The fucking receipts that most large games studios license middleware tools that predate esg money in games? And even if esg was not a thing they would still be licensing these tools? You are linking bull shit together.
No you are ranting about esg and complaining devs use a tool that has been around for 2 decades to make production of mundane background objects like trees more quickly freeing up time for their artist to work on other assets that they would not have had time or the budget for without it. You might as well link esg to carpenters who have the nerve to purchase boxes of nails instead of forging them themselves.
Why not add Wwise sound engine use too because ” those lazy devs” aren’t spending time authoring their own unique sound engine when it’s more efficient to license wwise.
Or any other middleware tool that has been used for decades because of the quality end result and low price to license vs creating it from scratch.
You are connecting dots to stuff that are totally unrelated to esg and name dropping development tools as if they’re use because it saves the developers time and money is somehow a sign of esg to involvement. And claiming that because they saved money on one thing that it’s a scam for them to charge the same price or slightly more than the historical price for a game…. Because the trees that’s only job is to fit into the environment and not look weird was made with a tool specifically designed to make the pain in the ass task of modeling a kit of trees easier was used.
Speed tree has been around longer than esg. And it’s a tool for making procedurally different trees not just one off trees like you would find in an asset pack. Because why bog down your environment art team with making trees from scratch and having to sculpt 50+ tree variations in zbrush over a time of months when you can move some sliders and node connections around and get plenty of realistic game usable trees in a fraction of the time. It’s a really weird thing to include in your collection of factors for esg in games. It’s like claiming that they use photogrammetry tools for scanning tiling textures is esg related because they use a technology to get realistic brick materials for buildings. Even without these tools they would still get things made cheaper than doing it in house with outsourcing companies in SE Asia, India, and Eastern Europe. These are literally just reducing the cost slightly on their outsourcing budget.
If their goal is to release a stream of shit product to keep getting esg money it would be cheaper to do a free to play live service game and constantly virtue signal some new esg goal with every update to receive more esg money. No need to spend money constantly on new games when making new content for one game is cheaper.
You are conflating cost saving techniques with ESG which are totally unrelated things. Some studios do use these tools poorly but they are not used by an esg mandate. If you want to look for signs of esg money in games look for their company announcements about their board/dev teams now consisting of x percentage of women and x percentage of gay, or x percentage of some other leftist pet group. Look for their posts about their green initiatives or donations to/partnering with organizations that have absolutely nothing to do with games.
I find it hard to believe people use discord with complete strangers…. I was introduced to it as a “free” alternative to team speak to hang out and chat with my friends. It just does not feel like a platform well suited to replace a web forum.
Lots of indies you know about are leftist because the igda is full of leftists who only support their friends and other leftists. Those who are not part of the woke hive mind do not get the push from the industry organization like they should solely over a clique of weirdo leftist.
People look back at the 360 era game lobbies with fondness for how unregulated it was…. Same company 16 years later let’s make it where no one wants to joke or talk trash in our game lobbies for fear of an account ban. This is going to do the opposite of getting people out of discord or party chats ( are they still called that? Haven’t had an Xbox in years) and getting them back into game chat.
It’s not a monopoly though. Microsoft is in third place out of the console makers. And they own way fewer studios than Embracer. Their biggest console game they are getting out of this is cod. Maybe this will spur Sony to pay for a cod rival on PlayStation
And it’s still a dumb fucking take those same tools are used for not woke, non esg backed products, and linking their use to esg is fucking stupid. Every developer is trying to ship their game a fast as reasonably possible and with less costs. That’s just business and does not require esg money to have that motivation.
The title of your thread is “the ESG factor in games” and you list fucking speed tree. I ask how is speed tree related to esg and you basically say “it’s because they use it to spend less time making the game.” Which any dev could use and pretty much all above a small indie team does use.