Epic China

Epic Announces Epic China Outsourcing Division recaps a talk at the Tokyo Games Show by Epic's Jay Wilbur in which he comments on Japan's reluctance to embrace middleware for game development and reveals Epic Games China and plans to shanghai some jobs to Shanghai as part of this new outsourcing division in an effort at controlling costs:
According to Wilbur, one of the keys to Epic's carefully managed staff size is the way that the company has outsourced content. Epic's teams were claimed to be 50% or smaller on average than the industry norm, with Gears Of War's average team size over its development life listed as being just 30 developers.

Hence, Epic has initiated the setting up of the Shanghai-based division, which is run by a team responsible for content development at high-profile studios including Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Shanghai, reportedly including former Ubisoft Shanghai studio head Paul Meegan. The people behind Epic China have worked on titles in the Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, and Ghost Recon franchises, and Wilbur indicated that Epic itself is outsourcing to Epic Games China for low-cost, high quality game assets, but it will also be available to other developers.

Why China for Epic, and why now? Wilbur explained that the cost per man month (including overhead) to produce games in North America is around $9,000, and in Europe and Japan, it's $8,500 per man month. But costs per man month in China are less than $4,000 - hence Epic's choice to keep its core team at Epic's NC offices, but outsource significant amounts of art creation for its games.
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Re: No subject
Sep 24, 2006, 00:34
14.
Re: No subject Sep 24, 2006, 00:34
Sep 24, 2006, 00:34
 
It's a sweatshop because these companies pocket the money and pay them like $100 a week if they are lucky. In the "russian" market it was $40 a week.

When a school charges 40k to do 3d you damn well better hope it isn't blue collar, or else we all might as well not get "education" and work in construction. Then after a generation of that we'll see where our country is.

The fact is most of the stuff coming from China is alright, some of it's damn good too, but they still need a couple monkeys here to fix stuff up. I personally don't want that job either, you might as well be part of EA's headfarm unit. Just because you can get nearly the same quality for more then half the price does sound smart, but if we did that for everything, how the hell are people going to work over here?

Maybe someone with an Economics degree can explain this to me, but if we're outsourcing every job, wouldn't that just make us all lower class and jobless?

It's really stupid to say "well what can you offer the Chinese can't" because there are a lot of things, ie: being able to talk to me face to face and give direction. Not f@#$ing up a pipeline. But on paper that's nothing, that's horse piss. So in reality artists here can't offer anything the Chinese can't, other then getting 100x the wage and getting benefits; so should we just sell these trained people out and outsource?

It's not an economical debate I am giving here, it's an ethical and moral one. On one hand I feel bad for someone doing the same job I am and getting paid pennies a day(or dollars a day) on the other hand I am pissed off my company would choose me over something cheaper. Sure my quality can be better, but no one cares, because it's a video game and it's about the dollar. "Good enough" art will always take precident over great art, and the outsources can produce "good enough"

Sorry, but it's personal, my future is being outsourced before my eyes. It's my livelihood and passion and these companies(and there are a lot of them) are selling me out.

So when they f@#$ the industry over like they are doing, I won't be sad when it crashes and is no longer a viable market.

PS: DEY TURK OUR JERBS!

This comment was edited on Sep 24, 00:34.
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