Cost of Cutscene

[MetalSkulkBane]

I thought a little about Sonic forces story, how little we see of resistance or Eggman ruling the world. And considering that 50% of the plot is told to us by Codec-like conversations it got me thinking: does anyone know proportional costs in making games?

I mean, I keep seeing fan videos of TF2, including action scenes. If people fans can do it, how hard it would be to show resistance fighting some robots for a minute?

This topic doesn't have to limit itself to cutscene, I'm curious about overall costs. Like, is making a boss fight takes as much time and money as making a normal stage?

 

[JezMM]

1 hour ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

I thought a little about Sonic forces story, how little we see of resistance or Eggman ruling the world. And considering that 50% of the plot is told to us by Codec-like conversations it got me thinking: does anyone know proportional costs in making games?

I mean, I keep seeing fan videos of TF2, including action scenes. If people fans can do it, how hard it would be to show resistance fighting some robots for a minute?

This topic doesn't have to limit itself to cutscene, I'm curious about overall costs. Like, is making a boss fight takes as much time and money as making a normal stage?

 

Those videos - the high quality ones, tend to take months and months of work.  They're also made using existing assets, whereas cut-scenes in video games have to have everything made for them.  Like there is not a single thing that comes for free with original animation.  Models have to be rigged, visual effects have to be programmed, sets have to be built, cameras have to be sequenced, music has to be scored, dialogue has to be written, voices have to be recorded, continuity has to be checked...  And if this is an in-game cut-scene, it has to be playtested to make sure the thing doesn't lock up the game for any reason, lol.  It's a lot of work for a lot of different people and it all has to come together correctly.

Finally, of course, the animators aren't being paid, they're doing it for fun, in their spare time, they don't have deadlines or other departments pressuring them, so it's just not really a comparable workflow whatsoever.