Originally Posted by
Katchii
Completely and utterly inefficient and stupid to do, yes. Literally impossible? No.
Yes, it's literally impossible a person to learn all the skills at the needed level of expertise and quality of AAA budget games in a lifetime.
The list of AAA game development roles above should have been self explanatory.
Unless you're not talking about the big ambitious AAA productions (WOW, RDR2, GTA, AC, Cyberpunk) but smaller scope games with little complexity or innovation.
Originally Posted by
Katchii
Hiring more people is supposed to speed things up, not slow things down. At least in the long run, as there is a learning curve for new employees. It should also allow for them to actually accomplish more things, rather than end up with features being removed or pushed back.
That's why you hire more people when you already have the core team needed for each of the roles. To do more than you could before, faster.
It's not that linear and doesn't necessarily apply to the main core of game development or else giants like
Google & Amazon wouldn't be having trouble developing their own games.
Conception/Programming doesn't benefit from throwing more heads into the problem. You can't add more engine programmers to add features to your game engine faster like you can't add more server programmers to code your server network faster. That 9 woman can't have a baby in 1 month thing. That is why these developers are the most sought after in the industry and earn the big bucks. It's not about quantity but about quality (experience, know-how, ingenuity).
In many cases adding more people to a task delays it's conclusion instead of speeding it up.
This has been documented in the book
The Mythical Man-Month:
Complex programming projects cannot be perfectly partitioned into discrete tasks that can be worked on without communication between the workers and without establishing a set of complex interrelationships between tasks and the workers performing them.
Therefore, assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later. This is because the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project and the increased communication overhead will consume an ever-increasing quantity of the calendar time available. When n people have to communicate among themselves, as n increases, their output decreases and when it becomes negative the project is delayed further with every person added.
Where hiring more people speeds things up is usually in the visual department (art, 2d-3d modelling asset production).
Big AAA productions require a huge number of assets to create their open worlds/mmo's in a believable way. Their games are expected to be novelty's and feel fresh and innovative enough to be worth the 60$ price tag so buying 3d Assets from engine stores are out of the question, everything has to be unique and tailor made for that world to feel cohesive, believable and immersive.
Which is why a lot of the big studios are outsourcing their Art/Modelling asset production to cheaper markets (Asia, India, South America, Easter Europe).
These artists have no creative or artistic input and are merely robots following step by step guidelines of production that were established by the contracting company. They get a briefing and sometimes classes showing the workflow of making such assets in the way the contractor wants and then they "mass produce" them. You can't do that with programming. The less people meddling with the core engine the better.