How Big should a Game's Datasize be?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Lately, there have been a great deal many complaints about new releases requiring excessively large downloads (before unpacking & installation, I might add). Titanfall, for example, has 35 GB of pure, uncompressed audio that has to be downloaded. While it is true that companies should (for professionalism and courtesy) clean and tidy up their games before launch, is it really too bad that a game takes up 50 GB? Now, I'm not defending anybody here, but considering you can take a 15-30 minute drive down the street to the nearest Fry's/Best Buy/Whatever and buy a TB drive for under $100, is it all that important?

Now, granted; disk drive isn't the only problem: some people are still running with plans that have data caps. This is (one of) the reasons why companies still produce hard copies of their games, though that doesn't solve all the issues. Having a bunch of messy data stored on your drive can cause slow downs and fragmentations and so on. But that's not what I came here to talk about.

Take World of Warcraft for example: The entire game; vanilla, 5 expansions (including WoD), and patches consumes only a mere 25 GB of space on the drive (post installation and unpackaging ofcourse). For that 25GB, you get a ridiculous, insane amount of art, sound, and SFX! Plus cinematics! Whereas Titanfall; a game with a dozen maps, lower-than-average res textures (1080p is antiquated as of 2013; 1440p is the new standard, and even that is quickly being replaced by full on 2k), and a handful of art assets: you get 50GB.

Your thoughts?

[Gourmandise]

I don't know how it works but I am amazed by the size of my wow data folder as each expansion comes out.

[drwelfare]

One of the reasons I like physical copies, I dont have to download the massive games just the patches, which can still be massive

[Jtbrig7390]

Ya game installs are getting way to big on both PC and Console. Its already said that GTA V on ps4 will take 50gig's of space. Now I know GTA V for Ps3 compared to Ps4 is like night and day but still the install size is insane.

Titanfall for PC is a perfect example like you said. There is no reason why games should be getting this huge in size in my opinion. Ya a 1TB HD is nice but if each game is 50gig's thats only 20 games before you max out ur HD. In truth its around 18 games since you don't get the full 1TB due to OS.

[Deleted]

Wasn't the Titanfall 50 GB because they didn't compress a lot of the sound files? Or am I completely in the wrong here?

[Jtbrig7390]

Wasn't the Titanfall 50 GB because they didn't compress a lot of the sound files? Or am I completely in the wrong here?

Ur right and they says that in the OP.

But games are getting bigger in install size. I think the average now is around 35 gigs for AAA titles. I could be wrong tho.

[Duronos]

I feel it should be 32-64mb, any more or less and I'll riot.

Oh how I love that console in the 90's.

[prwraith]

Hard drives are pretty cheap. You can get a decent sata hdd 1tb+ for chump change. And SSD's are getting cheaper every few months.

I suppose with average american internet downloading sucks, but 32 gigs is roughly an hour ish of download time on my net so it's not to big. I quote that number because I just downloaded black flag on steam. it's about that size and that's how long it took.

[Deleted]

Ur right and it says that in the OP.

But games are getting bigger in install size. I think the average now is around 35 gigs for AAA titles. I could be wrong tho.

Oh fuck I completely oversaw that

I don't know if 35 GB is the standard, I think the biggest I installed was Witcher 2 at 23 GB or something in that range. I guess it is part of the process of games looking better and such, not sure if there is some line that should be drawn. Honestly I think one had to be in the industry itself to analyse this.

[chazus]

Whereas Titanfall; a game with a dozen maps, lower-than-average res textures (1080p is antiquated as of 2013; 1440p is the new standard, and even that is quickly being replaced by full on 2k), and a handful of art assets: you get 50GB.

Firstly, a game is as big as it needs to be. There isn't 'messy' files or stuff just hanging around.

Secondly, Titanfall (since we're using this example) is insanely more detailed than WoW. You mention res textures (which have nothing to do with game resolution, not sure why you mentioned that). Size of game world is unrelated to texture detail.

Thirdly, and this is just nitpicking, since its relation to your point is.. well.. not related. '1440p' is not the new standard. It's just a false statement. It's a technical standard, but the majority (I'm talking like, 90% here) of screens and software where resolution is important is still 1920x1080 based.

[Xaelai]

As large as it reasonably needs to be.

Titanfall NOT compressing files is just stupid. There's no reason to not compress files; that only wastes bandwidth to download it and storage space to store it. The least you could do is compress it and then uncompress it later after it was downloaded if you simply must have uncompressed sound files.

The only two reasons you'd want uncompressed files is to speed the game up (maybe you should stop stretching limits or give users an option to play with the files compressed or uncompressed) and quality (most people wouldn't notice the difference between uncompressed and compressed, again that should be an Option).

Now, if a game is 20, 30GB of pure content, then heck, gimme ALL the content!

But if a game is 20, 30GB due to shoddy design/lack of compression/bad data storage/redundant data/etc, then..... yeah, I mind.

Firstly, a game is as big as it needs to be. There isn't 'messy' files or stuff just hanging around.

Unless, of course, you are purposefully NOT compressing files (as the OP claims Titanfall does), OR you are using inferior compression/storage methods and/or are not being very efficient with data handling. Then you'll see your game being larger than it really has to be.

[Baelic]

*cracks knuckles*

Game data sizes are only going to grow, but let's break down why.

Audio - Data size for audio grows as the scope of the game increases, it will also grow as new formats and/or higher audio quality is created.

Graphics - As players continually demand for larger games with ever increasing graphical fidelity (along with new hardware to support it), the size of art assets will become more complex and increase in size as a result.

Code - A game needs to be able to support varying amounts of Operating Systems and Hardware. On top of that the code for the game engine gets larger as it supports more and more game-related systems and graphics, then there's the actual code/scripts that are what actually allow the engine to drive all of the components of the game (player(s), enemies, etc.)

So pray to your ISP overlord and hope that they decide to increase your data-cap/speed as the digital, cloud-based age arrives (they probably won't). Because there is literally nothing you can do.

[MyndZero]

There getting bigger because games are getting more advanced, more graphical, able to do more things at any one time. Which is fine, prices for hdd storage has gone way down compared to what it used to be a few years ago. The only thing that really needs to catch up is the internet speed / download limit in some places.

[Deleted]

yeah its getting ridiculous in size i mean if i have to download a 50GB sized game is it wrong for me to assume i get more then 5 hours entertainment when a 4MB game can last 30+hours(tianfall campain vs FF6)

[Ilfayt]

Firstly, a game is as big as it needs to be. There isn't 'messy' files or stuff just hanging around.

Secondly, Titanfall (since we're using this example) is insanely more detailed than WoW. You mention res textures (which have nothing to do with game resolution, not sure why you mentioned that). Size of game world is unrelated to texture detail.

Thirdly, and this is just nitpicking, since its relation to your point is.. well.. not related. '1440p' is not the new standard. It's just a false statement. It's a technical standard, but the majority (I'm talking like, 90% here) of screens and software where resolution is important is still 1920x1080 based.

But as even the devs themselves mentioned, that's not the case with Titanfall. They have a large amount of uncompressed audio files. Like to the point that it's ridiculous and quite unprofessional. I'm not sure about textures(like Valyrian is mentioning), but I do know they straight up came out with a reason, and yet it's a BS reason since it's Sound(and even less people have the equipment to actually notice the difference in audio than if it was textures like you mention so I have no idea what they were smoking when they decided to do that).

[MMKing]

As big as it takes really, storage space is 10 cent a gig. Literally, 4TB drives are getting cheaper now, about 225USD for 7200RPM and 150USD for 5400RPM. The cost for a GB storage is 1USD = 17.77GB 7200RPM and 26.66GB 5400RPM. Even SSDs are getting dirt cheap and is dropping in price much quicker than HDDS did when they were sized less than 100GB.

As for physical disc limitations. DVDs can fit up to 17GB, easily 25GB if the data is compressed on disc and unfolded on the system and blu-rays can fit over 100GB. As for those with poor download speeds, i propose having the highest res textures being optional. They did this with shadow of Mordor, and i think it's a very good idea. People with poor download speeds are unlikely to have the latest graphics cards either way, so the higher textures are likely to be clutter on the HDD.

Personally, i find my 500GB SSD with a 6.25MB/s download speed to be perfectly adequate.

[Remilia]

As for physical disc limitations. DVDs can fit up to 17GB, easily 25GB if the data is compressed on disc and unfolded on the system and blu-rays can fit over 100GB. As for those with poor download speeds, i propose having the highest res textures being optional. They did this with shadow of Mordor, and i think it's a very good idea. People with poor download speeds are unlikely to have the latest graphics cards either way, so the higher textures are likely to be clutter on the HDD.

Just going to nitpick this, internet services doesn't matter to what hardware you have. It mainly depends on what area you live in. You could have essentially a monopoly in your zone with just horrendous internet but you may have a 980 / 4790k to boot, doesn't make the internet less shitty.

[Marthenil]

As big as it needs be, really.
Especially for pc.

I'd rather they introduced optional texture packs than "optimized" textures with insane compression.

[Deleted]

The size should be such that with that particular day's reasonable internet speeds, you can download it in one day, up to like 6-7 hours. So, using my own speed as an example, 2.2MB/s, 7h has 25200 seconds, 25200*2.2 = 55440MB, so around 54.14GB. Sounds about right to me. Games tend to be around 25-35GB right now I guess.

As far as how much space it takes on the HDD, seeing as though HDD space isn't exactly that expensive, it's not really relevant. As long as you can fit 10-15 games on one HDD, it's all good. So, taking a 50GB game, 500-750GB HDDs, again sounds about right to me.

[kail]

How big should a game size be? Depends on our current tech. Time will go on, and games/media will cost more data space. Hopefully, the cost for the capacity will stay relative to this growth.

ATM it does seem quite insane, but I'm speaking in terms of SSD prices. To get 1-2 TB of SSD space, it will hurt a wallet. As you can see, I consider most of my games playable only when ran from my SSD, HDDs are just too slow for me.