Session: AAA Game Development: A Peek Behind The Curtain - Ari Arnbjörnsson, Epic Games,

[Music] We're going to start in a moment with our first speaker. Uh, this guy moved from Iceland for the weather to Finland. Before he came here, his hair was lustrous and dark. He is a very big name in gaming. Has no tattoos and does not drink coffee. So, these are weird. Uh, we'll be tweeting all day and you can use the hashpg connects uh tag to share your thoughts on the conference. So, we're going to get started and I'm going to introduce Ari and Arna Borson. Yes. ish.
Thank you. So, this is AAA gameland, a peak behind

the curtain. Um, I didn't used to be in the game uh AAA game industry. I guess now I kind of am. I talked to a lot of studios in the AAA game industry. And for me, there were a few things that I'm like, "Oh, this surprised me." And I thought I'd make a presentation about it. We'll see if this actually surprises you or not. If not, at least you had a little fun, you know, way to uh start off the conference. So, who am I and why am I telling you about how the game industry works, especially the AAA? I have been a little over 18 years in the game industry now. And I'm currently working at Epic Games. And I am just 3 months away from having been at Epic Games for 5 years. And this is actually a record. I've never been at a single company for that long. And as a part of my job at Epic Games, I I'm technical developer relations, which means that I'm the one who gets sent to all these studios who are making AAA Unreal games when they're having problems and I help them out, give them my feedback. So I see a lot of things and I've previously been at companies like uh Robio where I

worked on a few Angry Birds games for four and a half years. That was my record until now at uh Epic Games. I was also also the lead programmer on Returnal at Sony Housemark. Back then it was just called Housemark and Returnal. I mean we were 70 people with 70 in outsourcing and people might debate well is that really AAA? Maybe that's DA. But the thing is when the game came out Sony decided hey this game is going to be one of the first games to introduce our new pricing structure for games. So it's going to be €7 $70. And I was like, well, if we're charging AAA prices for the game, I'm going to call it a AAA game. But the whole like, what is AAA anyways? We could make a whole presentation about it. Like, you know, is it the level of quality of the game? Is it how long it took to develop the game? Is it do we if you have a big publisher or not? And also maybe maybe it's just a big team size and budget. And that's actually why what I'm going to be using for the

purpose of this presentation. like if you have a big team and has a big budget doesn't really matter because um the lessons are basically the same. I want to know a little bit about this audience before I continue so I know like kind of how to focus uh the rambling in each slide. So, how many here are in the game industry? Okay, about half of you. That's excellent. Uh, that means that maybe this will be new information for most of you. How many would consider yourself working in a AAA studio, whether that's Remedy, Housemark, also Red Links, you're part of Ubisoft, you're part. So, anyone who considers themselves part of the AAA industry, no one? Yes. No one can call me out. That's amazing. Okay. So, double A sized like you know we're not not really maybe AAA. Okay. So, something else. We're indies. We're students or we're just interested in the industry. Uh if you have any questions, we might have time. I'll try to go fast through this because it's a fast presentation, but uh have your question ready in your mind to shoot it because

I'll have like 10 seconds before I go like, "Okay, never mind. Bye." skill level at studios surprised me a bit. It can actually vary a lot. It's not all experts. I used to think AAA games were just all experts of their craft. They they all knew what they were doing so well, just amazingly talented people. But the thing is, it can actually vary a lot. It's not all experts. It actually makes financial sense to have a distribution from juniors and interns to seniors in a company. And actually, it's like a normal curve. You have on the left side of the normal curve, you have, you know, the the underperformance performers. Like maybe they're not like completely useless, but compared to everyone else, they're on the left side. And then you have the big peak of the normal curve or like most everyone else is like average to smart people. And then you have the right side of the normal curve where it's the experts and they know like everything about very particular topic and it's very inspirational to be with those experts in a company because it's just they are basically moving the medium forward. And I want to talk a little bit about these experts because

um for many people that are joining the industry or maybe just any other company uh imposttor syndrome is quite a thing. I want to guys plenty of seats here by the way. Uh how many people consider themselves having impostor syndrome in the industry?
Oh wow. So a bit more than half of us. Um some people on the team they're very smart and they're intimidatingly smart and when you're a new hireer or not even a new hireer just you know when you've been in a company even you start comparing yourself to them. Oh wow like they are basically creating this new thing and I I only just make a level and just don't don't compare yourself to them. You're not expected to be as smart as those people. Uh, I think it's very detrimental because like when you're an impos when you have an imposter syndrome, you basically think you're so clever that you're fooling everyone in the company, which is already like that doesn't sound like uh you're undervaluing your talent. That actually, you know, you're giving yourself a lot

of credit, but don't worry, it's usually not expected of you. Uh, one thing about imposter syndrome is that it can stop you from learning. You don't want anyone to know that you don't know something. So then you're like, "Oh, I don't want this. I I don't know this, but I don't want them to know I don't know it, so I'm not going to ask." And for me, I don't think I ever classified as having imposter syndrome because it would get in the way of me learning things. I never let imposter syndrome stop me from asking someone a question. So be that person. Be the one who asks questions because when you ask questions, you learn something, you become better. So I hope I hope I managed to like get through this is uh I think this is an important slide for game specialization. This actually um this surprised me a bit when I um joined the industry is that you know because of coming from indie we have to wear so many hats we have to know such a range of topics but they often have very specific specializations uh like for example one person can be assigned to an eye shader for months and I I'm not even kidding with this I was just talking to

another friend in the AAA game industry uh telling them I was having a slide on this they were like it's funny they know they say this because we actually just put a on our eye shader problem. We have to make the eyeball and the eyelid, like the wetness between them look, right? And I'm like, I know, right? It's so specialized. And some games even have clothing designers. I'm not talking about game developers that decided to like get kind of like into clothing. I'm talking about they actually hire people from the fashion industry to work on these games. And some of these games, the triple A games, start noticing the clothing designs. You'll notice like these are really, really extravagant. These are really cool. like, yeah, they probably hired an actual professional clothes designers to do this. Also, um, no one at Epic Games knows the whole engine. We're all specializing. You like there's no no one at Epic Games is the Unreal Engine expert. We are all like focused on some parts of the engine, which is a really funny thing like like if you are having a company visit like I

do a lot of company visits, they have a lot of questions to like more than half of them. I just have to say, I don't know, it's another team. We we cannot have one person in any company visit able to uh answer all the questions. Duct tape and wishful thinking. UA games they are not perfect projects and I I was surprised by how much scaffolding gets left in and some of the reasons is because you know you have huge teams and we have lots of iteration. You're trying something that didn't work out. Let's try something different. And there's always a bit of vestage of each iteration in there. You cut features. No, this doesn't work. let's try something else. But we can't fully cut the feature because another feature depends on the foundation of this feature. So it has a lot of stuff like that left in. And also again the different skill levels you have the juniors that are basically putting in stuff that might not always be the most optimized but if it doesn't really affect stability or performance is often just left in. I'm actually amazed that most games even ship cuz like the amount of miracle it

takes for uh everything to come together in the end is just amazing. I think I heard some studio uh call it call it like it's the company name magic that they like they don't know the game is going to be successful until in the last month where everything comes together. Um so yeah usually when you're making a game of course it depends on each studio and stuff like that. I'm not saying for every game, but like for for some features or even yeah, for the entire game, sometimes you're just like you have this tower of scaffolding and then it's just stops shaking and you go like, "It's good. Ship it." Working within limits. Uh this is really funny. So content teams, they need to work within their own tools limits or with their own limits to realize their own ideas. And I really like the saying, if it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid. And you see this a lot in games. Um, when you're using an engine, an engine doesn't really make something you want to do uh, kind of easy. You get around the engine to do stuff. And this,

oh, the game industry has a lot of creative people and a creative solutions to these. Um, so these creative solutions to constraints are everywhere. And I want to give this example from Fallout 3. Uh, it had a DLC called Broken Steel. And in it, you are a character and you walk into this train. and then the train moves. But the thing is DLC, especially back then, it couldn't could not alter the binary. It could not add code. It could only add content, only the scripts, only uh 3D models and stuff like that. So, you couldn't add kind of like functionality if it wasn't built into the binary executable, which had to be untouched because people with the original disc should be able to download or like buy the DLC disc without it uh breaking. The level designer wanted a train where the player goes in and it starts moving. But the thing is the game does not have any vehicle mechanics. You cannot just go into a train and it moves. So what did they do? This is super funny. So you go into the train and then they switch

out the whole train model and they put a train over your head and then they make the character go like this and then they just move you, slide you with the service. So it looks like you're in a train but the train is you. You have the train head on like this. It works amazingly well. You can kind of notice if you are playing the DLC like you cannot really move the mouse to look around because if you did, you notice the whole train would move with you. QA most likely found it. You are playing a game. Oh, it's so janky. Oh my god. How did this bug get past the testers? I cannot believe they didn't find this. Bunch of amateurs. I could tell them better. Well, I'll tell you this. They most likely found it. I am almost certain they found it. But the thing is, the team only had time to fix all the bugs that were worse. And I'm talking about crashing bugs. Crashing bugs are the worst thing. They make it so that PlayStation won't even accept your build. They're like, "The game crashes, you cannot sell it on our store." So, a lot of fires are happening everywhere.

You got people fixing those bugs cuz those are the important ones, stopping people from playing your game. Um, if it's janky, oh, I love janky bugs because they're not crashing the game. Believe me, they probably just said this is we just have to have this in. the global audience. I actually really like this slide because that's something you're now going to start noticing in games. But AAA games need to cater to a huge audience and internationalization is very difficult in the games. They can get away with just putting a game out in English. H wow, good job. Great for you. Wow, aren't you lucky? They didn't have to think about right to left languages. Is your UI going to work fine if suddenly all the languages are written right to left instead of left to right? Also, verbose languages like German and Russian can require up to 50% more letters, usually between 30 and 50%. So, now you have a scroll you can pick up and you have made this text that fits just within it. Nice. Well, now you translated into German and suddenly it overflows by 50%. So, now when you're playing AAA games and you notice they

have these scrolls or other backgrounds, you'll notice there's a scroll bar on the right. Hey, that's AAA games for you. Also, uh cultural internationalization. For example, in China, you cannot ship a game there that has any red blood or death even. And uh it's not forbidden to have skulls in China, but it is a cultural taboo. You shouldn't do it. People don't like it. So, because of that, many games will not have skulls. And there's also no swastikas in games in Germany. I think they are uh making some exceptions for it in the name of art. But yeah, you'll notice, you start noticing now if you're, for example, playing Fortnite. No one dies in Fortnite. Did you know that? If you're playing Fortnite and you shoot someone down with a shotgun to their face, they just kneel down, they're tired, and then a little drone comes and teleports them away. Everyone's fine. No one died. It's fine. Just shoot them in the face. There's also gender nouns and adjectives. I'm not going to go into it too much, but basically, if you want to say blue, like you just picked up a spoon, but the spoon can be blue or red. So, you can say you picked up a blue

spoon or red spoon. You cannot do that dynamically because the blue and red can be uh gendered in many Germanic languages and other languages. So there's like a blue him and blue her version of the word based on what the gender of the noun is. The spoon is a female, chair is a male and table is an it. And it makes no sense. And um you'll you'll realize once you start making uh games that have to ship globally. And also pluralization is a nightmare. You think there's one and many that's English uh there are five for some languages you have one you have two you have few many and uncountable and it depends like so are you going to do the these forms for every single word now this is something I'm I'm noticing every time I play a game and you will notice it also when you're playing anything from uh any game like uh Assassin's Creed or God of War you'll notice whenever you pick something up it will never say plural it will always say 3x or 3 plus or uh apple plus three. It

will never say apples. It just it's not worth the hassle. You're welcome. Also, oh, you want to use X to confirm like on the PlayStation controller. Guess what? In Asia, that's the other way around. They use circle to confirm. Makes sense, right? Circle to confirm, X to cancel. And we in the Western world, we decided this means yes, this means no. So we were the odd ones out actually and uh I guess the western were like ah I use X and check marks I guess and circle is like a zero so it means no I'm not actually sure but PlayStation recently decided oh Asia now has to be like the western market and the Asians are like but that makes no sense. So there's still some Asian companies that still don't like to use circle to confirms X to cancel. So now it has to be a setting. So that's a fun fact. Then keyboards. Oh you want to use WD for your game? Guess what? It doesn't work in French. They don't have WSD.

They have uh or querty. They have aerty. So W isn't anymore forward. They have Z as forward. Are you working on a game and it should work in French? Then your game just you need to take that into account. And then German has quila devs read and watch the same tutorial tutorials you do. Um the information online is what like we consume especially for studios using Unreal Engine like my tutorials that I make online uh that is being watched by all the CTOs of all the AAA companies I'm in contact with and also in this also okay we do have the epic pro support but it's now publicly mirrored so you actually see the answers so leveling the player field again well there's the TDC vault but I mean you can buy it it's not prohibitively expensive and Also, all the talks are all free. So, again, leveling the playing field. Well, there are the console forums, but the thing is indies also need to ship on those

consoles for PlayStation. So, they also get access to those forums. It's not only TA Studios, it's anyone making for those consoles. So, again, leveling the playing field. But I don't want you to think that I'm saying, oh, the playing field is completely leveled. No, no, AAA studios also get special treatment. For example, Epic Pro support or UGN, what we used to call it. Uh, they get to be the ones who ask the questions. That's only for AAA studios. They can afford it. Then people like me are the ones as answering the question saying like they're like why doesn't this work in Unreal and we the people who made the engine will go and say oh it's because of this. Nona's do not have access to that but they do see the answers eventually when they get married online. Also AAA studios will sometimes have internal conferences. This is what I call an external conference. Anyone can come here uh many conferences record the talks and make them available online. internal conferences is basically like for example Sony they're saying all the brightest people from each of our studios is coming together to an internal conference we're recording the talk only for us so they have this like internal knowledge or even like um

they're inviting external speakers to speak and they also have direct escalation context for platforms and services if aa studio is having problem getting their game on Steam or Epic Games Store on PlayStation on Xbox anything like that they have a contact within each of these uh companies and they can just say something's wrong. We need to fix now and they will get someone from their company helping them fix it. This is something that indies usually get not unless they have a publisher. Okay, I actually managed to do this super quickly and we have time for like one or two questions. So I hope you were having some questions in your head. Does anyone have any questions for me regarding the AAA game industry behind the scenes? Just raise your hand. Yes.
Is there things there's a lot of talk about the ethics of the industry

does that same level of exista industry as well as monetization or you know multiplayer features. So the question was, do AAA games have the same discussions of ethics within the games?
Yes.
Versus like how indies are doing it right now?
Um, that's a good question. I mean, cuz you know, I work at App Fortnite and then, you know, it's a game aimed at kids and the discussion is definitely there. Um if anything we we have higher power scrutinizing us cuz uh indies you're being scrutinized by the gamers uh are being scrutinized by the governments. So for example at Epic Games like um they decided to make an example of us because um we weren't kind of taking into account well enough that children might be playing our game. So we were hit by

with a gigantic fine. But now everyone in Epic needs to be trained on uh personal uh private data and if you have children we cannot store any data on them at all. So yeah we do get that. Uh we are out of time. Thank you for that question. I'm so glad we managed to squeeze one in. Uh thank you all for coming. This is the big uh screen track at Pokey Gamer Connects. I hope you have a great rest of the conference. Thank you very much. Oh my god. Sorry. Yes.
Thank you. Don't leave the room yet. Addie has a tradition that he forgot about.
Three, two, one. And we're all going to wave and say hi from Helsinki. Right. Not that I don't trust you, but let's practice it. Three, two, one. Hi from Helsinki. Okay, actually that's good. Do that. You can even put even more hands in the air.
Ready? Three, two, one.

Thank you so much.
What's wrong with you, man? [Music]