Will Studios Start Using Outsourcing More?

The development of The Last of Us Part 2 united 14 external studios and over 2,000 people. That's how much power you need to release an AAA game these days.

A recent report revealed that 2,169 developers helped Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment finish the game. Two studios, for example, helped the team deal with voice over recording and editorial tasks, while 12 other studios focused on different art aspects helping Naughty Dog develop various parts of the game's world.

Naughty Dog couldn't hire all 2169 developers full-time, of course, so they had to cooperate with external studios. This collaboration model allowed them to cut costs and launch the title on time. 

There are several things that can be discussed here though. Can external studios keep up with the quality of the head studio? Does the lack of face-to-face communication damage the final outcome? 

Using outsourcing is cheaper than keeping staff in-house. Do you think game dev studios will use the services of external artists and companies in the future more? What positions will still be full-time in your opinion? What can’t you outsource? Also, will the popularity of outsourcing services lead to full-time artists losing their jobs? Is the whole situation dangerous for the community in some ways? 

We've contacted several 80 Level artists to discuss the situation and find our whether the shifting balance worries them. 

Do you agree with these points? Let's look at what different artists say about outsourcing and evaluate the conclusions. 

One of the artists we talked to was Anton Fokin, who previously worked as an outsourcing artist on Fortnite and who is now managing his own small outsourcing team.

Anton Fokin: Studios will start using outsourcing more because games become more complex and the amount of content in AAA titles grows at a stable rate. We get bigger game worlds with detailed models and high-resolution textures, so somebody should fill those worlds).

I don't think that the growth of outsourcing can have a big influence on in-house artists as outsourcing has already been used for a long time and there have always been some tasks that can be more easily solved in-house due to better communication inside the game development team.

A lot of big titles are already using outsourcing and the quality of graphics varies greatly. I don't think that it's connected with outsourcing. It's more about art direction and how the company works with outsourcers.  
At the same time, as I have said before, there are always tasks that need a lot of communication in every project. For example, the main characters or some very important scenes that need a lot of discussions and they can be done faster inside a studio because the art director or lead artist can check and advise something a few times a day - this is just impossible with outsourcers.

Kristopher Vita (Interview): Studios are already using the services of outsourcing artists and companies right now, especially studios with smaller teams. Even big studios use them and I think that the use of them will continue to grow due to globalization. The pandemic situation, while being horrible, is an opportunity to establish some of the best remote game development practices because of the need. 

Fabian Seager (Interview): Outsourcing is a key element in the industry: it creates more jobs which is always good and speeds up the process. You can't beat human-to-human studio interaction though - this is definitely something I noticed during the COVID lockdown here in New Zealand. I really just missed interacting with my team and getting feedback face to face and thriving off everyone's energy for our game. You just can't beat that.

Alberto Catalan Gallach (Interview): Studios have been increasingly outsourcing services to speed up their work, but mainly to keep their teams focused on developing a quickly evolving core business. In my view, studios are doing as many other industries before them, because the AAA games that are developed today, due to their size, complexity, and economical volume, are carried out more efficiently when a studio leads a seamless group of specialized enterprises.

Vitaly Rush (Interview): Studios will definitely use outsourcing more often. Moreover, today this is extremely common. 
In my opinion, it isn’t possible to outsource the development of gameplay mechanics, key art, plot, development of key missions, most of the level design, and various RnD for the needs of the project.

Studios need employees who set tasks and form artistic and technical requirements for the execution, as well as check everything and put all the pieces together.

Characters and skins created by Liquid Development for Borderlands 3:

Anastasia Novikova (Interview): They are already doing it. However, I don't think the whole project can be outsourced to different people. First of all, you cannot outsource management positions and leads. Someone should have a vision and someone should monitor the quality of the entire project. In addition, outsourcing specialists often do not follow the pipeline adopted in the studio, so if several people are working on one large task, there may be a total mess. In my opinion, companies can easily outsource things that are not as crucial and things they do not need to return to and change during the development process.

Anastasiya Osichkina (Interview): The game industry develops fast, games become more and more complicated with large-scale worlds and detailed content, so studios will need more artists, especially with narrow specialties.  I guess the best way to stay in demand is to be an Artist with the capital “A”. The hardest thing is not to learn software and pipelines, but to see your projects as art: composition, colors, lights. Learn those things! They are a base for everything else. I'm sure the best full-time specialists are people with those skills. Pipelines will change sooner or later but the ability to see work as a finished art piece is gold.

Shaafi Ahmad (Interview) Outsourcing is happening a lot for all types of assets like props, character clothing, weapons. I think when it comes to games, artists who work on the engine side of things will stay within studios. Anything to do with art direction, management, software, will also stay withing studios. If an indie studio is working on a shooter FPS game, they’ll stick to a core team and outsource the weapons. A larger studio from EA or Ubisoft will be able to maintain a bigger in-house team with more artists. But this can differ as it did with Mass Effect Andromeda where characters were outsourced.  

A lot of people can be skilled at making something but being an effective communicator is something you can’t outsource. Communication skills, being able to handle a situation, being able to work with others, are the requirements for every position.

Dmitry Bely (Interview): I am sure that the number of outsourcing studios and artists will grow. Projects are getting bigger and the amount of content is greatly increasing. I think that there will be technical artists inside companies, as well as managers responsible for building the final project. It is unlikely that studios will be able to outsource tasks related to prototyping, as well as undefined elements.

Hazel Webster (Interview): Outsourcing, freelancing, contracts, etc will continue to increase in prevalence. It's all about efficiency. That said some positions will be harder to outsource than others and I think there is a lot of benefit to being in-house. I imagine we'll find an equilibrium until another big change occurs in the world. I personally find a lot of value in trying to understand the experiences of others to help enrich the work I do.

Christoffer Ryrvall (Interview): To some extent, I already consider outsourcing to be a major part of the industry. It's cheap, it's quick. There is a certain drawback, however. 

Outsourced assets mostly being less specific in their nature as to fit a wide range of uses creates a remarkable difference between specifically tailored assets and those that are not. Making anything specific to your project is hard to acquire without having an artist on site.

In addition, puzzling together all the assets is an entire task in itself. That said, for an artist like me I wouldn't consider working as an outsourcer any different from working at a regular studio. There's still going to be plenty of work with or without the aid of outsourcers at your side.

James Thirlwell (Interview): This will be an option and for some cases, it’s a really good solution, however in my opinion you can’t beat a team that works together and knows each other. I think it would be a lot more difficult to create a cohesive and consistent game world/environment from an art standpoint if every aspect of it is created by people who have never met or spoke. You need to be able to work with each other and bounce ideas/feedback off each other. 

Anda Deng (Interview): The game industry is extremely competitive especially for the artists' roles. Most of the artists have to work as contractors at multiple studios for a few years before they actually land a full-time staff position. I think it’s going to be very possible that game dev studios will use the services of outsourcing artists and companies with cheaper budgets and faster turnaround. In my opinion, artists with more technical skills will be able to secure a full-time position at game studios. It will not be a surprise to me that an artist is able to handle all art-related game assets in a good way, including the 2D concept, 3D characters/environment, rigging, animation, VFX. It’s honestly the fact that keep learning and practicing more and more has been the daily life for artists.

Andy Baigent (Interview) 

Technically, you can outsource anything but one of the biggest things you can’t outsource is the game itself; the idea, and I also think that most studios like to keep the core aspects of the game (like creating the main character, gameplay design or environment building) internally to keep this idea flowing and on track to what their vision for the game is. If you outsourced everything, it probably would be cheaper but you need that studio culture and in-house knowledge which has a profound effect on the game.
 It can also become very complex the more you outsource as the work may fall on multiple studios across the world which raises concerns on language barriers and time zone differences.



What did we miss in this discussion? Do you agree that the balance is shifting? Share your thoughts and discuss outsourcing in the comments below. 

Author: Arti Sergeev