Video-Game Publishers Outsource Development 786
randomErr writes "According to a San Jose Mercury News article reprinted at the Miami Herald: 'Mark Vange is in the vanguard of globalizing the video-game industry. He employs 30 game developers in St. Petersburg, Russia, who have worked on everything from flight simulators to dragon-fighting games. 'We can get the work done for half the cost that it takes in the U.S.,' said Vange, president of Ketsujin Studios. Similar outsourcing of video-game production is being done in places like China, India, Vietnam and parts of Eastern Europe. California game developers, who are the creative force behind a $10 billion industry in the U.S. market, view the trend with a combination of fear and anticipation'."
Yeah, because this is an excellent idea (Score:5, Informative)
Bad idea for several reasons (Score:2, Informative)
2)Work ethic. Missed deadlines, shoddy work etc are mentioned in the article. What isn't mentioned is the shit approach to aftersales-Eastern European games are notorious for never being patched.
Essentially, the only real part that can be outsourced well is the art. This has already been going on for years, and it's only a logical step now to use the company in Saigon rather than the one in London-right up till Kinetix questions how the people you hired could afford the site licenses.
Bit late to notice now (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Sim City (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Even the Simpson's..... (Score:5, Informative)
Whose job is it to set up all the timing, thumbnails, and notes so the overseas animator doesn't screw up? Layout artists and timers, working here in the US. Although they succeeded in exporting the actual animation jobs, they made the remaining jobs here much more valuable. There's not too much room for screwing up when getting a reshoot of a bad scene takes weeks - hence, timing* is a very important position.
*timing is literally someone timing out actions with a stopwatch, notating them on an exposure sheet to dictate precisely how, when, and where keyframes and inbetweens fall. The timer has the most control over how a show looks in terms of the actual animation.
Re:Even the Simpson's..... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Feed the horse an increasing ratio of sawdust.. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, yes we are [census.gov].
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Informative)
I presume then that you will be voting for George W. Bush, the first president with an MBA (Harvard, 1975).