Some people will lie to you, but let's be honest here. Does size matter in this situation?

Bethesda has boasted about the evolution of their team size and strengths throughout their series.
Morrowind - Team of 40. Oblivion - 60. Skyrim - 100 People. http://elderscrolls.com/community/welcome-back-elder-scrolls/
Yet, on Fable 2, in 2008, Peter Molyneux also spoke about the size of his team. "(The game finished) 3 years in the making, 150 people on the team." http://www.vg247.com/2008/07/29/molyneux-three-more-fable-games-planned/ (Only a few seconds in.)

The question is, what can we expect with the 5 years and 100 people working on Skyrim, compared to the 3 years, 150 people on Fable 2?
Also, 450 people and 2 years for the release of Assassin's Creed 2?

With exactly a 1 (Skyrim) to .9 (Fable 2) ratio, and a 1 (Skyrim) to 1.8 (Assassin's Creed 2) ratio, what do you think?
If there are any other numbers from related games in comparison, let us know.

Also, I don't mean to say Skyrim will be worse or equivalent to either. Just curious of other opinions. Personally, it doesn't matter to me. "Size isn't what matters, but what you do with it." Just stoking the flames.


:happy: Discuss.

Small teams have created wonders, it has been proven. Large teams have created disasters, also proven.

TEH games have always been bigger and more fun than fable. i think the size of the team and timescale helps. but developer skill, determination, and drive are all very important too..

(thats not to say Lionhead isnt determined, hell they got the most optimistic man ever born, Peter Molyneux, at the helm!!!)

Team size has more to do with quantity than quality. More people on a team means you have devote more time to content creation, but the design process is still handled by a handful of people.

Team numbers means nothing: Assassin's Creed team is around 500 people and still not a single Assassin's Creed has the dimension or the quality of any of Bethesda games.

yeah but fable blows..imo

True.
But the ratios! The ratios!!

There are a handful of people in the Industry capable of creating truly great things in their respective fields. Think of it like sports and you have a star player that is capable of winning a game on his own at certain points. There are very few people in the industry who can build a next generation engine from scratch for example, people like John Carmack. The big guns in the gaming world, like Valve, Bethesda and Epic, have some of the best minds this industry has to offer, a lot of the newer people coming through simply don't have the vast knowledge and experience that these men have, because quite simply, they invented the industry as they went along over the last few decades. So a smaller team of 100, if it includes some of these wonder devs, can easily outproduce teams that have two or three times their number. I'd take a Carmack, Spector or Harvey Smith over 50 fresh out of college graduates any day.

So no, size does not matter, experience does.

I dont think its fair to say they worked on Skyrim whole-heartly for 5 years.

It depends on.

A bigger team often means more money being spent (thus a bigger budget), unless the smaller team are super-experts that have a very high salary.
Assuming both teams have employees that are somewhat equally "good", the bigger team can accomplish much bigger projects obviously. Graphics, map-size, details, etc etc etc.

What Bethesda is doing is very impressive for, to be honest, such a small/medium team. As far as I know, a lot of the bigger, famous games have hundreds of people working on it.

Also, the Skyrim project started being worked on 5 years ago; probably with ideas, concept art and such. However, the "real deal" started after FO3, so it has been fully developed for about 3 years and not 5.

The problem with having so many people is that you can risk the game seeming disjointed. Game designers must work as a team to make a complete game the way it is meant to be. If a designer has an idea for a new spell, for example, he might have a talk with the SFX peeps about what he had in mind, and what they think of the idea.
When you get such a large team, you split up the responsibility so much that it becomes more of a mass production line than a game designing studio.
That's just my opinion though.

I don't know, but I guess it'll matter to size-queens.

I liked Fable 2..... What is that? An oblvi- bliviongate:

This.

People always assume that a bigger team = better product, but that just isn't the case. Smaller teams often have a better sense of direction.

The effectiveness of adding more people to a project depends of the number of tasks you divide said people in. The lesser number of tasks the less beneficial the addition of more people will be. Besides, being more people suppose more work

Coordinating them. It's like pretending to increase a vehicle speed installing a more powerful engine. It works great in the beginning, the benefit is lessened reaching certain size and finally you'll reach a point, where the speed is reduced by the weight in a greater amount than is increased by the more potent engine.

I agree :foodndrink:. Those are some wise words of wisdom. Honestly, I feel that there van be, absolutely, no comparison between the Fable series and the Elder Scrolls... I loved the first Fable, but after that, it all came as a disappointment. The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim will be mind-blowing, it will be revolutionary... There is no comparison... That's just like having three lazy slobs and a hard-working father of four try to organize a shelf in minimal time... I'd bet my money on the hard-working father of four :tongue:.

Bigger teams - more people wasting time -

Small teams are made of people who know their ability to continue to pay their bills hinges on making a successful game. And yet, they are the ones who don't cater to the mass market. Hmm....

The people at Bethesda aren't saints, but they are trying to do their best... They've been very good to their loyal fanbase, which is quite extensive. I think that the main reason why Skyrim is going to have a much larger audience is because of how much advertising they've put out, not because of all of the revised features... I know my place among the Elder Scrolls fandom :foodndrink:, and couldn't care less about the people who are going to pick up this game because the've played Oblivion or saw that it had Dragons...

The thing is...they've made this game LOOK beautiful. That's going to bring in enough new fans on it's own. I wish Todd would just say "You know what...I don't care if people get confused by our games. This isn't Halo, it's a huge world. In fact, MOST people, smart people, will be confused at first. But it's not about intelligence. It's about PATIENCE."

I would rather have 1,000 people tell me the game I made was their favorite game ever than to have 5,000 tell me it ranks right below COD and Madden. And even tho Morrowind IS my favorite game, Oblivion does rank lower than COD for me...I've got way more hours logged into it, and the weapons/perk "load out" made me feel like a I was role playing even more than my bland, all skills are nearly equal, easier-to-kill-enemies-at-level-one Oblivion characters.

It's gonna be a great game, but it could have been the greatest.

Let's wait until we've played the game to actually judge it, shall we? :facepalm: And I cannot stand first-person shooters of any sort, so hearing that really pulls at my heart strings... The only thing that I really play is anything Elder Scrolls... Perhaps the first Dragon Age, and some Mass Effect very sporadically...

Fable also is not on the PS3 so that's a burden off their shoulders

Bungie created Halo CE with a very small team, and it's a masterpiece. The Morrowind Team was only 40 people and it was also a gem. Size helps, but vision and talent are equally important (that's what she said). :hubbahubba:



Pardon my child like remarks :biggrin:

I said it was going to be great, but not the greatest, which I think is fair to say. I know what they've added, I know what they've cut, I know what they've failed to add. I know what the enviro's, characters, and anim's look like. The only things left to see in operation are the story (which is already meaningless for me), the side quests (which are very important) dialogue in general, and radiant story. And none of those could be SO spectacular for me to think the game was the best ES or RPG ever. It will certainly have elements which are the best ever done, but too much has been done away with. I'd say that I hope they amp up the complexity for ES VI, but that's what I said about ES V after Oblivion...and I don't want to wait another 5 years for gamesas to decide if they're making a hardcoe RPG or God of War: War With The Nine.

Which is why it's so crazy that the added depth of RPG elements IS what launched the COD franchise. I got SO into making different classes, "playing roles," usually two for each "side," Russian special forces, Islamic Brotherhood, SAS, and US Marine. Each had different weapons, perks, side arms, and explosives which were tied with how that type of soldier would really attack. Snipers, machine gunners, rifleman, all were different in play style and equipment, with perks that made them more effective in their main task.

And ES seems to be stripping that away. Sure, it's still there, and on the flip side, I DO enjoy the "action" elements, but I'd prefer a grounding in pen and paper character specialization.