Fresh Hell pointed out a couple of good articles on ScriptSecrets.net which discusses an interesting topic – how to make movies on the cheap. It resonated with me since we have similar issues when building games as well. As much as we’d like everything to be the biggest and best, and as much as MMOs inherently invite the need of every feature under the sun, we constantly try to figure how to use and reuse art and code in order to keep costs manageable and testing under control.

The trick, of course, is to keep it from being too obvious. The most frequently used (and abused) technique is reusing art and rehueing and reskinning it to make new use of it. Of course, this is fairly transparent to the user – most intelligent players know that a rat is a rat – but we’re left with little choice. Due to their animation needs, monsters are by far among the most art-intensive parts of any game, and any tricks possible help to turn 50 monsters into 500.

But we do a lot of other things as well. Since height fields aren’t very interesting to look at, props and buildings are key to make the world look varied and interesting, but still our budget for that art is limited. Next time you play a modern game like WoW, SB or SWG, take notice of the props and buildings you see for POIs. Colored lighting and unusual prop combinations can make old art look new again, and usually, players don’t even notice.