The obsession with the budget of video games lately seems strange to me.

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onQ123

Member
Why has videogame budgets become such a concern in the last few years?

I don't remember ever giving a damn about how much a game cost to make 😂
 
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I think it's just a correlation between dev costs and bloated dev times. The perception at this point is that a majority of the spend is bloat because the quality of games is pretty iffy in many cases in the modern era.

Cost is just a highly visible thing to point at as a problem. It's not the entire problem just a symptom of it.
 
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I just don't see why the damn things cost millions upon millions. I also think some of the problem has been hiring too many people and finding ones that have no talent.
 
The more information people have, the more things they get to have an opinion about. That's in everything.

With videogame budgets specifically, creators have also been sounding alarm bells in the last few years, so that's why people invested in it - although I'm not sure wtf they expect players to do about inflating budgets.
 
I can see why people obsess over it, but it clearly doesn't determine the quality of a game anymore. I think manpower should be more of an important focus.
 
Increased costs will get passed onto customers, justifying higher prices. So from a consumer awareness point of view, understanding what your money is actually paying for is always important.
 
RavageX said:
I just don't see why the damn things cost millions upon millions. I also think some of the problem has been hiring too many people and finding ones that have no talent.
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Same here.

You look at the average cost and dev time, and then you look at some of the slop that is produced from it, and you wonder where all the money and time went.

Mismanagement is likely a huge problem, as is coddling employees and an ever inflating budget for stuff like HR, etc... that doesn't directly impact the final product.
 
It's not strange to me. People care about sustainability in an industry that provides them with joy. Not to mention that budget is often linked to profitability and development times (which most consider too high) and yeah, it becomes an important talking point. It is also very impressive that you have studios like Moon, Concerned Ape, Team Cherry etc putting out some of the best games of the last 2 decades on shoe string budgets contrasted against disaster projects like Halo Infinite and Concord. It's all interesting.
 
Because they largely determine what sort of games get made. A publisher spending hundreds of millions isn't going to experiment or take any chances. They'll look at what's selling and make more of that. Also gives them more of an incentive to monetize the shit out of their games and nickel-and-dime people to death.
 
same with movies.
Instead of a 300mil cgi slop.
they could have funded 5-6 movies with a modest 60mil budget given to promising varied projects instead of a demographic dartboard.

and it sucks that all the old talented small studios that made fan favorite games with low budgets got purchased by the big companies and got wasted and/or shut down shortly after.
 
Maybe it's because we're paying up to 80 bucks for games now. Sure, it's not that different from 30 years ago once you adjust for inflation, but back then everything was new and people were doing extraordinary stuff to deliver a hit, sometimes things that were way ahead of their time, with insane, never-before-seen techniques.

It's amazing to see how some RARE and Naughty Dog games were made, and the whole odyssey behind creating something like Resident Evil 4. Some of them even have "documentaries" showing how wild the production was.

The problem, in my view, is that way less money goes into actual tech compared to how much gets wasted on marketing today. That's a huge screw-up because you end up bloating the budget while delivering something that doesn't match the hype.

Of course a small-budget game can work miracles with some extraordinary creativity, but that's a huge exception. In general, I just don't feel comfortable paying 80 bucks for a game that was super cheap to make and looks like it's one or more decades behind.
 
Because we are perplexed by how much some steaming piles of shit cost. Is embarrassing sometimes when you see how much a game cost and the end product. Alot are case studies on how not to make a game.
 
DeepEnigma said:
Probably due to us forum gamers being fickle cunts and we'll argue or concern troll over anything?
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Basically this.

Honestly, its just a convenient angle to support the "AAA = Bad" argument.

Which is hilariously dumb considering that nobody is forced to buy AAA product, these days its a shrinkingly small minority of titles among an insane number of titles that get published each month, and only on top of the past 50 plus years of titles created - a large proportion of which are still easily available.
 
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I, for one, want less transparency and information on things I buy.

I just enjoy product. I consume. Then, I get excited for new product.

I trust my corporate betters. Keep the sparkling distracting things and the memberberries coming to my feed!
 
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Its because budgets for games are a more tightly kept secret than how much money the US armed forces and CIA make smuggling and selling drugs. Makes it intriguing.
 
I 100% agree. It can be interesting to know per se, but it makes no difference to me when playing. Same with number of developers or indie games: "You need to like everything about this game because it's indie!". Nope, don't give a shite. I love Dead Cells because it's a great game, that's it.
 
onQ123 said:
Why has videogame budgets become such a concern in the last few years?

I don't remember ever giving a damn about how much a game cost to make 😂
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Ok fair enough.

But let me spell this out for you and why it matters:

1. Games need to make money in order to exist.
2. Games with higher budgets need to sell more copies
3. Games that dont make a profit cause people to lose their job.
 
Banjo64 said:
It's not strange to me. People care about sustainability in an industry that provides them with joy. Not to mention that budget is often linked to profitability and development times (which most consider too high) and yeah, it becomes an important talking point. It is also very impressive that you have studios like Moon, Concerned Ape, Team Cherry etc putting out some of the best games of the last 2 decades on shoe string budgets contrasted against disaster projects like Halo Infinite and Concord. It's all interesting.
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Yep. I agree that sustainability IS the main reason.

Not only that, many people like me are sick and tired of all this money being blown on graphical bells and whistles, when I would much rather see a portion devoted to optimization and performance.
 
Game economics 101. We talk about budgets in the context of the financial success of a game. The more successful, the more the chance that we will see sequels or similar games. The bottom line has a direct impact on what we as gamers will be playing in the future.
 
There is nothing strange about discussing budgets involved with the production of games, and I would say that it's far weirder to imply that it could be considered "strange" in any way.

Like others pointed out, given that game pricing and costs have been consistent talking points, it's expected that budgets should also be scrutinized in relation to those. Even outside of that, it's only natural that people want to know or discuss how much or how little money went into games. Not just with massive successes (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong) but also with high-profile failures (Concord, Suicide Squad: KtJL, etc.). Understanding what goes into both successes and failures is a good thing, even more so when it involves people involved with this interest being affected.

Same with movies, and the production behind those. Hell, the games industry is mirroring more than a few of the same issues the movie industry is currently suffering from, and not just with budgetary concerns.
 
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Because i'd love to know why a game like Spiderman 2 on PS5 costs well over $300 million and is as boring as shit yet Clair Obscur can cost around $10 million, look as good and play as good and is infinitely more fun. Where in the fuck is that extra $300 million dollars going? And it's not just Spiderman 2. What did the newest COD cost? Around 3 quarters of a billion dollars? For WHAT exactly???

So yes, you may find it strange to obsess over game budgets but when they stall release dates and yet the end results are just awful, well I'll continue questioning why these big corporations keep blowing large sums for minimal gains and further jeopardizing our industry.
 
MacReady13 said:
Because i'd love to know why a game like Spiderman 2 on PS5 costs well over $300 million and is as boring as shit yet Clair Obscur can cost around $10 million, look as good and play as good and is infinitely more fun. Where in the fuck is that extra $300 million dollars going? And it's not just Spiderman 2. What did the newest COD cost? Around 3 quarters of a billion dollars? For WHAT exactly???
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I mean, to start with you're comparing something completely objective to something completely subjective. The cost of a game is a fact, whether or not you enjoy it is an opinion.

That said, is the scope of Spiderman 2 comparable to Clair Obscur, game size, number of assets, etc etc etc are all factors. IMHO tho at the end of the day the studios should be thinking that they can do more with less as the takeaway.
 
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Because increasing budgets have become a problem for AAA games, and are often cited as the reason for many things people complain about: like the lack of new IP, over reliance on sequels and IP, safe and samey game design, etc.
 
Sethbacca said:
IMHO tho at the end of the day the studios should be thinking that they can do more with less as the takeaway.
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That is all that they should be thinking about. And I did say I'm not just talking Spiderman 2. I'm referring to many other games with similar budgets that don't show 1/1000th the love and care and quality of what Clair Obscur shows. It's an indictment on ANY company that those devs could spend so little for such a high quality game that shit on games with budgets over 30 times that amount. And anyone that doesn't question that or consider it abnormal really SHOULD start looking closely at this shit as it truly does affect us when we pay for games and affects quality (higher cost of development generally means less risks).
 
onQ123 said:
Why has videogame budgets become such a concern in the last few years?

I don't remember ever giving a damn about how much a game cost to make 😂
Click to expand...

Because it would seem they could be cut down by 50% at least.

For the record I don't give a shit either way.
 
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Well I somewhat agree... I just don't really care how high a game budget is just make it fun to play.
If someone doesn't plan their budget realistically then the game will lose lots of money just as in other business like movies or any others.
Its sucks if the dead game or studio is your favorite but thats just life, sorry.
 
games are getting more expensive, less inventive, worse written and so on.

Looking at a budget helps to figure out if it was a funding issue or just absolute shite management and skills, and overall, the studio's fault. It's turning out to be the latter more often than not.

it's also not a new thing and most of the entertainment industry looks at budgets vs sales and quality. Even stage plays.
 
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When games like Halo Infinite and Concord comfortably waste half a billion dollars each and kill their respective studios, while a first-timer made for 2% of the budget becomes an absolute juggernaut, people are going to talk about it, because there's a lot to talk about.

Ubisoft could've had Expedition 33 under their umbrella, but rather then trust their talent and spend $10m on a new idea, they'd rather trust their suites and drop $400m on the next Assassin's Creed. That's worth discussing.
 
onQ123 said:
Why has videogame budgets become such a concern in the last few years?

I don't remember ever giving a damn about how much a game cost to make 😂
Click to expand...

I used to not care either but with so many devs\studios being shut down over it I do care now. I don't want to see my favorite studio or series be shutdown because the budgets got to big and the sales didn't increase enough to pay for it.
 
onQ123 said:
Why has videogame budgets become such a concern in the last few years?

I don't remember ever giving a damn about how much a game cost to make 😂
Click to expand...

Since the moment they are justifying price increases on "skyrocketing budgets"

Consumers should not pay an extra for incompetence on their side.
 
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people obsess over game budgets, cause its hard to convince me or anybody that spending more than 100 million on a video game of all things is a sound investment.

Quick reminder that if any random loser wanted to make a video game, all they'd need is a copy of Godot/Unity/Unreal. All engines, that for the majority of your time developing your game will be free. You can even code your own engine if you're so inclined.
You can throw together some lines of code and make a fully functioning video game in 2 weeks. People do this on the daily for game jams and certain game design experiments/sketches.
literally all you need is some art/coding skills and an engine. Music is entirely optional if you can craft a good-sounding enough ambiance.

Meanwhile AAA studios require the GDP of a small country to make their video games and charge 80 dollars just for the basic edition (120 for the "ultimate" edition) only for them to be 1/4th as fun as the shoestring budget $50 MSRP originals they made 20 years ago. What the fuck is going on inside those buildings?

I'm not saying video game development is easy. What i'm saying is that it's accessible. AAA studios don't need a googol's worth of dollars just to pump out something that took them 20 million in 2013.
 
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