“Asking the impossible on SSX: creating 300 tracks on a ten track budget” by Howard and Lemus
Conference:
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Title:
- Asking the impossible on SSX: creating 300 tracks on a ten track budget
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Abstract:
The world created for the latest release of the snowboarding game SSX posed the challenge of delivering massively increased volumes of content over previous releases without increasing the budget. The success of the game depended on drawing a new audience into an experience equal in scale and quality to the current generation of gaming console, while remaining true to the expectations of a large existing fan base. To retain the essential flavor of the game for the fans, while generating ten-to-twenty times the content required not only a new pipeline for content generation, but a whole new way of thinking about how content is created. To accomplish this, we implemented an evolving procedural pipeline. This type of approach is still relatively uncommon in game production, and so it required an educational process in parallel to the technical development. This talk discusses the technical, cultural, and production challenges faced in the creation of the massive world of SSX.
