Thread by @bthorne

1) I often hear from players, "Why are bosses just scaled up versions of existing enemies?"

This is a tale about #gamedev that's pretty common among most studios. Stay a while and listen...

[thread]

2) You're a designer and just started early design work on the next project. You're in a meeting talking about what the next boss will/should be.

The lead says, "We have 6 months from start to launch, which means in reality, we have a lot less time."

3) You cheerfully suggest that the boss be a brand new, giant squirrel-eagle cyborg that flies around the raid breathing fire. Immediately, the entire staff of animators, tech artists, FX artists all look at each other and cringe.

"What?" you ask.

4) Not being an artist, you don't understand their looks of horror. The character artist who will be responsible making the boss gently explains to you that it will require a new rig (the skeleton that actually lets the thing move) which will take 2 months alone...

5) ... all new animations, concept art exploration time, all new FX, audio, and we still have deliverables for the other teams working on this release.

Then the tech designer says, "We also don't have flying tech in this engine. That's months of engineer time."

6) "Plus," she adds, "We have no idea what space we're building it for. Is it bespoke where it flies around a spline, or can it just path anywhere? How will it..."

The lead steps in. "Okay, no flying boss. We don't have time."

7) "So," you ask, "what can we do?"

The rigging artist says, "Well, we could add a couple bones to the rig. Maybe add a couple attack animations. Maybe play with the walk cycle a bit."

8) "Remember, we only have about 3 months."

I thought we had 6?

"No, *we* have 3 months. We have to finish it and move on to the other features for this release."

Ok, scaled up squirrel it is. How big can we go?

"Well, anything bigger than x3 is going to look bad because..."

9) "... it'll mess with the animations and FX, so we'll have to redo those as well."

Great, so much for my squirrel boss idea. What can we use to make a really big boss?

"The elephant combatant is already pretty big. We can scale that up."

But we already used that one last...

10) "We can add some spikes to it."

Spikes are cool. What about a jump attack?

"Are you using a perfectly flat space with no geo that it can get stuck on or otherwise mess with the physics?"

Well, no, but...

11) TLDR: making a new character model is time consuming and expensive because you have to make all the stuff that supports it. Devs can make a lot more stuff by reusing existing assets and customizing it.

To be clear, this is basically an abridged version of my 12 yrs as a game designer across multiple studios.