Haven Studios, the latest developer to be acquired by Sony, is trying to change the game. The Canadian studio – which has grown at a rapid rate – is not only working on an ambitious live service title for the PS5, but is also aiming to transform the way game development works. If it’s successful, it could have an enormous impact on PS Studios and the industry at large.
After inviting media to its office earlier this week, Axios reports that the developer’s ambition is to create games in the cloud. Its goal is to build tools and systems whereby entire titles can be constructed like a Google Docs project; in other words, changes occur in real-time, and everyone always has access to the latest version. It’s a project that even PS5 and PS4 system architect Mark Cerny has been attracted to.
While infinitely more complicated than the crude example above, the overarching idea is to reduce bottlenecks. Cerny believes it’s important because cumbersome game development practices only hurt projects: “The game ends up not being your best ideas, or it ends up being your ideas but they're not in the best possible form, because it's that really fast iteration that lets you polish it and get it into place.”
By working in the cloud, there’s no need for developers to download enormous amounts of data each time a new build is released – it’s just there for everybody, all at the same time. Haven Studios is even investigating ways Machine Learning can be used to create video game assets, speeding up the entire process so that developers can more easily and freely experiment with different ideas.
All of this, it hopes, will allow it to focus on the most important part: making great games. If it’s successful with its efforts, then Haven Studios could completely transform the way PS Studios, and the industry at large, operates. And ultimately what this all means for us is bigger and better games, developed in a healthier environment, and released on a more sensible schedule.
[source axios.com]
Comments 57
In that picture why does Mark look like he is plotting to murder me in my sleep?
"Sony Studio Haven Wants to Change Game Development Forever...working on an ambitious live service title for the PS5..."
How about no
I'm telling you, I know everyone is focusing on all of the IP and studios and CoD being swallowed by the likes of MicroSoft and Tencent, but Sony have been very shrewd about where they've put their money. They've gone after the talent, and the rewards will be reaped down the road.
It's well known that game development has some of the smartest people in software development, but also some of the worst practices and working patterns in any industry.
One can only imagine what could be produced with such brains and structure most already enjoy. Not surprised though, there was a reason Sony and Cerny specifically wanted to acquire Haven Studios people.
@mariomaster96 Well, if they're successful in implementing these new game development practices, then it doesn't really matter what they make because it'll improve development for everyone.
@get2sammyb Yeah I know, for game development itself it (most likely) sounds nice. Just wanted to make a joke
@PegasusActual93 . At what point side to side with that, beautiful women. Are u thinking cerney is going to kill u.
@Mariomaster96 they do with haven but not with ps5. It's to early to tell but I'm thinking a new console on the basis of stream vr. But between meta and microsoft taking all the talent. It's anyone's guess.
@SplooshDmg damm straight.
Mark Cerny looks like he just got caught stealing Cindy Lou Who's presents.
@get2sammyb that's where the death kill thing Pegasus was on about.... In the wrong hands... It won't make us money lol. But no honestly they keep that close to there chest. For now anyways.
Always find this stuff fascinating to read about but then when we get the actual game in our hands it just ends up looking and playing similarly the same way as every other game is. Hope I'm wrong of course but will remain skeptical until we see it with our own two eyeballs. I could watch Mark Cerny talk tech and gaming all day long
Microsoft rubbing their hands together, while chanting yes yes yes!
Hopefully they concentrate on better AI, exciting side quests and better storytelling.
@Beerheadgamer82 ok I see your point, and its a fair one. But so many people are putting there efforts into it..... It's going to be like lawnmower man. Just real this time. It's either that or ready player one.
Having everything in the cloud? What could go wrong? “Erm…Microsoft…I appear to have lost the latest God of War in your servers, can you help?…hello”
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@mariomaster96 let me guess you have no clue why you hate on live service games , and you think all live service games are mp?
@jonbow1980 ready player one type videogame I'll be on board with something like that for sure, enjoyed that movie. Imagine if it's something like Playstation home but on a much larger scale which has its own huge world
Very vague claims. Everyone wants to be different and make significant contribution to their fields. This is easier to say than do. They will not invent the wheel and I can not see a life service title changing the game world. In fact, that will likely be a boring multiplayer title. Let's see and I hope they prove me wrong.
@twitchtvpat I dislike (hate is such a strong word) live service games because I usually buy a game, play through it in it's entirity and never touch it again (unless it's a very good game)
So even if they add new content at a later point I won't bother with it because at that point I have unlearned how to play that game and it's usually to tedious to relearn it, especially with games that have tons of different gameplay mechanics. And therefore I'd miss a lot of content. I simply prefer to have a complete game at launch
@jonbow1980
What?
Just so long as they don't forget that the vast majority of players still prefer good ol' fashion hardware to play games off of. I get their mindset about the benefits of development through the cloud but just don't go fully cloud only on everything.
Never forget the tale of the Stadia!
@mariomaster96 fair enough. but a few examples are the new assassins creed game or even no mans sky that have seen many updates over the years. i'd rather see that then developers making multiple games off of what should just be updates/ dlc.
@jonbow1980 what is lawnmowerman lol never heard of it before. Is it a PC game that know ones heard of?
@beergamerhead82. It was a good film. Oh and u mean the ps home kind of thing Microsoft are doing. Bringing vr gamepass in meta. Mean the next couple of years are going to be mad as hell. But an interesting one.
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@jonbow1980 yh PS home started with the release of the PS3 console. Never used it myself but it was a really good idea but seemed to be a head of its time, like it might be more suitable these days?
@Beerheadgamer82 Yeah your not wrong. Same happened with the vita (original) it was ahead of its time. But they killed all chance of portable with all the iterations, psp go, WiFi, and the dreaded memory card. As the more sustainable side I think it would be. But people... They want something new. (Kids who'd have em) and to be fair this might be it. But it could turn side ways and be black mirror.
Whatever Jade Raymond is having Haven Studios do is personally my most anticipated project from Sony. It seems like they are taking risks. Jade Raymond is talented and experienced enough to be able to successfully lead that charge.
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@bpomber dude did u just Google that... No but you are definitely right. There's thing a coming but we all, have to wait unfortunately. But whatever there upto in that lab. It going to make psvr ***** it's self. Vr1, just saying.
@MFTWrecks hey I like this bridge. It's cosy.
@jonbow1980
I just made a joke that Cerny has a funny look in that picture and you are being really really incoherent. Are you okay? Are you having an episode?
I don’t think this means what people think it means. They’re talking about developing in the cloud so they don’t have to download new builds all the time, saving development time.
Imagine the current build for a game is 150GB (before optimization) and each dev needs a new build every day or every other day. Normally they would download a new build over night so it’s ready to go the next morning, but sometimes giant downloads fail and have to be restarted during normal work hours (a failed download can mean half a day of work lost in some cases). This would resolve a lot of those issues, potentially saving substantial amounts of time (or maybe just 30 minutes a day or so). However, things still have to be tested on real hardware constantly, so devs and testers will still need to download builds and install them on real machines (PCs & consoles), otherwise you can end up with a Cyberpunk 2077 situation where nobody bothered to test on the base hardware and the final product ran like trash.
There are definitely some interesting problems to solve with this approach. Like what happens when code is merged? Is it done on a per-instance basis or does everyone get an updated build all at the same time? If development is done in the cloud instead of locally, how do account for latency, server maintenance/downtime, version control, security, critical/blocker bugs causing crashes, etc.?
This isn’t about consumers streaming the game, but allowing a more streamlined agile environment for developers, meaning they can make games faster, fix issues faster, share resources more efficiently. At least taking the information we have at face value this doesn’t seem like a monumental shift for development.
@Beerheadgamer82 oh here we go. Google it. Lol just kidding u idiots. Lawnmower man. Good Atari game u should check it out.
@PegasusActual93 nope had a stroke
@Shstrick you are right. It would take next to no physical box to stream to the cloud. Unless u have rubbish internet. And that's why stadia failed. And from a comment earlier it was just to early to release. They had some games but. Not enough bandwidth.
@MFTWrecks how am I a troll. I make a comment, u make a comment. It's that simple. Everyone's right. But it don't harm to make light of the conversation. If u can't see that. Then. Well that's upto u.
@Shepherd_Tallon this. Always said this.
Sony goes for talent 99% of the time.
Microsoft goes for already existing well established developers and franchises 99% of the time.
@jonbow1980 I don't mind if someone politely insults my intelligence a little when I've been proven wrong but an idiot I is not. I've already googled Lawnmowerman and I still haven't heard of it before until today and I know my movies a lot, maybe if I actually see a bit of the movie I might remember it?. Have you seen Basketcase movie, I highly recommend the first one
Good thing cloud services are so rarely hacked.
Im ready for all the big talk from developers to finally pay off. It feels like I’ve been hearing all these grand ideas for about a decade now and in the history of games I’ve never been less wowed. I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just tired of these companies trying to sell to me.
For example, I’ve heard numerous times from the PS4 on about how development is faster and easier than it’s ever been yet that’s not the result we have received.
@Beerheadgamer82 look dude. All stupid ***** aside. Jokes. All it was. No one is stupid. No one. But that again aside. Lawnmower man is an old film about vr. I won't spoil it but if u like your films, u never know u might like it. As for basketcase all that comes to mind is baseketball. Trey and matt stone.. I've got a whole frigging library up in my brain dude.. all u need is a genre and a type of film.
@KaijuKaiser think lawnmowerman is one of those movies where as soon as I see a bit of it I'll go oh yh I remember this now, same thing happened to me with Puppet Master movie where I'd just completely forgotten about it for years. Basketcase(1982) is the same bad but good. Mac and Me is another one but have so much nostalgia for it
This is just another way of defining luve service garbage.
Just like NFT's, live service will eventually die due to the decline in quality and rampant microtransactions based content gating that already is becoming every corporate gaming ventures carrot on a stick.
It will eventually. Implode as does. All manner of greed and financial enslavement. Sadly short term Gaines seem to be the name, and our societal implosion will likely occur before the MAsses realize that none are More hopelessly enslaved, than those that falsely believe they are free.
Every time there's an article about this studio is always them overhyping something without anything to show.
So now the expectation set by them is that they will introduce a revolutionary game with groundbreaking everything, anything below that should be considered a complete failure again by the expectations they set.
@Shepherd_Tallon
Sony has always had the talent. It's why I switched from 360 to PS4. Well, that and the disastrous XB1 reveal.
They probably really mean game monetisation lol
@get2sammyb In the end its all words Sammy i see it when i believe it. Plus i want to know where this leaves the customer.
Will every bloody game be a liveservice and will we never see a complete game again if so then i hope it bombs in the biggest way.
I have not seen one liveservice game that has the best interest towards customers so far without being predatory in some way and thats especially big Corp Sony, Microsoft and even Nintendo included.
The big game companies like Activision Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft where bad for a long time ago.
If used in a good way im all for it.
I think a lot of people on this site don't know how games are developed on a fundamental level.
I'm late to the article, but I'll break it down:
In modern development every couple days you get a new CL, or change list, this has the most recent build of the project you're working on, which you then have to download, install, and then begin working.
That takes...a considerable amount of time for modern AAA games that range from 50 - 150GBs (sometimes more). That time you could be working, you are downloading, and it's essentially wasted time most of the time. Not to mention sometimes stuff happens, and the build fails to download, and you're forced to re-download it, your day is shot, you're stressed out, and everyone laughs at you, but deep down they're crying on the inside.
Now...if you could just work out of the cloud like an Excell spreadsheet or Doc, you could eliminate that wasted time. You get the build, everyone already has it, you work, in minutes... THAT. IS. CRAZY.
You could do over a weekend what you could do over a whole ass week if you didn't have to worry about downloading, installing, or having s build that is borked and unplayable, so you kinda...just do nothing while your leadership bangs their heads against the wall, and scramble to not JUST find out what's wrong, but find something else for the team to do.
It's got nothing to do with live services, although a cloud workflow would be great for it, but everything to do with optimizing technology so that everyone can get right to work, the project moves on smoother, and the product you get is recieved faster, and of higher quality.
If they can pull this off expect to see more games from Sony, with more polish.
@Shstrick Man I wish we downloaded builds every night. We download them in the morning, otherwise I'd get paid to do that. That's part of the job, I'm downloading, I'm on the clock baby. That's a good 1/4th of my day where I'm not really doing anything important.
If you didn't have to download a build every couple days, and maybe just once every couple weeks, that eliminates a lot of wasted time.
Downloading builds will still be a mainstay for any certification team, that's for sure. As a matter of fact, I'm CERTAIN this will only be for devs. QA testers will 100 percent have to just download builds as that is a core part of testing, it might even be more annoying.
It'd be funny to have 2 - 3 new builds a day, and none of them work because of a 5/5 crash on boot. Oh well.
@SplooshDmg
I support your message!!! Knack 3!!!!!
I don't know, it really just sounds like a lot of market talk to me. The resulting product is pretty much guaranteed to be like everything else we've seen. The development process might speed up releases by, what, two or three months per year...? But to the consumer that might just raise more suspicions that devs are cutting corners. We're already cautious when it comes to annual and biannual releases. I also don't like the application of machine learning. It's a cool concept for small teams, but when it comes to big name developers it usually translates to cheap, mechanical, clinical production.
Also, what happened to Git? Doesn't that mostly address the concerns that are listed here?
@twitchtvpat Live services are quite predatory. They also pretty much entirely remove the product from the consumer. What happens if the servers suffer technical issues? What happens if the bottom falls out? I like games that I own, ones that I can see that I own, physically. Live services introduce a lot of concerns with respect to this.
So they plan to start using Dropbox?
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