why are games so large?
2023-09-14
The first thing I did after rejoining my old indie studio (find out more here) was to install both Unreal Engine 5 and their project codebase. This ended up occupying over 300GB of my SSD, which I feel is a little too big.
Why does it have to be so big?
The studio I work for make VR games, so instead of just installing UE5, I had to download the Oculus fork and build it myself, which definitely counts towards the size of it. Also the editor does include a wide range of sample projects for tutorials and starting off points. But 208GB for a game engine is still massive!
In my spare time I also make games for the Playdate. The SDK for that (which comes with sample projects and full documentation for both C and Lua!) clocks in at 78.4MB. Sure, the Playdate is a much weaker machine compared to PC dev, and it doesn't handle 3D all too well, but I can download it and get set up anywhere quickly, instead of dedicating an entire day to downloading and then installing UE5 (repeat the installing step several times as I encounter multiple bugs).
If you've done the maths, you've probably realised that the project codebase is over 100GB, 121GB to be exact. For a large, high quality VR game I can understand the size being this large due to detailed assets, but the project is supposed to be a vertical slice of a rhythm game. After downloading the project, I realised why it was so big. The studio had taken their previous (UE4) project and copied it over to UE5, inserting the rhythm game section as a folder within the project. This meant 90% of what I had downloaded was unnecessary, and could've been accessed by keeping the previous project on disk (which was also in the same repository!) and dragging the files over when needed. Ridiculous.
Modern games
Of course, game engines and projects aren't the only culprits for large sizes. Look at modern triple A games such as Starfield (125GB), Red Dead Redemption 2 (120GB) and Call of Duty Modern Warfare (200GB). These games are large because they pack in so much detail that, for a large portion of PC users, is often unnecessary. Remember HD texture packs? Why did we stop with those? Include the base detail but then package those higher fidelity options into a separate downloadable package.
Cutting down on file size isn't just a benefit to those with poor internet, but also to those who have low storage or slower file reads.
Personally, I don't play much triple A games anymore, I prefer smaller, focused indie experiences. The file sizes on these? Often below 4GB. That lets me put them on a stick and carry them around with me, which is awesome! Don't just optimise your frames per second, optimise your storage too, because players will be a lot more willing to keep your game on their system when it doesn't take up a substantial portion of their space.