The most expensive part of game development is content production. This is a bit unintuitive: if you look at a game like Kirby’s Epic Yarn, you immediately see the cool graphical style, the fun game mechanics, and the well-polished charm. The clear advancements Starcraft II made over the first game are its increased graphical fidelity and its modified gameplay elements. The levels are just where the game happens; they’re rarely the interesting part. However, I’d bet you that more person-hours were spent making those levels than on any other single aspect of the game. This is a big part of the appeal of procedural content.
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