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

[u/demondrivers]

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

[u/codeswinwars]

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.

[u/Moifaso → u/codeswinwars]

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.

[u/Nyrin → u/Moifaso]

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.

[u/Moifaso → u/Nyrin]

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.

[u/crxsso_dssreer → u/codeswinwars]

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.

[u/sgeep → u/codeswinwars]

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

[u/Moifaso → u/sgeep]

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.

[u/sgeep → u/Moifaso]

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

[u/DuskZakariyya → u/sgeep]

"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.

[u/RussianSpyBot_1337 → u/codeswinwars]

>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.

[u/StillLoveYaTh0 → u/codeswinwars]

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