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[Skifi28]

It's an interesting discussion, but some people tend to obsess a bit too much about it.

 

[Efren is G.O.A.T.]

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.

Everyone in the team is probably making between 80K~200K a year depending on role and experience. Multiply that number by the amount of people working on the team and how many years of development games take now and you'll understand why it costs millions.

 

[64gigabyteram]

Everyone in the team is probably making between 80K~200K a year depending on role and experience. Multiply that number by the amount of people working on the team and how many years of development games take now and you'll understand why it costs millions.

40 to 50 million yes. naturally makes sense.
100 million? you don't need that much time or manpower to make a video game unless you're going for something that's at the scale of a Bethesda or Rockstar game and even then Bethesda (despite the bugs) made do with less

 

[onQ123]

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.

I actually believe we will return to the days of small dev teams making great games on their own but sadly AI is going to muddy the waters on this one

 

[poppabk]

Because they seemingly ballooned overnight from $10 - 20 million to $400 million and things like that - while not seeming to have made any great leaps in terms of content, quality or even just production values and graphics.