publisher.


[Edit]Also, because outsourcing is somewhat common, there's been some stupid incidents where dev's have been accused of plagiarism by the public, because modders have found identical assets in different games, which goes to show asset re-use by different companies does occur somewhat.

Even if such a thing were possible, it would just dampen the creativity of studios even more... It is about the money for the publishers, but if you ask any game developer who makes a decent living, it's more about the thrill and challenge of creating great games. When you start copying so much stuff, the line between trivial and important gets blurred and the whole game suffers. Not to mention the ratings of reviewers who are getting more critical by the minute! And of course, every bad rating is a hit on sales.

Creativity and fresh, genuine stuff matters! Games are like cars, it's okay to share the engine, but the actual car has to be unique, beautiful and most of all, a thrill to hop in. Now, if Audi XX looked almost the same as BMW XX, you wouldn't be really enticed to buy it, would you?

Something I've noticed as a game developer is that the broad strokes are not really important, it's the trivial details that matter the most... When a player exits from a car whose wheels are rotated to the left and they actually stay that way rather than reverting to the idle animation like in most games, it stays with you (Mafia 2 is one example). When a car's chassis reacts to turns of a vehicle in place, it stays with you. If developers got forced to share by their publishers, they'd eventually start to make skins all based on one general, shared game. That perhaps isn't the idea OP had in mind, but nonetheless, this would happen if publishers were to enforce something like this.

i think if it makes sense to outsource work they are already doing it with companies that provide this service but not with other publishers. Most things just dont make sense to outsource because of the additional management overhead and quality drop. This is true in alot of software.

it doesnt really sell your game if your ripping bits out of other games, it makes you look lazy and then people expect the game to be cheaper because they did less 'work'.

If you used the ID engine and took some textures / furniture from Quake 4 and set your game in a futuristic war zone you have a Mod and there are plenty of them.

If all of Battlefield's art looks like Modern Warfare why are people going to pay for two versions of the same game?[/quote] What makes their art different anyway? I guarantee that if you take a snapshot from both of those upcoming games you wouldn't be able to say which one is which. (other than BF's horrible looking trees if they still have them). People will pay for 2 versions of the same game because thats all we do pay for in series games.

You don't just buy a Hind model and chuck it in your game. You need an art director to assess it to ensure it fits stylisticly, and a tech-artist to ensure it fits the tech requirements,[/quote]
So someone downloads blueprints of a hind and models it. They are going to be the same, there is no style if your going for realism. The texturing can be different but I've never played a game and gone: man that Humvee looks way different than any other game. And tech requirements are basically going to be the same on vehicles.

and that communication with external parties is much more time-consuming than communication with internal parties[/quote] There already is a lot of art outsourcing anyway.

it doesnt really sell your game if your ripping bits out of other games, it makes you look lazy[/quote]
My 2nd point of this argument is that NOBODY will ever know. If I put a MW soldier in any other game and it sold, nobody would be like "thats a character from MW2". Or that its a humvee or chopper from MW2. I'm not talking about Link from zelda here or main game characters. So many people use speedtree, do you play games and right away go "yup thats speedtree".

Its true in the fact that its funner to do your own stuff, but I'm just talking about it from a publisher standpoint who is always talking about money.

You're still not getting it. It's not about saving negligible costs; it's about not helping the competition getting their game to market faster. If anything, that would be detrimental to your game's revenue. Besides, any work that is simple or complex enough is already outsourced - including CG intros, various models of all kinds and some other misc. Really, saving those 500$ for one model isn't going to help a 35,000,000$ production that much... especially not if those expenses saved went towards aiding your competitor.