Electronic Games are Massive Undertakings

1
Electronic Games are Massive Undertakings

• Dr. Lewis Pulsipher
• Wake Tech

2
Lets try some estimates

• Rainbow 6 Vegas (console version)
• 1,767,000 lines of code (may use the Unreal 3
  game engine)
• How long would it take to simply type?
• Lets stick to 1 million lines
• 54 lines per page for 1 inch margins.
• Some program lines longer than one page linesay
  50 lines per page
• Say 20,000 pages

3
Estimates of typing time

• Full line is 11 words (65 chars / 6)
• Lets round off to 10
• One page is then roughly 500 words
• 50 words per minute 10 minutes per page
• Code is actually harder to type than normal text
• But many lines of code are short
• 10 minutes times 20,000 pages about 139 days of
  constant typing
• Remember that was 1 million, not much more than
  half the code

4
Thats nuthin

• It takes longer to test the code than to type it
• Some things take a long time. You cant get
  1,000 testers together and have the game tested
  in a day. Testers must become familiar with the
  game
• It takes MUCH longer to write the code than to
  type or test it
• Think how long it takes to fix something in
  Gamemaker, let alone devise from scratch
• And thats only the programming!
• You cant gather together nine newly-pregnant
  women and produce a baby in a month!

5
Budget-based estimate

• (Thanks to Ian Schreiber, Ohio University)
• BIG gameguess 8 million
• Current estimates typically 5-20 million
• 30 of Rainbow 6 Vegas budget was programming
• Programmer average 50K per year, costs employer
  minimum 80K (extras, taxes, benefits)
• So 100 30 30 man-years solely for the
  programming

6
Programmer costs

• Now lets see what time we have in classes
• 3 hour lab times 16 weeks, say 50 hours
• 50 into 2000 (a man-year) is 40 students for one
  man-year
• BUT students are much less effective programmers
  than 50K/year game programmers
• Id say ratio of 1 to 10 and likely much worse
• So make that 400 students in one semester for one
  man-year
• Result 12,000 students in one semester
• Or 40 students for 300 semesters
• Or four really, really good student programmers
  for 300 semesters
• Just for the programming!
• And remember again, You cant gather together
  nine newly-pregnant women and produce a baby in a
  month!

7
The result

• There is no way on earth we can begin to produce
  anything approaching a big-time electronic game
  in class
• Smaller games?
• Lets say it requires one onehundreth as much
  programming
• Thats still 40 student programmers for 10
  semesters
• Game engines reduce time immenselythats why we
  use them (but so did Rainbow 6 Vegas)
• Gamemaker is a very small, very clever game
  engine
• Gamebryo, Unreal are the major engines
• Unreal 3 may is usable for the PS3/Xbox 360
  others arent, nor for older consoles

8
Why so many people?

• In general, around 1990 it was no longer possible
  for one person to do all the work on a Big game
• But there are games today originally produced by
  a few people (Darwinia, Defcon)
• Whats going on?
• Marketing a BIG game costs at least a million
  dollars, often more

9
Monitoring and Chaos

• The fewer people involved in producing the game,
  the greater risk
• Of a key person quitting or being incapacitated
• Of a key person being not up to the task
• The more money involved, the more monitoring is
  required to mitigate risk
• As more money begets more monitoring and more
  people, everything will become less efficient
• Lews saying The level of chaos is proportional
  to the square of the number of people involved.
  And to the cube of the number of people in
  charge.