58 minutes ago, SillyCow said:

If you compare blockbuster indie developers Crytek to ID software, you will see that Crytek needed a much bigger team to make a blockbuster then ID did.

And if you compare blockbusters from GSC with Crytek you will shortly found that GSC has solve 10 years ago any open-world simulation problems, that Crytek can not solve until now, ans has done it by tiny team of 3-4 programmers that made both gamelogic and engine.  It just becouse regarding any kind  of simulations ability "to drill"  a field dipper anycase will beat budget and quantity of developers.

58 minutes ago, SillyCow said:

Think about a hit like Prince of Persia. It was a game with unbelievable production value for it's time. I'm not talking about innovation, just production value. And it was largely made by one entry level programmer.

He just invent and implement a beter tools then sharks has. Game engine and design tools is a data processing software. And better tools that much of work shift to computer anycase helps to make more actual work faster by involving less developers and designers, becouse single CPU core anycase faster then ever 10000 humans that making same processing manually. So about nothing changed nowadays, with only difference - it  is plenty of ready hight-tech tools around, that aleady better then sharks use. And looks like sharks just can not shft to existing tools or develop a similar gamedev-specific tools just becouse nobody will shift to gamedev industry as employee from industries where junior engineer can have 120k+/year salary.

16 minutes ago, JoeJ said:

Why are we still in the stoneage with all those things? @Fulcrum.013 gives some answers, but that's more kind of proposals or visions, but why isn't this a reality?

I guess companies that use huge budgets and huge teams still in stoneage. Many companies with tiny teams allredy have proprientary engines and tools that use at leat partially industry-similar codebase for engines and addons to modelling tools. And thay allerady made billions on it.

12 minutes ago, JoeJ said:

Is it just lacking interest, caused by the vision imitating what Hollywood does is the way to go?

I guess wery soon gamedev will devide to 3 big baranches - movie games, that will complete shifted to Hollywood, realistic simulation games with some dummy story and mechanics (it that gamedev generally do nowadays), and high-realistyc training software.

34 minutes ago, JoeJ said:

To be able for them to compete with AAA standards, we need much better tech. This goes from automated LOD generation, procedural generation of unimportant details up to simulated characters instead motion capturing etc.

And then the AAA studios will use the same tech, but with 100x the budget, maintaining the difference.

Here's a thought:

The current discontent over indie vs AAA has nothing to do with the quality of either.

It has more to do with mainstream attention.

AAAs have made the entry barrier so high that your chances of getting a spotlight as a small studio have plummeted.

It's not that AAA have gotten worse.

It's not that small games have gotten better.

It's just that the percentage household brands which are also "indie" ( or "developed in a garage" as one might say in the 80s) has dropped. 

That is because a Houshold name means you are one of the top 20(?) grossing games in your category. 1M$ cut it in the past, but today you need to make $50M to be in top selling charts.

The indie game can still make 1M$, just as before. It's just that making 1M$ is considered non-mainstream today. It will amount to a game which only a small percentage of gamers have played. One might argue that quantitatively the number of players remains the same, it's just that selling 10k copies today isn't considered much.

29 minutes ago, Lactose said:

And then the AAA studios will use the same tech, but with 100x the budget, maintaining the difference.

Enlarging of team and budgets will not help into it area. Becouse main idea to shift as much as possible work to computer. Also tiny team may still a shareholder of company, so salaries for team is not a kind of budget. Instead of employees that have in mind to saw biggest budgets, teams of its kind have in mind to make required  work faster and with better quality.

23 minutes ago, JoeJ said:

Haha, right  

I guess thay can not to have same grade developers in so big quantities, so also not helpfull at all.  Just becouse implementing of its tools and engine features require at lest 5-years of university education and than years to enter field enought deep. Really, even locally, companies that made a proprientary high-tech engines and tools for own games have a top-most into any computing-related industries demands to developers and offer highest salaries, and can take a  years to find required professional. And it is for country where high-tech developers not contributed at all, generally contributed webdev and accounting. So what situation with required engineers into USA for example, where by predictions for next 10 years universities able to  graduate no more than 10% of developers that real-world industries require? 

1 hour ago, Fulcrum.013 said:

by tiny team of 3-4 programmers that made both gamelogic and engine

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/stalker-shadow-of-chernobyl/credits

This team does not look tiny to me.

For god's sake they have the "Prague Symphonic Orchestra" making their music for them!

This is the difference between an indie and a funded studio (I will not go as far as calling GSC "AAA").

Both have 3-4 lead engine programmers. But the funded studio will hire an intern to make the particles look slightly better.

Don't focus on the programming. That's only one part of the process. Let's say you're a really smart dev team. You're using a great engine that is rock solid (either developed in-house or licenced)... that cost is minimal in the grand scheme of things. You have an amazing writer, and a brilliant designer and you have come up with wonderfully innovative game mechanics and an engaging core gameplay loop.

Congratulations, you are now around 5% of the cost of the game. 

The more amazing your engine is, the more work has to go into the asset production to show it off. Sure, tooling in that area has improved, but it's still a very labour intensive process and it turns out that level designers, modellers, etc like to be paid. 

Plus, it's pointless having an innovative gameplay mechanic if the levels are designed to take advantage of it. Getting the tech ready for Portal was relatively easy (hell, the concept was written by a bunch of students for a project). The cost was building all the levels to show off the mechanics.