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Genshin impact cost $100M to make, but expected to cost $200M per year of dev (700 devs working on the game now)
- Thread starter Kolx
- Start date
After the last event I can only assume the majority of the staff are working on Inazuma, which will hopefully release sooner rather than later and hopefully be as well designed as Dragonspine was but on a much larger scale. Plus all the new characters they will need for it. Seems like we're almost done with current area characters
Mid-senior ? Where?
Yeah I don't know why I said that...
People will just rush through that as well and complain a week after that there is no new content^^
Honest question to all that play more live-service games that I do: is there a game where people are actually happy with the amount of new stuff per month? Because I see this complaint all the time. It's not exactly like you can materialize new areas and quests out of thin air.
It's getting closer (1/2 or even more m, in my experience) in per head operation costs compared to the west. Top game industry salaries are high in areas like Shanghai (with top 10 real estate pricing in the world, mind you) and living costs are getting closer to many developed countries.
With how well the characters are realized, the tons of content they added since release and the marketing behind it...yeah works out. Not that it matters with them making that money easily. Genshin already made its development cost back at launch. Unlike Blizzard, PUBG etc. you got the whales here so the train won't stop and they are doing a great job with the game.
Another note on everybody wondering about the cost. You do realize (for those who don't know the game) or remember (for those that do know the game) that they are going above and beyond in production value? Like having the London Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphonic orchestras record hours of music and hiring only the most popular voice actors of 4 languages (English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean) for the characters. Yuri Lowenthal aka Spider-Man is in this, and he has been having a looooot of lines so far.
This production value goes of course into other aspects of the game as well.
Running the studio itself might be cheaper, but many other things they gotta pay international prices for. like hiring the London Philharmonic Orchestra or Yuri Lowenthal-tier voice actors.
This production value goes of course into other aspects of the game as well.
Running the studio itself might be cheaper, but many other things they gotta pay international prices for. like hiring the London Philharmonic Orchestra or Yuri Lowenthal-tier voice actors.
Man the japanese cast is crazy too. As you said the productions values are high.
I can totally see that amount being realistic if it includes R&D and they keep up the crazy production value.
But maybe that production value will bite them sooner rather than later. The first new big area (Inazuma) and with it the continuation of the traveller story has been postponed 2 times already. Going from a January release to March and now it wont release for quite some time maybe even as far out as the end of the year. The roadmap has 5 of those giant game-sized areas on it even before the story setup will be complete. That 10 year support plan might just be enough to release all the elemental skills for the traveller.
But maybe that production value will bite them sooner rather than later. The first new big area (Inazuma) and with it the continuation of the traveller story has been postponed 2 times already. Going from a January release to March and now it wont release for quite some time maybe even as far out as the end of the year. The roadmap has 5 of those giant game-sized areas on it even before the story setup will be complete. That 10 year support plan might just be enough to release all the elemental skills for the traveller.
From a wiki search -
Analyst estimations place the game's combined development and marketing budget at more than GB£170 million (US$265 million), which would make it the most expensive game ever made at that time.
"Trashy ass" huh? And with each region itself being about as big (and siginificantly more dense) as the entire map in other open world games as well? Never change Era.
Well, that is on them though, lol. I play the game very differently and still have lots to do. I recently checked and I have been playing this game for 425 hours (damn...) but I am still exploring Liyue, finding new treasures, new quests...
I don't play any other live-service game, so I wouldn't know....but I have heard things of course. I honestly can't imagine me being able to handle two toxic and whiney big game communities at once. ;)
And this whole time I assumed it was an indie dev team (purely because of the art style feeling like they took shortcuts to get a game going by heavily basing the visual design on another game - BotW).
Haven't actually played it before so wasn't familiar with how much effort they put into the game mechanics tho.
Haven't actually played it before so wasn't familiar with how much effort they put into the game mechanics tho.
"Trashy ass" huh? And with each region itself being about as big (and siginificantly more dense) as the entire map in other open world games as well? Never change Era.
I'd honestly ignore them. They've been calling the game's art "garbage" and "trash" and "charmless" since it got its first thread here. They should be a little more consistent though, since on one hand it is supposedly trash art and on the other hand it supposedly ripped off everybody's darling BotW's art. So what is it now?
Clarification: I don't think Genshin looks visually closer to BotW than it looks to many other anime games. It's an art style that's been around for many years and is featured in by now countless games and is inspired from fantasy anime which are around for decades now.
The visually closest game to Genshin is imo Tales of Vesperia:
Both In environment art and character design and no one called that game's art trash...well, I'm sure there are those people too, lol.
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Fortnite, if only because they update the game so frequently that no other live service game can compete. At the expense of the developers ofc.
I'm not rushing, I was logging in only for like a month, and playing very minorly for awhile... And I still out of majority of content.
Some of this content you can't even take at your own pace if you wanted it. Limited events will not wait for you. So if you want those rewards.... better strap in
Genshins marketing seems absolutely massive as does the level design on new areas. Theres a LOT of world still being built.
Do you actually read and understand English?
Rockstar spent this amount of money over a period of 4-5 years, here we are talking about $200 million/year to support GI.
Make 200m*4 years (for example) and you are getting 800m spent to support the game, which is completely insane.
Working in healthcare IT for a large network it's kind of funny seeing what the public thinks is a large budget. $200m in a year is big money? That's our March.
But anyways it does seem like a hue endeavor. I hope the best for them.
But anyways it does seem like a hue endeavor. I hope the best for them.
Seems a little weird they expect to spend twice as much on supporting it than they did making it from the beginning given some of the relatively weak content they've been adding. Maybe future content will be a lot more ambitious than what we've gotten thus far
I noticed a lot of people are missing the fact they have voicework in like 5? different languages, plus simultaneous translations of these events. It's honestly kinda crazy
The event content is actually the reason why I still have to do most of the character questlines and finish the Archon quests. I always have to pause them to do the current event stuff. I guess some just play through the content faster than others.
USD, but it's not a hard number, it's a guestimate in their presentation
I think we need to properly differentiate lack of new content with lack of interesting repeatable content.
A game like monster hunter does not get new content every month but can still acheive people spending a huge amount of time into it, not because they need to log once every day but because they actively want to grind that content. Most mmorpg do the same, even if it might mean unsubscribing a few month when things get stall because you played it too much too fast.
Most people who complain about content with Genshin are not saying that we need a new Dragonspine every month, but rather new content you will go back to and grind ( outside of the Resin limitation ) like the Abyss.
The way we spend our daily playtime in the game didn't change much since the game release, a new world boss a new domain a new weekly boss ( which sadly takes on our limited resin pool, so it add variety but not playtime ) and.... the 3 weekly reputation hunt for that weekly 90k mora that's pretty much it. Oh and the daily Rich Ore Reserves.
200m per year seems like chump change for them. I hope their ambition doesn't outgrow what they can realistically deliver though. I guess we'll see how fully realized the third major region is.
Something doesn't add up. This is produced in China, and even in Tier 1 city developer salary would be around $2-3K a month on average depending on seniority.
A very good and senior dev could probably get more, but it would still be well under 6 figures US unless it's a hotshot startup and the dev in question got headhunted from the West or something.
Here is like first hit on Google for 2020. Divide by 6-7 to get $ amount (since Yuan fluctuates).
So with 17K Yuan salary average (on a high side unless the studio is in Beijing), I get about $24mil a year when converted to USD (being overly generous on conversion rate). Now, add executive compensation, benefits, etc...
So $200mil must include office rent and huge marketing cost. Like tremendous marketing cost. Also I wonder if localization teams are included in the 700 people count. If they are outsourced, could be another separate cost to be counted.
A very good and senior dev could probably get more, but it would still be well under 6 figures US unless it's a hotshot startup and the dev in question got headhunted from the West or something.
Here is like first hit on Google for 2020. Divide by 6-7 to get $ amount (since Yuan fluctuates).
Survey of programmer salaries in first-tier cities in 2020 - Programmer Sought
Survey of programmer salaries in first-tier cities in 2020, Programmer Sought, the best programmer technical posts sharing site.
www.programmersought.com
So with 17K Yuan salary average (on a high side unless the studio is in Beijing), I get about $24mil a year when converted to USD (being overly generous on conversion rate). Now, add executive compensation, benefits, etc...
So $200mil must include office rent and huge marketing cost. Like tremendous marketing cost. Also I wonder if localization teams are included in the 700 people count. If they are outsourced, could be another separate cost to be counted.
Lol, yeah this event wasn't good. Especially if you don't use the gacha.
They need to stop making everything a fucking limited event and start adding some permanent content to the game. The wait for the next region is so long that I feel like they won't make it really far at this rate. No way people will keep playing this until the last region is released.
For ongoing mobile games, not really. This isn't one of the big huge devs that are common with triple A stuff. This came out of nowhere
This is a $100 million game on mobile, PC and PS4.
MiHoYo alone employs 1500 devs.
"came out of nowhere" -> They spent millions in marketing and released the game on 3 platforms and they are the people behing Honkai Impact lmfao
This is not an unknown small title like Valheim that "came out of nowhere"
I'm not yet at this point where I've run out of stuff but I can agree here. Personally, I would like something like the dungeons you get in storyquests, but maybe rougelike and random layouts. Currently all of the non open world content is just arenafights. I also hope the tower defense minigame will eventually become a permanent addition.
