Too much cinematics adding to the cost of games

[TenPc]

If there were no conematics, those movie like in-game scenes, would the cost of making the game be way less than the finished product with those scenes. Do we really need them? Couldn't they just do as well using the graphics? Don't we really need just more play time than watching some sort of scene that portrays whatever is happening then or next or whatever?

It costs a fortune to make a movie so don't those movie like scenes also cost a small fortune?

Sure, they add reality to whatever you are playing but do we really need "reality" to whatever we are playing?

Any thoughts or opinions?

 

[jaguarskx]

Does Cinematics add to the development cost of the game? Of course.

However, I think most gamers expect games to have these type of scenes since it has become part of the "storytelling toolset". In a way, cinematics is the easiest ay to convey what is going on in the game. A visual presentation is often preferred to paragraph or two of text describing the situation. Would you rather see an event or read about it?

While visually appealing, I know it does take a lot of time to render the graphics for the scenes. Which means it can also be expensive. Perhaps a good compromise is to use the in-game graphics engine to render such scenes in real time (which may or not be possible).

 

[bystander]

The cut scenes in the games I've seen are always far lower quality than a movie. I doubt they cost anywhere near the same. I always thought the most costly part of the production was the voice actors, well, besides the cost of actually producing the game itself.

And many games do use the game engine rather than pre-rendered movies for their cut scenes. In most cases, the pre-rendered movies have lower quality graphics, probably because they were made for consoles.