You are absolutely 100% correct though I don't quite see it as a new trend. Majora's Mask, Galaxy 2, the Metroid Prime trilogy. Nintendo takes a game and plays around with it for a generation. Sometimes more.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Are game development costs misrepresented?
- Thread starter laziboi
- Start date
You are absolutely 100% correct though I don't quite see it as a new trend. Majora's Mask, Galaxy 2, the Metroid Prime trilogy. Nintendo takes a game and plays around with it for a generation. Sometimes more.
The way I see it, if you are making a game that has micro transactions and so many expansive dlc then you shouldn't raise the price.
That's the excuse many of them use and it is bullshit.
That's the excuse many of them use and it is bullshit.
probably not the sequel people were thinking but Twilight Princess used the same engine as WW and it is speculated several of the cut dungeons in WW made it into Twilight princess.
If you're spending 25% of a AAA budget but you're only making 5% of a AAA revenue, you're most likely losing a lot of money.
To be more concrete, let's say you spend $30 million dollars on your game development and you're selling at $40/copy. For simplicity sake, let's say you get half of that as profit (general rule of thumb on digital is like 62% and less on physical, plus even launch copies will probably have a slight discount). That means you need to sell 1.5 million copies at near launch price in order to break even. That's a lot of copies and most games that aren't part of an on-going series aren't going to get that. If you drop your development costs to $20 million, that still means you need a million copies sold which is still a lot. Of course, copies sold with heavy discounts will help contribute, as well as any deals you can pull with stuff like subscription services, but still, it should be easy to see how it's hard to make money with a AA game that isn't part of an ongoing, well-known series.
Conversely, an indie game with a $1 million budget, a base price of $15, that is purely digital, only needs to sell about 100k around launch to break even, which (while still difficult) is a much easier goal to hit.
Last edited:
And there was awhile there when they poured out Mario Party over and over again. So they're not above iteration.
Winder Waker got a sequel to promote a handheld. Coincidentally, LTTP did too more than a decade after release. BOTW 2 wasn't a given after TP and SS had no followups.
I'm just saying that direct sequels are not a new concept for Nintendo.
I think what it is, is the money that comes in from purchases just needs to be DISTRIBUTED better. Don't blame the consumer and "rising development costs" when yall fuckin execs take home big ass bonuses and the company gets record profit, all while they LAYING people off.
You gotta spend money to make money...so spend it on the people that's MOST important, which is the folks actually MAKING the games. Without them, there WON'T be a game. I'd like to see Bobby Kotick or Andrew Wilson sit in front of a damn computer for 12-14 hours at a time coding, drawing and testing shit
If anything the opposite , id move more transparency as an industry into how hard and expensive these games are
I mean probably to a certain extent yes but probably mostly in countries with state subsidies for the arts. Though I am not really sure what elements of a games budget could be tax deductible in various countries.
I never said they were. Just that we're starting to see more of that as become more and more similar to other pubs.
You're both right and I appreciate your historic perspectives.
Who's another good example of low crunch, small team, and still successful? There must be more we're not thinking of.
Yes, most often as being significantly lower than reality, combined with a naive view of what it takes to recoup that investment (ie the actual amount a publisher would see per copy sold in a given distribution channel, the royalties due to IP holders, the ongoing costs to support and maintain a game, etc).
^ this.
I mean, you guys know publicly traded companies release annual reports that are available to the public, right? Here's Activision's for example:
These are 10k statements and dish out pretty detailed information about the company' operations.
Funny thing happens when you search for "budget" on this document:
Activision 10k Statement said:
So there's your answer straight out of the horse's mouth: There are advantages to scale. Yeah, you could break out into smaller projects but large projects save you money through consolidation and they give you more influence over different parts of your industry. It's better for them to make 1 billion dollars (which is roughly how much the last Call of Duty made) off one project as opposed to making 50 million off 20 projects.
The size of the end credits on some games makes me wonder how on earth they are able to pay them all a decent wage.
Even games that are considered cheap small 'indie' games can have a long list of people
We're going to see more GAAS/Early access implementation as it makes a lot of sense financially for a lot of companies. If it sells well they can continue to support it, if it fails hard they can act accordingly and try and save themselves from oblivion with another plan.
Even games that are considered cheap small 'indie' games can have a long list of people
We're going to see more GAAS/Early access implementation as it makes a lot of sense financially for a lot of companies. If it sells well they can continue to support it, if it fails hard they can act accordingly and try and save themselves from oblivion with another plan.
Sorry to throw a specific at you but how much of that real budget would you attribute to marketing? Or is that not considered part of a game's budget?
Not all of them stay on for the duration for the project. I got credited on a game with a multi year development cycle but only worked on it for a few months as a contractor.
To me this is more of a function of society than a problem unique to video games when we are looking at large companies. We could list a million examples. The ceo of UPS made like 15 million in 2018. Meanwhile the dudes loading trailers in 100 degree heat are making 13-16 bucks an hour or something probably.
Not disagreeing with your point at all just saying big video game companies act the same as other big companies.
While this might be getting into the weeds the only extra thing I would add is also factoring in the overhead that goes to platform holders and retail/distributers (if it's a physical product). This is something that is also greatly overlooked by people when they just assume a developer gets 100% of the MSRP.
Back when I worked on GBA titles publishers were only getting back 1/2-2/3 of the MSRP after retail and platform holder got their cut.
"We sent our devs around the world 3 times so they could document and experience things first hand to bring the most accurate representation of the locations."
"We also hired Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks, to do the motion capture, and will use the likenesses of Leonardo DiCaprio, Dwayne Johnson and Robert Downey Jr."
"As well, to announce the first trailer of our game, here is Will Smith, pulling up in a brand new Lamborghini Veneno."
Unnecessary over spending just for the sake of it? Noooo, never.
Spend the money on artists and dev talent. Quit pissing it away on spectical bullshit.
"We also hired Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks, to do the motion capture, and will use the likenesses of Leonardo DiCaprio, Dwayne Johnson and Robert Downey Jr."
"As well, to announce the first trailer of our game, here is Will Smith, pulling up in a brand new Lamborghini Veneno."
Unnecessary over spending just for the sake of it? Noooo, never.
Spend the money on artists and dev talent. Quit pissing it away on spectical bullshit.
Yes but that difference between the games industry and film industry is pretty obvious: film industry is heavily unionized, games industry is not.
Prices going up and developers being fairly compensated are almost entirely unrelated. If prices went up game developers would not receive higher compensation and benefits; if the industry unionized then prices probably wouldn't rise, developers would just see a larger portion of the massive profits games already generate.
No, it's a question of opportunity cost, not just whether or not a game is profitable or not.
Then why would companies like EA or Take Two set up labels for AA titles?
Without strong multiple unions and transparency, this campaign for raising price to pay the devs equally and to stop crunch is a long con. Believing otherwise would be naive.
Also where are the posters that downplay every labor abuse by saying things like "under capitalism there are no moral spending, Capitalism has no moral, only money!" If so what would change to stop companies from abusing the labor? The extra money they squeezed out from customers with price rise?
Also where are the posters that downplay every labor abuse by saying things like "under capitalism there are no moral spending, Capitalism has no moral, only money!" If so what would change to stop companies from abusing the labor? The extra money they squeezed out from customers with price rise?
So they can experiment and see if they can make cheaper games and still have people buy lots of them.
Unionization also implies a standardization of skills and tools, which the game industry does not really have in the same way as all the movie unions/guilds.
There was an infamous EA Tiburon speech like ~10 years ago where one of the studio heads basically said "Don't complain about money. There are 10 people that want to do your job for less than we pay you and we will fire your ass."
Insomniac have paced themselves really well. They've made AAA, AA, and indie games and still manage to stay afloat. Some don't do so well, while others do, but they experiment. And now they've been bought by Sony so they have major backing. It was smart to price R&C at $40 and I hope they continue their trend of balancing AA with AAA going forward.
it can be done, and It'll suck if game prices rise but I won't be surprised. Should I not say that?
it can be done, and It'll suck if game prices rise but I won't be surprised. Should I not say that?
There's plenty of publishers and developers proving that this model can be done efficiently. So I agree.
You wrote a lot of words in the OP which is commendable, but the answer to your question (and thus a response all of your assertions) is: No.
Source: Me, a game developer for 12 years working in large studio and indie teams, who knows a lot of developers across every spectrum of the industry.
If anything, your understanding of how much 'AA' and 'Indie' games cost is not commensurate with reality and probably influenced by Kickstarters that grossly misrepresent costs as lower than they really are and passion projects which have developers killing themselves working insane hours over multiple years while living on less money than your average student does.
Games are expensive as hell, the tools that make development easier have not kept up with the drive for ever-increasing quality standards, and it is a hit-driven industry in which the games that make it big make so much money for the companies producing them that they subsidize the way many games do not find the audience necessary to be successful.
This doesn't even get into just how much of the AAA space is subsidized by crunch culture.
Source: Me, a game developer for 12 years working in large studio and indie teams, who knows a lot of developers across every spectrum of the industry.
If anything, your understanding of how much 'AA' and 'Indie' games cost is not commensurate with reality and probably influenced by Kickstarters that grossly misrepresent costs as lower than they really are and passion projects which have developers killing themselves working insane hours over multiple years while living on less money than your average student does.
Games are expensive as hell, the tools that make development easier have not kept up with the drive for ever-increasing quality standards, and it is a hit-driven industry in which the games that make it big make so much money for the companies producing them that they subsidize the way many games do not find the audience necessary to be successful.
This doesn't even get into just how much of the AAA space is subsidized by crunch culture.
How are major publishers doing profit wise? That's the important metric.
It doesn't really matter to the consumer how much something cost to make, if the audience is big enough, a game can easily make all of that money back.
It doesn't really matter to the consumer how much something cost to make, if the audience is big enough, a game can easily make all of that money back.
So wouldn't the solution be to just keep improving the tools then? If not then what do you think would improve conditions in the industry (besides unions of course).
The tools are improving, the quality bar is also increasing.
That arms race will go on forever and is why the cost of developing large games goes up every year.
I have no solution, I left the large studio space and went indie where this is less of a factor because we're not competing for the same audience, but in the indie space you have other problems... It's a random estimate but based on the stats I'd say 95%+ of indie games released on Steam are not profitable.
All right. Then how would you solve the problem of indie games not supposedly being profitable (not saying they are, I genuinely don't know).
People say it is inevitable that game development rises and just in the last week we had discussions about games getting shorter and more expensive to battle those costs.
Using a little hyperbole here, where does that leave us in the next one or two generations? Games that cost 200 bucks with a playtime of 4 hours? I'd rather the AAA and AAAA Studios go under than THAT becoming a reality. They need to learn to be more efficient and reign in the costs.
Using a little hyperbole here, where does that leave us in the next one or two generations? Games that cost 200 bucks with a playtime of 4 hours? I'd rather the AAA and AAAA Studios go under than THAT becoming a reality. They need to learn to be more efficient and reign in the costs.
Shawn Layden: "I would welcome a return to the 12 to 15 hour AAA game"
Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has called for the industry to examine the trend towards bigger and more expe…
www.gamesindustry.biz
/thread
Games cost up to 150m without marketing this gen. Halo Infinite, even thought it's unknown wether marketing is included is rumored to cost 500m as a cross gen game. I don't think all gsmes cost that much obviously, but the industry needs to think about a different path. We can't have PS6,7,8 gen having a huge increase in budget or games could potentially cost 1 billion or more.
But that's only for AAA games. What about Indies and AA, what are they like?
Sure, here's one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W6lZir97bUU0KdvIGNIVWG0O-_A3QrdN/view
The basic idea is that as time goes by, the barrier to entry to make a game gets lower and lower. Making games is a highly desired job so tons of people try to make one. And because the barrier to entry is so low & everyone wants to make one, the number of games getting released is astronomical. Aka supply is far higher than demand and as a result, most games bomb.
To give specific examples, when I released Cthulhu Saves the World in 2011 on Steam, the rate of new games coming out was low enough that you were pretty much guaranteed that your new game would be on the front page on the New Releases chart for a week or two. That was a huge amount of visibility given to every single game with a result that merely getting your game accepted onto Steam as an indie developer meant that you had a very good shot at being profitable. Cthulhu Saves the World did so well for us that I was able to start making games full-time. And another game that came out the same week, Dungeons of Dredmor, did even better.
Now, there are so many new games coming out every day on Steam that when you release a game, there's no guarantee that you'll show up on the front page New Releases chart AT ALL. There's so many new releases that the Front Page chart is actually a "Popular, New Releases" chart to help thin things out and even if you make it to that chart, you're going to get kicked off pretty quick due to the rapid release of games. I just checked how many new products were released on Steam yesterday and the total was over 60! Admittedly, some of those were DLC, but even still, in the middle of a Steam Sale (aka the worst possible time to release a game on Steam), dozens of new games are coming out every single day!
I can't find the article right now, but I remember reading something that basically said the vast majority of Steam indie games these days sell under 10k (and many are under 1k) at normal prices (aka before they do crazy 50%-90% off sales). If you're selling 5-digits, you're basically in a small group of success, and if you manage 6-digits, then you've got a huge hit on your hands.
And well, those numbers don't bode well for making a living - 10k copies sold at $15 means about $100k revenue to the developer which is a good salary for a single person working for a year and not so good a salary if you have anyone else working with you that needs to get paid or spent more than 12 months working on your game. And 10k copies sold at $15 is selling a lot better than most indie games on Steam - good luck making those kinds of numbers on a year-project that you made yourself with no outside help.
Last edited:
Really well said.
This is the main reason why big games are getting bigger, and smaller games are getting smaller. There's not much for anything in between on the mass market. The solution for AA studios is to develop well crafted games dedicated to very specific niches, and allocate budget knowing exactly how big is said niche and how much they are willing to pay.
I think you can do a lot with smart design decisions like not aiming for perfect realism but instead stylized realism and focusing on gameplay rather than making the biggest game worlds ever. Not having voice acting for everything can also be a huge cost saving but at the same time works only for certain games. I am never put off in Yakuza games where it shifts suddenly from voice acting to text boxes, it's perfectly fine.
Most indie hits are not top tier in visuals but are very high up in either gameplay, storytelling or both.
Big game companies are kind of digging their own grave by constantly trying to one up themselves and gamers expect that to happen, based on all the "boohoo, this does not look like a next gen game" threads. I fully expect that a lot of next gen games won't be gobsmackingly massive upgrades over the already stellar work found in today's games.
Most indie hits are not top tier in visuals but are very high up in either gameplay, storytelling or both.
Big game companies are kind of digging their own grave by constantly trying to one up themselves and gamers expect that to happen, based on all the "boohoo, this does not look like a next gen game" threads. I fully expect that a lot of next gen games won't be gobsmackingly massive upgrades over the already stellar work found in today's games.
Right.
There are basically 3 routes to success with game development these days.
1 - Arms race. Basically outspend & outquality the competition so your game is best-in-class. Ultimately, this is unsustainable for the industry as costs keep going higher and higher and success goes to fewer and fewer games.
2 - Niche. Find a niche that is underserved or constantly craves new content and set a budget that is appropriate for the potential sales that you can get from that niche. This is the safest & most reliable approach if you do it well.
3 - New. Make something new & exciting that has no real direct competition in other games. This is the most difficult approach (it's hard to make something that's very different than everything else) and riskiest (since it's new, it's hard to tell how much demand there will be for it), but it's potentially the most lucrative if you pull it off.
The thing is, the type of game you are referring to, that entire market disappeared with the switch to HD. They got to expensive to be profitable. It lead to the death of many companies, and that needs to be rebuilt slowly.
I don't think anybody thinks that AAA games don't cost more to make than ever. And that the AA games has practically disappeared because it's now so high risk. Companies need to either go full AAA with something that guaranteed big sales or go low budget indie with lower risk.
That said I'd be amazed if the huge publishers like Ubisoft, Ea and Activision don't indulge in some Hollywood accounting.
That said I'd be amazed if the huge publishers like Ubisoft, Ea and Activision don't indulge in some Hollywood accounting.
Shawn Layden: "I would welcome a return to the 12 to 15 hour AAA game"
Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has called for the industry to examine the trend towards bigger and more expe…
/thread
Games cost up to 150m without marketing this gen. Halo Infinite, even thought it's unknown wether marketing is included is rumored to cost 500m as a cross gen game. I don't think all gsmes cost that much obviously, but the industry needs to think about a different path. We can't have PS6,7,8 gen having a huge increase in budget or games could potentially cost 1 billion or more.
That mindset is wrong on so many levels. If the answer to spiraling costs that are out of control, is that you slash the content, where do you think we will be in 1 or 2 generations? 4 hour games for 200 bucks?
Which it already is starting to.
But AA games are starting to make a comeback though.
I don't think slashing content to more than a small degree is the solution. I believe Machine learning could help and maybe full path tracing in the future as no time is needed to "fake" lighting. Then Sonys standalone DLC provide another solution as the games are smaller in scale using most of the assets of the big AAA game.
I talked about this with a friend, but do we really need a completely new open world within a generation with every game? Won't happen as CD is working on Cyberpunk, but I don't think we would need a new open world in Witcher 4 on PS4/Xbox One and that would in theory result in lower costs.
Obviously new sidequest, story, maybe different playable character, new weapons and all that are needed and maybe a few new areas, but I think we don't need a complete new open world map for every game within a franchise due to increasing cost.
Last edited:
Then you have to ask the question:
- If the Open World game does not get the budget to make a good quality AAA Open World, does the game get made at all?
GTA; Ass Creed, Monster Hunter, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Zelda, Just Cause, No Mans Sky, Witcher, Horizon, Red Dead Redemption, Spider Man, Watch Dogs, etc.
would and can those games be transformed in 12-15 hour games?
And would they even sell, if there is now a bunch of 12-15 hour "cinematic experiences"?
long, Open World games are not made because devs and pubs like bloated games, they are getting made because they sell, because it is needed to sell the setting, because the story needs the pacing.