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  1. #21
    There is no real answer unless you use a specific example. Art is a VERY broad term, because there are so many different types. Something like 3D modeling might not be very time consuming, but animating an object might. Even more so something like a spell animation can take a very long time. Something like concept art or texturing can be long or short as well. You just keep going to you get what you want.

    Now coding generally can be long because it take the time to type it out and basically "connect" everything together and testing to fixed mistakes, bugs, and etc. Again, though, coding can be sped up when making similar things you can use coding to do that and make small changes.

    There is no clear answer unless you can name things to compare, then an answer can probably be given.
    You can also keep in mind that coding cant really be fixed by throwing more people at it, in fact the more people working on coding the more problems are likely to occur, because each person does things different and coding needs to all be the same. and everyone needs to be on the same page. While with Art long there are lots of different parts that can be split up and more people are normally useful. and you can get more similar results.
    Last edited by Yingyang; 2013-12-30 at 05:23 AM.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by SodiumChloride View Post
    But do you want your programmer wasting his time trying to explain to the artist why something can't be done/what the trade off is? Do you want the artist to waste time trying to explain to the programmer what he wants?
    Uhm, that's why you've got people with cross competence - so you don't have to explain everything.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by JimmyHellfire View Post
    Uhm, that's why you've got people with cross competence - so you don't have to explain everything.
    Easier said than done though due to jargon in the respective fields as well as the background knowledge required. It no doubts cuts into an artist's/programmer's time to learn something out of his/her field. The time would be better spend furthering knowledge in their own fields to maximise competence. Jack-of-all-trades normally don't produce the best works - unless you are one of those rare "renaissance man".

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by SodiumChloride View Post
    Easier said than done though due to jargon in the respective fields as well as the background knowledge required. It no doubts cuts into an artist's/programmer's time to learn something out of his/her field. The time would be better spend furthering knowledge in their own fields to maximise competence. Jack-of-all-trades normally don't produce the best works - unless you are one of those rare "renaissance man".
    Yeah, well, the reality looks a little bit different, but whatever.

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Yig View Post
    Do you often sit and stop working on your code and come back to it and purposefully not work on it for days or weeks at a time and then completely rework it based on a moment of inspiration or new direction? Does looking at your code too long make you make blatant mistakes that make no sense, do you ever look at your coding backwards or rotate it around, do you have other coders look at your code and suggest tweaks here and there in your code, maybe even trading that code off with each other and jamming on the same code with your own personal technique?
    From reading this, it sounds you like expect everyone to answer "No" for coding (as opposed to "Yes" for art). In fact, I think you've just expressed why the two are more similar than you realise. I'm not a programmer myself, but I work with them on a daily basis. I can say that pretty much all of what you said goes for coding (as well as for art).

  6. #26
    Speaking as a programmer of 6 years experience, it's very tough. Not only you need a decent background in math and computing (an undergrad with a CS degree doesn't cut it), you also need to be willing to work long hours. I normally clock 12-16 hours a day, and sometimes a whole day or two without sleep during crunch times as project nears deadline. The pay is good however, not AMAZING, but good.

    I can't speak for the art side, but I imagine it's the same (not as much requirement in math/science, but more on the creative side)

    All in all the game industry is very demanding and competitive, but it's very rewarding. A lot of young people who play games like to work in the games industry, but it's hard hard work.
    Last edited by corebit; 2013-12-30 at 10:47 AM.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by JimmyHellfire View Post
    Yeah, well, the reality looks a little bit different, but whatever.
    Games aren't getting simpler. Specialisation is inevitable. You also make it sound like there is only one kind of "programmer".

    Why would the programmer in charge of net code need to know anything about art?
    Why would the AI programmer need to know how to use a modelling program?

    I'm beginning to suspect you are greatly underestimating the amount of technical expertise required to do the respective jobs.

    "Creative Developer" ...

  8. #28
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    Currently every single "big" game has a bigger art team than programmers team. The opposite is now quite scarce.

    See http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~catarci/...les/Games1.pdf for examples (slides 18-22), teams goes from 1 part time artist in a 5 person team (1988) to a 2003 game with 50% artist, 25% designers and 25% programmers. That was 10 years ago, and the trend hasn't changed since then.

    Current state is around 50% to 80% art I'd say, and 10% to 25% coding (and can certainly go under 10% for AAA games).


    But then, none is "harder" than the other, it's so different you can't compare both overall, but maybe only on specific points. For example a bad programmer can quite easily hide some of his ugly code, as long as it works (unless it's on critical parts of the code), while an artist can't do ugly work, this won't go unnoticed.

    Competition is harder on coding side, there are so many people who want to work in game dev. If you're bad (and not willing to work much more than what you'd do in other areas), you're out, it's simple as that.

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Iff View Post
    From reading this, it sounds you like expect everyone to answer "No" for coding (as opposed to "Yes" for art). In fact, I think you've just expressed why the two are more similar than you realise. I'm not a programmer myself, but I work with them on a daily basis. I can say that pretty much all of what you said goes for coding (as well as for art).
    Yeah depending on what you program that is actually what you do in programming. I find myself constantly changing things around when I'm writing my code for hardware near applications, often abandoning concepts, asking what my collegues think about it, trying things, go batshit over details, etc.

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Ysilla View Post
    Currently every single "big" game has a bigger art team than programmers team. The opposite is now quite scarce.

    See http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~catarci/...les/Games1.pdf for examples (slides 18-22), teams goes from 1 part time artist in a 5 person team (1988) to a 2003 game with 50% artist, 25% designers and 25% programmers. That was 10 years ago, and the trend hasn't changed since then.

    Current state is around 50% to 80% art I'd say, and 10% to 25% coding (and can certainly go under 10% for AAA games).


    But then, none is "harder" than the other, it's so different you can't compare both overall, but maybe only on specific points. For example a bad programmer can quite easily hide some of his ugly code, as long as it works (unless it's on critical parts of the code), while an artist can't do ugly work, this won't go unnoticed.

    Competition is harder on coding side, there are so many people who want to work in game dev. If you're bad (and not willing to work much more than what you'd do in other areas), you're out, it's simple as that.
    It's because things like game engines (and some tools) are incredibly complex and expensive to make, but fortunately you can license them from third parties, especially if you have limited budget and manpower. That's why commercial game engines are so popular.

    The same cannot be said for art. You have to make your own art, you cannot license them from somebody else, or else your game will look generic, or at worse you will be sued for plagiarizing other peoples' art.

  11. #31
    As a programmer I think there is certain level of creativity necessary for coding, but compared to art it's much smaller degree and it's very clean. With knowledge, a lot of discipline and a bit of passion you are making software constructs that need to be elegantly simple, fast, clean, tough and well documented.

    Art on the other hand from my point of view does not have this kind of restricted form, it can be anything, it can be much more messy and passionate.

    As for what is more difficult it very much depends on a person. For me programming is difficult because I have to code in silence highly concentrated and often it can take days to see any visual manifestation of my work that even then can be very underwhelming. The beauty of programming is on the inside so to speak. On the other hand when doing UI work I can chill, listen to music and see my work grow before my eyes. Much easier to get satisfaction out of it.

    But I will stick with coding ... for as I said art seems messy to me.

    My part in this story has been decided. And I will play it well.

  12. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by corebit View Post
    It's because things like game engines (and some tools) are incredibly complex and expensive to make, but fortunately you can license them from third parties, especially if you have limited budget and manpower. That's why commercial game engines are so popular.

    The same cannot be said for art. You have to make your own art, you cannot license them from somebody else, or else your game will look generic, or at worse you will be sued for plagiarizing other peoples' art.
    Yes there's also this. Since Quake 2 & 3 mostly, which where from the first to sell their engine to lots of other games. Now some studios are specialized in very specific common parts of games, for example some create and sell only particle systems. These are really complicated parts of game development that you don't necessarily have to do again.

    Not only games requires more art than before (esp. since 3d and high resolutions), it also requires less development, sometimes way less depending on how it's done.

  13. #33
    I believe Art has been the reason for nearly every delay in game, that's usually the excuse they give anyway.

    As far as I remember from what they have said, the art team is much, much smaller than most imagine, and the technical side has far more resources, especially because it doesn't rely on a particular style, like the art, I'd imagine it's pretty hard for Blizzard to employee people for the art team that are truely passionate for their specific style.

    Doodads for instance, are EVERYWHERE, and even though small, take up a damn long time to create, and I'm sure they have said theres only like 3 guys who do it, I'm pretty sure they said the world design team is like 10 people, I really need to find the video so from memory I could be totally wrong, but it's certainly far smaller than you'd think for a company the size of Blizz, you imagine Blizzard just having this army of 40-50 artists churning away, but it's almost polar opposite.

  14. #34
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    I'm a Graphic Designer and a Web Developer, so I code and I design stuff. Both requires a lot of work to do properly. What I create isn't related to gaming but there should be plenty of similarities.

    I think both art and coding in WoW takes a lot of time, and it simply depends on the feature which aspect requires more work. New character models for example is a lot of artwork, while implementing something like cross-realm raid finder is almost fully coding.

    Besides, creating fully 3D models and animating them also requires some coding. Art isn't just doodling some stuff on paper. I don't think there is an easy answer to this question, let's just say they both require a lot of work.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Toiran View Post
    I believe Art has been the reason for nearly every delay in game, that's usually the excuse they give anyway.

    As far as I remember from what they have said, the art team is much, much smaller than most imagine, and the technical side has far more resources, especially because it doesn't rely on a particular style, like the art, I'd imagine it's pretty hard for Blizzard to employee people for the art team that are truely passionate for their specific style.
    Yeah, I think you're right. Blizzard is very strict on sticking true to their art style that it's hard for them to get a bigger art team easily. Artwork is probably the reason for many delays and rehashes. Just look at how Abyssal Maw was cut from Cataclysm and how Dragon Soul was rushed, those are clear signs that artwork wasn't up to speed.

  15. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Hardstyler01 View Post
    Yeah, I think you're right. Blizzard is very strict on sticking true to their art style that it's hard for them to get a bigger art team easily. Artwork is probably the reason for many delays and rehashes. Just look at how Abyssal Maw was cut from Cataclysm and how Dragon Soul was rushed, those are clear signs that artwork wasn't up to speed.
    Abyssal Maw wasn't cut from Cataclysm due to artwork issues, it was cut because the story of Vashj'ir and the raid didn't match with the rest of the expansion.
    And Dragon Soul wasn't a rushed raid, it was just a poorly released raid (right on Christmas time) to drive up WoW subs to compete with Star Wars, but it failed because people would rather spend holidays with friends and family...not raiding in WoW. Blizzard would've been better off waiting until Jan-March 2012 to release Dragon Soul.


    Aside from all of that, as a Web guy myself who has experience and knowledge in composing video, animation, audio, 3D modeling, and some front and back end web design. I can say that while Art takes up quite some time all on its own, coding equally takes up time and must be carefully done.
    Any good coder will have a strong foundation to their code, so the program becomes dynamic and the code can easily be adjusted if needed.

    People that say coding is more just copy/paste don't understand coding at all.
    Code actually takes precedence in 3D modeling. People probably have no idea that the 3D models and world rely on code more than they do what an artist drew on paper. The physics of Azeroth is all Math and Programming.
    Last edited by NickCageFanatic; 2013-12-30 at 04:25 PM.

  16. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Silverrendy View Post
    My question is: Which takes more time? The art aspect of WoW or the coding
    Quote Originally Posted by Silverrendy View Post
    Please include proofs in your comments.
    Since I doubt anyone from WoW Dev or Art Team would post "proofs" here, you won't find proofs here that art or dev take more time than the other.
    It's anyway highly subjective since a totally different job.

    Do you compare the time and skill it takes to build mechanical system in a car to the one to design the shape of the car itself ?
    Two different things, absolutely no reason to compare.

  17. #37
    Programming is more about quality while art is more about quantity.

    Consider that the average video game programmer salary is probably around $100k USD, but the average salary for an artist is about $60k or so (from some quick google searching). Programming is one of the best paying non-management jobs whereas art jobs aren't considered to be very well paying.

    If you look at the credits for World of Warcraft here (http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=36669&tab=credits), you'd see that the number of programmers is around 30, but the number of visual art jobs (artists/animators/level designers) is around 67 by my count.

    Coding is harder but there is less coding to be done. It's quality over quantity. Artwork is very time consuming and requires a lot of man hours, especially designing 3D models.

    WoW has the best engine of any MMO in my opinion, both for graphics and network code. And that's why it shines. It's efficient. Something as simple as using mouselook to look around in the game world is noticeably smooth compared to any other MMO I've played. And combat is fun because your abilities are actually responsive.

    Some of the core senior programmers most likely make 200k+ because they do a job that a team of 5-10 fresh college grads could never do. It's not about man hours, it's about problem solving. If you took 10 programmers and asked them to solve a problem (for example, implement a world phasing system), they could likely all complete the task. And they'd all do it slightly differently. But not all solutions are equal! A good solution in 2 weeks time is better than a bad solution in 3 days time. Code has to be fast and bug free, and every layer of the architecture has to be considered: client side CPU and memory load, network load, server CPU/memory load, and database load. You can't just sacrifice one layer for the benefit of another.
    Last edited by Moozhe; 2013-12-30 at 05:19 PM.

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Yig View Post
    Do you often sit and stop working on your code and come back to it and purposefully not work on it for days or weeks at a time and then completely rework it based on a moment of inspiration or new direction? Does looking at your code too long make you make blatant mistakes that make no sense, do you ever look at your coding backwards or rotate it around, do you have other coders look at your code and suggest tweaks here and there in your code, maybe even trading that code off with each other and jamming on the same code with your own personal technique?
    The answer is yes. That's how it's done.

  19. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by hrugner View Post
    The answer is yes. That's how it's done.
    Well, to be fair you probably don't rotate code But having other coders look at your code or write it with you are very strong tools, code reviews being pretty mandatory in long term projects. (Thats when somebody goes through your code and then bitch slaps you for a while pointing out all the lazy/bad code you wrote. Emotions can get pretty high in that process.)

    Fixing mistakes and refactoring code is daily bread and butter as well. And making blatant mistakes due to working too long ... no idea how that happens while making art, but it does happen when writing code. Most programmers can't even manage 8 hours a day of intensive coding if at all. Not talking about web coding or anything like that. That's recreational coding.

    Having to wait for inspiration or jamming on code with personal technique is more arty. In coding we have KISS technique ... keep it simple stupid.

    My part in this story has been decided. And I will play it well.

  20. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Repefe View Post
    Fixing mistakes and refactoring code is daily bread and butter as well. And making blatant mistakes due to working too long ... no idea how that happens while making art, but it does happen when writing code. Most programmers can't even manage 8 hours a day of intensive coding if at all. Not talking about web coding or anything like that. That's recreational coding.
    It can be anything from ignoring one of your light sources to leaving a polygon structure that won't deform correctly. There's also lazy things like trying to speed up frames rather than redraw them to get the timing right, or designing something that unintentionally defies the expectation of the consumer confusing rather than informing.

    That's all illustration more than the broader term "art" though. I don't really do "art", so I couldn't say.

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