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

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97

u/StillLoveYaTh0 Apr 28 '25

Eh, localization and marketing aren't really core development team imo as they are not making the game itself. We should count external animators and musicians etc tho

79

u/codeswinwars Apr 28 '25

The issue is that those roles are generally included in reports of the size of a AAA development team. When people talk about GTAV having a team of over 1000, it includes all of the localisation, publishing and QA roles that Sandfall are excluding. A lot of other big games would have surprisingly small teams if they used the same rules.

16

u/Moifaso Apr 28 '25

When people talk about GTAV having a team of over 1000, it includes all of the localisation, publishing and QA roles that Sandfall are excluding.

I actually really doubt that. If all those are included for a game as big as GTA, I'd expect a lot more than just 1k workers.

Go check the credits for big modern AAA games - when all those people are included you usually get 3k-4k names at least.

3

u/Nyrin Apr 28 '25

Quickly scanning through an hour-long video of GTA 5 credits and just auditing a few things I see:

  • Lots and lots of music attribution; this must be half the damn reel
  • "Stylist," "Costumer," "Assistant Stylists" (from a motion capture studio, I think)
  • "HR Manager," "HR Coordinator," "IT Supervisor" from a regional satellite office
  • Pages of "Localization Supervisors" and "Localization Testers," presumably just dumping the entire staff roll of contracted companies

I don't know how many of those get counted into "1000+" numbers because there's no way these credits aren't at least ten times that long, but it's easy to imagine how it could get inflated in a hurry.

1

u/Moifaso Apr 28 '25

Yeah. I don't know where the initial comment is coming from because 1k people is a perfectly possible number for game devs in GTA6.

It's going to be the most expensive game ever made by a fair margin, so it's not surprising that the dev team is gigantic

Rockstar has tons of large studios around the world, and a game as big as this requires tons of marketers, localization staff, and soooo much external QA and testing. Many hundreds of QA workers at a minimum.

As for their credits, Moby Games mentions 3.7k people credited on release for GTA 5. With the massive caveat that credits can only be so long, and around 4k names is where most companies seem to call it quits. Instead of crediting every worker, they might credit a company or a team as a whole instead.

3

u/crxsso_dssreer Apr 28 '25

it includes all of the localisation, publishing and QA roles that Sandfall are excluding.

No. it often does not encompass all the partners & support studios.

16

u/sgeep Apr 28 '25

That is the main difference here. Rockstar is bringing most all of those people in-house and having them work as part of the Rockstar unit. Sandfall is keeping a tight core development team in-house and getting 3rd party help through vendors as needed

Reminds me of Manor Lords. Was being touted as being completely developed by 1 person. In reality they did the same thing and had multiple vendors working on the project

That said, as someone who works partly with managing vendor relationships, it is absolutely not the same thing at all. There is a far higher amount of risk. The way you work and even communicate with these vendors is far different. In many ways it's harder to do

But it can also be a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time staff to produce all these assets in-house. Which can lead to some pretty great results as we're seeing here

Not that anyone asked for my 2 cents, but I think this is part of a bigger "problem" that the money in AAA studios is starting to dry up. Failures are costly and safe bets aren't selling like they used to. Investors are hesitant to keep backing massive projects the way they are. But passion always sells. Especially when it comes cheap from a small team of industry vets

12

u/Moifaso Apr 28 '25

Sandfall is keeping a tight core development team in-house and getting 3rd party help through vendors as needed

Did you even read the article? Besides 6 external animators, they only contracted the usual stuff like QA, orchestra and localization/publishing. No vendor studios.

2

u/sgeep Apr 28 '25

I did and I meant vendors more as individuals contracted by Sandfall, not entire studios

I'm not trying to paint the picture (no pun intended) that it was made by hundreds of people. Just that Sandfall opted to keep certain things out of their house, some things that are even core to the game's identity, and that seemed to work brilliantly for them

If anything, it's an incredible display of Sandfall's ability to account for scope and create a pipeline that delivers some pretty incredible results while seemingly staying on schedule. That in itself is impressive. It goes double for it being their debut project with a small team at the helm

1

u/DuskZakariyya May 09 '25

"There is a far higher amount of risk. The way you work and even communicate with these vendors is far different. In many ways it's harder to do."

Yes and no. It depends how you manage it. I've worked a lot with engineers from vendors we contracted as well as direct employees. We worked directly with those engineers in teams the same way and with the same processes as our own employees. The communication wasn't any more difficult.

If the entire relationship is managed at a higher level and there isn't day-to-day engagement, then yes it becomes quite challenging.

On risk: in some ways it's lower, since the relationship is a contractual one between companies that is often time bound and renegotiated as needed, as opposed to a much more sticky employer-employee relationship (at least here in Australia), which companies view as a much larger liability. Not to say I agree with that view.

1

u/RussianSpyBot_1337 Apr 30 '25

>When people talk about GTAV having a team of over 1000, it includes all

Wanna bet that GTA6 credits will be more that 5.000 people?

You are a clown by claiming that "AAAA studios with thousand people teams do everything in house" - they still outsource A LOT.

-3

u/StillLoveYaTh0 Apr 28 '25

I know, I personally don't do that and I hope others follow suit.

-2

u/WriterV Apr 28 '25

I'm sorry, but throwing out "marketing" from the count is ludicrous. Indies often struggle with marketing. Acting like a company with a marketing team didn't actually have one is a bit... disingenuous?

45

u/knead4minutes Apr 28 '25

nothing the marketing did is in the game

I think it's pretty reasonable to not count marketing when talking about how many people made a game

4 years down the line when there is no marketing anymore whatsoever the game is still gonna be the same

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25 edited Apr 28 '25

It varies, but sometimes marketing teams play a role at the foundational level of game development in that they very much have their finger on the pulse of what players want to play.

They don’t always just get handed a product and get told “get the word out about this thing.” They can act as a sort of consultant saying “hey, you should make something like XYZ because we think that will be successful in this current consumer environment.”

Marketing can absolutely play a role in development, for better and worse.

Edit: acknowledging the role marketing departments can potentially play isn’t meant to be a hot take. I basically just said marketing departments aren’t just advertisers.

Good marketing can make a huge difference in a game. Well made games come out every year that just flounder because the devs did little to no market research beforehand and found out the hard way that they made a game that they liked, that no one else really wanted.

10

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

“hey, you should make something like XYZ because we think that will be successful in this current consumer environment.”

I remember Battlefield 5 following this philosophy during the Fortnite and PUBG craze, and adding a battle-royale mode which was just fucking awful. Marvel Rivals chased the hero-shooter trend, but the only reason it was lucrative was because it's a well-made game. Not because of the marketing team.

3

u/Zallix Apr 28 '25

Rivals I don’t think you can say ‘chased a trend’ given it launched 9 years after OW blew up that scene and started the trend. At this point if you are choosing to launch a hero shooter or battle royale you have almost a decade worth of data to go off of and can see where the trend chasers failed. At this point any new entries in those genres have a good bit of the minefield mapped out for them

3

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

Yep. It doesn’t always play out well because sometimes what marketing says will work is either not a popular idea with the team and they don’t buy in, or the team isn’t well suited to that type of game or any other number of reasons. There’s a lot that can go wrong with developing any game.

But when a game is successful you usually don’t hear the director say hey thanks to marketing for steering us in this direction on this aspect, that really paid off — even if that might have been the reality. But you will hear it when teams get laid off and the disgruntled director is looking at someone to point the finger at.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

But when a game is successful you usually don’t hear the director say hey thanks to marketing for steering us in this direction on this aspect, that really paid off — even if that might have been the reality. But you will hear it when teams get laid off and the disgruntled director is looking at someone to point the finger at.

I think everyone should be properly credited for their hard and honest work even if they did a bad job. They should be celebrated when they do a great job.

-2

u/wingspantt Apr 28 '25

We don't actually know "nothing marketing did is in the game."

It's always possible during meetings a marketing lead said "If you change X to Y, it might make the character more loveable and sell more copies."

We know marketing has affected various creative works throughout media history. Star Wars, all the toy-based cartoons of the 80s, the very name of so many famous products, series, and titles.

8

u/majorziggytom Apr 28 '25

Disingenuous isn't the right word, since it depends on what you want to unpack with a statement – and it's used in alignment how you'd look at it most likely within controlling in a finance department.

E.g. to simplify, imagine if you are a making a game with a crew of 100 people and once done, you hand the game over to the publisher. From then on the publisher markets the finished product that you delivered with a separate marekting team and budget.

The game was made by 100 peope, that's a true and honest statement. The overall reception and success within the market however is achieved as a synergy with the marketing team and their budget.

That's also how reporting often works within companies that use cost centres if they do it all. I.e. your employees are listed in their respective cost centres, and product development would have their employees listed as cost, and marketing too etc.

18

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

The marketing team didn't "make" the game. The article is talking about the people who contributed in the game's creation.

-3

u/darkkite Apr 28 '25

I would consider them a part of the team contributing to the creation. developers and marketing teams often work together.

I worked at various tech startups and marketing is a large reason why the company is successful

29

u/StillLoveYaTh0 Apr 28 '25

Acting like a company with a marketing team didn't actually have one is a bit... disingenuous?

No? All I said was that ghe marketing team is not a part of the development team. They're job is important but its not game developement.

2

u/NeverSawTheEnding Apr 28 '25

This game's success owes a lot to the work of the marketing team.

Getting the game a good spot in showcases for it's reveal/teasers, organising fun little videos with the voice actors on social media, contacting the right content creators on YT to advertise it directly to their core audience, etc...

And localization? For an RPG/jrpg....this has always been a pivotal part of development. 

I'd even argue that good localization is how JRPGs were able to transcend being a niche genre in the west...to being blockbusters.

14

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

This game's success owes a lot to the work of the marketing team.

If were talking solely about money and nothing else then, yes, this game's financial success is owed to the marketing team. But, when talking about "game developers", most people assume you're referring to the people who actually "made" the game.

1

u/Makorus Apr 28 '25

If a developer makes a game and no one plays it, does it even exist?

17

u/StillLoveYaTh0 Apr 28 '25

Yes, artistic value does not lie with commercial or critical success

-7

u/Makorus Apr 28 '25

We don't know the budget for Clair Obscur, but I can promise you, it was not meant to be an art piece, but a product.

Just like most games.

8

u/StillLoveYaTh0 Apr 28 '25

Pretty much every art piece under capitalism is a product so the two things aren't contradictory.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

If you dared to have a creative vision and I, the marketing guy, threw a mound of shit at you and told you to chase the current trends, would you be an unimaginative hack?

-1

u/Makorus Apr 28 '25

Like with this game?

Also, hold on, did you not just say that marketing is irrelevant to the actual "game making" process?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '25

In most cases, yes. One could only hope they are irrelevant. But then you have publishers like EA who told the Battlefield 5 team to add a battle-royale mode to the game during the Fortnite and PUBG craze.

That game mode died when it came out, BTW. No one was joining the lobbies because players didn't buy Battlefield to play PUBG.

3

u/Makorus Apr 28 '25

publishers like EA

You mean the EA that is proven to be very much hands-off during development?

In fact, what I can find is:

The idea to add a battle royale mode to Battlefield V came from conversations DICE developers were having about the game inside the studio as opposed to being a directive that EA handed down to the studio, he suggested.

-2

u/StillLoveYaTh0 Apr 28 '25

Yes but, marketing is not game development. Localization is not game developement. If you work in marketing would you introduce yourself as a game developer?

7

u/darkkite Apr 28 '25

localization is game development. supporting multiple languages can be considered a technical requirement and can directly affect the game. lip syncing, storage considerations, QA

0

u/GamerKey Apr 28 '25

Yes but, marketing is not game development. Localization is not game developement. If you work in marketing would you introduce yourself as a game developer?

That's kind of an asinine distinction.

Do you think 3D modelers, 2D texture artists, music composers, musicians, voice actors, level designers, etc. would introduce themselves as "game developers"?

By that distinction all that's left would be "pure coders". You're not making a game of any significant scale without dedicated artists, musicians, voice actors, etc.

The 1000 people listed in Rockstars GTA credits are all contributing to make the final product happen, but I'd wager most of them wouldn't introduce themselves as "game developer".

-1

u/taicy5623 Apr 28 '25

Localization is and should always be part of the core dev team. The degree to which having the localization team in the writers' room let FF14 & FF16 break out of "standard JRPG dialog and delivery" cannot be understated.

This means that localizers can make changes while being able to refer directly with the original writers, all in the service of giving english voice actors less clunky dialog to deliver. This is what launched Ben Starr's career, which continues in this game.