Operation Sports Forums - View Single Post

Hooe · 06-15-2020, 04:05 PM

Two separate but related thoughts:

1 - Game development tools have changed a lot over the past decade. I'm a little surprised Canuck Play received such a candid response, but I'm not really surprised by the content of that response with respect to the decayed state of code base of their older games. I'm also not surprised that Take 2 wasn't interested in licensing source code or open-sourcing their game.

2 - The companies at the top of the video games industry - particularly AAA and first-party companies - historically have not shown much if any interest in the idea of preservation. Any interest they have shown is an incredibly recent development. That the code base is as decayed as it reportedly is is only carelessness in the most literal sense - no one at VC cared about preserving All Pro Football 2K8 for years upon years. That is most certainly not a problem unique to Visual Concepts or APF 2K8.

If you're interested, here's a 45-minute talk from GDC 2019 by an engineer at Electronic Arts about all the headaches he had to go through to preserve some of EA's older games. It's a lot of work for no immediate monetary return. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of AAA game studios still aren't doing this work.

06-15-2020, 04:05 PM	#7
Hooe Five Becomes Four OVR: 45 Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Culver City, CA Posts: 21,506	Re: All Pro Football 2K8 Source Code Two separate but related thoughts: 1 - Game development tools have changed a lot over the past decade. I'm a little surprised Canuck Play received such a candid response, but I'm not really surprised by the content of that response with respect to the decayed state of code base of their older games. I'm also not surprised that Take 2 wasn't interested in licensing source code or open-sourcing their game. 2 - The companies at the top of the video games industry - particularly AAA and first-party companies - historically have not shown much if any interest in the idea of preservation. Any interest they have shown is an incredibly recent development. That the code base is as decayed as it reportedly is is only carelessness in the most literal sense - no one at VC cared about preserving All Pro Football 2K8 for years upon years. That is most certainly not a problem unique to Visual Concepts or APF 2K8. If you're interested, here's a 45-minute talk from GDC 2019 by an engineer at Electronic Arts about all the headaches he had to go through to preserve some of EA's older games. It's a lot of work for no immediate monetary return. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of AAA game studios still aren't doing this work.