Support NeoGAF

[Ainem Enamas]

I think it's 50-100m, and 2 years at max. Just finished Rage. And the game was so good, first I thought it's going to be like Fallout, but it was much more simpler and focused on the game's core design. Couldn't find how much it costed but the dev-time was like 3 years. So I think in this day the Rage game could be made in 2 years with 100m.
What do you think?

 

[Sticks]

Rage sucked

 

[DeepEnigma]

$1.37 maybe $2.00 at most.

 

[Ainem Enamas]

Rage sucked

I personally really enjoyed it.

 

[AmuroChan]

There's no one size fit all number because wages and cost of living vary greatly across geographic locations. Assuming two same sized teams with the same dev time, both making the same AAA game. One team is in California. The other is in China. The cost of making the game for the studio in CA is going to be magnitudes higher than the budget of the game made in China.

 

[FatallyYours]

 

[Ainem Enamas]

There's no one size fit all number because wages and cost of living vary greatly across geographic locations. Assuming two same sized teams with the same dev time, both making the same AAA game. One team is in California. The other is in China. The cost of making the game for the studio in CA is going to be magnitudes higher than the budget of the game made in China.

Didn't think of it that way...
But if you convert that - 100m and 2 years max, to every region, so it would translate approximately the same. I think in the US - 100m and 2 years would be very optimal for constant AAA pushing. In China maybe 20m? In Japan maybe also 100m? What do you think?

 

[diffusionx]

It's an impossible question to answer.

PS3 games were getting to this level of spend, $50 million to $100 million, a long time ago:

Dead Space 2 Dev Says Game Cost $60M To Make And Sold Millions, But Failed Commercially

The game sold "only" 4 million copies and that "wasn't enough," developer says.

www.gamespot.com

As good as Dead Space 2 was, it came out in 2011 and it would cost a lot more to make a comparable game with modern production values. Clearly though this market cannot function when games cost $250-$350 million and take 5+ years to make. I doubt Spiderman 2, for example, did that well considering Insomniac moved on as quickly as possible. It seems like Sony is trying to rein in costs.

But we also went through a "pandemic" where it seemed most game development just stopped for 2 years whle the costs kept incurring. And massive inflation that led to costs going up 20% immediately. So I don't know if some of the eye popping figures we have seen lately are representative or just part of short term challenges taht the entire industry and really the entire world went through. Ask again in five years.

 

[Labadal]

That's not how real life works.

 

[LectureMaster]

I think around 4 years for major AAA titles is more reasonable.

Loved the Witcher trilogy when CDRP could release a sequel every 4 years.

It's so fucking insane to even think about the old Naughty Dog

UC1 - 2007
UC2 - 2009
UC3 - 2021
TLOU - 2013
UC4 - 2016
Lost Legacy - 2017

Now we have Druckmann and his favorite shaved head characters, we won't get a new game till maybe 2027.

 

[Pop]

I have no clue how much they should cost but currently theres way too much bloat in the AAA scene

Dev cost should be noticeably cheaper for sure

 

[Fabieter]

I think around 4 years for major AAA titles is more reasonable.

Loved the Witcher trilogy when CDRP could release a sequel every 4 years.

It's so fucking insane to even think about the old Naughty Dog

UC1 - 2007
UC2 - 2009
UC3 - 2021
TLOU - 2013
UC4 - 2016
Lost Legacy - 2017

Now we have Druckmann and his favorite shaved head characters, we won't get a new game till maybe 2027.

Everytime we ask for more games they are gonna do another tlou remake.

 

[RCX]

Staff of between 1-20 people. Ideally the fewer the better.

Artstyle of late PS2 games with HD resolution. MGS2 is a prime example.

8-12 hr playtime. No endless live service, post-launch support shite. Just a fully realised game with a beginning and an end.

20 million dollars tops.

 

[bighugeguns]

Think next gen games won't cost much to produce, when guys like EA tells investors they're going to significantly reduce dev costs, believe them.

Although, that said, that same method of using AI in development cost reduction could be added to big budgets to make even huger games!

 

[lughnasadh123]

Better question is how each studio can make better decisions that help cut costs while still making a desirable product. Every answer is going to be different.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Staff of between 1-20 people. Ideally the fewer the better.

I think this is one of the most important things they could do. Just look at Team Cherry and what a team of about 5 people are able to do.

Plus imo, large development team = management hell, I bet AAA devs lose a lot of time on that.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

This is the market that regulates, in other words, reducing the number of aaa and increasing the number of aa.

 

[The artful mincer]

As long as they break even and make a profit it doesn't matter.

All this concern about budgets ballooning is nonsense. Hollywood Films have been able to get up £450 million and still be profitable.

Gaming as the apparently bigger industry can afford to have bigger budgets. All games now have infinite shelf rooms thanks to digital stores and even before we discuss shit microtransactions.

 

[Ainem Enamas]

It's an impossible question to answer.

PS3 games were getting to this level of spend, $50 million to $100 million, a long time ago:

Dead Space 2 Dev Says Game Cost $60M To Make And Sold Millions, But Failed Commercially

The game sold "only" 4 million copies and that "wasn't enough," developer says.

www.gamespot.com

As good as Dead Space 2 was, it came out in 2011 and it would cost a lot more to make a comparable game with modern production values. Clearly though this market cannot function when games cost $250-$350 million and take 5+ years to make. I doubt Spiderman 2, for example, did that well considering Insomniac moved on as quickly as possible. It seems like Sony is trying to rein in costs.

But we also went through a "pandemic" where it seemed most game development just stopped for 2 years whle the costs kept incurring. And massive inflation that led to costs going up 20% immediately. So I don't know if some of the eye popping figures we have seen lately are representative or just part of short term challenges taht the entire industry and really the entire world went through. Ask again in five years.

But if, for an example, you would force the dev-time to be only 2 years for US based studios, how much it would cost to make the game, in 2025 terms? Now that you said all of that, yeah it's more complex... didn't think that much when created the thread. When I was making this thread, I was thinking something like - since the cost is so high in this day and games take a lot of time to make - how would you minimize the cost and time with changing scope of games...like the upcoming Wolverine game, how would you force that game to be a 2 year project

 

[PauloRoberto]

IMHO, you are seeing by the wrong angle. The problem is the sheer number of pepole working on something that you can SEE it can be done with less people. Pratical example: Did you see how lenghtly are the credits for Prince of Persia the Lost Crown, in comparison with Hollow Knight ?!

 

[kiphalfton]

Rage sucked

Sounds painful

 

[semiconscious]

I think around 4 years for major AAA titles is more reasonable.

Loved the Witcher trilogy when CDRP could release a sequel every 4 years.

It's so fucking insane to even think about the old Naughty Dog

UC1 - 2007
UC2 - 2009
UC3 - 2021
TLOU - 2013
UC4 - 2016
Lost Legacy - 2017

Now we have Druckmann and his favorite shaved head characters, we won't get a new game till maybe 2027.

if you're in the business of selling new game consoles every 7 years, & your major studios take 5 years to produce a single title? you've hit a serious bump in the road. when you throw in cross-gen, what possible incentive is there to not wait years before purchasing a next-gen console? or even skip over every other gen?...

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Like anything in life, it should be compared to expected sales and profits. In business, there's standard costs metrics like COGs and SG&A. The goal is to have a reasonable cost % and then have a decent forecasted amount of units sold. So do some math and see where it shakes out.

Problem is gaming is so volatile and most studios have no clue how it will sell (and how would they since most studios dont even show gamers the game until the final year when most dev costs are already done?), so it practically a random shotgun whether it will do well or not unless it's an established IP with predictable sales. And even that can be wonky when you got stuff like Veilguard bombing.

$100M budget is insane for shitty game selling 2M copies. But for COD that sells 20M copies and gets tons of mtx on top of it, $100M might be fine.

 

[Loomy]

I think it's 50-100m, and 2 years at max. Just finished Rage. And the game was so good, first I thought it's going to be like Fallout, but it was much more simpler and focused on the game's core design. Couldn't find how much it costed but the dev-time was like 3 years. So I think in this day the Rage game could be made in 2 years with 100m.

With how many devs?

Rage took more than 3 years to make. Carmack demo'd id tech 5 at Apples conference in 2007 and showed an early demo for the game which would have been in development for some time already, and the full game released 4 years later.

No way for anyone outside of individual studios to answer that question since it varies so much. People like to give Insomniac crap for the cost of Spider-Man 2, but does anyone actually believe they wasted millions of dollars and, not only did they suffer no consequences from Sony, but were given more money to make other games?

Yes, AAA development is very expensive, but until we find ways to cut costs, it'll continue to be expensive.

 

[Rockman33]

2 years is really short these days. I'd think almost impossible without the crunch for a lot of titles. 2 years being the really low end and 4 years for a big giant AAA game seem good to me.

 

[Felessan]

I think it's 50-100m, and 2 years at max. Just finished Rage. And the game was so good, first I thought it's going to be like Fallout, but it was much more simpler and focused on the game's core design. Couldn't find how much it costed but the dev-time was like 3 years. So I think in this day the Rage game could be made in 2 years with 100m.
What do you think?

AAA 100-200m and 3-5 years
AA 50-100m and 2-3 years
A 10-50m and 1-2 years
Indies <10m

Why people want to upper tier to be gone so they can have their AA tier games to be on top is beyond me. If you don't like high profile games - don't play them, there are plenty of less expensive games. But some people do like their fancy games and you just want to deprive them of their games.

 

[PlayStaytion]

Must be reasonable with AI until the evil guys behind it ask for more unreasonably.

 

[CrimsonTide]

AAA 100-200m and 3-5 years
AA 50-100m and 2-3 years
A 10-50m and 1-2 years
Indies <10m

Why people want to upper tier to be gone so they can have their AA tier games to be on top is beyond me. If you don't like high profile games - don't play them, there are plenty of less expensive games. But some people do like their fancy games and you just want to deprive them of their games.

I can get behind this scope

Indie-ish-AA is my fav

Silly things like "No, I am not human" is my jam

 

[Aressa]

100m is a ridiculously high amount of money. A focused AAA game shouldn't need more than 40 - 70m max unless it's aiming for massive open world scope and movie-level production. Funny how some devs complain about Silksong only costing 20$.

 

[Bondo]

Whatever Mafia Old Country took.
Great story, fun game, doesnt over stay its welcome, and doesnt appear to have a massive budget.

Need more games like this. Less fluff

 

[Durin]

$30-100 million is the threshold for AAA budgets that I'd like to see, with only the very top franchises getting close to $100 million.

The best examples this year for my ideal would be Split Fiction (estimated around 50 million or less) and Clair Obscur (estimated 25-30 million when I asked AI before)...because if you go back to when AAA started in the 360/PS3 era you had games like Gears of War 1 made at $12 million or more, and Gears 3 closing the gen with $48-60 million.

Games getting labelled "AA" this gen, are working with budgets similar to AAA in that PS3/360 era. Keep it there, make graphics within those limits.

 

[Danjin44]

We can reduce the cost of games if STOP putting celebrities in video games, do we really need it?

 

[Black_Stride]

I think it's 50-100m, and 2 years at max. Just finished Rage. And the game was so good, first I thought it's going to be like Fallout, but it was much more simpler and focused on the game's core design. Couldn't find how much it costed but the dev-time was like 3 years. So I think in this day the Rage game could be made in 2 years with 100m.
What do you think?

Rage the id game from 2011?

Thats your benchmark for what AAA games should be like today?

Mate we were using 1.2GB VRAM graphics cards in 2011.........if thats the quality of game we were stuck making I would have never needed to spend so much money on GPUs.

$30-100 million is the threshold for AAA budgets that I'd like to see, with only the very top franchises getting close to $100 million.

The best examples this year for my ideal would be Split Fiction (estimated around 50 million or less) and Clair Obscur (estimated 25-30 million when I asked AI before)...because if you go back to when AAA started in the 360/PS3 era you had games like Gears of War 1 made at $12 million or more, and Gears 3 closing the gen with $48-60 million.

Games getting labelled "AA" this gen, are working with budgets similar to AAA in that PS3/360 era. Keep it there, make graphics within those limits.

PS360 AAA games were already in 60 to 100 million range.


But I do agree that we need more "cheaper" games.
Looking at the costs break down of AAA vs midsized projects, sub 100 million is good enough for me.
IF we get more Expedition 33s ill be down.


From the Insomniac Leaks.

 

[Sintoid]

I think it's 50-100m, and 2 years at max. Just finished Rage. And the game was so good, first I thought it's going to be like Fallout, but it was much more simpler and focused on the game's core design. Couldn't find how much it costed but the dev-time was like 3 years. So I think in this day the Rage game could be made in 2 years with 100m.
What do you think?

Please split all the costs so we can discute how you come to that budget plan

 

[Felessan]

$30-100 million is the threshold for AAA budgets that I'd like to see, with only the very top franchises getting close to $100 million.

Do you feel offended that something like Ferrari exists and think that everyone should crawl in the dirt?
What's wrong with games with even 1bn budget - it's not your money that fund development. And yours 50mn games are still there. And no, there will not be a surge of these games if 100-200-500mn game go out, it doesn't work this way. Guys who fund 200mn games want numbers/risk/reward of 200mn games, they will just pull out completely if this tier are off.

 

[RCX]

Let's be honest, one of easiest ways to conserve budget is to get your studio out of California.

Hell, even major movie studios don't make anything in the state anymore.

 

[TGO]

Today? between 100-200 million depending on the project.
Development time about 2-4 years, yet again depending on the project.
Where it's made should have zero influence on the product, same budget and development time, no excuses.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

How the fuck should I know, I'm some idiot posting memes on GAF lol

 

[Ainem Enamas]

I think around 4 years for major AAA titles is more reasonable.

Loved the Witcher trilogy when CDRP could release a sequel every 4 years.

It's so fucking insane to even think about the old Naughty Dog

UC1 - 2007
UC2 - 2009
UC3 - 2021
TLOU - 2013
UC4 - 2016
Lost Legacy - 2017

Now we have Druckmann and his favorite shaved head characters, we won't get a new game till maybe 2027.

I think 4 years is bit too long, if we're talking about optimizing constant AAA game releases. Like you mentioned ND's output, do you really don't want this to continue in this day?

 

[Ainem Enamas]

I have no clue how much they should cost but currently theres way too much bloat in the AAA scene

Dev cost should be noticeably cheaper for sure

Yes, because now the focus is on all this tested stuff - games need to have all these graphical features etc

 

[Ainem Enamas]

Staff of between 1-20 people. Ideally the fewer the better.

Artstyle of late PS2 games with HD resolution. MGS2 is a prime example.

8-12 hr playtime. No endless live service, post-launch support shite. Just a fully realised game with a beginning and an end.

20 million dollars tops.

Would be fucking great

 

[Ainem Enamas]

Better question is how each studio can make better decisions that help cut costs while still making a desirable product. Every answer is going to be different.

What do you think needs that 'cut' the most in the most of projects?

 

[Ainem Enamas]

I think this is one of the most important things they could do. Just look at Team Cherry and what a team of about 5 people are able to do.

Plus imo, large development team = management hell, I bet AAA devs lose a lot of time on that.

Really agree with this, the larger the team the harder it is to manage

 

[Griffon]

It's more expensive and slow because those studios are more incompetent than ever. They hire 100 devs and only 10 of them are doing the real work, the rest are useless buffoons at best, malicious psychos at worst.

 

[Ainem Enamas]

This is the market that regulates, in other words, reducing the number of aaa and increasing the number of aa.

Is Rage game a proper AAA? I enjoyed the game so much, gameplay, story, limited world interactions (yes, that's great, because it doesn't need it IMO), progression, the feel of the game. I would be so glad if games like that would regularly come out every two years from all the studios

 

[Ainem Enamas]

As long as they break even and make a profit it doesn't matter.

All this concern about budgets ballooning is nonsense. Hollywood Films have been able to get up £450 million and still be profitable.

Gaming as the apparently bigger industry can afford to have bigger budgets. All games now have infinite shelf rooms thanks to digital stores and even before we discuss shit microtransactions.

But do you think games actually need that much resources, why spend extra for a couple of graphical elements and other things that could easily not be there

 

[Ainem Enamas]

IMHO, you are seeing by the wrong angle. The problem is the sheer number of pepole working on something that you can SEE it can be done with less people. Pratical example: Did you see how lenghtly are the credits for Prince of Persia the Lost Crown, in comparison with Hollow Knight ?!

Haven't played either of those but I see what you mean

 

[Ainem Enamas]

if you're in the business of selling new game consoles every 7 years, & your major studios take 5 years to produce a single title? you've hit a serious bump in the road. when you throw in cross-gen, what possible incentive is there to not wait years before purchasing a next-gen console? or even skip over every other gen?...

That's why this thread exists. Do you really wouldn't want games like Uncharted 2 every 2 years, but with modern visuals?

 

[simpatico]

New Blood does a good job. Games are cheap as hell. Good as hell. And devs are rich as fuck. Their secret? Hating money.

 

[bitbydeath]

I think around 4 years for major AAA titles is more reasonable.

Loved the Witcher trilogy when CDRP could release a sequel every 4 years.

It's so fucking insane to even think about the old Naughty Dog

UC1 - 2007
UC2 - 2009
UC3 - 2021
TLOU - 2013
UC4 - 2016
Lost Legacy - 2017

Now we have Druckmann and his favorite shaved head characters, we won't get a new game till maybe 2027.

Do this, then add a second team so new releases are delivered every two years.

Insomniac has three main teams, which is how they can deliver new games on a near yearly cycle.