John of GAMElitist.com - "Like many other hardcore gaming fans, I’ve been wrapped up in E3 this week. It’s been a thrill cheering on my favorites and scrutinizing any gaming prospects that caught my eye. After watching presentation after presentation, I couldn’t help but crown Ubisoft as victor, and not because of one standout reason."
The story in part 3 of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us series may explore a "congregation of immune people."
Former Naughty Dog artist Gabriel Betancourt explains why the "sweet spot" for game teams is under 200 people and how AAA "factories" kill creativity.
There’s definitely some truth to this. When teams get too large, coordination starts to outweigh creativity—layers of approval, risk aversion, and tight deadlines can turn bold ideas into “safe” ones. Keeping a team under ~200 people sounds ideal for maintaining clear communication and a shared vision. That said, massive AAA projects also come with huge technical demands and expectations, so scaling up isn’t always avoidable. The real challenge is figuring out how to keep that small-team creativity alive inside big studio structures.
More than that, it's logistically untenable. Inevitably, when teams get too large, how do you keep tabs on accountability? I suspect this massive team size is a consequence of the perfectionism streak Naughty Dog has.
I wish we could have so many people working on something and it turns out great because I'm all for collaboration in spirit - the problem is too many people as part of the larger team and smaller units. Suppose for example that you have too many people in the art department; you will very often come up against fiercely competing visions for how things should look. That competitive vision will cause friction between team members, team doesn't work as a unit, the back and forth can further delay parts that the other departments are waiting for, etc etc.
A 200-person team says, to me, that we need to scale back game development. Even if it means we go back to PS2 era costs and scale, why not? Those games are still great fun, the budgets were in check, and you could literally break the 200-man team into like 10 20-man teams working on different projects.
The new trailer for the free 60 FPS update is here.
I'm happy with Part 3 & Blood Dragon getting the 60FPS treatment. I'll eventually try Primal, maybe this weekend.
You know E3 was sh!t when a 3rd party developer won it.
And yes UBI did win it because lets be honest here compared to that pile of poop that was shown from the big 3 which was Wonder Book Harry Potter money maker, Usher grappling his nuts and Nintendo trying to gimmick a tablet is not win worthy.
They only games that kept E3 alive for me was WATCHED DOGS AND TLOU.
i agree sony won E3 its funny how everyone says ubisoft won cuz of 1 game, i mean the game is all that from the looks of it but come on 1 game ?