How Big should a Game's Datasize be?

[bbr]

Ill accept a few gigs,.

Wow and titanfall are simply - too big nowadays.

[Rennadrel]

Star Wars The Force Unleashed Sith Edition on Steam was 30GB and that game came out what, 5 years ago? And I don't want to hear QQ about the size of a game. Just the initial Star Citizen Arena Commander module was 17GB, on top of the already huge hangar module. By release I anticipate the game will have broken 100GB, which is what we should he expecting for true next generation high end PC games. Console games will never get that large because trying to load that kind of data would take forever using discs.

[minteK917]

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

That does not work anymore unless you are talking about consoles only (even then). The more you go foward the more often youll need to install 100% of the data. On PC it is impossible anymore to have game were the Disc is used to play any content. Eventually it will happen to consoles too, the discs are limited in space.

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Ill accept a few gigs,.

Wow and titanfall are simply - too big nowadays.

They arent too big and it will only get bigger. People really dont get that.

[ldev]

*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.

Code. Yeah. Compiled binaries take sooooo muuuuch space.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Star Wars The Force Unleashed Sith Edition on Steam was 30GB and that game came out what, 5 years ago? And I don't want to hear QQ about the size of a game. Just the initial Star Citizen Arena Commander module was 17GB, on top of the already huge hangar module. By release I anticipate the game will have broken 100GB, which is what we should he expecting for true next generation high end PC games. Console games will never get that large because trying to load that kind of data would take forever using discs.

Take this from someone who has made games before: Alphas and betas will always be larger than the finished game size. It'll be highly unlikely that SC will be over 100 gigs, considering how files are cleaned up towards the end of development. Then again, at the rate that new stuff is being added, we'll never know for sure...

[Shakadam]

When games are hitting the 50GB mark it's noticeable. SSD's still aren't that cheap, a ~500GB SSD still costs about 250-300€ for a decent one, it's not just pocket change tbh. So a few of those 50gb games and you're quickly out of free space. Sure, it's not such a big deal to delete and re-download when needed but it's still an hour or two of waiting, which is rather annoying.

[Tech614]

When games are hitting the 50GB mark it's noticeable. SSD's still aren't that cheap, a ~500GB SSD still costs about 250-300€ for a decent one, it's not just pocket change tbh. So a few of those 50gb games and you're quickly out of free space. Sure, it's not such a big deal to delete and re-download when needed but it's still an hour or two of waiting, which is rather annoying.

Or you could simply load them on to a multi TB HDD instead of trying to play all your games on your SSD for a 2 second advantage in load times. Put your competitive games you play all the time on your SSD, but there is no reason to be putting all the single player games you buy on steam on a damn SSD.

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Console games will never get that large because trying to load that kind of data would take forever using discs.

Console games install to the HDD from the disc now. They don't stream from the disc anymore(except you, ole Nintendo). Also we already have the technology to fit 200 GB on blue rays.

Game sizes are not going to pass physical media by any time soon, nor is it going anywhere any time soon for consoles.

[Deleted]

Honestly, any game that launches with more than 25 GB at the moment is doing something wrong. WoW, which is like... at what, its 5th expansion, has only reached that and it has an insane amount of content. I can understand good graphics and sounds, but not compressing your shit is just bad. And you know what, Guild Wars 2 has amazing graphics too, and great music, and even now after several patches the GW2 folder only has 19.3 GB, so the Titanfall devs were just lazy or thinking anyone runs with a 50 TB drive.

[WskyDK]

Titanfall is a perfect example of what not to do. Too much uncompressed audio. 48gb for a single game (no expansions etc) is fucking ridiculous.

[zealo]

Honestly, any game that launches with more than 25 GB at the moment is doing something wrong. WoW, which is like... at what, its 5th expansion, has only reached that and it has an insane amount of content. I can understand good graphics and sounds, but not compressing your shit is just bad. And you know what, Guild Wars 2 has amazing graphics too, and great music, and even now after several patches the GW2 folder only has 19.3 GB, so the Titanfall devs were just lazy or thinking anyone runs with a 50 TB drive.

If they are doing something wrong depends entirely on a case by case basis and how much unique assets and textures are in use.

Its not the actual code taking up all that much space relative to modern storage media sizes but more the quality of the art and audio assets being used, some games are ridiculously large because of legitimate reasons while others are just badly optimized. This is one of the reasons for why a game like Da2 is only 5GB in file size despite having a campaign that can easily last at least 40 hours.

Most MMO's are reusing assets in a huge amount of places, which is why they are able to keep file sizes down despite offering a ton of content, depends on the game if a large file size is warranted.

[RoninaThorstone]

The size of the data isn't what's important.
It's how you process it.

[kail]

Titanfall is a perfect example of what not to do. Too much uncompressed audio. 48gb for a single game (no expansions etc) is fucking ridiculous.

No campaign either. I enjoyed Titanfall, but this couldn't be closer to the truth.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Necroing because PCgamer just looked into this and has some juicy charts and stuff.

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-problem-w...ownload-sizes/

[drwelfare]

I like physical copies but some games kill my older SSD with their size. Payday 2 always gives me trouble when it patches

[Gumboy]

I like how the op assumes that it's normal to run games at full on 2k resolution for normal gamers...not everyone spends 2k on a system to play games on :P

[Edge-]

I like how the op assumes that it's normal to run games at full on 2k resolution for normal gamers...not everyone spends 2k on a system to play games on :P

The files are still there. What resolution you run it on rarely has an impact on the size of the game, as few games have the option to download it with or without a HD texture pack, for example.

[Aruhen]

I don't think there's anything wrong with huge games because honestly hard drives are really cheap nowadays and only a few games really benefit from having an SSD. The biggest issue is how backwards the internet is in a lot of the world when it comes to speed and data limits. I myself have unlimited but a download speed of 3.4 and it took around 5 hours to download GTA5. I'd imagine most people being limited by the data caps with 60GB being the norm here in Canada. Heck the ISPs here raised a shit storm when Netflix started becoming big because they couldn't be assed to upgrade their archaic copper lines.

[Torgent]

I give 0 shits about how large a game file is. I give all the shits about how good the game is. I have an SSD for the games I care about and OS, then I have an HDD for the games I don't care much about. I can move them around as I see fit. Size doesn't matter (amiright ladies? No?), quality matters.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

The acceptable size of a game depends entirely on the speed in which it can be installed and the amount of available space one has. I can remember a time when i thought 500 MB was too big.

[Orange Joe]

The acceptable size of a game depends entirely on the speed in which it can be installed and the amount of available space one has. I can remember a time when i thought 500 MB was too big.

First time I seen D2's size I almost cried.