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I'm a programmer and would like to get some perspective on the art / content creation part of game development.

Comparing a 2D platformer like Super Meat Boy and a high-end game like Crysis 2, what do you think:

  • What is harder to do / more likely to cause the project to fail: Art or programming?

  • Which will consume more time and take more people to work on?

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    \$\begingroup\$ I'm voting to close this question as "not constructive", I'm afraid. It's very subjective, it's very project-dependent, and I don't think the answers will do anybody much good. You can't really compare the two. Art is subjective, code is not. The number of artists and coders you require for a project depends on how much code and art you began the project with and how much of each you need at the end. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kylotan
    Commented Jul 12, 2011 at 17:19
  • \$\begingroup\$ To give a very general answer: art is usually cited as taking more time/resources than programming, but as Kylotan said, it's very project dependent. \$\endgroup\$
    – thedaian
    Commented Jul 12, 2011 at 17:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ Poor project management is going to cause a project to fail more so than art or programming. Either way I agree, this question isn't very constructive. Look at the faq. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetrad
    Commented Jul 12, 2011 at 18:40

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I think you're attacking the question from the wrong angle. What will cause a project to fail is a poor understanding of the field, lack of funding, loss of interest/morale in a team. In other words, given an infinite supply of labor, time, and money, any project of any size can theoretically succeed. If you want to know more about what causes of failures for projects are, then search explicitly for that.

To narrowly define a game as "Art + Code" and ask which is more important is kind of like asking in the food service industry, "Which is more important in the success of a restaurant, food or spices?" I think you would be better off understanding all of the parts that go into a successful game development + launch and then trying to find points of failure in there.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Great restaurant analogy, although I probably would have gone with something more specific than "food". \$\endgroup\$
    – jhocking
    Commented Jul 12, 2011 at 20:43
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Have you seen post mortem discussions? Any answer will depend on the type of game and you're not going to get any good answer to the "what is harder" question, that's so very subjective. Plus "fail" is a s

I don't think that these are answerable questions, all projects carry risk across both those axes and the two examples given are so wildly different any comparison will be manufactured and not a valid observation in my opinion.

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