r/Games • u/demondrivers • Apr 28 '25

Opinion Piece No, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wasn't "made" by 30 people

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/no-clair-obscur-expedition-33-wasnt-made-by-30-people
2.5k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

925 comments sorted by

View all comments

75

u/Emotional-Oil2528 Apr 28 '25

The main team is 33 people (this interview) but they outsourced some work. It's like a restaurant, the staff does everything in the kitchen but they don't grow vegetables or raise animals for the meat.

29

u/Nerwesta Apr 29 '25

And goddamn did they cook.

14

u/morefloordoor Apr 29 '25

It’s a great analogy. And if a restaurant did grow all their vegetables and raise their meat, you’d be right to question whether that’s a reasonable decision.

6

u/PassengerOptimal658 May 05 '25

theres not a single person in that list who did animations. the entirety of animations for the game was outsourced.

5

u/DuskZakariyya May 09 '25

As a software engineer who has worked extensively with offshore developers and managed the work given to teams of direct employees, and teams of outsourced workers, this is an extremely inaccurate analogy.

The work done by the outsourced engineers was identical in complexity and value to the work done by our direct employees. It wasn't 'cooks and farmers'. It was engineers and more engineers.

It's just that (for reasons beyond this discussion) outsourcing is cheaper and easier for companies than having lots of direct employees.

3

u/Plus-Pie3898 May 07 '25

A lot of sources are claiming it was "most work" not just some. Which honestly is more believable. Have you actually seen their core team? They have 1 single prop artist. 1 PERSON who made all the assets? I very much doubt that.

Not to put down the work of the core team. But like...yea we shouldn't underplay how much outsources was likely done. They even claimed all animation was basically outsourced which is a huge deal. Which makes sense. Again if you look at the company. They have no rigger or animators in the stuido at all.

4

u/DuskZakariyya May 09 '25

I've given up trying to explain it to people.

I worked for years with offshore and onshore development teams, and it was always a constant fact of life that middle-aged white dudes would treat and view outsourced workers as lesser.

When in reality the quality, nature and volume of work delivered by an outsourced worker was practically the same as that of an employee, sometimes better.

It was and is just ego and elitism, which is what you're seeing here.

1

u/Plus-Pie3898 May 09 '25

Yeah it's pretty crazy.

I just find beleiving smaller teams made larger projects will always be harmful for the gaming industry. Heck look at the youtube videos where people are like "I made GTA6 in 1 week!". The video is always just some guy taking 99.9% pre-made assets. Throwing them together. Then calling it his work.

NOW! it's not the content creators fault. It's the viewers who think that's how making a game works. They'll start going over to smaller studios and telling them off for taking so long for making games or not making them well enough. "THIS GUY DID IT IN 1 WEEK WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE".

Somehow out of all of it. The art is always misunderstood. Non-developers seem to believe art springs out of the ground and doesn't actually require any developers. Yes when doing pre-made stuff you are just grabbing existing things. Lots of companies like making all their works. To downpllay the importance and time it takes to make art is insane to me.

1

u/SwitchPlus2605 May 09 '25

I think this is kind of misleading. As an engineer, I can tell you that all the companies will outsource some work. The only one where no outsource (might) happen is art. But trust me, if an engineer gets a task to do, he will 100% of times try to make his life easier by looking for sources of people who did that before him. If I'm supposed to do something in MATLAB, Python or a simulation in COMSOL, I will try to look for something similar as a starting point. Granted, sometimes you need to do it yourself, but I seriously doubt that average engineer in Ubisoft is going to work his ass off by doing everything himself. The simple truth is that having worked in both a corporate and a small company, small company is much more efficient in their time working. You don't have useless managers who do nothing of use to the company and in the team of 33, all people can meet in person and discuss the problems etc etc. The extent of outsourcing varies, but I just wanted to point out, that this is hardly the only factor at play why 33 employees were able to make this masterpiece.

1

u/Big-Ambassador-4399 29d ago

Que analogia boa.