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[Moriarty1889]

Greedy CEO’s, bloated budgets and unreal expectations of profit. These companies today want every game they make to be the next moneymaker like Fortnite. Then when reality sets in despite decent sales it’s still not enough. It’s never enough for them and that’s why you have this problem….greed. Pure and simple. Just look at the recent story with the Bungie exec and his collection of cars. If that doesn’t clue you in then nothing will.

 

[Danjin44]

AAA devs are overspending both for the graphics and marketing.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

When videogames was stolen by business men and shareholders and become a stupid industry without passion. And even worst, we have now shitty politics and woke non sense (hello black samurai in traditional Japan or intentionally ugly woman in Star Wars)

 

[Fafalada]

A future where Insomniac's stuck on Marvel/X-Men & any number of other SIE studios are stuck on Batman, WW, The Flash, Superman, and MK games would just be depressing.

Extraordinarily so, yes.

That said....still have to say the idea of a Naughty Dog-developed Game of Thrones title is extremely intriguing (and at least it'd be a break from the superhero stuff).

Here I will disagree. If there's one thing I don't really want to see more of is game industry takes on mainstream IPs that have already been milked to death. While GoT hasn't been bastardized quite as much as Tolkien (though there's been a lot of junk too) - gaming has always been at its best when its not chained to IP limitations.
Case in point - imagine if Dead Space was made by the same studio at the same time it did - but had 'Aliens' IP attached to it. Even in the unlikely scenario that the game would have stayed good - it wouldn't have broken half the grounds it did.
I wouldn't mind NDD take on medieval timeframe (although I'd prefer sci-fi - make Savage Starlight happen!) but let them do what they do best and built something original in it. Hell - projecting from what Uncharted did - I'd 'love' to see them bring that Errol Flynn inspired camp from other historical eras into games.
Or if we 'must' take an existing IP - let them do Quantum Thief trilogy (It's basically Arsene Lupin in space, but better).

 

[jakinov]

This is the topic. I asked why. Smaller teams made ground breaking games for 30 years then in the past 10 years, everything has been "this game that isn't better than the last few gens sold 4x more than the previous games, and its not profitable". I think there's more of a budgeting issue than cost of games.

In regards to "ground breaking". It's harder to be ground breaking when people have already solved a lot of the game design problems. Gears of War was ground breaking for it's cover system but everyone else just copied it. Assassinss Creed was ground breaking for how it handled the open world and stealth mechanics. Call of Duty for how it handled FPS gameplay. Ground breaking basically means introducing something new while bringing substantial impact.

Standards are much higher today than they were years ago. People expect more in gameplay and in graphics. People have lower standards for games in the past like they do for movies. Look at how people excuse Star Wars cheesy dialogue and effects. If you took most games from the past that were highly praised with only a face-lift people would complain about the gameplay that's why people talk about specific games holding up well. The little things people take for granted nowadays and are common still require people to implement and in turn cost money. The people you hire cost more and you need more than them whereas game prices have not really gone up much. Lets look at GTA 3 for example, graphics/visuals aside think of all the features that are standard nowadadays in an open world game like interactive map, mini map, waypoints, path routing, full cover system, fast travel etc. If you built a modern game like GTA 3 you'd expect all those game features and more.


Games aren't selling 4X more. The problem is that they are selling about the same or only slightly more while standards/costs are going up higher and higher.

Also in regards to when started, you started hearing about it back int he 360/PS3 days.

Dead Space 2 Sold 4 Million Copies, Still Considered Sales Disappointment

A former Visceral Games developer reveals that, despite Dead Space 2 selling 4 million copies, Electronic Arts viewed the sequel as a sales disappointment.

gamerant.com

continued on in the PS4/X1 days:

Tomb Raider has sold 3.4 million copies, failed to hit expectations

3.4 million copies of Tomb Raider have been sold in four weeks, publisher Square Enix has revealed, which is not enough…

www.eurogamer.net

 

[diffusionx]

On Xbox 360 where minimum for a multi platform game was $60 million budget. A top AAA game these days costs $200 million.

 

[LavitzSlambert]

History lesson time for you youngs (and the senile olds who forgot).

It started during the HD era and continued as games grew larger and longer, with more mechanics thrown in. That surge in complexity has resulted in the cookie-cutter AAA industry we see today. Every big game needs to be visually intensive, with an open world, with crafting and RPG mechanics, and full voice acting. But they also need to be well executed, because if they aren't, gamers will just play something else that is. Right when devs started getting comfortable with the amount of time and effort it took to support high quality modeling, now you throw in all of these other things that also need to be animated. Budgets have swollen along with the cost of living and team size.

Elder Scrolls and Fallout began this trend when devs realized the tech was here, and these giant games were possible. But those games were exceptional. Morrowind in particular almost destroyed Bethesda shortly after they were acquired by Zenimax. The only reason they were able to even create what they did was because of how small a team they were. Which also meant no voice acting and other things we have come to expect in today's games. Morrowind sold 4, maybe 5 million copies and was a giant success. Keep in mind Oblivion had an upscaled team, full HD world, voice acting, etc. It sold similarly, but launched at $60 (up from $50) and pioneered microtransations (horse armor) as well as had a large expansion too (Shivering Isles which was $30). It was a glow up moment for Bethesda in the eyes of the gaming community, and helped setup Skyrim to be a blowout success that you really can't compare other games to - it was a phenomenon.

So now you have these gigantic teams trying to mimic the success of these unicorns, and with cheap money from ZIRP, and (at the time) a growing userbase, it was pretty easy to justify large games. Now that gaming is not growing at the rate it was, free money printer has been turned off, and the increasing development time, it's just not financially viable for companies to have hundreds of people working on one huge game for 5+ years - unless it sells tens of millions of copies. That's the only way it makes sense - so if a game is not as successful as expected, that is a problem. If it flops? That's why you are seeing all of these studio closures, it's not a viable business model, and you don't get a "next time" when the last project your team worked on bombed, lighting many millions of dollars on fire.

Price increases, smaller team sizes, smaller scope of games, less/no voice acting, games as a service, larger userbase. Those are the factors that will help games become successful if they don't sell millions.

 

[Rat Rage]

It all went to shit as soon as it became "cool" for the general gaming population to CONSTANTLY ask for MORE POWER!!! It all started with the sixth generation of consoles, a.k.a the PS2 era. This is where it actually started to become "en vogue" to put a lot of emphasis on presentation, fancy CGI cutscenes, cinematic trailers and shit. However, it was the PS3 era which started to introduce ridiculously large budgets and teams.

Not enough people realized that always asking for more power would ultimately lead to a creative and development dead end because at a certain level of hardware power and diminishing graphical returns, you, as a huge as game publisher, are literally forced to create a certain type of gaming look and gameplay, because the general gaming population won't accept any other look. This all creates games which are too similar.

It's a very complex problem of what publishers believe the gaming population actually demands, what the gaming population actually demands and gaming publishers believe is feasable to do.

Ultimately I think it is a fundamental problem of too much hardware power, which needs to be "used" in a certain way.

Maybe this is a problem that can't be fixed. Maybe the gaming industry is ultimately fucked.

On the top of my head, a radical solution would be to try something like a "indie console" or better a ultra low cost, low polygon gaming mashine.

Something that is restriced enough to allow for smaller development teams of 20 or 30 people. The console itself needs too be so cheap, that anyone can afford it.

Like 99 dollars max. Maybe even 49 dollars.

Another way would be to resurrect old classic consoles with updated versions, for example:

How about a Super Nintendo Pro?
How about a Mega Drive Pro?
How about a Playstation 1 Pro?

All of them faster then their OG versions, so they can produce BETTER looking games, but still limited enough to not lose their identity. Basically a physical console eco system, which would be perfect for indie developers or any other smaller, but highly creative group.

Games would need to be in the price range of 29 to 39 dollars max for any game.

 

[DryvBy]

In regards to "ground breaking". It's harder to be ground breaking when people have already solved a lot of the game design problems. Gears of War was ground breaking for it's cover system but everyone else just copied it. Assassinss Creed was ground breaking for how it handled the open world and stealth mechanics. Call of Duty for how it handled FPS gameplay. Ground breaking basically means introducing something new while bringing substantial impact.

Standards are much higher today than they were years ago. People expect more in gameplay and in graphics. People have lower standards for games in the past like they do for movies. Look at how people excuse Star Wars cheesy dialogue and effects. If you took most games from the past that were highly praised with only a face-lift people would complain about the gameplay that's why people talk about specific games holding up well. The little things people take for granted nowadays and are common still require people to implement and in turn cost money. The people you hire cost more and you need more than them whereas game prices have not really gone up much. Lets look at GTA 3 for example, graphics/visuals aside think of all the features that are standard nowadadays in an open world game like interactive map, mini map, waypoints, path routing, full cover system, fast travel etc. If you built a modern game like GTA 3 you'd expect all those game features and more.


Games aren't selling 4X more. The problem is that they are selling about the same or only slightly more while standards/costs are going up higher and higher.

Also in regards to when started, you started hearing about it back int he 360/PS3 days.

Dead Space 2 Sold 4 Million Copies, Still Considered Sales Disappointment

A former Visceral Games developer reveals that, despite Dead Space 2 selling 4 million copies, Electronic Arts viewed the sequel as a sales disappointment.

gamerant.com

continued on in the PS4/X1 days:

Tomb Raider has sold 3.4 million copies, failed to hit expectations

3.4 million copies of Tomb Raider have been sold in four weeks, publisher Square Enix has revealed, which is not enough…

www.eurogamer.net

Not near as frequently. Almost every game now needs to hit 50m to be profitable. And today we have more micro transactions to shake a stick at. People claim digital was here to save them, digital is up, profits are still down. Where is all of this money going?

 

[EDMIX]

yea, thats what happens when you keep the price the same for several generations.

 

[jakinov]

Not near as frequently. Almost every game now needs to hit 50m to be profitable. And today we have more micro transactions to shake a stick at. People claim digital was here to save them, digital is up, profits are still down. Where is all of this money going?

What is not near as frequent?

Where on earth you get that idea that almost every game needs 50M to be profitable? The vast majority of games don't even break 10 million let alone 1.


Microtransactions is what allow games to sell only a few million copies and still be profitable.


Why would digital save them? Who claimed it would. Who also said profits are down? The only positive sentiment I've heard from the industry about digital across developers/publishers (apart from platform owners) is that digital lets you have more control over merchnadising (marketing not merchandise) and promotion.

I think the problem here is you is that you have the wrong idea on how many games are actually being sold how much it takes to be profitable. You mention that games are selling 4x more and that almost every game needs 50M to be profitable when those numbers are far from reality. Very few games have quadrapled their sales and they are from considered unsuccesful or unprofitable. There's no game today that needs 50M copies sold to be profitable.

 

[lmimmfn]

It's the same with movies, have a huge budget, lots of CGI effects and a higher chance of becoming a blockbuster.

Another thing with games and movies is if they meet their DEI/ESG goals they get cheaper loans ( unfortunately)

 

[West Texas CEO]

New games should be priced at $89.99, minimum.

 

[Magic Carpet]

New games should be priced at $89.99, minimum.

If everyone would stop buying condoms and use that money on games the gaming world would be a better place.
More babies=More console sales=More game sales.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Who knows when it really changed, but if you read up on game sales in the 90s, some games considered top sellers selling a million copies on consoles "deemed greatest hits", or a PC game sold maybe 500,000 tops. And that was success. I remember someone posting top selling games on consoles in the 90s by platform and I think the best sellers were around 5M with tons in that 1-3M range. I think only Super Mario 64 topped 10M.

Now, 1-3M copies is considered meh.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Let's say Doom sold 200,000 copies in the first year and made money.

Which of the two will benefit the most from the sales?

The current ID software staff?

Or these dorks?

The modern day photographer benefits the most.

If you look at any old school dev team pic, it's usually a random pic of them goofing around or some coworker with a Polaroid cam was taking random shots.

Now, every studio has this weird way of doing those giant front lobby promotional pics on twitter like everyone is one big happy family.

I've never worked at any large company who has ever cared enough wasting time doing that.

 

[West Texas CEO]

If everyone would stop buying condoms and use that money on games the gaming world would be a better place.
More babies=More console sales=More game sales.

You sir, are an absolute genius.

 

[IAmRei]

yea, thats what happens when you keep the price the same for several generations.

This

$60 dollars x 1.000.000 is not much for big studios, it will only cover part of the dev cost, they need 3m at least to cover the dev cost, and maybe more if the scale of the games are bigger.

And i roughly count spiderman 2 cost vs 12m sales. They roughly got almost 1000m, and they only got 100-150m, maybe 200m, roughly after lot of cuts, especially said 30% of marvel cut. And all vs they said 300m budget. And by AAAA sony standard, its not big enough for one of the biggest :/

I think mario wonder in 12m having lot of positive because nintendo only use roughly 10-15m to develop, with almost the same revenue.

If the game development cost are too high, xx million sales are needed to justify the cost.

Its crazy because there are lot of stakes such as dev cost vs timeline to be gamble with. And the sales target will always more than xx millions. How many games reach more than 10M sales? Not much.

 

[Hypereides]

In regards to "ground breaking". It's harder to be ground breaking when people have already solved a lot of the game design problems. Gears of War was ground breaking for it's cover system but everyone else just copied it. Assassinss Creed was ground breaking for how it handled the open world and stealth mechanics. Call of Duty for how it handled FPS gameplay. Ground breaking basically means introducing something new while bringing substantial impact.

(...)

Just a small remark here; Gears of war copied, refined and popularised the cover system. Killswitch (Namco hometek) originally introduced it:



I'd also like to counter your argument by claiming that ground breaking gameplay is still readily achievable and can be engineered if incentivized/encouraged. Its all about finding the right skilled developers, followed by obtaining them and then retaining them in your studio(s). Not saying its easy by any stretch, but it is possible with a fresh view and the right mindset. Big studios face various internal challenges that make it more difficult and prevent it from happening.

 

[PotatoBoy]

Warcraft 3 was made by like 30 people.

Nobody in this thread can tell me "increased complexity of games" is the reason game budgets are inflated. Warcraft 3 is still a more complex game than 99% of what is getting played nowadays and in fact there are massive industries selling simplified games derived from the Warcraft 3 gameplay loop, like MOBAs and Tower Defense.

The only thing that is outdated about Warcraft 3 is the graphics. Are you telling me a game that took 30 people like 3-4 years to make now takes 10 years and 100+ people? How does that make any sense?

Even if public corporations like Blizzard want bigger and bigger profits and aren't interested in games like Warcraft 3, why are there absolute no indie games of comparable quality? It's been over 20 years.

Compare the credits for Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires 4.

Warcraft III credits

The credits listed below are from pages 152 and 153 of the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Game Manual book and pages 21 and 22 of the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne Game Manual book.

wowpedia.fandom.com

Age of Empires IV credits (Windows, 2021) - MobyGames

The official game credits for Age of Empires IV released on Windows in 2021. The credits include 1,653 people.

www.mobygames.com

Warcraft 3 has ONE producer. Age of Empires 4 has FIFTEEN.

Look at how many people are in Age of Empires 4's "core technology engineering team." It has multiplicatively more people than the entire programming staff for Warcraft 3. Is AOE 4's game engine better than Warcraft 3's? Does anyone actually believe that? Count in all the people on "core gameplay" and all these other layered functions and you have a staff 5-10x as large to make a game that is LITERALLY NO BETTER than its predecessor. WHY?

 

[EDMIX]

Warcraft 3 was made by like 30 people.

Nobody in this thread can tell me "increased complexity of games" is the reason game budgets are inflated. Warcraft 3 is still a more complex game than 99% of what is getting played nowadays and in fact there are massive industries selling simplified games derived from the Warcraft 3 gameplay loop, like MOBAs and Tower Defense.

The only thing that is outdated about Warcraft 3 is the graphics. Are you telling me a game that took 30 people like 3-4 years to make now takes 10 years and 100+ people? How does that make any sense?

Even if public corporations like Blizzard want bigger and bigger profits and aren't interested in games like Warcraft 3, why are there absolute no indie games of comparable quality? It's been over 20 years.

Compare the credits for Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires 4.

Warcraft III credits

The credits listed below are from pages 152 and 153 of the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Game Manual book and pages 21 and 22 of the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne Game Manual book.

wowpedia.fandom.com

Age of Empires IV credits (Windows, 2021) - MobyGames

The official game credits for Age of Empires IV released on Windows in 2021. The credits include 1,653 people.

www.mobygames.com

Warcraft 3 has ONE producer. Age of Empires 4 has FIFTEEN.

Look at how many people are in Age of Empires 4's "core technology engineering team." It has multiplicatively more people than the entire programming staff for Warcraft 3. Is AOE 4's game engine better than Warcraft 3's? Does anyone actually believe that? Count in all the people on "core gameplay" and all these other layered functions and you have a staff 5-10x as large to make a game that is LITERALLY NO BETTER than its predecessor. WHY?

I agree with most of your point, but leave out "better", this is a subjective opinion and lets reframe on trying to force that.

You make great points about how many worked on each game and how many are in the engineering team etc. This shows that gaming has gotten much more complex (if the game ends up better in anyone's opinion should not be factored here as just for bullshits sake, I can argue Pong is better and act as if all of gaming isn't needed or something, I don't wish for this to turn into that)

Factually, it takes more to put out games today, then 22 years ago.

Even if that same amount of people wanted to make such a game today, to today's current standards, it would not only take longer to create, they would likely need to charge more or something to even make the return. So much more things are complicated today with creating a game then back then.

So I'm sure 30 people today can make some Warcraft type game, but it will greatly lack a fuck ton of features we see to day as normal, expected, standard etc.


Keep in mind, even if someone wanted to make an argument that the teams are too big, don't you think if this was true publishers would be looking to shrink those teams to oblivion? Like Naughty Dog during 2002 was like 50 or so people, but clearly what it took to make those games then, is not what it takes today.

Over 2000 plus was needed to create The Last Of Us 2.

Look at Cyberpunk, over 1000 worked on it and for such a open world game, that number is pretty low when RDR2 had over 2000 plus

Yet one of theses games launched with no Ai using vehicles in combat, removed MP support, no train station and 3 years to even include some of that post launch

My point is, if team size was really like TOO BIG, clearly we'd see this not effect some of those titles, but clearly we see such large AAA titles require a lot involved to get all of those systems working correctly, I don't see it as something that can be cheaped out on or short cuts taken or something silly like this.

 

[Melfice7]

Since Corporate CEOs and investors took over gaming.


Now constant growth is all that matters for game development, and CEOs and company executives still want their massive bonuses even if it's at the expense of the game and the game developers actually making the games.


Yea, 4K graphics and whatnot cost more money to make now but they aren't the main reason games are so expensive to make and some companies aren't satisfied with millions in sales anymore. The truth is big corporations will never be satisfied with simply making money from games. Constant growth and constant revenue is the holy grail for companies now. Everyone is trying to be the next Fortnite, COD or GTA. Even if you somehow manage to bring game budgets down by getting rid of positions that aren't needed or having cheaper and more efficient ways to make games, you'll still find companies saying that it isn't enough and they need more to prevent shutdown and cutting jobs. It's never-ending cycle that gaming is stuck in and will probably never get out of.

Nailed it. Greed will fuck everything up

 

[ReBurn]

This is just a relatively simple math problem.

(selling price - media production cost - distribution cost - retailer cut) * n copies = (development budget + marketing budget + other production costs)

Solve for n.

A million copies of a game sold for $70 is $70 million in gross revenue, but the whole $70 doesn't really ever go to the developer. If you're a third party developer or indie dev releasing on someone's storefront, when you subtract 30% that goes to the platform holder/whatever it costs to print discs, ship them to retail, and give the retailer their cut of the $70 selling price, that $70 in gross revenue probably looks more like $35 to $45 in net revenue per copy sold. So if you end up spending $100m total to produce your game you probably end up with something like this:

$40 * n = $100,000,000
n = $100,000,000 / $40
n = 2.5 million unit sales to maybe break even

So the point where it got to a million unit sales not being enough was right around the time total budgets went over 40 million bucks or so.

 

[CamHostage]

IIRC, in the Atari 2600 days it took one or so person from 6 weeks (or even less) to about 3-4 months to make a game.

...And yet still cost consumers $40 USD in 1982-money to own a copy. Which is something like $130 by inflation calculators.

Wait for bomba.

 

[Hohenheim]

Greedy suits and poor management comes to mind, yeah.
As for the whole "gamers expect photo realism in 4K" argument, im not so sure.
Looking at those Nintendo sales numbers say otherwise. I think they've been quite smart not opening that can of worms.

 

[IAmRei]

Just a small remark here; Gears of war copied, refined and popularised the cover system. Killswitch (Namco hometek) originally introduced it:



I'd also like to counter your argument by claiming that ground breaking gameplay is still readily achievable and can be engineered. Its all about finding the right skilled developers, followed by obtaining them and then retaining them in your studio(s). Not saying its easy by any stretch, but it is possible with a fresh view and the right mindset. Big studios face various internal challenges that make it more difficult and prevent it from happening.

This game is underrated at the time, while still clunky, this game nailed future of TPS as well i think

 

[CamHostage]

OP was asking about Diablo...

Games have to be so detailed graphically now that you can't get away with having a small staff working on a game. When elements of gaming could be left to the imagination, you didn't have to have a ton of people building out details.

And it's not just level of detail of design; every aspect has to jump up in fidelity accordingly, including animation and physicality. I remember back in the PS2 era (or maybe it even started in the PS1 games?) that there was a battle between which of Madden, NFL2K or GameDay would get to having individual fingers which could realistically wrapped around and caught a ball as opposed to mitt-hands.

(Speaking of fingers, Claude in GTA3 didn't have animated fingers; when he flips somebody off, that's apparently a "weapon" which attaches over his hand on the model.)

Now, one member of a development team might be tasked with developing a model/sim specifically so dirt/blood accumulates naturally under each fingernail as a battle ensues, because that might show up as a necessary detail on a 4K image.

 

[FeralEcho]

That industry wide crash can't come soon enough!

 

[Pfroebbel]

I would bet Marketing is the Point that makes Games so invredible expansive without doing anything for the Game (and it‘s Quality / Graphics etc) itself.

This costs are absolut absurd

 

[Felessan]

Well, part of the issue (not the whole thing) is that making a small profit isn't enough for game companies that are publicly traded. The shareholders demand more and more money, ever-increasing profits.

It's so convinient to blame CEOs and shareholders.
"It's all because of greedy capitalism and if we would have lived in free libertarian world everything would be perfect" (no)
FYI - ROE requirements from shareholders for companies are pretty standard and in range 15-20%, not some 100-200% some probably imagine.

As for how it's got to this point:
1. People started buy some games in tens of million - it created a market for them. And market for 10m game is simple - you can bet and get 500% of profit with 3% probability or you can pour money (hire the best writers, make the best graphics, animation, put some cutscenes for immersion, buy well-know popular franchise etc), make a safe project and get 25% of profit with 90% probability. First is a venture investments, second is a classic investment, and second is a preferable way for most investors.
After market for high-selling was established - the whole scale of what is a "perfect" game was realigned as consumers looked at top budget games and started to expect at least something from titles with less budget (story in txt file as in Doom was hardly possible anymore outside of super-indi titles). It drives expectations for games higher and thus inflate features expected in games and subsequentely number of people required to do so.
2. Having hugely expanded market on both gamers and developers side it makes game development no longer a geek activity of a few highly sophisticated and passionated, but rather general profession. And companies started to hire average people - it's just not enough sophisticated and skilled geeks for everyone. Quality of average game developer dropped. Rise of gaas dropped it even further for AAA games as they also need a lot of developers/artists/qa etc to keep constant flow of content. Lower quality - bigger number required for the same work, professionals also much more sensitive to money paid, for them it's their job, not their passion. Larger number of people times higher cost - much higher budgets.
This actually hit smaller teams the hardest, as bigger teams have more opportunity to hire highest skilled professionals.

 

[Lethal01]

Graphics aren't an issue. Posted above, Robocop which is licensed and looks amazing, made profits. There's something else to it.

True, it's graphics + "normal" sized games.
Robocop has a smaller scale and so needs a smaller budget.

 

[BlitzerRadic]

This is the topic. I asked why. Smaller teams made ground breaking games for 30 years then in the past 10 years, everything has been "this game that isn't better than the last few gens sold 4x more than the previous games, and its not profitable". I think there's more of a budgeting issue than cost of games.

30 years ago avg price of a car was 15k. Today its more like 40k. Cars today are bigger, more complex and much more complicated to make. They are more expensive because they cost more to make.

Games should work the same way. But because the market is so resistant to price increases, the only way they can make money is to sell more units. This is not rocket science.

 

[RaduN]

~ '96 or so

 

[Quixz]

Also let's not forget the ransom fees paid to companies like SBI etc

 

[Topher]

Capitalism demands growth and pouring more money is usually how you go about doing that.

Some of it makes sense. Assassin's Creed is a prime example it. It's magnitutes more expensive, but it's also magnitudes more profitable.

Some of it is industry stupidity. Firewalk thinks weekly CGI cutscenes are a sensible use of money for arena shooters.

I think it is more about stockholders than "capitalism".

 

[bitbydeath]

The important question here is why a game like GOW Ragnarok costs 300 million whereas Stellar Blade is several times cheaper (less than 100). Both games have epic set pieces, cutscenes, and similar hours of content. There's clearly a budgeting problem in the Western studios.

We have to stop believing the "massive budget" bullshit, both in videogames and cinema. Movies like Joker and Longlegs with excellent cinematography cost ten times less than any Marvel flick.

On top of this, we have less competent developers, bad work culture, and greedy executives / shareholders. These factors have nothing to do with game development but cultural aspects of western societies.

Was just saying something similar in the TV thread. House of Dragon cost 20M per episode and each episode is 90% people standing around talking. They skip most large battles and use limited CGI compared to shows like Sweet Home which costs around 3-5M an episode.

Something is messed up.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I think it is more about stockholders than "capitalism".

Yeah, It's a symptom of unfettered capitalism is a better way to put it.

Moral of the story is stalin did nothing wrong

 

[lh032]

Higher cost of living = higher wages
Better technology advancement = longer development time

Higher wages x longer development time = AAA ballooning cost game.

If you include hollywood actors, phewwwwwwwwwww

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Was just saying something similar in the TV thread. House of Dragon cost 20M per episode and each episode is 90% people standing around talking. They skip most large battles and use limited CGI compared to shows like Sweet Home which costs around 3-5M an episode.

Something is messed up.

Somehow that she-hulk tv show was $225M across 9 episodes. There was talk about this in the OT way back. $25M/episode.

It came from articles. And one guy was shocked saying at $225M you could had made a Hollywood movie.

Crazy.

Similar to tech companies, a lot of media have insane budgets where some reason nothing is ever too much or too over budget.

 

[AJUMP23]

If the game cost 300million to make and 100milion to market. You have to sell millions to make profits.

 

[FewRope]

When "infinite growth" entered the equation

 

[DryvBy]

30 years ago avg price of a car was 15k. Today its more like 40k. Cars today are bigger, more complex and much more complicated to make. They are more expensive because they cost more to make.

Games should work the same way. But because the market is so resistant to price increases, the only way they can make money is to sell more units. This is not rocket science.

Games used to cost $50 for a complete game. Today a simple fighting games is $80 plus 2 or 3 $30 season passes. See how they make up the costs?

You're also comparing the cost of moving, tangible parts to "unlimited" code that doesn't take up anything but space on a drive. These aren't fair comparisons at all.

 

[Bond007]

When the cost of making them grew

 

[Fbh]

Around the end of the Ps3 era.
IMO at least part of it is that publishers themselves screwed up and put themselves in this position. Instead of innovating with gameplay and managing budgets they just kept pushing "more content and better graphics" as the selling point of their new games without ever adjusting the price. Now they can't get away from that because that's what the market wants and expects from them.

There was a time Sonly could sell 10 hours long single player games like Uncharted 1 or God of War 3 at full price and no one minded.
Try doing that now, just image the meltdowns if the next Santa Monica game doesn't have significantly better graphics than Ragnarok while also offering at least 30 hours of content.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

This has been discussed over and over again to death by now. Games cost significantly more money to make nowadays, so the amount of money a game needs to make back when it releases increases, in order to recoup costs, and thus be able to make a profit.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Around the end of the Ps3 era.
IMO at least part of it is that publishers themselves screwed up and put themselves in this position. Instead of innovating with gameplay and managing budgets they just kept pushing "more content and better graphics" as the selling point of their new games without ever adjusting the price. Now they can't get away from that because that's what the market wants and expects from them.

There was a time Sonly could sell 10 hours long single player games like Uncharted 1 or God of War 3 at full price and no one minded.
Try doing that now, just image the meltdowns if the next Santa Monica game doesn't have significantly better graphics than Ragnarok while also offering at least 30 hours of content.

I would just suggest that the campaign length of a game doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how much they cost to make. Uncharted was at the time a hugely expensive game to make, *but at the time it released, there wasn't the expectation that exists now, that games like that need to be 50+ hours long in order to be worth paying full price.

PS3 era and PS4 era games each cost $60. When PS4 era games cost significantly more to create.

 

[Felessan]

IMO at least part of it is that publishers themselves screwed up and put themselves in this position. Instead of innovating with gameplay and managing budgets they just kept pushing "more content and better graphics" as the selling point of their new games without ever adjusting the price. Now they can't get away from that because that's what the market wants and expects from them.

Innovation of gameplay rarely sells games. Successfull innovation is a thing you can't predict - devs might think that new gameplay is innovative, but players will think that it's boring, stupid or crazy - and such innovations no one wants to play.
You have a whole indi scene where every pit filled to a brim with various "innovations" and 99.9% of them are rotting in those pits. Only a very few successed and those gameplay mechanics quickly adopted into higher budget tiers. And most are not even innovation, like Souls-like and Rogue-like, it's just old but niche gameplay became popular for whatever reason.
Mass market wants high production values, not some obscure artistic "innovative" hardly playable stuff.

 

[peek]

Budget.

 

[Rockman33]

When games started taking 4 years with 150 people to make. Which is probably on the low end at this point.

If the average salary is 100k. That means 15 million a year just on salary. 60 million over 4 years.

Game sells for $70. Service its being supplied on takes 30% cut. That means they get $49, IF it’s digital. I’m sure physical is a good amount less. Also remember most games arent selling at $70 for very long.

But hypothetically if they sold 1 million copies they would return 49 million back.

This also does not take in consideration of the 10’s of millions they spend on marketing.

As you can see 1 million copies sold would put them in the solid RED.

 

[gamerEMdoc]

Games when the Nintendo came out cost $50. They had considerably smaller dev teams with much shorter production times. Now a game with huge production teams that take 5-7 years to develop cost $70 despite nearly everything else in society being far more expensive than they were 35 years ago. The cost of a movie ticket from 1990 has more than doubled for comparison. A $50 game should cost like $120 with equivalent inflation. So we as consumers are paying far less for games (comparitively) that are far more expensive and time consuming to produce. Plus with a saturated gaming market, consumers can just wait and buy games on sale, which are far more frequent now as the price of a game diminishes much faster these days.

So not only are profit margins far smaller which requires you to sell way more games to appease the shareholders.