There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all budget when it comes to the vast world of AAA games, but let's take a look at the most typical costs and see where game studios can cut corners--and where they absolutely can't, and why. Code of Conduct - becausegamesmatter.com/extra-credits-community-code-of-conduct
Extra Credits Isn’t it really cheap to put an add on TH-cam and what do gamers look at more normal tv where it costs loads or TH-cam where it’s cheaper and that’s well most gamers watch instead of tv I for one don’t haha and if I do fast forward hell the only ads on TH-cam I watch are games .....
and yet hell blade was of AAA quality and cost 1/5th of what you stated. corporate waste and overpopulation of the workforce is the major cost of game designed. graphics in this day and age is much cheaper then 5 years ago, look at quixel photo scan. you can populate a game with low cost extremely high fidelity materials and static meshes cutting your costs by 100,000's of thousand of dollars right there. hellblade has invalidated traditional AAA game development, they are profitable with only digital distribution, a small team, and AAA visual fidelity.
I feel like you've skimmed over an entire huge point; how do we even know that AAA games are what people WANT? What non-AAA games even get a decent marketing budget? It doesn't feel to me like gamers are the ones demanding photo-realistic graphics or these super-movie-like feeling games. It feels like these games are being pushed on this "gamer" demographic that may not even exist instead of making games that are fun and market themselves based on how enjoyable they are. Why aren't game studios at least TRYING to make smaller games?
Gotta' disagree with ya on this one. There is no arms race for graphics anymore. Nintendo is proof enough of that. As long as your aesthetic works and isn't broken at launch, no one is going to bat an eye at you having Xbox360 quality graphics.
Hellblade didn't really invalidate anything. The game isn't as mechanically complex as many AAA titles. Hellblade is what happens when you have a strong team of people dedicate to their work with loads of experience under their belt. And it was an ENORMOUS risk. Thanks to word of mouth and good reviews the game managed to become profitable in only a few months. Which is fine for an indie firm, but for a big company that's a bit of a problem if it's your sole source of revenue. But what if its quality had been a little lower? What if word of mouth hadn't picked up on it? What if there were THREE games like hellblade released at the same time? Hellblade only really succeeded like it did because it was the only one like it around. If it had actual competitors it might not have done nearly as well. Of course we won't really know this until other groups try to take a stab at the model. But don't run out into the thunderstorm with a beer bottle just because someone came back with lightning in one.
The problem is the same across all industries. The movie industry is as bloated and slowly but surely becomes less profitable. The bubble will burst. The costs need to be brought down or the gaming industry has no future. EDIT. The biggest problem is the lack of customers. There are too many games that I would love to play, but I don't have enough time. 10 years ago fewer games competed for my attention. Obviously, I stopped buying. So, I think, current model cannot sustain itself. There either will be a new big market for the Western AAA game (China?) or many companies will just stop producing so many yearly titles. And that is a good thing.
Game industry has plenty of future but the current model is dying a slow death. Publishers specifically belong in the past, and the future of games is probably in projects like Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice, which involved a large dev team creating a full size game, but without a publisher, just marketing cheaply through the internet and word of mouth. Indie games are going to continue to play a massive part in the industry too, some of the best loved and highest quality games out there are indie titles, Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, FTL, Stardew Valley, Heat Signature, Prison Architect, just to name a few.
Why do I get the feeling that even if you could reduce the budget drastically you would probably still get games with transactions and loot boxes in them, Don't want to sound like a paranoid jerk (I literally do not care for most AAA releases, just not my thing) But somehow I doubt that publishers would get rid of ways of making extra money... Just a suspicion though.
Sure, but if games without loot boxes start doing better or loot boxes stop paying off their development because of low purchase figures, then they'll be dropped because they no longer make economic sense.
Indeed. Assume that trying to make all the money that they can is a constant. That said... I was a Game Designer for 15 years until I left the industry over a decade ago. If I was to go back to the industry today I would have to overcome a serious blank space in my skill-set and that is monetisation. When I was a Designer there wasn't a SINGLE Designer in our team who was an expert in that field, or who would have claimed to be if they were. Nowadays it's much more front and centre in game design - and it's that change that really speaks to how key making even more money has become to AAA Development. I feel like that evolution wouldn't have happened if the old model of pricepoint plus expansions was bringing home all the bacon required by the studio.
Thats what business is, finding new ways to make you open your wallet. Really, there is no need to change your phones and computers and consoles and cars and houses and monitors and etc as they probably work fine and will for many years. Yet people replace them anyway because they want newer/flashier stuff. Is the latest 1000$ iphone really necessary when previous versions were already overpriced at 500$? No, but people still buy
loot box are done because they make money. They allow for bigger budgets but that is not the reason. They are done because it makes more money than cost. Games budget could be zero, but if the statement “loot boxes make money” is true, big companies will use them.
cw8 it may be funny but when an 80 million dollar passion project tanks due to a neutered marketing budget careers are destroyed and families are affected. Consumers never feel the cost of failure outside of being disappointed that their $60 did not provide 150 hours of continuous orgasmic pleasure
AAA games are hardly about passion anymore. It's more about money and profit and how to maximise said profit. I don't care about graphics and full voiceacting myself, but the AAA industry seems to throw a huge budget in graphics and VO instead of gameplay. Can't remember the last time I actually bought an AAA game, unless you count Witcher 3. Been happier with my niche, indie and AA+ games.
@cw8 Full VA doesn't have to be expensive, either. Let's take an older indie darling, "Dust: An Elysian Tale", which was made primarily by a single person, does feature full voice over, and has fantastic gameplay with a pretty good story. And made it's money back some time ago, and is still being released on modern consoles.
Kevin Fredericks Us consumers aren't the ones who asked them to spend $80 million on a game, and if it fails we certainly aren't the ones to blame. It's up to them to convince us to part with our cash, not up to us to prop up the industry. We can spend our money how we see fit, and if a cheaply made indie game is superior to a AAA game with a massive budget, well... I'm going to buy the better game. Is that wrong? Companies go out of business every day, we can't save them all.
At its core it's just about the 'AAA' trying to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible, and therefore more often than not scurrying away from anything could /potentially/ alienate some customers. Whereas successful indie games (or even those from smaller studios which don't subscribe to the 'AAA' bullshit) take a niche or semi-niche and unapologetically do their own thing.
For as big and as long as it took to develop, Breath of the Wild only needed to sell 2 million units to make its budget back. And it was the most expensive game Nintendo has ever made.
And Richard Branson is a highschool dropout who became a billionaire. But whether its games or education, statistically... the more you invest, the greater your odds of success. Trying to emulate outliers is generally a recipe for disaster.
The whole debate about the cost of game development always feels like two people completely talking past one another. On one side, you have consumers saying they are unwilling to pay, or, increasingly, cannot even afford to pay more for games. We have consumers saying they are unwilling to purchase games that contain predatory monetization schemes or that gate content behind microtransactions. Now, some of these people can be pretty toxic and hateful about how they voice those opinions (which is bad, obviously, being angry is fine, but being a jerk is not), but in the end what they're saying is "I am unwilling/unable to purchase games like these in this state at this price". In response, developers and people like the Extra Credits team say "These games can only exist at this price and in this state. That's the only way they can be profitable enough to make." The problem is, even if we take that statement at face value, it doesn't actually change anything. If a product doesn't appeal to a consumer, you can't make them change their minds by saying "this is the only way to make this product". It will still be just as unappealing to the consumer. Maybe if you're a popular company you can coast on consumer goodwill for some time, relying on the customer-base to purchase products they otherwise wouldn't because they specifically want to support you, but that sort of goodwill can only last for so long, and it is rapidly drying out even for previously extremely popular companies like Blizzard (and let's be completely honest here, when it comes to Activision/Blizzard, any customer goodwill was directed entirely at the Blizzard part of the company). Now, obviously not everyone feels this way about 'AAA' games, because they're still making a profit (and a huge profit at that, judging by the bottom line reported by 'AAA' publishers). But the amount of people who feel dissatisfied with the content, price and monetization of 'AAA' games is steadily increasing, and publishers clearly know it. But they keep trying to solve the problem by telling us there's no other way things could be. They are doubling down on unpopular decisions and practices, and trying to appease the growing dissatisfaction of the consumer base by telling us their hands are tied. And wether that is true or not, it's not a solution, it doesn't help in any way. Those who can't or won't buy these games won't change their minds unless the games themselves change into something they consider to be worth buying. TLDR: Saying games 'need' to be more expensive doesn't actually make consumers any more willing to pay more for them, and if the growing trend of consumer dissatisfaction continues, the 'AAA' industry only has two real options. Change, or collapse.
"I am unwilling/unable to purchase games like these in this state at this price". In response, developers and people like the Extra Credits team say "These games can only exist at this price and in this state. That's the only way they can be profitable enough to make."" Well if the customer won't buy your product and you need to raise your product price tag even more, to cover expenses, then clearly the system will crumble on itself. Sadly, there are strong arguments and evidence, that one side lie (AKA having 600% profits, yet calling it fail) and this video portray situations so absurd, that it fails to support both customer and producer sides.
"They are tied. You can't have high-quality games and low prices. It's one or the other." Completely ignoring highly polished free to play games with huge player bases, aren't we? Last I checked, MOBAs were still doing just fine.
Why are you pinning the blame on the studios or Extra Credits for acknowledging reality? What are they supposed to do from consumers who demand one thing while complaining about how they're getting it, even though there aren't any alternatives? I'm sure as shit not gonna advocate for developers or designers or voice actors to get paid less, and the entire point of this video was too explain why it's not possible to do much else to cut costs. If you're gonna give them crap for saying "there isn't a good solution" when the fault is on the consumer being hypocritical, you damn well better have an alternative to offer.
What's hilarious about that case is that CoD is one of those franchises where they could literally drop a new game unannounced and it'd still sell like hot cakes. Pretty much every case I can think of "huge marketing campaign for established franchise and still resulted in a flop" (whether it be for games, movies, or otherwise) involves said marketing campaign making the product look really shitty.
Speaking as an owner who cannot afford consuls or good PCs I literally cannot play super HD graphics on my machines. I do not want better graphics, just good games.
There is a reason the Indie scene is booming these days. The AAA industry doesn't make games for quality or to appeal to anything but the widest market, but gamers want something more than great graphics, and the indie scene appeals to that where AAA doesn't.
That's a good and healthy perspective to have. Unfortunately, the critical mass of consumers don't think the same way. Graphics bugs, glitches, fuckups, all get talked about to the end of time. It really is a thin sliver of gamers who appreciate quality gameplay regardless of graphics fidelity.
I don't think the movie industry does that. I believe he meant if game companies would say what the game's budget was instead of hiding it like they usually do
AxlGundam ? The movie industry is a mess. Every, EVERY film wants to be a blockbuster of the season. And every, EVERY movie expends like so. Our media, in general, is suffering from this. Movies aren't the exception.
I understand budgets are tight but when EA can remove microtranactions it says it needs to make money and then tell it's investors it won't be a problem someone is feeding someone a load of bull I'm gonna say it's the consumer
exactly.. when a game sells 7 million copies.. if you don't make a profit with those numbers, the problem isn't the cost of the game, but somewhere else.
Elldallan I heard about this but it made them $500 M I’m sorry it’s poor sales was because how they handled loot boxes my feeling on loot boxes is this. Put them in a game fine but don’t charge me $60 for the game on top of another $40-50 for a season pass and say you aren’t making money. Then maybe you need to take a look at how you run your business
Well, you can ask EA on how to cut cost on AAA game development. They have been spending less and less money in development through many years in a row now :)
Andromeda is a really bad example. The issue wasn't that the graphics were bad, the issue was that the animation was actually broken. If you gave it the graphics level of ME1 and fixed the animation, it would look better. Because the graphics level wasn't the problem.
There's a difference between being sub-par and actually broken though. The issue wasn't that it didn't look amazing, the issue was that it straight up wasn't working
Raul Gallegos, malfunction animations show a lack of polish, a lack of care. Its not the graphics but their willingness to ship a game with a broken peice.
And their point is, not spending enough time and money to make sure their game looked good was a bad decision. They were the laughingstock of the video game world for months.
It was inconsistency that broke it and heck it's actually an antisis for his claim that we demand good graphics. The broken graphics is caused by agreeing what EC is saying here. EA changed the engine bioware used to make ME andromeda at a really late date which is what is said to be the cause of the game being broken as it is. Because EA belived frostbyte to be a better looking engine and it would cause it to sell more.
I did once, but it was a one of my favorite voice actors, they were playing the main character, it was a genre I liked, and it was a series that already had a decent track record (and that I had played a game or two from before) so I felt pretty safe doing it. Still, I was on the fence before I found out who was voicing the MC. So, even though it was highly situational, it still happened.
Alexander Jansing But did you see that a famous actor was in a AAA game and think: wow they got (famous actor) that’s cool! That was (more or less) the point of getting that famous person in the game
If costs can't be cut, and the only way to recoup those costs is exploitative business practices that target people with gambling addiction, then maybe it's time for the AAA space to undergo some severe contraction. The loss of competition will hurt the games that get released, but I would rather have fewer super flashy games than have dozens that try to prey on their consumer base.
I feel like that should be repeated and emphasized. If costs can't be cut, and the only way to recoup those costs is *EXPLOITATIVE BUSINESS PRACTICES THAT TARGET PEOPLE WITH GAMBLING ADDICTION*, then maybe it's time for the AAA space to undergo some severe contraction. ...But hey! When an AAA company claims that "removing micro-transactions won't hurt its [current big budgeted game's] bottom line" to their investors, I'm SURE they're just joking...except, isn't there some law against lying to your company's investors/shareholders?
And to directly quote them. "And by 'learn to live,' *I don't mean to put up with predatory crap.* I mean we're going to have to find a way to reward developers for making good supplimentary income systems that *aren't overly aggressive or required* in any way to play competitively." So... yes they did.
+Bainbow ya, they made one tiny mention condemning predatory practices, but the entire video was all about explaining the reasons why publishers have been doing it and basically defending those reasons.
*TARGET PEOPLE WITH GAMBLING ADDICTION* lol i love this argument so much, 'no1 has free will anymore, they put it in the game so i just couldnt help myself' as someone who has an *EXTREMELY* addictive personality that includes gambling, i find this argument insulting. Lootboxes do not tempt me to spend any money on a shitty game. The only time i will use any kind of microtransaction is if i think the game is so good that they *DESERVE* any more money out of me. There are so many dainty little snowflakes that just want to put *ALL* the responsibility on big scary companies. Don't get me wrong, some of these practices are *REALLY* shitty, but none of them would work if people just had the willpower to *NOT DUMP ALL THEIR MONEY INTO THEM* then maybe the tactics wouldn't be profitable and they would move onto something else.
The graphics arms race sucks so damn much. I saw one dude whining that Prey was "Too ugly looking to buy" and I'm like "...What? The hell are you smoking? It looks friggen great." I mean, I like my pretty graphics and all, but the degree to which it's being taken is getting downright preposterous. Oh, and by the by, good management can save you insane amounts of money. The studio I'm writing for has done some incredible things with a pretty low budget. And the studio does not believe in crunch time. There's been busy weeks, but never actual crunch. And there are still places where we could be more efficient.
I work at Nine Dots Studios (at least until the writing contract for "Outward" ends) You remember that Extra Credits Episode about Working Conditions in the industry? They were the ones who requested that topic via a donation. :P Pretty much the mission statement of Nine Dots is "We don't agree with the bad practices so much of the industry participates in. We believe we can make quality games without needing to do those things". It's pretty much the founding principle of the company. Combine that with a really talented small team and hooo boy we've done some amazing stuff.
It's very strange. I was playing Nier: Automata, and near the end, my fps was tanking to like 15 fps; I was annoyed but not upset. Then I was recording gameplay for a different game, and my FPS went down to 47, and had to stop and apologize to fix it. With the latter game, if I didn't have an fps counter, I wouldn't have even noticed a drop ( I can't tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps most of the time). Why am I not consistent in my apathy for graphical perfection? Strange, indeed.
Games don’t need higher fidelity graphics to look better. Art direction plays a role that seemed to be overlooked in this video, despite there being some Zelda footage shown.
I guess, what I’m saying is don’t make what we currently consider AAA games. To solve the problem, don’t make AAA games. Do “AA” or whatever Ninja Theory calls it.
@@defunctchannel942 I agree with Mike here, even a very cartoonish none-photorealistic artstyle isn't much less expensive then hyperrealism. Shaders, lightings, Polygon count, Model rigging, etc etc, is all the same no matter how the game looks when considering artstyle.
The main question is even with this being true and the dlc and microtransactions being deemed necessary for a game to be profitable. Why are major publishers reporting record profits to share holders and to not worry about a loss even if dlc was removed?
Chinese Sparrows it is the two-face nature of this saying that we can not sustain our company by the strength of our product but require very pereditory and trust eroding practices to make even a "slight" profit instead of maybe putting together larger expansions like in the past with games like total war and border lands after regaining the eroding trust of the consumers.
Because losing shareholders is just as bad for a company as losing customers. If you start reporting losses, people will pull out, a panic of the dropping value will spread, more people will pull, and you as a company will tank. It's like your grandmother called and asked how work or school was and it just makes your life go smoother if you leave out the bit where some douche ate your lunch when you weren't looking and you didn't have the time to buy another.
Exarian exactly. The more likely story is they are lying to gamers, and telling the truth to investors. And where does that more likely story get us? They're earning plenty of money [Lines up nicely with their financial reports], but are crying because they want more. It ain't need. Its greed.
What I'm hearing from this is that the AAA gaming scene is basically unsustainable, either due to increasingly ridiculous budgets or increasing consumer contempt? I'm curious if you're gonna do a video about indie games?
I don't think the AAA scene is in a bubble. sure, there are more players than there needs to be, but it's nothing like Atari, in the 80's, which shoveled games out the door because anything would sell, and they needed the sales to cover the losses of previous titles. those new games would lose money, so they would have to shovel more games out to cover *those*, and so on. Nintendo has specifically said that they refuse to chase, and have refused to chase, the latest super-high resolution graphics because they are so expensive and add nothing to the gameplay. You notice that as beautiful as Breath of the Wild is, it looks nothing like Skyrim or Witcher III. Style and beauty trump slavish reproduction of reality, and when more developers realize this, the graphical arms race will have an off ramp.
The companies putting out quality games are going to be fine. It's the companies that are spending all this cash and putting out games like Andromeda that are going to be in for a rude awakening. Even though you'll still have people trying to come up with excuses for them, but every disappointing game lowers your customers trust in your brand. Lower it too much and they'll eventually go elsewhere. Right or Wrong the market is still going to be the final "decider."
Well that's why all my games these days are indie titles. AAA games just aren't what they used to be, and their investors who usually have little to do with the industry have made it worse. Let's go back to independent developers with better games and are more in touch with the individual
all this video says to me isnt that we need to pay more for AAA games, but that AAA games are going to fail. the industry seems like its inevitably going to collapse, because AAA game standards are higher than what the average consumers budget will allow, but the average consumer won't accept less than high quality.
Exaclty in AAA customers demand insane production values but aren't willing to pay 60$, that's why they have to rehash the same series and franchises most of the time, because trying something new with that money on the line is a very high risk and is more easier and safe to sell an already known product (FIFA,CoD,Assasin's,etc.) Also the standar AAA audience is not even the main target of the whole industry anymore, mobile games and free to play/freemium games are, because there are more people that are willing to pay a slow entrance fee or nothing at all and the blow over 60$ in gacha, than just pay a single 60$ fee. That's why many companies are jumping ship, Nintendo is publishing mobile games, Square-Enix is also, hell the most grossing game compnay at the time, Tencent makes more money than Activision-Blizzard and EA combined by publishing fremmium/free to play games in China. So AAA is not going anywhere per-se, just ar eadopting the Gacha model more and more because that's what's making revenue for them than the standar AAA model.
Not necessarily, Yearly AAA games are mostly safe as they have the most established presence and fanbases. (Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Need for Speed, Just Dance and COD aren't exactly flopping every year). It's the games and studios closer to the middle that are at the most risk. So at most, there will be a small recision but not a full-on collapse. That's like saying Hollywood will collapse despite how many people will go on to watch superhero films.
Yep. High expectations for no reason. No real control over their actual budget, and the fact that any actual profit is going to pay the dividends of the share holders who are also expecting more each year. It's going to burst under the weight of everything.
While any kind of wide scale crash might seem inconceivable now, the bosses at blockbuster, woolworths, and the WWC all thought that too in their heyday. They thought that they could withstand anything. That they were too big to fail. Where are they now?
I know that this might sound selfish but, as consumers we shouldn't care about how a game is made or how much it costs to make. We are consumers we should only care about the cost to us and the quality of the end product because that's what we deal with. If a game cost a bunch of money to make, but the quality of the game is poor, why should I or any of us as consumers should care about it. You wouldn't buy a shit car for a bunch of money just because the guy selling it payed more to make it.
I agree with you and the millions upon millions of dudebros that buy Call of Duty and Assassins Creed every year probably do to, but this isn't a consumer channel, these guys are clearly industry proffesionals which is why its being talked about But also these are things that do affect the price we eventual see, and as we've seen (and Extra Credits are dodging) it affects how predatory gambling mechanics are added just to line shareholder pockets NOT affect any of these costs this video talks about
if you think about it, it shouldn't even matter to the employees either. they don't get the profit that the game makes, the company does, if they are lucky the profit might be re-invested in them having another job making a sequel, but that's it. who is this video really for, other than the people not concerned with just breaking even, but a ruthless need to expand their industry at the expense of the employees and consumer?
So if somebody has enslaved children on the other side of the world, that's fine as long as the shoes are cheap? Or that the company making a product is pouring toxic chemicals into a river? I think people are smart enough to be able to weight cost and social/environmental impact.
I think your subs deserve an explanation as to why you are ignoring glaring counter points to a lot of your arguments in this and your last video. With all due respect, I think you should at least make a devils advocate video to reassure that you are coming to these conclusions from a mostly unbiased perspective.
Bit by bit: You mention getting a game done in two years. Because of trend-chasing, this is the standard now. It used to be 4 years. Doing a task twice as fast needs more than twice the staff, usually closer to 4 times. Which similarly multuplies equipment costs. Halving the time cuts those drastically. 2. Hiring celebrity voice actors costs way more than probably better professional Voice Actors. A voice actor does a better job with their voice than a celebrity actor, just as a celebrity actor will do a better job with their whole body, and the voice actor is cheaper. 3. Graphics race is pretty much all AAA pushed. We're well past the point where people notice anything but lighting, buying large. Aesthetic does a lot more than fidelity and is far cheaper. Andromeda failed because one area of graphics was notably worse than the rest and had amateur mistakes like the backwards gun, not because all of them were below cutting-edge. 4. Marketing doesn't need to be as huge as it is. Marketing budgets used to be far, far smaller even a few years ago. 5. If you can shave large ammounts of money through organizing, strive for that. Don't just dismiss that off of "oh we can't be perfect", get as close as you can. 6. Copycat games are a huge problem. See point 1. Basically, you talked about a lot of stuff as fact when it's meerly recent trend. People decry the age of the FPS, but we got Bioshock, Gears of War, Halo 3, and many more good games out of that, most of which still hold up. Meanwhile, all those game industry neo-standards you just said gave us... Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Destiny 2, two of the highest profile "publishers doing things to actively make player experience worse" cases in recent years. Instead of saying it's us consumers failing the companies, look instead to how the companies can better serve the current market.
All the AAA Games you mentioned (with the exception of GTA V) don't have any form of Microtransactions and where pretty darn successful. So doesn't that contradict the argument of your previous video where you stated that the only options in the future are either to pay more or accept additional monetization? And sure games are expansive as Hell to make but does raising the pricetag really solve that issue? In your case you estimated that it costs around 100 mil. to publish a game. So you would need roughly 1.67 mil copies sold at a price of 60$ to break even. At 70$ that would drop to 1.4 mil copies. I'm no expert but that does not really seem significant to me but please correct me if I'm wrong here but especially if you compare that to the money that can be made by lootboxes etc. this comparison is just ridiculous! Adding 10$ or 20$ on top of any AAA Title will not bring you nearly as much money as glorified gambling. And looking at how this Industry behaves (especially the big publishers) why not have your cake and try to eat it at the same time? They see themselves as too big to fail anyways.
Consider the fact that 50 % of the money you pay for a game, even in digital format, goes to either the store in which you buy the game or the country you live in.
So what? I mean it's not like the Industry is full of poor orphans who don't know how to do business. They of course know how much shipping and distributions cost. And if it wouldnt be profitable they would not do it. That is what every business on the planet has to do and the game industry is no different from that.
We released a game a year ago on steam and here's how it worked: 20% of what a player spend goes to the country, in France its a tax applied to everything you buycalled T.V.A, then steam took 30% as the owner of the distribution platform. Add 15% for the publisher that allowed us to simply be on steam, and the 35% left were split into the 6 members of our team :) For every 3$ copy of our game, less than 0.2$ went into my pocket. But i'm not complaining at all, it was a student game developed without any pretension whatsoever
The conclusion seems obvious. Companies should be more open about the quality/price tradeoff and trust the consumers to invest money into a game they believe in. If there's a game I know I'm going to be playing for months or a year, I'd be willing to pay 100 dollars for it. The problem is that the industry is constantly gambling and losing on a lot of products, meaning that they ones where they win have to win hard. That's not a sustainable business model. I do see the problems this video makes obvious, but the solution shouldn't be 'microtransactions' or 'DLC'. It should be openness to the public about why their game costs so much, trust in the consumer to pay a game for what it's worth and a very strict regime on investing in the right games from the publisher's side. If I'm paying extra for my game because another game the company made turned a loss, that's a bad deal for me. I don't pretend I have all the answers, but it does look like the companies don't trust their customers to recognize quality if they see it. That's a bad place to be in as a company.
Drecon84 just because you would pay more for a game (that you are invested in) if they explained it does not mean a majority or even a descent sized minority would. you said that you would be willing to do this with a game that you are invested in but what about games that you have only a passing interest in, a game that you think is a cool concept but have not play a game like it before or a franchise that you are looking to get into. would you be willing to still pay an increased amount if they told you why it was that expensive? Then there is also the fact that there are people that have those outlooks about games that you are invested in do you think they would be willing to pay more if given the reasons? What about people that do not have the time and/or the desire to read why a game costs as much as it does do you think they would still pay an increased amount? If even some of the answers to these are no then would the company still make a profit? How much would it hurt the fan base of the company and the franchise? The truth is that the problem is far more complex then what your simple solution can handle.
Graphics are SUPER over rated and AAA, knows it. They lean into that selling point because excelent graphics are less risky than excelent game play. Mass Effect wasn’t panned because of graphics, people hated it because it was a buggy mess and which resulted in bad facial animations. Game play, art style, QA... That’s why Insomniac, Nintendo, and Epic are making great games and solid profits at or below a $60 price point.
The focus on graphics comes from a paradigm that was already outdated when gaming got to it. When we market a game, we market it the same way as a movie or TV show. Advertising has a bias toward visuals because it's not designed with interactivity in mind. So, what looks good sells, even if the experience of playing it feels like putting your hands through a meat grinder.
The problem is that gameplay and art style are subjective, graphics are objective. What might appeal to consumers is unpredictable, and might not appeal to the publishing execs or the bank loan officers, especially if your studio and your primary markets are in different parts of the world. Compare Korean/Chinese glamour and grind with Japanese style whimsy and weirdness with Anglosphere AWESOME!!!!11!. Meanwhile, the number of pixels per cm, the number of FPS, these are objective metrics that (with some internal data from previous games) you can put on a chart and say "if increasing graphics by X much costs $Y, but we predict it will get us Z more sales, it is a good deal," and then you get your advance from the publisher/bank loan/venture capital investment, etc.
I recently played through Final Fantasy VII. Graphics were awful, but the game was just as wonderful as I remembered. Ruby and Emerald Weapon were easier than I remembered, though Safer Sephiroth was harder.
Pricing is set by the consumer's willingness to pay, not by costs. The rare exception to this rule is total collapse of the profit margin, and even then an increase in price is usually a death knell for the company. Is there evidence of a significant decrease in studio profitability on an industry-wide basis?
I think what they were trying to say is that the devs have to charge more for their games in order to profit from it. If they just charged 60 dollars with no micro-transactions, they would have a loss and the industry would die.
The reason games cost so much is cause it isn't a bill, it's an investment. It costs 20m if you're trying to earn 40m. Before it only costed them 2m, but thats cause they weren't trying to make 40m back then. Games don't have to cost that much, same as movies not needing to hire A-list actors. They chose to do so in an attempt to make as much money as possible. If the game cost went up so unjustly in the last 10 years, why are they more profitable now than they were when it was cheaper?
The game's industry kind of did this to themselves. They pushed for open world and multiplayer games, which not only are expensive to make, but also hurt sales as people began to just play a couple of games over and over instead of buying more. Despite the fact that more people are playing games now than ever before, and despite the fact that the industry is making more money than ever before, the AAA industry has been selling less games per customer for years now.
In the long scope of things, between 5-10 years ago people would actively complain when anything was a linear experience because a few somewhat-experimental games did the open-world format well, and bigger studios decided to follow trends (that, to be fair, they most like focused tested into the ground) that they deemed to be more marketable or safe, even if it raises costs overall.
The Elephant of Doom The game industry, and almost every industry in general, is reactionary. Some of the best titles are open world, and the consumers loved them. The publishers didn't push open world, they felt pushed to make open world games because at the time that's what gamers wanted. Until something special became not so special at all.
This doesn't explain why so many companies create AAA games and expect them to sell. Consumers are only willing to buy a limited number of that kind of game each year. The solution is not to raise AAA game prices, but to stop making so many of them.
While there is some truth to that... how exactly do you make that happen? All the compines would have to come together and agree to reduce product and I pretty sure that will trip some anti-comtention protections laws in at least a few places.
+Left2Cake a lot of the companies that are doing this are publishing multiple games themselves, and thus could employ some self control. Take for instance Titan Fall II. The game could have been a huge success, but EA decided to release the game during the holiday season around the same time as Battlefield, and when it would have needed to compete with Call of Duty. Titan Fall got lost between the more popular releases simply because gamers don't have enough money to get so many hot games at the same time. All EA would have had to do was push back the release until after the holidays when there was a lot less competition. With how many games they release, EA is practically in competition with itself.
I understand the logic behind this but when it comes to release dates there's a reason that no major titles or movies come out in January/February: after the holiday season there's a steep drop-off in how much consumers spend, and pushing off the release date of a game affects advertising that is put into motion 6-10 months in advance. Aiming for a post-holiday release slot is almost sentencing a title to death, where very few things (for example, the original Deadpool film) can turn a profit just because the audience doesn't want to buy. This is less of a problem with a super niche focused game that a small dedicated fan base would buy regardless, but when your sales rely on the general public that buys most of their games for the year between October and December that closes off a lot of possible customers. If anything, Titan Fall II would have benefited from a different marketing STRATEGY, one that would have somehow better differentiated it from more standard FPS titles, but at the end of the day there's only so much they can do.
The best AAA titles don't come out on a schedule. Bethesda releases a main-series game only once every few years. Zelda, Pokemon, and Mario come out on similar schedules. These franchises release smaller games, sometimes cell phone games or. ones with reused assets, or DLC packs on a more regular basis. Point being: it's not necessary to release a AAA game every year, and so many companies doing so is causing the current problem. I expect a new video game market crash in the near future.
yeah AAA game is so expensive to make. EA's Star Wars Battlefront 2 despite ship 7 million copies but still not enough to satisfied the AAA. Is this really a cost-issue? or in fact it's greed-issue.
So $100, 000, 000 for a game budget sounds like a ludicrosly high sum to pay without context.But if you divide that number by 60 according to price per game then you only need to sell 1.6 million games to make your money back.Any AAA game dev worth their salt could sell that amount in their sleep, and thats not factoring in additional profits from pre-orders, microtransactions etc.Even SW Battlefront 2, which became so infamous that it was publicly branded an online casino targeted at children has made a tidy 9 million sales. While battlefront certainly must have cost more than 100 million to make it doesn't change the fact that you're portraying 100 million as a massive goal to meet when it really isn't for a AAA publisher.
"60 according to price per game then you only need to sell 1.6 million games to make your money back" Aer you guys so sheltered that you still think the whole 60$ goes to the dev/publisher? askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/138674831501/hello-i-have-a-question-regarding-the-maths-of
I feel like they should have brought up the fact that MOST DEVS DON'T SEE MORE THAN HALF THE MONEY FROM THEIR GAMES. Distributors and platform providers charge hefty fees just to get the game sold. And then there's the fact that most of that profit doesn't go to the company, but to whoever holds stock in the company. Those people put pressure on the devs to make as much money as possible, and the devs don't really have a choice. Investors have a nasty tendency to move on as soon as they find something more profitable or stable, so we have a sort of arms race where everyone is trying to make as much money as possible just to keep doors open.
It may have saved a lot of misunderstanding if this had been part of last week's video, or at least alluded to better. That said, in your example here, you are muddying the waters by including startup costs with operating costs. And I have to admit, $10k/month for average compensation packages sounds awfully high (not regarding what people should earn, but what people actually do earn). I do think it is important to do at least one or two more videos to finish discussing this topic, including counterpoints and addressing the hubbub last week's video has so enthusiastically generated. You lot are seen as a voice of reason and fairness in the games industry, and many people were discouraged by your incomplete treatment of this subject last week. This week adds to the topic, but doesn't complete it.
I agree. To be fair, we did state previously (in the first episode) that we were devoting several episodes to this topic, but I think by the time people had gotten to that point in the video they had already typed out their comments, as tends to happen. Keep in mind that we make these *months* in advance--like, as of right now, the scripts and art are done for at least the next 3 episodes. I do agree that this episode should have been more heavily alluded to, if only to save me the headache of dealing with way too many folks who should really get their blood pressure looked at. --Belinda
That 10k wouldn't just be direct salary. Don't forget things like the employer contribution to Social Security, unemployment insurance, 401k, ect. That alone may run 15%+ or more of base salary. Then factor in other potential expenses, such as health insurance, paid time off, administrative personnel costs, hiring costs (even this stage could run over $3000), potential workmans comp cases, and so on. These numbers can add up.
jrggrop - Yes, I'm aware of this, and factored it in. I'm also aware that my perspective is a little skewed because I live in a pretty rural part of the country, and living in a major city like LA or New York is much more expensive all around. That said, I also haven't known many AAA devs living in a metro area who pull even $50k/year. Many people don't consider that full-time compensation includes those things (and those things cost the employer money), so I'm glad you brought it up.
Belinda - For what it's worth, I'm sorry for all the bullshit you and the team have had to endure this last week. At least you know there is a discourse, and that has always been the goal of EC. Silver lining.
+Xaos Bob I think some of the (for the lack of a better word) hateful comments come from people who are also fans of the Jimquisition: a show in which the host Jim Sterling looks at some awful business practices that some AAA or Independent companies do, and I do have to admit. He's a bit too harsh with the negativity... But he does bring-up some good points in his rants, he's also pretty good at predicting things that companies will do, and he's really quick with the news as well.
Sorry, but the consumers never asked for big budget Hollywood actors to do voice over work. (Some have been great, but the majority have been pretty bland) we also don't need money spent on old school marketing techniques. Seriously, what AAA game came out that nobody knew about until they saw it in billboards or a tv ad. That's a pretty lame excuse. Espically since the cost of marketing is way cheaper nowadays and most gamers know about games through word of mouth or just by going through things like game informer or something. Hell, perpetual hype machines like E3 make everyone know about pretty much most AAA studios upcoming games months or years ahead of time. I don't know any consumers that are saying games are cheap to make and that's why they don't want to pay 60 dollars. Nor are they totally against making any sort of extra revenue. (Weve all enjoyed DLC on games we like). All this comes off as, is some sort of PR excuse for EA and the like. And sorry but, I'm not gonna feel sorry for a company that openly cares more about it's shareholders than it's consumers. I'll stick to playing things like Dust: an Elysium tale, or little nightmares, fallout, or Mario: Odyessy.
J M we spoke with our dollars. The dollars were misinterpreted and a thousand other things went wrong but video games aren't exactly literature when it comes to education or discourse. What do games provide you? Are they essential to your life? Can you make sense of the world without them?
Games provide many things. Games like fallout or skyrim provide escapism and power fantasies. Co-op games like payday, cuphead or Minecraft provide good times with friends or family while accomplishing a goal. Games like Mario and shovel knight help remind me of my youth and the bright spots during that time. Rythem games like DDR and rock band get me out of the constant sitting position and get me some exercise. And games can very much be literature in things like Bioshock, deus ex, final fantasy, and mass effect. Games where you fall in love with the characters and cry or make you sit back and think about yourself and question yourself and maybe help change the way you think. No. You don't NEED video games to survive in life, but technically neither do you NEED books, movies, tv, internet, phones, or music. But do you really want a world without any of those things. I think some games can very much help you make sense of the world or at least certain aspects of it.
+J M if a game studio is planning to make a movie based game like star wars or some marvel movie, they will hire the same actors who were in that movie
This is actually important. The problem isn't the price raise, it's the lack of consumer confidence. The people who purchase games seriously enough to sustain a AAA industry have been suffering through so much abuse since the DLC generation started that they no longer trust the companies that provide it. We dealt with the jump from $50 to $60 with grumbling back during the 360/PS3 generation jump with grumbling, but back in those days we still trusted the publishes to sell us complete games. Now the industry has been so abusive for so long that customers only see greedy tyrants. They CAN'T legitimately raise the price, because they also can't stop loot boxes, DLC, DRM, Online Only, etc.
IDK, this whole argument seems backwards to me. Why do games need production teams of 500 and $5 million game engines? Because that's what everyone else is spending and you need to keep up. It's an arms race of inflated budgets and expensive graphics engines that is leading to the risk aversion and predatory monetization that is happening just now. I work in film, and it's the same reason why movies take 3-4 months to shoot and have crews of hundreds, while television can shoot 90 minutes in a couple of weeks. It's not because it *has* to take that long, it's because they think they can afford to and feel they need to to keep up.
Also the longer the turnaround process is, the riskier it gets, because games aren't making back the money until it hits the market. So if you wait 8 years for a game to be made, that's 8 years without any revenue. Now compare that to 2 years
Underqualified I agree with you, arms race is a good way to put it. But, the way I see the industry as an outsider, movies as a whole are still being propped up by these big budget blockbusters. That's what brings the attention, the eyeballs, and the infrastructure. Television or indie film provide some alternatives, but they don't fully replace that market either. I'm interested: do you see a solution forming or getting talked about in film?
Omg yes! This is what I have been saying for the last couple of years! Especially in the MMO industry, they basically start development with an artificially inflated budget
Cyrribrae I actually took 6 months off work last year to try and set up a humble bundle style service for niche and indie films, so my reply might might have a bit of a bias.. Film and tv are going through a golden era due to platforms like netflix, hbo, starz etc. making people think that good content is worth paying for again! So there is no one at the top pleading poverty right now. Unfortunately, the indie scene is terrible for film, much worse than in gaming (from an outsider in gaming). And I think it has a lot to do with monetization. When you go to the cinema, it doesn't matter if you see a big summer blockbuster or a 20 man indie darling, both tickets cost the same price, both of them offer overpriced popcorn, and the blockbuster has a bigger screen better screening times. Whereas, indie games can offer a much better value proposition than AAA games. We all know that when we buy COD, or an EA or Ubisoft game, as well as the $60 up front price there will be storyline dlc to buy in a couple of months as well as multiplayer map pack dlc, limited time offer exp boosts "hurry only $1.99 soon to be $5.99", and constant popups reminding you that new cosmetics are available or the next season of lootboxes has started. But indie games offer much better value because as well as usually costing between $15 to $30, if they end up being successful like terraria, FTL, or stardew valley, there is an expectation that you will continue to provide updates and more content for as long as you can reasonably afford to. So, in conclusion, yes. You're right. The Hollywood system is set up so that only the big superhero movies make money, and smaller films only exist to find new talent. But no one's talking about fixing it because the people on the inside are making plenty of money and the audience isn't asking for it because the biggest movies offer the best value proposition.
Mixing up standard company running costs with project costs and adding them all up into one “price to make a game” sum. Yeah, I can see this is going to be a thorough discussion...
Are you claiming that devs don't cost the amount EC claims? That they don't work for the amount of time claimed? Sure, they don't buy a new laptop for every dev for every project, nor office space. But the large bulk of the cost is just time spent, and you still arrive at a fairly large number that most non-business minded people in this comments section would balk at.
Fun fact: standard company running costs are part of the project costs for a AAA game as they are an actual company. Company costs are factored into the budget of any company project anywhere. What else are they running the company on?
I used to work in a project-based company (ITS infrastructure). You always, ALWAYS factor in company overhead into project costs. Because there will be times when your company is not getting paid for the project (trying to get your pitch approved/bidding for your next project, etc.), but you still have to pay salaries for your entire staff. So frankly EC was extremely conservative when they said $10,000 per person for 2 years. That number assumes everyone is working on something that makes money everyday.
Plus they did bad math. If it's $10k/month for 200 people - that's $48m, not $40m. (They seemed to have forgotten that there are 12 months in the year.)
To be fair, in certain games you could probably cut voice acting all together, or have VERY limited voice acting. Just look at breath of the wild. Game did great and had VERY little voice acting in it.
It really depends. NeR is a low budget AAA game that focuses on story and emotions, so it cut down thijgs like graphic to be able to afford great voice actors as Laura Bailey and Liam O'Brien
The problem I see is that the cost of developing a game is increasing much faster than inflation would dictate. If the price of making a triple A game keeps going up without a similarly expanding customer base, then alternative revenue sources are just a band-aid on a much bigger problem. The big budget games industry needs to find some kind of equilibrium, or I can't see it lasting forever.
+Jane Black You're sadly incorrect. A large majority of unemployed and underemployed people around the world get through their days only because they can play video games all day. Video games are the modern day circuses from the "Bread and Circuses" of the Roman Empire. Take that away and you're probably looking at massive social unrest and upheaval.
Well, the thing is the shareholders want more and more, because the way they often see it (especially institutional investors) a games company is no different from a company that makes, for example, luxury cars.
This video feels like a very defensive response to people's criticisms of last week's video. I realize you're mostly just laying out information about the status of the AAA industry. However, because you don't repeatedly and explicitly come out against how this system works, these two videos both read like you're defending an industry model that, from the outside looking in, is very very obviously an unsustainable bubble that is going to burst. I hope defending it wasn't your intention; if it wasn't, then you need to be extremely clear about your position.
Thom Cote no they dont they really try to stay away from taking a position these vids are mostly just them laying out info from their own experiences and nothing more
I'm not sure if you're familiar with our channel, but it takes us *months* to make these videos--we don't really do "response videos." (As stated in that first video, we're taking a few weeks to explore this topic of game costs and lootboxes). You are more than welcome to peruse our archives (where we have a *lot* of videos talking about predatory monetization practices from years and years ago--for starters, you can look at this playlist: th-cam.com/play/PLhyKYa0YJ_5BiTUDF5EPpVquSpsSZ0gSe.html ). We try to keep the focus narrow for each video, and we always hope that our viewers will use our videos as a starting point for their own research. --Belinda
Thom Cote they don't need to do anything. EC exists because they want to improve the discussion. I think they are reacting to the recently escalated internet flamewar concerning loot boxes and micro transactions. Video game bubble popped in the 80's and we can prevent it from happening again by educating ourselves.
VallenChaosValiant Agree, EA can go bankrupt but the game industries will still here because gaming bubbles aren't as big as student debt bubbles. My grandma always say "If you can't handle the fire then don't go to kitchen", that is similar to anyone who wants to go to gaming industry business.
You know..... im not 100% sure on this one. Like would anyone be too upset if games didnt look much diffrent from PS3 games? and dont most people care more about visual style than graphics proper?
Cid Aghast Maybe not people who are super fans of the medium, but they’re not the only ones who buy games. People who don’t have in-depth knowledge of how games are made and only care about when the next COD is coming out will care. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Magnus Prime I'm not entirely convinced that the people who are invested in the next Call of Duty can really tell the difference between a PS3 and a PS4 game and that's not me knocking them I just mean that graphics are getting better at a much lower rate but costing exponentially more and people that aren't very invested in graphical output may not notice if a game looks last-gen because there's not a huge difference it's not like jumping from PS2 to PS3 anymore
Sadly, if you ask this on TH-cam you'll have tons of people echoing the (obviously more logical) opinion of graphics being second to a lot of things when that is not the case for a ton of people. Look at Twitter for #Witcher3 and see all the "OOOH LOOK HOW PWETTY THE SUNSET IIIIIS" and all the reddit posts of the same flippin sunset. I've seen so many Witcher 3 sunsets by now that I kind of didn't even wanna see the sun IRL anymore, I was sick of it. People care. SO. FUCKING. MUCH. And it's really maddening, because a lot of great games are underlooked because they don't pump their game full of crazy particle effects and Hyper-high res textures and 5 billion polygons for a single blade of grass. Graphics are basically marketting on their own and if you were to go a bit back, sure a lot of people wouldn't mind especially in the PC space if the game's fun. Heck, World of Warcraft is STILL one of the biggest MMORPGs together with Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV and other than WOW, all of those came around exactly that Era of PS3/Xbox360 games that you're talking about. (with FFXIV actually having been on the PS3 for a long while.) So it CAN work. But in the console space, a lot of people still argue to this day "Which console is better" and get defensive. What do they talk about? Graphics of course. I'd love for a world with people who didn't give a shit if a game looked new or old but instead looked at a game and saw whether the graphics are *coherent for their world*, which is far more important in measuring an artworks beauty and games ARE art. The aforementioned WoW has a cartoony yet at times violent and grotesque artstyle that just works wonders, especially looking at how the next expansion features tons of atmospheric details. Instead people want their 4K 30 fps games to look pwetty and it drives me nuts.
I think you might underestimate how far graphics advance, look at Witcher 2 and Witcher 3, there are only 4 years between those games(2011-2015). Without a doubt, the beauty of the Witcher 3 helped its sales.
I'd rather have worse graphics and or slower progression for cheaper games; and no cost in the world is worth making our children addicted to gambling mechanics
Yeah, those poor people addicted to real gambling should be better protected too. Although the gaming-gambling is less of a threat to them than the bone-crushing brutes of a casino who will not only send you bills... But i got kinda good news(sadly only for the country i live in). One German University made a study about video game lootboxes and it is now scientifically proven, that lootboxes act the same on our psyche as normal gambling and our Landesmedienamt ( the state-organisation for media-regulation) looks into banning lootboxes alltogether. But i only believe in the ban once its in act.... the lobby might want to have a word in that
The more I hear these arguments, the more I feel like the real problem is not the actual cost. The real problem is this kind of "Prisoner's dilemma" that game companies are in. With current tooling, a AAA studio could achieve less ambitious games (let's say, early ps3 quality) for a fraction of the money they used to cost. The problem is everybody else is going to keep making unsustainably big-budget games. If everybody agreed on a set of principles for "sustainable" game development I dare to guess that we would not be questioning the $60 price tag, we could keep most games well under $30. Sadly, that's not how things work, the prisonner always chooses to betray his partner.
Pretty much this, yeah. And it's not unique to the AAA games industry, either; it's the reason why electronics are sourced from sweatshops, and food from banana republics. It's why retail is paying their employees as little as possible, even to the point of weird swap-out arrangements to make sure that they never have to pay them full time. Because when everybody else keeps to the Sustainable Business Practices, the one company that *doesn't* creams the rest of the market. This is why "there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" is a phrase you hear thrown around.
It's a fine microcosm of the problems with capitalism. This is an issue in just about every industry. The marketing costs are where this is really a problem. They're not spending this money to "get the message out", as much as they're spending the money to try to push out their competitors.
I think a problem they do point out is people aren’t gonna pay 60 dollars up front for a game that looks like it belongs on the PS3 You could say “we’ll just lower the price to 30-40 bucks” but then you need to do even more cutting elsewhere to put yourself back in the green. People are expect a certain technical standard and if it’s not up to par with others in the same price range it’ll get review bombed and then likely flop regardless.
Meanwhile I'm making an indie game with my friend on a budget of less than $500. I'm a college student whose parents pay my rent and food, so I guess I don't count. It's fucking hard to complete a game with little money, little free time, understaffed; years of labor and almost nothing to show for it.
rageoftyrael It's actually two games. We make a point of designing games that defy genre so bare with me. The current smaller game is a 2D grid platformer but also a puzzle game that is also a sandbox point and click adventure. On top of that, you play as two people at once, one with each hand. We expect to release it early spring on computers. I think I'd be perfect with Joy cons, so I want to make a Switch port one day. The bigger game on hiatus is equally bonkers. It's equally RPG and Horror. You play as a paranoid traveling shopkeeper who lives in a surreal tribal world and has the option of nondeadly tactics. It looks like a PS1 game, but plays like Paper Mario TTYD on steroids, and is also a point and click adventure game, and a Tactics RPG in many respects. We've spent two years world building and are struggling to code the game. We expect a release a few years out. I refuse to apologize.
Haha, guys, please don't subscribe to this TH-cam account: we don't upload videos here. Search for Otyugra Games on Facebook or Twitter instead if you're trying to support us.
@@ruthenican No, we never completed either. We decided to work on a new game of a smaller scale instead. It's a turn-based roguelike that is humbler in all ways, except for it's story which is actually rather deep and nuanced all things considered. I have even less time to work on this game but I'm doing well financially and so is my coworker. That's all that matters. Releasing a game would only be a bonus.
So something occurs to me. At least some of that 60-70 dollar price tag is the game store, right? How much of that money is actually going back to the developer? How many copies does the company actually need to sell to recoup its losses? Also, including things like office equipment in the price is a little dishonest. I doubt Nintendo buys new chairs and walls for every game it makes, you know?
We actually do know those numbers. Speaking broadly here, but it roughly amounts to a dev gets about 17 dollars, the publisher gets about 30, and a retailer gets about 2 dollars from every $60 game. The rest generally is lost to costs in producing the game, shipping, and other fees.
I work in an electronics store that sells video games. I know that my company pays $48 for games that we sell for $60. Some of that goes towards shipping, and I don't know if there are any other middlemen taking their cut. I just know we make a $12 profit for every 'AAA' game we sell.
It really can't though. The biggest chunk of that still goes to the publisher, the person putting the money up to make the game, so they kinda do need the largest cut of the profits. If you tried to take that money away then they would simply either give out less money, which causes more issues for the dev's needing to cut corners and causes problems for them, or they demand that the sales have to make up for the lost cost, resulting in them demanding an extra million or so copies have to be sold at min. to made up for their lost profits, which also causes issues for the devs. The remaining fees make up about 13 dollars in the current breakdown, and even then there's not a lot you can do to make that cheaper. The most you might be able to do is shave off a dollar or two, but things are already very tight in terms of budget.
The issue is stockholder dividends and expectations. It is that greed that drives the constant need for more revenue streams. Why don't you address that?
Agreed. I work for a company that pulls everyone together for a quarterly event where the whole C-team tells everyone how the company is doing, and all the records we're breaking. The company acquires more assets and expands the product line. They buy giant machines that easily replace workers. Meanwhile, they eliminate, redefine, and consolidate positions, which limits upward mobility. Wages have stagnated even though the cost of living in the area creeps higher. But hey, sometimes we get breakfast tacos, so everything must be great, right? I don't think we should blame corporations for doing what they can to maximize on profits - they're a money-making machine and it's what they do. But it's the corporate demand, not just for profitability, but *growth* is what is killing everything. That's where the greed comes in. As a society we have to do what we can to reign them in and make them work for us in a responsible long-term way. Otherwise they will spin out of control, and we'll all be shucked like oysters.
Because dividends dont contribute to the quality of the game, and therefore arent justifiable. Better to just imply that devs would starve without a 50% price hike.
6:51 "Having the hottest-looking screenshots and trailers of the season practically guarantees success in that environment." It also and mostly guarantees that people with at best average computers are gonna skip on it because it's not gonna run well on their machines. Dial down graphics, dial up aesthetic.
from my experience gorgeous graphics can be toned down to an acceptable level - but with a low-end computer that will likely still not run very great since from also my experience, big AAA games that have gorgeous trailers usually have big, open worlds that take a lot of power to render, and the render distance usually can’t be lowered unless the world is literally infinite (minecraft, if you ignore the world border) it’s not the graphics by themselves, it’s the other stuff that usually comes with gorgeous graphics that cause me to skip games like that
I'd like you put more emphasis on the "this needs to change" part of the video, I get the feeling that you're OK with all this madness just because you like nice graphics and big games... maybe we don't need more Witcher 3s or Horizon Zero Downs until they are actually affordable? Maybe we don't need AAA games at all. The industry needs to change before it kills itself.
Well, they don't need to go apocalytic about it. You can focus on the needed change from other angle, it's clear that there's a lot of problems on every end. Shareholders aren't happy, devs aren't happy, players aren't happy... The issues are there.
if you feel like 60 dollars is out of your price range you maybe need to look into your personal budget, its not like you need every single game that comes out every year, you should only really be buying 3-5 new games every year max and thats if you're really into gaming more than that then you're just wasting your own money because theres just now way youre actually going to put enough hours into all those games to justify the cost to yourself
Man, I won't get into a discussion with people that uses words like "stupid" and "moron" on their first post... Let's just say that there're differences between quality content and a tech arms race that bring stress and problems to everyone involved. I'm not saying $60 is too much, it may be too little. My problem is that companies are trying to exploit people's minds into spending as much as they can into their games. If that's required to make AAA games, then I don't want those games.
A Blob probably not as much as you'd think. You still need to hire all the artists, modelers, riggers, lighting tech, etc It might MIGHT be less intensive, but I don't think as much as you'd think
Bullcrap super mario odyssey just got 9 millions in sales www.vg247.com/2018/01/31/switch-overtakes-wii-u-lifetime-sales-as-super-mario-odyssey-hits-9-million-units-sold/ and when u look at switch compared to a ps4 it's still not as powerful yet nintendo made games still look just as good. Like this guy failed to address WHY video game costs have just balloon astronomically over the years(www.newgamernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/vgdevcost.jpg), it doesn't take much to realize when games like Tomb raider sells about 3.4 million and is considered "under preforming" or Final Fantasy 15 needing 10 million to be considered a "success" (it's recent put it at 7 million sold). Another is that this guy also ignores that these companies has MASSIVE tax exceptions via loopholes (th-cam.com/video/SFKnv1YzI3k/w-d-xo.html). Here's a more better look into the "AAA" industry (th-cam.com/video/l0FI3iUt9H4/w-d-xo.html)
Well, how do you define AAA? To be honest, I'm not really familiar with the term besides knowing it involves a game with lots of marketing, a huge budget, and a large publisher.
Like I have an idea. Maybe make a game that doesn’t take 200 people 2 years? Idk. Just a thought. The entire premise of this video is that only high budget games matter, and they use this to prove that only high budget games matter. That is circular logic.
Welp, that settles it. Big games are just too expensive to make, the AAA industry is going to collapse under its own weight, and in a few years only inde games will be left. Enjoy it all while it’s still here, folks.
Indie games have better managed budgets, they also achieve similar graphics quality and soundtrack quality, so honestly most of the cost isn't worth it for AAA games.
Your prediction might come true... for a year or two. Then some new AAA studios will come in to fill the resulting gap such a collapse would leave in the market. Might be fewer AAA games then we have now if you believe the market is over-saturated now, but the basic principles remain the same. Consumers demand it, so someone will provide.
shivore Yeah, that's what an industry collapse is. The video game industry has already gone through two or three collapses and it's heading for another.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, Current Triple AAA is an unsustainable buisiness that sooner or later will go plop. If you have to throw millions of dollars at marketing a system that is clearly customer unfriendly, then you are doing it wrong. Make a good product that people want for a reasonable price, and you don't have to spend millions convincing/marketing your product to sell it.
yeah that aint gonna cut it because word of mouth will never spread enough to cover for the gains you could have made but lost because you did not spend anywhere near enough at the marketing end to actually sell enough copies to meet the bottom line.
Wages have been basically stagnant for the last 40 years... The purchasing power of Americans keeps on getting lower...heck the average American is still literally thousands of dollars poorer then they were before the great recession of 2008. For publishers like EA the developing cost has been decreasing since 2013 ... These companies are highly profitable... Activtion, EA,take two literally store billions of dollars in the Netherlands to avoid paying taxes... These companies are NOT cash or credit strapped.. Not to mention the patent and IP they own... It basically comes down to greed of upper management and maximizing profits for share holders... you guys are really mistaken if you think that if games cost 90 bucks that they would get rid of loot boxes... They have a fiduciary responsibly to maximize profits for share folders.
mAybE AAA games could be a lot cheaper if you wouldn't aim for more than +270% profit like EA. www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ea/financials?query=income-statement The point is, games are expensive to make, but that isn't the reason of exploitative monetization. If I take the upper estimation from above, the 100mill, you "only" need to sell ~1.7 million copies to turn positive. Now compare that number to the very few statistics we have from AAA sales.
+NoESanity Uh no, he has a point. This video isn't just about game budgets but also as a continuation of the last video about why publishers are forcing more monitization into their games. EA doesn't put those extra monitzation schemes into their games because the games are too costly to make and turning a profit is too hard... they do it because they demand their games have a +270% profit. If they were willing to accept less profit, then they might not need to change a thing... The previous Batttlefront more than likely made an enormous profit for EA; without the controversy, BFII would have likely done even better. And yet, EA still forced in lootboxes simply because they wanted even higher returns. The problem is not that games "cost too much to make" but simply that publishers demands for profits are far too high. They aren't happy with just being successful, staying in the black, and growing; they demand MORE. Its pure simple greed.
I see, TH-cam at its best. The video above details why AAA video games cost a lot to make. That's fair, it even seems to Match the EA statistics. My comment's third line acknowledges that. The video however doesn't seem link the identified high cost to predatory monetization practices. Seems fair again. The point is that one still shouldn't make that assumption. Almost all comments of this video appear to just do that, everyone beleives AAA games must be flawed if they need so much microtransactions and DLC to cover their production costs, while in reality, you need that to have some juicy profit.
This video was mostly about how the price for games comes together. Sure, most "Big AAA" companies (as weird as that sound) aim for stupidly high profit margins. Especially EA, let's not kid ourselves, are just idiotic. But the price still stands and it explains why some companies despite not being complete assholes still opt to go for Lootbox-based systems or go more and more to the 60 bucks + more bullshit added route. Is that cool? No. Don't support games like those if you wish for them to just...Stop. See Need For Speed Payback, that game sold horribly, played only...OK-ish, the story was absolutely dumb and robotic and I can't even fathom who had the idea for tuning to be part of a literal SLOT MACHINE. That upper estimate from the video is also considering good decisions are made, and you don't have stupidly high costs for your employees. I reckon EA pays its higher ups quite a nice amount of money, prolly a lot more than some higher guy gets in another business.
The most easy solution: Tell the graphical fidelity spectacle creep to go eff itself and focus on gameplay and use stylized graphics. You'd shave off at least half of the developers and middleware . Players don't demand super graphics. The AAA publishers are pushing the narrative to scare away any competition and protect their oligopoly.
Ok, who here has ever bought a game because it had a certain voice actor? Because I know I never have. I never even know a famous person did any voice acting on that game until I actually get the game and hear their voice on it! Notable examples would be Fallout and The Sims Medieval. So you could easily cut that out and not lose anything. These are games we're talking about, not movies. It wouldn't alleviate that much strain from your budget, but it would definitely work without losing anything. As for lowering the budget in general. I'm pretty sure AAA games back in the 90s didn't cost that much to make, even when you adjust for inflation. So there's definitely room to have lower budget games out there. Games that obviously won't sell as much, but also don't need to sell as much (since games back then sold a fraction of the amount that they sell now, yet still made a profit). I feel like they did use to be a bridge between Indie and AAA games back during the PS2 era. I use to call them B Games (like B Movies). But they just sort of disappeared. Maybe it's time for them to come back.
DanVzare yeah exactly I didn't buy overwatch beacause Matt mercer was in it no I brought it cause I actually thought it looked like a good game. It's not a movie where you actors can make the movie good beacause with games if the mechanics are broken and the story is boring well I'm sorry no voice actor is going to convince me it's a good game
Agreed. At most I've bought a game because the art designer was someone whose style I liked. But VAs? I can't say that I'm interested in them. It probably doesn't help that there are actually very few VAs with distinctive enough sounding voices that I can point to them and say "I know that guy's voice!" The B games still exist, it's just that most of them have migrated to the 3DS since it has lower development costs and expectations than a full sized console while having an audience that's bigger than any single console. For example Marvelous moved their popular farming sim Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons to the 3DS specifically because they felt development costs on home consoles would be too high, while the development costs for a 3DS title were manageable.
I did actually keep an eye on (but ended up not buying) one game purely because Jennifer Hale (femShep, Bastila Shan, Avatar Kyoshi and many many more) voiced the main protagonist. I don't even recall the title of the game, but you played a battlemage and it had a 'elaborate crafting system' for the spells you could sling around... which ended up being a slightly retooled equipment screen, where you would plug runes that did AMAZING EFFECTS such as damage +3% to the base spell. Lichdom Battlemage was the title (it just came to me as I was typing that last bit)
Dishonored 2 has Steven Russell (the original va for Garret in Thief) and that forced me to pre-purchase the game instead of waiting for a sale like I do most games. Voice actors are a selling point, you are an idiot.
Certainly it is not a selling point for some people. But their fame attract consumers to notice the product. Just like movies, you maybe do not see it because the cast, but you notice the movie because some big name, even if you don't go see that movie there are other people that will do because of those reasons.
Skyrim had a budget of 85 million dollars. You're saying a scappy game can cost 100 million to make. Somehow the math doesn't check out. MA: Andromeda didn't cut corners in facial animations either. It is clear they worked a lot to make those crappy animations. The reflections, facial detail, independent motion, they are all there, the thing is, they sucked at their job. You can spend money inefficiently. That's the problem with the AAA industry.
Skyrim is a bit older now, the cost increased since then as you can use more detailed 3D models, which take more time to make aswell as better textures which are a lot of work. There are ai features that skyrim did not have but are standard by now. All those things mean additional work. And yes, Andromeda did cut corners. If it didn't they wouldn't have hired people who can't do the job perfectly. Or they had given their people more time for polishing.
Mandos Aldmer andromeda was scrapped and the game we got had less than a years worth of development time. The facial animations were all automated and, with a few noticeable exceptions, we're never touched up, something that process was not made for.
Thank you for being a voice of reason in this sea of folks talking about how studios like EA or Activision Blizzard needs to die. Thank you so very much, you genuinely made my day just being saying this! ^^
@ArgentumEmperio Taxes, maintenence of all kinds, staff capacitation, insurance policies, social security, working equipment and I'm not even getting started here... Did I mention TAXES?? Cuz that's kind of a big deal... Accountancy exists as a profession for a reason. Lol
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you, the regular consumer should care about this stuff, but that also doesn't entitle anyone to be dicks towards companies, if you really hate a company, if a company's policy is do scummy and shady, the best way to hurt them is to ignore them, Insulting them won't do crap to them. Ironically the strongest, most harmful message a company like that can get is no message at all. DON'T BE A JERK!
so you showed a lot of numbers in this video but you neglected to make the final (and in my opinion the most important) one 100.000.000/60=1.666.667 This means that if a game with a budget of 100 million sold roughly 1,7 copies, it would make its money back. Despite this, EA's CFO Blake Jörgensen recently announced that due to battlefront 2's dissapointing sales of 'only' 7 million copies (and that was despite the massive backlash), they would have to put the microtransactions back in the game. This is why I simply refuse to believe these mulit-million dollar corporations pleading poverty while they shove their predatory monetization schemes down our throats. Furthermore, if you're telling me that an assasin's creed or call of duty game can't make it's money back by just selling the product then the only conclusion I can draw is that the executives behind these games are fucking idiots who don't deserve to be in this business.
Even if you cut the game price by 30% (what Valve/Sony/Microsoft take for instance on digital downloads), that's about 2.5 millions copy. Monster Hunter World sold for 5 millions IN 3 DAYS. Most triple AAA make over 5 millions very easily when proper marketing is done for it. And this video is telling us making more than twice your original investment is not enough? Really? AAA games wouldn't be so common in the first place it it wasn't making a lot of money, that's just how capitalism works, there's no need to make something if you know you won't make money out of it.
Jelle Hondelink I agree with your point, but just to expand the conversation further let's remember that, in buisenesses your objective is not recover the money you put in it, is to gain something over your initial investment. So in this case maybe the profit of those 7 million copies was not up to the return value they expected. please don't grill me, I DO hate microtransactions and every game I played in 2017 did not have them (to my knowledge at least). But yeah is healty to remember that gaming companies WHOEVER they are (for the most part), are not our friends they are in for the money and not the passion (again, for the most part).
Not really. Keep in mind that as a company, you want to make enough profit that your shareholders will invest their money in YOUR company instead of something else. Any decent economic class will tell you that you want to have your company make a profit of at LEAST more than what you would get from a basic savings account.
Celestial Gecko I think you're the one getting too focused on the numbers here. I realize that battlefront 2 probably had a much bigger budget than 100 million (although AAA publishers have always been notoriously silent about such things so we can only assume) but my main point here was that I simply don't believe that these publishers actually need all these additional monetization avenues. And if they do, if EA genuinely can't turn a profit just selling a game with a star wars license (which may as well be a license to print money), then they're completely incompetent. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that these loot boxes are not motivated by necessity, but by pure and simple greed. Because a company like EA is never satisfied by just making money, they have to make all the money in the universe. They've demonstrated that time and time again. Besides, if a game can sell over seven million copies and still be 'dissapointing' then this industry simply isn't sustainable.
The big flaw with this video is that your cost estimation is using a newly created studio with a newly created franchise to estimate the cost of an already well established company releasing a game in a well established franchise. They don't need to repay for the engine they already bought and pay for the features they already developed. Hell most AAA games literally just modify the previous game, Ubisoft being the perfect exemple of that but also sports games by EA are even worse. They also don't actually need to market it that much, "No one is gonna know about your game", like really? People are not gonna know about the new Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed or FIFA? These games sell themselves, don't tell me they need those indecent marketing budgets and superstar voice actors to sell. Besides, they're already making a huge amount of money, why are we even treating this as an issue? AAA games have gotten less and less expensive to make over the years while selling more and making more profits. If anything they should be costing less because they're not getting better in any significant way.
"They don't need to repay for the engine they already bought.." actually that's not accurate - most engine licences are typically done on a per-product basis, so a studio has to re-license it per developer seat for each distinct game they make. Also, things like upgrades and technical support for the engine is often a recurring subscription-like yearly cost for the studio using it. Everything else I agree with though. I love EC, but I don't think they've really made their case on this one.
How much of the shelf price do you think the publisher gets? Unless the publisher is only selling digital copies direct to consumers, then the distribution chain takes its cut on the way through. And if they are selling digital copies direct to consumers, then that adds its own overheads...
rjc0234 I really doubt it cost that much and if it did, it’s a complete mismanagement. It reuses a lot from the previous game: engine, features, assets, infrastructure, etc. and it’s a fucking Star Wars game. This thing should have been one of the most low effort most profitable game ever made.
"No need to market?" Sure, you might know about every new game that's coming up, but I'd bet that millions of people who would be interested in playing a game aren't "true gamers", and thus don't spend half their lives keeping up with every new announcement from every major studio. Heck, even I'm pretty uninformed as to what big games are coming out outside of Nintendo.
didnt you yourself say "noone buys a game for the voiceactor"? I would only know Matt Mercer, and him only from critical roll, and i wouldnt care if he was VAing or not...
You say these are all fhe common practices but here's the thing: WHY are these the practices? Why do you need 200 people when there have been amazing and profitable games made with MUCH smaller studios? You also said alot of these are practices to sustain the annual releases but WHY do they need to be annual? They don't! You also claim that the main topic on andromeda was the graphical issues: that's patently false. Sure that was ONE topic but it was faaaaaar from the only issue people focused on. All of these are stupid costs, but if these costs are necessary: then why dony the triple a studios just offer all the money they keep from avoiding income tax?!
Marek Dobrotivý they do make a profit Most aaa game studios release all their earning reports and tax records as public knowledge and Ubisoft, EA, etc all earn hand over fist. They're making more money than ever, and get to keep more due to a lack of income tax
Marek Dobrotivý You're also implying turning a profit is contingent on these practices; its not. There are plenty of companies proving that's false Senua's sacrifice is the most recent example Binding of Isaac Undertale Hyperlight drifter PUBG Warframe All these games are testements against these practices
Why do you need 200+ people? Because you can't make a AAA game with less in a reasonable time frame. Remember, we're talking about AAA here, not indie. And you you mean we don't need AAA games, have you seen the steam top sellers of 2017? Out of the top 24 (ignoring f2p) at most 5 of them weren't AAA - h1z1, pubg, rocket league, CS GO and arc-survival evolved, and none of those are really indies, they're all no less then AA. Clearly there's a demand for them, meaning people want them. The reason for which some of the most popular games have an annual release schedule is to make sure that they keep their players, a too long break between releases might cause their players to get board with the game and possibly not return for the later sequel, having found something else they enjoy. This is a more questionable practice, even ubisoft suspended their annual assassins creed release last year. However could you please time-stamp where in the video it said anything about annual releases, because I couldn't find a single mention or implication of that. I also googled "why did mass effect andromeda fail" and read the first 4 articles, every single one of them either started with animation, or put animation second, right after bugs, which can still be partially attributed to buggy animations. Yes, it wasn't the only problem, but it was definitely the first problem anyone would think of, and therefore probably the most influential one. Finally yes, indie games can make a profit, but as the video said, there are hundreds of indie games released every week. Got to the steam store, search for indie games sorted by release date and honestly ask yourself how many of them you have ever heard of. If game publishers would want similar profits with indie games, they'd need to release a LOT more games then they currently do, flooding the market even more, and causing their own games to compete with each other. Prioritizing profits can cause some disasters and terrible practices (battlefront 2 for example), but in can also create great games. Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, Witcher 3, GTA, Dark Souls 3, Total WarHammer, Stellaris, Arma 3, City Skylines, Xcom 2, Civ 5, Divinity Original Sin 2, ect, all great games that would be impossible to make if they weren't made and funded by profit seeking businesses.
Here's a shocker: it doesn't matter how fast or slow the development cycle is; a specific amount of work needs to be done before a game is finished regardless of the time frame that work gets done in. This is the concept of "man-hour". A game that takes 200 people to make in a year will take 10 years if you cut the team down to 20. Small teams don't make miracles. Each employee in those small teams will cost 10 times as much (hired for 10 times as long), resulting in a grand total saving of $0 for a game delayed by a decade.
Man the AAA game market is not worth it anymore. For game developers and players. I find myself playing and getting more hyped for indie stuff then AAA like every year. When a game developer makes a game they want to make, I find myself enjoying it alot more. And it seems that most AAA At this point are just trying to make their money back. In a way, digging their own graves.
I love indie games too, most of my games are indies nowadays. But I do still pick up the odd bigger game, Total Warhammer and the Hyperdimension Neptunia games are my standouts outside the indie scene.
still, if games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Witcher 3 can be massive successes and make money without Microtransactions, I still won't accept them in a game. If needed, I'd much rather just see them go up to $70
Horizon and Witcher were also developed in Amsterdam and Warsaw. 2 areas with lower costs of living than usual so any profits they made were magnified for them. (This is especially why Witcher had cheaper DLC with more content than it's competitors). Witcher was made for around $50 million. A game of that size would have been around $150 million in the US Most other studios don't have that as they are usually based in locations like California and Japan with higher costs of living
This still boils down to the simple truth that the AAA game industry has grown to unsustainable levels. It's a bubble, and it's going to pop, especially if the industry truly believes there is no way to change course.
I guess I just won't buy AAA. My average for a year is two $60 titles near launch. I can't afford more and honestly, most big releases aren't worth the price. Here's hoping for the next cinema and gaming market crash.
ProcrastPerfection or we could spread awareness with we'll reaolsined multi-part TH-cam videos that help educate the public in order to preserve the video game industry without putting millions of people into economic hell
The fact that the majority of people can't afford to keep up is less of a fault with the industry and more a fault with the economy. If there's another cinema and gaming market crash, it'll be because everything else is burning.
@@emPtysp4ce This, tell people more of this. All of the structural antagonisms that come with free market liberal capitalism. All of it is just unsustainable
@@Texelion on which parts? I know ive thought that about some of his stuff in the past, but not really all that much. Hes just usually not very nice or elegant saying it, which is probably why its heard in the first place though.
'Not a lot of room to shave' and yet, 'no one game production is the same.' Sorry, I usually love these series, but the transparency of income/distribution per-worker is extremely wishy-washy. Then you proceed to make a hypothetical of the 'general costs' of a game production. You're pulling numbers. And while I appreciate you bringing up the many people that are involved in a production, I still can't justify the need to hike up the prices/ support gambling tactics in games until we have a look at actual productions and see 'why these choices were made.' Because the impressions I'm getting isn't to 'cover costs' as it is just to 'get more money'. While we know the bottom line for a business is 'making money' there is such thing as demanding too much. In general- businesses of all shapes and sizes, not just game studios, need to be more transparent about where their costs go. Telling people 'maybe we should be paying more, or allow them to implement microtransactions/DLC/Gambling in our games' is putting a bandaid over a problem and enabling more careless choices in the productions of a AAA game. Many successful indie productions and games being made without the AAA stamp/micro transactions/paid dlc/gambling and prices on them are proving every year that there clearly IS other ways about making a successful game.
From where I see it, triple A games have a large customer-base to satisfy, where indie games keep it small. It is just a general overview of what is to be expected when running a game industry. Naturally you will get more in-depth information than what EC provides when you are actually working in the industry, likely on the business side of things.
If 👏 AAA 👏 games 👏 cost 👏 so 👏 much 👏 then 👏 maybe 👏 it's 👏 time 👏 to 👏 drop 👏 the 👏 AAA 👏 system 👏 altogether 👏 Scale things down. Stop annual releases, don't pay mountains of benjamins for graphics (added bonus to that is consumers don't need outrageously costly computers either). Not all games need to be AAA-standardbreaking. Just remove one, even two of the As if needed and see how things work out.
Don't cut down on the graphics, but rather, cut down on the technology used to render the great graphics. Notice how people are able to make Skyrim, a game from 2011, into a game that looks not out of place in 2017. If studios use a very standard graphic-production process, and have a completely different team add the fancy touch ups, it will certainly cut down production costs by a ton. Also celebrity voice actors aren't recognized in games unless they are blatantly advertised for the game (such as Kojima's own Death Stranding with Norman Reedus), hell, not everyone knew that Liam Neeson was in Fallout 3. So using non-celebrity voices in games will not affect the game's overall marketing.
Celebrity voice-actors often suck too. They're used to acting, but not to voice-acting. Professionql voice actors are better at voice acting than professional actors. There's a reason why David Hayter's Snake is better than Kiefer Sutherland's one
Problem of this argument is that quality of many AAA games is decreasing rapidly. If all games would be like Witcher 3, then you can argue about increasing costs. But if we talk about AAA games like SWBF2 and Destiny 2, how are you going to convince me as a customer to buy these "products" for 60 bucks or more?
Uhhh, so - I know this sounds harsh, 'cause the AAA game industry provides so many jobs - and it really would be putting a lot of people in an insecure spot to even consider this, But aren't way too many games coming out from any production background, at too fast of a rate? Like, just any one AAA studio can dish out games - heck, from the same franchise - so quickly that people seem to be having a hard time keeping up with all this. A lot of people I know will often skip out on the latest Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty because they have a bit of fatigue they didn't have time to recover from. It's not uncommon for them to skip one game or two in those series! But I'm thinking, wouldn't it be more profitable to slow those franchises down a notch? Give consumers a bit more time to really get excited for the next game, and by the same token make that game more meaningful? 'Cause I'd really love to see what can happen when a game can garner as much of its regular audience as possible, rather than make that audience more tempted to skip around! Like, the industry is so bloated with games and those games even compete with themselves. It's crazy! The unfortunate part to that is that, obviously AAA studios would have to force a lot of their employees out the door if they were to follow such a plan. Edit: Oh and yeah, if big franchise games were coming out just a tad less frequently, I'm sure that more people would actually be willing to pay $70 or $80 for those games.
I get what you’re saying but it makes no sense for the firms or the consumer. If they’re not seeing any significant decrease in demand for their products, they have no reason to decrease supply. People are still consistently buying video games, it’d be nonsensical to just say ‘slow down’.
The problem is less about AAA companies not slowing down - it moreso has to do with the fact that they've accelerated a bit beyond their consumer's capability to keep up
Mandew5 that’s clearly not true if you look at the statistics though. Games are selling and probably more so than ever. Although the market becomes more flooded by the day there’s nothing to suggest these bigger studios are oversupplying as once again: they’re making money.
These numbers sound unbelievable. You've hit $100m quite easily even as we have real world numbers for games that are nowhere near this figure - Horizon Zero Dawn cost $47m, the Witcher 3 cost $32m, and Detroit: Become Human recently had its budget of $36m get leaked.
I highly doubt those cover every single cost involved, and likely dont take certain factors such as offices into account, since those companies likely already had offices
Till the time their eyeballs start to rot. It's like a winning hot sauna contest, but 90% of your skin gone forever. Worst thing is I can't see soft resolution of that situation.
It's basic maths. Let's say you make a AAA game for $50,000,000. Then you spend the same amount on marketing, so your whole budget is $100,000,000. You sell the game for $60, and actually get $40 of that. You'll break even just by selling 2,500,000 copies of your game - and that's a really low number of sales for a AAA title. COD titles often sell over 20,000,000 copies, for example. I've heard reports Witcher 3 sold over 25,000,000 copies. Even Mass Effect Andromeda reportedly made a profit, and that game was terrible.
Rod H $40 per game is pretty high imo. Maybe on PC as I know valve takes a 30% cut. But on console, you have the retailer cut, plus licensing fees to sony/MS/Nintendo, plus the cost of producing and shipping a physical copy etc. And then a large chunk of those profits have to goto the tax man. And how many of those millions of copies actually sell at the full $60 retail price? I bought the witcher 3 plus season pass for $25. Clearly cd project red isn't going to earn $40 off my $25 purchase. But breaking even also isn't good enough. Gamers expect sequels to be more polished, have more content and higher production values than their previous iteration. Plus If you want new franchises like overwatch and destiny to get funded, then you need games like call of duty to produce revenue well beyond what they cost to make. If activision only earns enough money off call of duty, to fund the next call of duty. Then they will only ever be able to make call of duty games.
No sir, I don't relish high fidelity graphics. The polish a game is given is what really sells a game for me. The interface, button mapping, camera control (where applicable), and cohesive aesthetics are what make or break a game, not the 4K
@Marko Stamenkovic Source? People love to say "the majority loves great gameplay" or the opposite, "the majority loves good graphics" but nobody ever backs it up with real evidence, only flawed reasoning like "well they keep buying the games." Yes people buy the games but that doesn't tell us why they did so, or if they were really happy about doing it. I would say that the majority of the market is "casual" gamers, but that doesn't necessarily mean all casuals only care about graphics, so that doesn't work, either. I'd really love to actually know for sure which side is right, but I'm not sure the data exists.
Then you didn't undertand a thing. People that analyze games in depth are not the main target for AAA, tha avarage AAA customer demands good graphics, open world and multiplayer they don't even realize if the gameplay is unique or if the UI is good (unless is really broken). And even then programming gameplay is still more expensive than 4K graphics so either way AAA will still cost a fortune.
Xfushion2, graphics take a good chunk of the budget. The focus of most AAA titles is selling a game on the pizazz and wow factor and less focus on the internals of the game. The common practice of the "day one patch" is an extension of this. Pour budget into flash and use the preorder sales and predicted week one sales to finish polishing the game.
It sounds like we need more quality products and less products in general, like with PC gaming so many games come out with almost no hope of competing with the general market.
Wonder how much they could shave off just by developing in cheaper states and cities. Do they really need to be in California or Stockholm where life costs are so high?
Witcher 3 was made for 81 million USD. It was in production way longer than 2 years, 240 people worked on it. Using Extra Credits calculations it should cost ~3 times more.
LastofAvari If I've learnt one thing from being a part of the gaming community is that we're a passionate bunch, for good and worse. Good example is our rejection of lootboxes. Bad example is right here. Extra Credits are an amazing group and they clearly know their stuff since we've been watching their great content for years now. But they say one thing which we don't like and suddenly we know better? Sure they can't be right all the time but they know people in the industry and have also worked in it. We just spend a few bucks and get to play the damned things. I don't see how we as a group can think we know everything when we ao obviously don't. That's why we watch channels like this isn't it? To learn stuff?
Is Undertale a AAA game? then it has no place in this topic. Mario is Mario and sells because is Mario, I mean having the brand of the most popular character in the world kinda helps. He never said photorealistic graphics made a good game, he said the *standar AAA consumer* will demand those kinds of graphics, and for the record Mario Odyssey in fact has sweet graphics cause of the art-style but the mayority of AAA consumers don't give two cents about art-styles.
Xfushion2 then I push you towards a hat in time and while not being a triple A game so to speak yet has a similar design concept to mario oddesy is a bit less graphically inferior to mario oddesy and was realeased in the time frame of one of the most hyped games going for last year, and yet still sold 150,000 copies at $30 smashing it's $230,000 kick started budget to the tune of $4.5 million dollars. This is an new IP selling basically off of filling a hole in the industry the triple A publishers would have told you is not what the "players" want. Going back to mario oddesy yes it would have sold a lot of copies beacause it was mario but I think your not really realising how much that game lived up to its expectations by being a good inventive platformer oh and actually justifying the price of the switch so that even more people brought it just for mario oddessy. And what's that they don't have the predatory Microtransactions that EA would have you believe are required to turn a profit? Something tells me that that's weak justification for them wanting to make all of the money they possibly can customer satisfaction be dammed.
@Grant Mitchell Thats because Mario is an established braned from an established mega game company, and Hat in Time is a small time indie product. 150K copies is pretty astronomical for a 30$ small indie game.
This model is flawed. You don't need expensive voice actors, motion capture and a team of 500 hundred devs to make ultra realistic graphics to make a good game. Making games to a mainstream public (to justify the costs of production) in most cases makes the game shallow and alienates the real fans.
There are always niches, but looking at how 3A games morph themselves into these days, it's apparent that publishers want to meet more groups' needs, to try to make a product as diversity friendly as possible, and as mainstream as possible.
Deo Temp what do you mean by "should" or "shouldn't". If emotional manipultion is seen as pedatory. Basically all industries need to be put down. Every ad on the TV is there to exploit lack of self confidence in someway or another.
Well it was the consumer that made the predatory practices in the first place. Stop prentending this is the industry fault because it isn't, some jackass decided to implement microtransaccions, and others million bigger jackasses decided to blow over 60$ in them rather than 60 in a single game. The consumer voted with their wallet and the only way this is gonna stop is when people get a grip and stop buying these kind of crap and from the looks of it, is not gonna happen anytime soon.
I am sure he means in terms of things like lootboxes, and how they nurture gambling habits. Surely, you are not saying using special colors to appeal to children is equivalent to gambling addiction.
Devious Oatmeal Yes, things such as loot boxes and patented algorithms to get people to buy micro-transactions are way more invasive then basic marketing. So I am just talking about those and similar predatory systems
Xfushion2 Yeah it's almost as if gambling addicts exist or something. The consumer didn't "make" the predatory practice, we just encouraged it because the average consumer throws their money at anything shiny like it's nothing. You can't blame a collective of totally unrelated people from different backgrounds and with different thoughts and beliefs and reasons for doing what they do, but you can blame a group of multi-million dollar organisations whose main goal is and always will be to make as much money as possible regardless of ethics.
Wow, I'm really surprised games continue to be made considering they don't turn a profit... Oh, they do turn a profit? Then what's the problem? In my opinion, none of the costs associated with making a game should matter if the game is already making people filthy rich. You're basically telling us why already wealthy people need more of our money.
Excellent point. Obviously their costs have gone up if they're trying to make more money now. Same way superhero movies costs way more now than they did when they started. They must be going down, their cost went up like 10 times!!! ...as did their profits, lol.
The reality of game development being costly combined with the reality that companies will do everything for their bottom line will result in some consequences. The point of the video is to show why we are where we are, much the same as an explanation on why we pay $3-4 per gallon of gas. We the viewers may not like some facts presented (be it the cost of dev or the monopoly of fossil fuel supply), but they are what they are and our opinions hardly have anything to do with it.
As soon as you said janitor, I thought sim-devteam. Having a dev-team sims game where the devs sleep under their desks could be hilarious and realistic.
I know that the market demands the "Bigger, better looking, Open-world" type of AAA game, but I really feel that AAA studios could cut costs significantly by not chasing those trends. Operate like an Indie studio but with a AAA budget. It's not about lowering the budget, it's about doing more with what they got. Being more efficient. Use as little of the budget as possible while making the best game possible. Down-scale. The Trends say go bigger, but those trends will lead to the industry crashing. Do not chase trends, create them. It's risky as fuck, but it's far more sustainable in the long run.
DemonGrenade274 All of you guys who say these type of things dont realize that if they (the AAA game studios) fail a game they *LOSE* a lot of money which can lead to many bad things. TL;DR: They can‘t afford risks so they go with the trend.
If you can't afford to exist... if you need to trick people into thinking your product is cheaper than it is, if you need to scam your customers, just to stay in business, you shouldn't be in business.
60 bucks for one shitty AAA title, that adds nothing new and removes a lot from what they've shown on E3, or 6-12 great Indie games that I would enjoy for several months? Tough choice!
Mr. Smart Important Self-centered here thinks everyone on the videogame market likes the same things as him. You should check the sales numbers on the shitty AAA title and those indie games.
Not necessarily, Yearly AAA games are mostly safe as they have the most established presence and fanbases. (Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Need for Speed, Just Dance and COD aren't exactly flopping every year). It's the games and studios closer to the middle that are at the most risk. So at most, there will be a small recision but not a full-on collapse. That's like saying Hollywood will collapse despite how many people will go on to watch superhero films.
I would say Hollywood is also approaching a collapse (similar to previous ones they already faced). Blockbusters are less profitable every year. Budgets are increasing faster than income. That happened before, in the 70s, and Hollywood crashed. You only need a year with 2-3 tentpoles bombing hard (which is somethign unpredictable) to start a chain reaction. A soft, but consistent, decline over many blockbusters would have a similar effect.
Indie games take more time, AAA games cost more money. Assassin's Creed can take about 1 year to make a game (kind of), and the original Cave Story was about 5 years in development. (Before being ported to every new Nintendo console under the sun)
Styler427 That's not really how game making cycles work, the games come out annually because AAA publishers have games being worked on at the same time...So let's say when Assassin's Creed 7 is halfway done; the dev team is split and one half starts working on a new one. Then when the first game ships, there's a break (or some workers being laid off since this is the gaming industry)and the 1st half of the team rejoin the 2nd half on what they have been working on (Assassin's Creed 8) .Basically, it still takes a good 3 or even 5 years for some to make, depending on the dev cycle of the publisher.
I know I'm ignorant when it comes to the budget plans and expenses that video game publishers have to deal with when they make games, but there's something that I can't wrap my head around... This video suggests that a "small" AAA game will cost somewhere between 75-100 million dollars to make. That's a hell of a lot... but... If we do some simple math, and multiply $60 (the supposedly average game price) times "failing" game launch numbers... say 7 million copies sold, we end up with $420 million. Minus the highest level of cost suggested by this video, and we now have $320 million in profit. This is, of course, not taking into account the fact that games usually end up selling for higher than $60, since there are also deluxe editions, dlc, season passes and the like, which end up inflating the cost of the game overall. But lets be modest, and just round that all off to, say $70 a game. That still brings us $490 million in sales, of which $390 will be total profit. Considering that this more than covers the costs suggested, where is all that extra profit going? Or is $390 million per average game launch just too little to keep this industry going (and keep in mind, I'm using modest numbers here...)? If it is too little, then doesn't that mean that this industry simply isn't sustainable, and maybe, just maybe, a crash is not only possible, but maybe even necessary to normalize things? Even something as cool as the Concorde was shut down when it was discovered that it would just be too expensive to keep going. Again, I know I'm ignorant, but just wondering here. Someone please enlighten me.
There was another EC video that explained that developers actually get about $27 of the $60 sell due to other middlemen taking cuts in the process. That means they need to sell some over 3.7 million to break even on a $100 million game. However, they need money so that they can work on their NEXT game, so that even break doesn't actually count as profits, and may actually not be enough if they want to make their sequel bigger and better. Usually movies need to make 2.5 times their budget in profit to actually be considered "successful", and applying that logic to the game means that just under 13 million copies need to be sold. Only 7 million would be about half of what they want.
Those cuts depends on the type of distribution... With full digital distribution (for example: steam, or even better their own digital distribution system, like EA and ubisoft (they will get 100% revenue)) they get around 60-70% of the revenue (that is around 39$)... And guess what; digital sales are skyrocketing. So if we recalculate it, you need around 3 million sales to "break even" (with 17 million pure profit)... "Usually movies need to make 2.5 times their budget in profit to actually be considered "successful", and applying that logic to the game means that just under 13 million copies need to be sold." Why? Those are movies and we know that this thinking is why that industry is bloated as hell.... That kind of thinking will only generate a bubble, also what happened to market research for a game? you know to budget accordingly? when you budget a game you need to do market research and that will tell you more than some focus group will tell you; "You don't need a 100+ million budget to make a good AAA game ".
you are making a false statment here.. and i mean with "However, they need money so that they can work on their NEXT game," if you want add it for reduce profit and you must add in the start of productions for reduce.. that is, of 100m 20m where already got from released games.. Now is a fallacy in your case but this video put it correctly the profit of one game must cover the lack of sells of other game.. if your game make 100m in profit and other 3 or 4 games make a lose of 20M you only win in 20-40M
I guarantee you neither Ubisoft nor EA gets 100% of the $60 paid for sales through their digital distribution platform - Uncle Sam still takes his cut. And there's also the additional costs associated with running a digital distribution platform to add to the budget.
true still as other has posted is something like 30 usd.. little more little less.. and with 7m in copies that means 210M that is the number people say.. they already win .. and as i said up.. well at least is probably not valid for starwars battlefront...
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice made back its budget after only 300k sales at 30 dollars a copy. They made it with a staff of 20, not 200. This video relies on a ton of really terrible assumptions and has some enormous blind spots, most particularly the enormous cost of AAA Publishers, their executives, and their shareholders. That $10k/person average is covering both the $100m/year CEO and the hundreds of temp contractors the company is paying peanuts to make the thousands of art assets needed to populate an open world game. None of this is inevitable.
Jetsetlemming hellblade is lighting in a bottle, hell they were even bragging how to show other companies how to manage budgets, That's like saying every game should be like undertale, there will ever be only 1 game that is like undertalen you can't make it the standard way to make all games.
Hellblade's success involved luck, but not their budget. You might play too many video games if you think they made a game for 20x less than Assassin's Creed because they rolled a critical success on a finance skill check.
I agree, despite Senua's low budget, i believe it was a pretty safe bet. Making a game for a niche audience they knew existed and only needing to sell very little to make it back. There was kinda no way they wouldn't make that money back, but cause it was good, it made the money back fast. The reason EA isn't doing the same thing is cause they're not interested in the petty profits senua did. They want millions and billions. So they invest millions. It's really their choice and they shouldn't act like a victim cause of it.
codec69 People seem to act like indie successes come out of nowhere and their deviations from standard "AAA" practice is thus meaningless, but you're right that Hellblade was definitely a safe bet: Ninja Theory isn't some new startup and Hellblade wasn't their debut game. Their similar past games had been decent successes but not enough for Publishers to care, so they just made another without the publishers this time.
Yup and the probably didn't even spend much...or any money on marketing, since all the game media always is interested in what succesful devs and publishers are working on. Meanawhile EA spends twice the money on marketing, cause just reaching every gamer who ever followed any game outlet on social media isn't enough, they also need everyone who hasn't heard of cod, every non-gamer to buy their game too.
So, I did the math (simple division actualy). Even assuming a game costs roundabout 200 millions, you need about 3.5 million copies at 60 bucks to break even. Now, sales figures are sometimes hard to come by, as publishers are quick to accuse critics of being "missinformed" when voicing criticism, but are a lot slower in providing information to prevent said "missinformation" (that's like calling someone out for being dirty while refusing to let them use the shower but I digress), but I'm reasonably certain even the disapointing Andromeda sold more than that. From what I could gather, the last CoD sold about 20 million copies in the first two months or so (at 60 bucks that's a gross revenue of 1.2 BILLION. Even if your game cost you half a billion, that still sounds like a tidy profit. And were not even counting special editions, DLC and so-on). So... I still don't think production cost is the main factor for the increased - and increasingly predatory - monetisation. No. My money - pun intended - is on the investors demanding ever higher and faster return on their investment.
That's something I think about often. Seeing sales figures in the millions, multiplying it by $60 and seeing the crazy figures. Though Sony and Microsoft require a percentage of the profits on games sold on their consoles, then the store you bought it from (Best Buy, Gamestop) gets a percentage, but these are all things that should be taken into a game's budget. Nintendo likely has an easier time with this since their AAA's sell like crazy, yet they never have crazy graphics and since it's their game on their console, they don't have to pay any royalties. I also consider JRPG's and how much content they offer, like Xenoblade or Persona, and with just a million sales they're considered a huge hit. If devs would just stop pumping tens of millions into flashy graphics and focused more on style and game content like the aforementioned games, things would be a lot easier.
"Even assuming a game costs roundabout 200 millions, you need about 3.5 million copies at 60 bucks to break even" No you don't, only a fraction of the profit actually goes to the company.
Vitorruy1 How much off a cut do brick and mortar stores get? 6% is a number I once heard. (not much at any rate) The cut the console companies take is actually added to the 60 bucks - at least where I live. 60 for a PC game, closer to 70 or even over for a console game. And don't forget digital distribution. If EA sells a game via Origin, they pocket all the revenue at a very low cost. Then there are the deluxe editions that cost 30% more... So, even counting all the distribution costs and being pesimistic on sales of the deluxe editions, how many more copies do you have to sell? Another 500 k? I don't think that hurts my original point.
" If EA sells a game via Origin" IF. Most companies don't own or can't rely on their own distribution platforms. And running a platform has its own costs. "How much off a cut do brick and mortar stores get?" How many games still rely on retail as their main distributor? In 2016 26% of games were sold physically while 74% were sold digitally. "6% is a number I once heard" Steam get's a 30% cut. "I don't think that hurts my original point." You also have investors to pay. Activision Blizzard generated $6.6 billion dollars of revenue in the last fiscal year. Pretty impressive huh? Guess how much of that they got to keep? 5 billion? Half perhaps? around 3 billion? Sure they must have had 2 billion! Well, it was 1 billion. Less than 1/6 of the money you payed for the game actually went on as profit to the company. Now 1 billion is still a lot, they are not starving with a number like that, but Blizzard is a giant, imagine how those profit margins should feel for someone not so gargentuous. Take Two Interactive closed three of the last five fiscal years at a net loss even tho its main series, Borderlands, was a big hit on the market.
"IF. Most companies don't own or can't rely on their own distribution platforms." Actualy, most big AAA publishers - and that's who we are talking about here - now do. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard. And Activision is working closer with Blizzard, so they are getting in on blizzard.net "And running a platform has its own costs." Yes, but how much is ist per copy sold? "You also have investors to pay. " THAT IS my original point. That's exactly why I think the publishers are monetizing their games more agressively. As I wrote in my original post.
It's funny to me that you say marketing budgets are often "almost as much as the development budget" when most of the AAA games coming out in recent years have budgets WELL in excess of the development budget, some times 2 or 3 times the development budget. That's what people talk about when they talk about bloated budgets. That's why people get angry when companies try to push the "games are too expensive to make" shit. You seem either out of touch or completely biased. It's also funny that you showed Breath of the Wild as an example of "excellent graphics". While it's an excellent game with a fantastic aesthetic, the graphics are a pretty mediocre tbqh.
Agrees, Netist. I am so sad right now. Extra Credits DID THEIR OWN VIDEO on the difference between aesthetics and graphics quality. I feel like they, of all people, should know better than this!
@@fartsniffer2722 Smaller publishers don't bloat out their marketing, because they can't even if they wanted to. They don't have that kind of money to spend.
i get it, i see what your saying. The competition is good. Playstation has killer exclusives and Xbox has a good infrastucture. On my end i feel the shackles are off. maybe ive been looking for a more open and free platform and not be so confined according to what microsoft and sony wants to do. I do have a ps4 and a switch so i do still support consoles. I just cant justify paying 50 a year for online when i already pay my ISP. i know theres cloud saves and free games which makes paying for the service a better value but its not for me.
Watch the last vid, if the game cost more out of the box the dev/publisher won't have to rely on DLC or lootboxes, but will players accept the new cost?
Storm Wings I don't think players would like that at all. I remember people getting their tit in the ringer when games jumped from $50 to $60. I can't forget EA's online pass B.S.
There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all budget when it comes to the vast world of AAA games, but let's take a look at the most typical costs and see where game studios can cut corners--and where they absolutely can't, and why.
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Extra Credits
Isn’t it really cheap to put an add on TH-cam and what do gamers look at more normal tv where it costs loads or TH-cam where it’s cheaper and that’s well most gamers watch instead of tv I for one don’t haha and if I do fast forward hell the only ads on TH-cam I watch are games .....
and yet hell blade was of AAA quality and cost 1/5th of what you stated. corporate waste and overpopulation of the workforce is the major cost of game designed. graphics in this day and age is much cheaper then 5 years ago, look at quixel photo scan. you can populate a game with low cost extremely high fidelity materials and static meshes cutting your costs by 100,000's of thousand of dollars right there.
hellblade has invalidated traditional AAA game development, they are profitable with only digital distribution, a small team, and AAA visual fidelity.
I feel like you've skimmed over an entire huge point; how do we even know that AAA games are what people WANT? What non-AAA games even get a decent marketing budget? It doesn't feel to me like gamers are the ones demanding photo-realistic graphics or these super-movie-like feeling games. It feels like these games are being pushed on this "gamer" demographic that may not even exist instead of making games that are fun and market themselves based on how enjoyable they are. Why aren't game studios at least TRYING to make smaller games?
Gotta' disagree with ya on this one. There is no arms race for graphics anymore. Nintendo is proof enough of that. As long as your aesthetic works and isn't broken at launch, no one is going to bat an eye at you having Xbox360 quality graphics.
Hellblade didn't really invalidate anything. The game isn't as mechanically complex as many AAA titles.
Hellblade is what happens when you have a strong team of people dedicate to their work with loads of experience under their belt.
And it was an ENORMOUS risk. Thanks to word of mouth and good reviews the game managed to become profitable in only a few months. Which is fine for an indie firm, but for a big company that's a bit of a problem if it's your sole source of revenue.
But what if its quality had been a little lower? What if word of mouth hadn't picked up on it?
What if there were THREE games like hellblade released at the same time?
Hellblade only really succeeded like it did because it was the only one like it around. If it had actual competitors it might not have done nearly as well.
Of course we won't really know this until other groups try to take a stab at the model. But don't run out into the thunderstorm with a beer bottle just because someone came back with lightning in one.
The problem is the same across all industries. The movie industry is as bloated and slowly but surely becomes less profitable. The bubble will burst. The costs need to be brought down or the gaming industry has no future.
EDIT. The biggest problem is the lack of customers. There are too many games that I would love to play, but I don't have enough time. 10 years ago fewer games competed for my attention. Obviously, I stopped buying. So, I think, current model cannot sustain itself. There either will be a new big market for the Western AAA game (China?) or many companies will just stop producing so many yearly titles. And that is a good thing.
Kings and Generals HEY K&G!!!!
You're extra credits fans too huh ;D
We are. :-)
Technology will probably be the answer if I were to wager
Game industry has plenty of future but the current model is dying a slow death. Publishers specifically belong in the past, and the future of games is probably in projects like Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice, which involved a large dev team creating a full size game, but without a publisher, just marketing cheaply through the internet and word of mouth. Indie games are going to continue to play a massive part in the industry too, some of the best loved and highest quality games out there are indie titles, Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, FTL, Stardew Valley, Heat Signature, Prison Architect, just to name a few.
Why do I get the feeling that even if you could reduce the budget drastically you would probably still get games with transactions and loot boxes in them, Don't want to sound like a paranoid jerk (I literally do not care for most AAA releases, just not my thing) But somehow I doubt that publishers would get rid of ways of making extra money... Just a suspicion though.
They wouldn't. they'd charge you everything for nothing if they could get away with it
Sure, but if games without loot boxes start doing better or loot boxes stop paying off their development because of low purchase figures, then they'll be dropped because they no longer make economic sense.
Indeed. Assume that trying to make all the money that they can is a constant. That said...
I was a Game Designer for 15 years until I left the industry over a decade ago. If I was to go back to the industry today I would have to overcome a serious blank space in my skill-set and that is monetisation. When I was a Designer there wasn't a SINGLE Designer in our team who was an expert in that field, or who would have claimed to be if they were. Nowadays it's much more front and centre in game design - and it's that change that really speaks to how key making even more money has become to AAA Development.
I feel like that evolution wouldn't have happened if the old model of pricepoint plus expansions was bringing home all the bacon required by the studio.
Thats what business is, finding new ways to make you open your wallet. Really, there is no need to change your phones and computers and consoles and cars and houses and monitors and etc as they probably work fine and will for many years. Yet people replace them anyway because they want newer/flashier stuff. Is the latest 1000$ iphone really necessary when previous versions were already overpriced at 500$? No, but people still buy
loot box are done because they make money. They allow for bigger budgets but that is not the reason. They are done because it makes more money than cost. Games budget could be zero, but if the statement “loot boxes make money” is true, big companies will use them.
It's hilarious when small studios or indie teams make games that are so much more fun to play with a small, small fraction of the AAA budget.
cw8 it may be funny but when an 80 million dollar passion project tanks due to a neutered marketing budget careers are destroyed and families are affected. Consumers never feel the cost of failure outside of being disappointed that their $60 did not provide 150 hours of continuous orgasmic pleasure
AAA games are hardly about passion anymore. It's more about money and profit and how to maximise said profit. I don't care about graphics and full voiceacting myself, but the AAA industry seems to throw a huge budget in graphics and VO instead of gameplay. Can't remember the last time I actually bought an AAA game, unless you count Witcher 3. Been happier with my niche, indie and AA+ games.
@cw8 Full VA doesn't have to be expensive, either. Let's take an older indie darling, "Dust: An Elysian Tale", which was made primarily by a single person, does feature full voice over, and has fantastic gameplay with a pretty good story. And made it's money back some time ago, and is still being released on modern consoles.
Kevin Fredericks Us consumers aren't the ones who asked them to spend $80 million on a game, and if it fails we certainly aren't the ones to blame. It's up to them to convince us to part with our cash, not up to us to prop up the industry. We can spend our money how we see fit, and if a cheaply made indie game is superior to a AAA game with a massive budget, well... I'm going to buy the better game. Is that wrong? Companies go out of business every day, we can't save them all.
At its core it's just about the 'AAA' trying to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible, and therefore more often than not scurrying away from anything could /potentially/ alienate some customers.
Whereas successful indie games (or even those from smaller studios which don't subscribe to the 'AAA' bullshit) take a niche or semi-niche and unapologetically do their own thing.
For as big and as long as it took to develop, Breath of the Wild only needed to sell 2 million units to make its budget back. And it was the most expensive game Nintendo has ever made.
And Richard Branson is a highschool dropout who became a billionaire.
But whether its games or education, statistically... the more you invest, the greater your odds of success. Trying to emulate outliers is generally a recipe for disaster.
Huh, that explains the glitches.
Still playable, however.
*only 2 million*
@@BlazeLibra 2 million is nothing nowadays.
@@fartsniffer2722 What percentage of all games make that mark then? Slightly more than lotto?
The whole debate about the cost of game development always feels like two people completely talking past one another. On one side, you have consumers saying they are unwilling to pay, or, increasingly, cannot even afford to pay more for games. We have consumers saying they are unwilling to purchase games that contain predatory monetization schemes or that gate content behind microtransactions. Now, some of these people can be pretty toxic and hateful about how they voice those opinions (which is bad, obviously, being angry is fine, but being a jerk is not), but in the end what they're saying is "I am unwilling/unable to purchase games like these in this state at this price".
In response, developers and people like the Extra Credits team say "These games can only exist at this price and in this state. That's the only way they can be profitable enough to make."
The problem is, even if we take that statement at face value, it doesn't actually change anything. If a product doesn't appeal to a consumer, you can't make them change their minds by saying "this is the only way to make this product". It will still be just as unappealing to the consumer. Maybe if you're a popular company you can coast on consumer goodwill for some time, relying on the customer-base to purchase products they otherwise wouldn't because they specifically want to support you, but that sort of goodwill can only last for so long, and it is rapidly drying out even for previously extremely popular companies like Blizzard (and let's be completely honest here, when it comes to Activision/Blizzard, any customer goodwill was directed entirely at the Blizzard part of the company).
Now, obviously not everyone feels this way about 'AAA' games, because they're still making a profit (and a huge profit at that, judging by the bottom line reported by 'AAA' publishers). But the amount of people who feel dissatisfied with the content, price and monetization of 'AAA' games is steadily increasing, and publishers clearly know it. But they keep trying to solve the problem by telling us there's no other way things could be. They are doubling down on unpopular decisions and practices, and trying to appease the growing dissatisfaction of the consumer base by telling us their hands are tied. And wether that is true or not, it's not a solution, it doesn't help in any way. Those who can't or won't buy these games won't change their minds unless the games themselves change into something they consider to be worth buying.
TLDR: Saying games 'need' to be more expensive doesn't actually make consumers any more willing to pay more for them, and if the growing trend of consumer dissatisfaction continues, the 'AAA' industry only has two real options. Change, or collapse.
"I am unwilling/unable to purchase games like these in this state at this price". In response, developers and people like the Extra Credits team say "These games can only exist at this price and in this state. That's the only way they can be profitable enough to make.""
Well if the customer won't buy your product and you need to raise your product price tag even more, to cover expenses, then clearly the system will crumble on itself.
Sadly, there are strong arguments and evidence, that one side lie (AKA having 600% profits, yet calling it fail) and this video portray situations so absurd, that it fails to support both customer and producer sides.
On side note. Inflation had rise and wages generale did not.
"They are tied. You can't have high-quality games and low prices. It's one or the other."
Completely ignoring highly polished free to play games with huge player bases, aren't we?
Last I checked, MOBAs were still doing just fine.
You said this a lot better than I wanted to.
Why are you pinning the blame on the studios or Extra Credits for acknowledging reality? What are they supposed to do from consumers who demand one thing while complaining about how they're getting it, even though there aren't any alternatives? I'm sure as shit not gonna advocate for developers or designers or voice actors to get paid less, and the entire point of this video was too explain why it's not possible to do much else to cut costs.
If you're gonna give them crap for saying "there isn't a good solution" when the fault is on the consumer being hypocritical, you damn well better have an alternative to offer.
because of marketing
prime example cod mw2
development cost 50 million
marketing cost 150 million
What's hilarious about that case is that CoD is one of those franchises where they could literally drop a new game unannounced and it'd still sell like hot cakes.
Pretty much every case I can think of "huge marketing campaign for established franchise and still resulted in a flop" (whether it be for games, movies, or otherwise) involves said marketing campaign making the product look really shitty.
@@doctorwhouse3881 That wasn't the case before MW2.
Speaking as an owner who cannot afford consuls or good PCs I literally cannot play super HD graphics on my machines. I do not want better graphics, just good games.
Go on the indie scene then, mostly devoid of microtransactions and typically low requirements.
Same
There is a reason the Indie scene is booming these days. The AAA industry doesn't make games for quality or to appeal to anything but the widest market, but gamers want something more than great graphics, and the indie scene appeals to that where AAA doesn't.
Ok well gamers shit themselves over a game not having consistent 60 fps, so you're in minority or lying.
That's a good and healthy perspective to have. Unfortunately, the critical mass of consumers don't think the same way. Graphics bugs, glitches, fuckups, all get talked about to the end of time. It really is a thin sliver of gamers who appreciate quality gameplay regardless of graphics fidelity.
If the game industry was as open about their budget as the movie industry we’d be seeing a different conversation.
Open to what? Hollywood accounting buddy.
You mean if it actively lied to make it look like none of its games made a profit, just like the movie industry? Yeah, fantastic idea
I don't think the movie industry does that. I believe he meant if game companies would say what the game's budget was instead of hiding it like they usually do
AxlGundam
?
The movie industry is a mess. Every, EVERY film wants to be a blockbuster of the season. And every, EVERY movie expends like so.
Our media, in general, is suffering from this. Movies aren't the exception.
Where did you get this idea about the movie industry being open like that?
I understand budgets are tight but when EA can remove microtranactions it says it needs to make money and then tell it's investors it won't be a problem someone is feeding someone a load of bull I'm gonna say it's the consumer
exactly.. when a game sells 7 million copies.. if you don't make a profit with those numbers, the problem isn't the cost of the game, but somewhere else.
Elldallan I heard about this but it made them $500 M I’m sorry it’s poor sales was because how they handled loot boxes my feeling on loot boxes is this. Put them in a game fine but don’t charge me $60 for the game on top of another $40-50 for a season pass and say you aren’t making money. Then maybe you need to take a look at how you run your business
Well, you can ask EA on how to cut cost on AAA game development. They have been spending less and less money in development through many years in a row now :)
Same with Activision:Blizzard and Rockstar....
Andromeda is a really bad example. The issue wasn't that the graphics were bad, the issue was that the animation was actually broken.
If you gave it the graphics level of ME1 and fixed the animation, it would look better. Because the graphics level wasn't the problem.
CSDragon ...But they said one ASPECT of the graphics were bad (the animation).
There's a difference between being sub-par and actually broken though. The issue wasn't that it didn't look amazing, the issue was that it straight up wasn't working
Raul Gallegos, malfunction animations show a lack of polish, a lack of care. Its not the graphics but their willingness to ship a game with a broken peice.
And their point is, not spending enough time and money to make sure their game looked good was a bad decision. They were the laughingstock of the video game world for months.
It was inconsistency that broke it and heck it's actually an antisis for his claim that we demand good graphics. The broken graphics is caused by agreeing what EC is saying here. EA changed the engine bioware used to make ME andromeda at a really late date which is what is said to be the cause of the game being broken as it is. Because EA belived frostbyte to be a better looking engine and it would cause it to sell more.
I don't think I've ever purchased a game because a specific voice actor was cast...
Yes, that's a waste of money. You can have great actors, who are not hollywood stars. One of the best examples is Kevan Brighting.
Yeah we haven't because we are gamers but the data shows what the data shows
Would you buy a Mario game if another random person would voice Mario?
I did once, but it was a one of my favorite voice actors, they were playing the main character, it was a genre I liked, and it was a series that already had a decent track record (and that I had played a game or two from before) so I felt pretty safe doing it. Still, I was on the fence before I found out who was voicing the MC. So, even though it was highly situational, it still happened.
Alexander Jansing
But did you see that a famous actor was in a AAA game and think: wow they got (famous actor) that’s cool!
That was (more or less) the point of getting that famous person in the game
If costs can't be cut, and the only way to recoup those costs is exploitative business practices that target people with gambling addiction, then maybe it's time for the AAA space to undergo some severe contraction. The loss of competition will hurt the games that get released, but I would rather have fewer super flashy games than have dozens that try to prey on their consumer base.
I feel like that should be repeated and emphasized.
If costs can't be cut, and the only way to recoup those costs is *EXPLOITATIVE BUSINESS PRACTICES THAT TARGET PEOPLE WITH GAMBLING ADDICTION*, then maybe it's time for the AAA space to undergo some severe contraction.
...But hey! When an AAA company claims that "removing micro-transactions won't hurt its [current big budgeted game's] bottom line" to their investors, I'm SURE they're just joking...except, isn't there some law against lying to your company's investors/shareholders?
Seriously, did nobody watch the videos EC made? You do realise that last episode they explicitly condemned predatory practices, right? Right?
And to directly quote them. "And by 'learn to live,' *I don't mean to put up with predatory crap.* I mean we're going to have to find a way to reward developers for making good supplimentary income systems that *aren't overly aggressive or required* in any way to play competitively." So... yes they did.
+Bainbow ya, they made one tiny mention condemning predatory practices, but the entire video was all about explaining the reasons why publishers have been doing it and basically defending those reasons.
*TARGET PEOPLE WITH GAMBLING ADDICTION* lol i love this argument so much, 'no1 has free will anymore, they put it in the game so i just couldnt help myself' as someone who has an *EXTREMELY* addictive personality that includes gambling, i find this argument insulting. Lootboxes do not tempt me to spend any money on a shitty game. The only time i will use any kind of microtransaction is if i think the game is so good that they *DESERVE* any more money out of me. There are so many dainty little snowflakes that just want to put *ALL* the responsibility on big scary companies. Don't get me wrong, some of these practices are *REALLY* shitty, but none of them would work if people just had the willpower to *NOT DUMP ALL THEIR MONEY INTO THEM* then maybe the tactics wouldn't be profitable and they would move onto something else.
The graphics arms race sucks so damn much.
I saw one dude whining that Prey was "Too ugly looking to buy" and I'm like "...What? The hell are you smoking? It looks friggen great."
I mean, I like my pretty graphics and all, but the degree to which it's being taken is getting downright preposterous.
Oh, and by the by, good management can save you insane amounts of money. The studio I'm writing for has done some incredible things with a pretty low budget. And the studio does not believe in crunch time. There's been busy weeks, but never actual crunch. And there are still places where we could be more efficient.
Aegix Drakan what,s the studio you're working at? I though crunch time was nearly an institution in the game industry?
I work at Nine Dots Studios (at least until the writing contract for "Outward" ends)
You remember that Extra Credits Episode about Working Conditions in the industry? They were the ones who requested that topic via a donation. :P
Pretty much the mission statement of Nine Dots is "We don't agree with the bad practices so much of the industry participates in. We believe we can make quality games without needing to do those things". It's pretty much the founding principle of the company.
Combine that with a really talented small team and hooo boy we've done some amazing stuff.
That's pretty great! Do you have any contract that also protect the employees from the more predatory use of the industry?
Eh? Define what you mean by that?
It's very strange. I was playing Nier: Automata, and near the end, my fps was tanking to like 15 fps; I was annoyed but not upset. Then I was recording gameplay for a different game, and my FPS went down to 47, and had to stop and apologize to fix it. With the latter game, if I didn't have an fps counter, I wouldn't have even noticed a drop ( I can't tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps most of the time).
Why am I not consistent in my apathy for graphical perfection? Strange, indeed.
Games don’t need higher fidelity graphics to look better. Art direction plays a role that seemed to be overlooked in this video, despite there being some Zelda footage shown.
I guess, what I’m saying is don’t make what we currently consider AAA games. To solve the problem, don’t make AAA games. Do “AA” or whatever Ninja Theory calls it.
@@defunctchannel942 Eh, sadly, that doesn't always work. Plus it's not really that simple.
@@defunctchannel942 I agree with Mike here, even a very cartoonish none-photorealistic artstyle isn't much less expensive then hyperrealism. Shaders, lightings, Polygon count, Model rigging, etc etc, is all the same no matter how the game looks when considering artstyle.
The main question is even with this being true and the dlc and microtransactions being deemed necessary for a game to be profitable. Why are major publishers reporting record profits to share holders and to not worry about a loss even if dlc was removed?
Chinese Sparrows it is the two-face nature of this saying that we can not sustain our company by the strength of our product but require very pereditory and trust eroding practices to make even a "slight" profit instead of maybe putting together larger expansions like in the past with games like total war and border lands after regaining the eroding trust of the consumers.
Because losing shareholders is just as bad for a company as losing customers. If you start reporting losses, people will pull out, a panic of the dropping value will spread, more people will pull, and you as a company will tank. It's like your grandmother called and asked how work or school was and it just makes your life go smoother if you leave out the bit where some douche ate your lunch when you weren't looking and you didn't have the time to buy another.
Shareholders expect a return on investment, and if they pull out then the company tanks. Lying to them is advanced tactics.
Exarian exactly. The more likely story is they are lying to gamers, and telling the truth to investors. And where does that more likely story get us?
They're earning plenty of money [Lines up nicely with their financial reports], but are crying because they want more. It ain't need. Its greed.
What I'm hearing from this is that the AAA gaming scene is basically unsustainable, either due to increasingly ridiculous budgets or increasing consumer contempt?
I'm curious if you're gonna do a video about indie games?
Bryan Gray there's probably a burst bubble in the future, like there is for movies, but that doesn't mean the industry is going away.
I believe EC already has a few-parter on how to create and market and indie title.
I don't think the AAA scene is in a bubble. sure, there are more players than there needs to be, but it's nothing like Atari, in the 80's, which shoveled games out the door because anything would sell, and they needed the sales to cover the losses of previous titles. those new games would lose money, so they would have to shovel more games out to cover *those*, and so on. Nintendo has specifically said that they refuse to chase, and have refused to chase, the latest super-high resolution graphics because they are so expensive and add nothing to the gameplay. You notice that as beautiful as Breath of the Wild is, it looks nothing like Skyrim or Witcher III. Style and beauty trump slavish reproduction of reality, and when more developers realize this, the graphical arms race will have an off ramp.
That's what it sounds like. It just isn't going to be sustainable.
The companies putting out quality games are going to be fine. It's the companies that are spending all this cash and putting out games like Andromeda that are going to be in for a rude awakening. Even though you'll still have people trying to come up with excuses for them, but every disappointing game lowers your customers trust in your brand. Lower it too much and they'll eventually go elsewhere.
Right or Wrong the market is still going to be the final "decider."
Well that's why all my games these days are indie titles.
AAA games just aren't what they used to be, and their investors who usually have little to do with the industry have made it worse.
Let's go back to independent developers with better games and are more in touch with the individual
all this video says to me isnt that we need to pay more for AAA games, but that AAA games are going to fail. the industry seems like its inevitably going to collapse, because AAA game standards are higher than what the average consumers budget will allow, but the average consumer won't accept less than high quality.
Exaclty in AAA customers demand insane production values but aren't willing to pay 60$, that's why they have to rehash the same series and franchises most of the time, because trying something new with that money on the line is a very high risk and is more easier and safe to sell an already known product (FIFA,CoD,Assasin's,etc.)
Also the standar AAA audience is not even the main target of the whole industry anymore, mobile games and free to play/freemium games are, because there are more people that are willing to pay a slow entrance fee or nothing at all and the blow over 60$ in gacha, than just pay a single 60$ fee.
That's why many companies are jumping ship, Nintendo is publishing mobile games, Square-Enix is also, hell the most grossing game compnay at the time, Tencent makes more money than Activision-Blizzard and EA combined by publishing fremmium/free to play games in China. So AAA is not going anywhere per-se, just ar eadopting the Gacha model more and more because that's what's making revenue for them than the standar AAA model.
Xfushion2 I just wish people where more willing to spend more money on quality products, I would be willing to pay $80-90 for quality games
Not necessarily, Yearly AAA games are mostly safe as they have the most established presence and fanbases. (Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Need for Speed, Just Dance and COD aren't exactly flopping every year).
It's the games and studios closer to the middle that are at the most risk.
So at most, there will be a small recision but not a full-on collapse.
That's like saying Hollywood will collapse despite how many people will go on to watch superhero films.
Yep. High expectations for no reason. No real control over their actual budget, and the fact that any actual profit is going to pay the dividends of the share holders who are also expecting more each year. It's going to burst under the weight of everything.
While any kind of wide scale crash might seem inconceivable now, the bosses at blockbuster, woolworths, and the WWC all thought that too in their heyday. They thought that they could withstand anything. That they were too big to fail. Where are they now?
I know that this might sound selfish but, as consumers we shouldn't care about how a game is made or how much it costs to make. We are consumers we should only care about the cost to us and the quality of the end product because that's what we deal with. If a game cost a bunch of money to make, but the quality of the game is poor, why should I or any of us as consumers should care about it. You wouldn't buy a shit car for a bunch of money just because the guy selling it payed more to make it.
I agree with you and the millions upon millions of dudebros that buy Call of Duty and Assassins Creed every year probably do to, but this isn't a consumer channel, these guys are clearly industry proffesionals which is why its being talked about
But also these are things that do affect the price we eventual see, and as we've seen (and Extra Credits are dodging) it affects how predatory gambling mechanics are added just to line shareholder pockets NOT affect any of these costs this video talks about
if you think about it, it shouldn't even matter to the employees either. they don't get the profit that the game makes, the company does, if they are lucky the profit might be re-invested in them having another job making a sequel, but that's it. who is this video really for, other than the people not concerned with just breaking even, but a ruthless need to expand their industry at the expense of the employees and consumer?
but as a consumer, you also don't want to pay more than $60 for a game, so that's why companies invent things to squeeze money out of our pockets.
So if somebody has enslaved children on the other side of the world, that's fine as long as the shoes are cheap? Or that the company making a product is pouring toxic chemicals into a river? I think people are smart enough to be able to weight cost and social/environmental impact.
Companies would still likely do all those things even if the price of games was raised to 70$ or whatever, is the thing.
Maybe you should just call up Sterdust at this point and you can fight it out in the ring!
We'll pass, but we enjoy watching a good promo! Young Bucks, maybe?
I think your subs deserve an explanation as to why you are ignoring glaring counter points to a lot of your arguments in this and your last video. With all due respect, I think you should at least make a devils advocate video to reassure that you are coming to these conclusions from a mostly unbiased perspective.
Bit by bit:
You mention getting a game done in two years. Because of trend-chasing, this is the standard now. It used to be 4 years. Doing a task twice as fast needs more than twice the staff, usually closer to 4 times. Which similarly multuplies equipment costs. Halving the time cuts those drastically.
2. Hiring celebrity voice actors costs way more than probably better professional Voice Actors. A voice actor does a better job with their voice than a celebrity actor, just as a celebrity actor will do a better job with their whole body, and the voice actor is cheaper.
3. Graphics race is pretty much all AAA pushed. We're well past the point where people notice anything but lighting, buying large. Aesthetic does a lot more than fidelity and is far cheaper. Andromeda failed because one area of graphics was notably worse than the rest and had amateur mistakes like the backwards gun, not because all of them were below cutting-edge.
4. Marketing doesn't need to be as huge as it is. Marketing budgets used to be far, far smaller even a few years ago.
5. If you can shave large ammounts of money through organizing, strive for that. Don't just dismiss that off of "oh we can't be perfect", get as close as you can.
6. Copycat games are a huge problem. See point 1.
Basically, you talked about a lot of stuff as fact when it's meerly recent trend. People decry the age of the FPS, but we got Bioshock, Gears of War, Halo 3, and many more good games out of that, most of which still hold up. Meanwhile, all those game industry neo-standards you just said gave us... Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Destiny 2, two of the highest profile "publishers doing things to actively make player experience worse" cases in recent years. Instead of saying it's us consumers failing the companies, look instead to how the companies can better serve the current market.
All the AAA Games you mentioned (with the exception of GTA V) don't have any form of Microtransactions and where pretty darn successful. So doesn't that contradict the argument of your previous video where you stated that the only options in the future are either to pay more or accept additional monetization?
And sure games are expansive as Hell to make but does raising the pricetag really solve that issue? In your case you estimated that it costs around 100 mil. to publish a game. So you would need roughly 1.67 mil copies sold at a price of 60$ to break even. At 70$ that would drop to 1.4 mil copies. I'm no expert but that does not really seem significant to me but please correct me if I'm wrong here but especially if you compare that to the money that can be made by lootboxes etc. this comparison is just ridiculous! Adding 10$ or 20$ on top of any AAA Title will not bring you nearly as much money as glorified gambling. And looking at how this Industry behaves (especially the big publishers) why not have your cake and try to eat it at the same time? They see themselves as too big to fail anyways.
Breath of the wild does
bruh cod has a bunch of it have you ever heard of supply drops?
Consider the fact that 50 % of the money you pay for a game, even in digital format, goes to either the store in which you buy the game or the country you live in.
So what? I mean it's not like the Industry is full of poor orphans who don't know how to do business. They of course know how much shipping and distributions cost. And if it wouldnt be profitable they would not do it. That is what every business on the planet has to do and the game industry is no different from that.
We released a game a year ago on steam and here's how it worked:
20% of what a player spend goes to the country, in France its a tax applied to everything you buycalled T.V.A, then steam took 30% as the owner of the distribution platform.
Add 15% for the publisher that allowed us to simply be on steam, and the 35% left were split into the 6 members of our team :)
For every 3$ copy of our game, less than 0.2$ went into my pocket. But i'm not complaining at all, it was a student game developed without any pretension whatsoever
The conclusion seems obvious. Companies should be more open about the quality/price tradeoff and trust the consumers to invest money into a game they believe in. If there's a game I know I'm going to be playing for months or a year, I'd be willing to pay 100 dollars for it. The problem is that the industry is constantly gambling and losing on a lot of products, meaning that they ones where they win have to win hard. That's not a sustainable business model.
I do see the problems this video makes obvious, but the solution shouldn't be 'microtransactions' or 'DLC'. It should be openness to the public about why their game costs so much, trust in the consumer to pay a game for what it's worth and a very strict regime on investing in the right games from the publisher's side. If I'm paying extra for my game because another game the company made turned a loss, that's a bad deal for me.
I don't pretend I have all the answers, but it does look like the companies don't trust their customers to recognize quality if they see it. That's a bad place to be in as a company.
Drecon84 just because you would pay more for a game (that you are invested in) if they explained it does not mean a majority or even a descent sized minority would.
you said that you would be willing to do this with a game that you are invested in but what about games that you have only a passing interest in, a game that you think is a cool concept but have not play a game like it before or a franchise that you are looking to get into. would you be willing to still pay an increased amount if they told you why it was that expensive? Then there is also the fact that there are people that have those outlooks about games that you are invested in do you think they would be willing to pay more if given the reasons?
What about people that do not have the time and/or the desire to read why a game costs as much as it does do you think they would still pay an increased amount?
If even some of the answers to these are no then would the company still make a profit? How much would it hurt the fan base of the company and the franchise? The truth is that the problem is far more complex then what your simple solution can handle.
Graphics are SUPER over rated and AAA, knows it. They lean into that selling point because excelent graphics are less risky than excelent game play. Mass Effect wasn’t panned because of graphics, people hated it because it was a buggy mess and which resulted in bad facial animations. Game play, art style, QA... That’s why Insomniac, Nintendo, and Epic are making great games and solid profits at or below a $60 price point.
The focus on graphics comes from a paradigm that was already outdated when gaming got to it. When we market a game, we market it the same way as a movie or TV show. Advertising has a bias toward visuals because it's not designed with interactivity in mind. So, what looks good sells, even if the experience of playing it feels like putting your hands through a meat grinder.
The problem is that gameplay and art style are subjective, graphics are objective. What might appeal to consumers is unpredictable, and might not appeal to the publishing execs or the bank loan officers, especially if your studio and your primary markets are in different parts of the world. Compare Korean/Chinese glamour and grind with Japanese style whimsy and weirdness with Anglosphere AWESOME!!!!11!. Meanwhile, the number of pixels per cm, the number of FPS, these are objective metrics that (with some internal data from previous games) you can put on a chart and say "if increasing graphics by X much costs $Y, but we predict it will get us Z more sales, it is a good deal," and then you get your advance from the publisher/bank loan/venture capital investment, etc.
I recently played through Final Fantasy VII. Graphics were awful, but the game was just as wonderful as I remembered. Ruby and Emerald Weapon were easier than I remembered, though Safer Sephiroth was harder.
Pricing is set by the consumer's willingness to pay, not by costs. The rare exception to this rule is total collapse of the profit margin, and even then an increase in price is usually a death knell for the company. Is there evidence of a significant decrease in studio profitability on an industry-wide basis?
I think what they were trying to say is that the devs have to charge more for their games in order to profit from it. If they just charged 60 dollars with no micro-transactions, they would have a loss and the industry would die.
The reason games cost so much is cause it isn't a bill, it's an investment. It costs 20m if you're trying to earn 40m. Before it only costed them 2m, but thats cause they weren't trying to make 40m back then. Games don't have to cost that much, same as movies not needing to hire A-list actors. They chose to do so in an attempt to make as much money as possible.
If the game cost went up so unjustly in the last 10 years, why are they more profitable now than they were when it was cheaper?
true
Because games now have microtransactions
The game's industry kind of did this to themselves. They pushed for open world and multiplayer games, which not only are expensive to make, but also hurt sales as people began to just play a couple of games over and over instead of buying more. Despite the fact that more people are playing games now than ever before, and despite the fact that the industry is making more money than ever before, the AAA industry has been selling less games per customer for years now.
In the long scope of things, between 5-10 years ago people would actively complain when anything was a linear experience because a few somewhat-experimental games did the open-world format well, and bigger studios decided to follow trends (that, to be fair, they most like focused tested into the ground) that they deemed to be more marketable or safe, even if it raises costs overall.
The industry didn't push, they made what people bought.
The Elephant of Doom The game industry, and almost every industry in general, is reactionary. Some of the best titles are open world, and the consumers loved them. The publishers didn't push open world, they felt pushed to make open world games because at the time that's what gamers wanted. Until something special became not so special at all.
This doesn't explain why so many companies create AAA games and expect them to sell. Consumers are only willing to buy a limited number of that kind of game each year. The solution is not to raise AAA game prices, but to stop making so many of them.
While there is some truth to that... how exactly do you make that happen? All the compines would have to come together and agree to reduce product and I pretty sure that will trip some anti-comtention protections laws in at least a few places.
+Left2Cake a lot of the companies that are doing this are publishing multiple games themselves, and thus could employ some self control. Take for instance Titan Fall II. The game could have been a huge success, but EA decided to release the game during the holiday season around the same time as Battlefield, and when it would have needed to compete with Call of Duty. Titan Fall got lost between the more popular releases simply because gamers don't have enough money to get so many hot games at the same time. All EA would have had to do was push back the release until after the holidays when there was a lot less competition. With how many games they release, EA is practically in competition with itself.
I understand the logic behind this but when it comes to release dates there's a reason that no major titles or movies come out in January/February: after the holiday season there's a steep drop-off in how much consumers spend, and pushing off the release date of a game affects advertising that is put into motion 6-10 months in advance. Aiming for a post-holiday release slot is almost sentencing a title to death, where very few things (for example, the original Deadpool film) can turn a profit just because the audience doesn't want to buy. This is less of a problem with a super niche focused game that a small dedicated fan base would buy regardless, but when your sales rely on the general public that buys most of their games for the year between October and December that closes off a lot of possible customers. If anything, Titan Fall II would have benefited from a different marketing STRATEGY, one that would have somehow better differentiated it from more standard FPS titles, but at the end of the day there's only so much they can do.
The best AAA titles don't come out on a schedule. Bethesda releases a main-series game only once every few years. Zelda, Pokemon, and Mario come out on similar schedules. These franchises release smaller games, sometimes cell phone games or. ones with reused assets, or DLC packs on a more regular basis.
Point being: it's not necessary to release a AAA game every year, and so many companies doing so is causing the current problem. I expect a new video game market crash in the near future.
yeah AAA game is so expensive to make. EA's Star Wars Battlefront 2 despite ship 7 million copies but still not enough to satisfied the AAA. Is this really a cost-issue? or in fact it's greed-issue.
So $100, 000, 000 for a game budget sounds like a ludicrosly high sum to pay without context.But if you divide that number by 60 according to price per game then you only need to sell 1.6 million games to make your money back.Any AAA game dev worth their salt could sell that amount in their sleep, and thats not factoring in additional profits from pre-orders, microtransactions etc.Even SW Battlefront 2, which became so infamous that it was publicly branded an online casino targeted at children has made a tidy 9 million sales. While battlefront certainly must have cost more than 100 million to make it doesn't change the fact that you're portraying 100 million as a massive goal to meet when it really isn't for a AAA publisher.
"60 according to price per game then you only need to sell 1.6 million games to make your money back" Aer you guys so sheltered that you still think the whole 60$ goes to the dev/publisher? askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/138674831501/hello-i-have-a-question-regarding-the-maths-of
I feel like they should have brought up the fact that MOST DEVS DON'T SEE MORE THAN HALF THE MONEY FROM THEIR GAMES. Distributors and platform providers charge hefty fees just to get the game sold. And then there's the fact that most of that profit doesn't go to the company, but to whoever holds stock in the company. Those people put pressure on the devs to make as much money as possible, and the devs don't really have a choice. Investors have a nasty tendency to move on as soon as they find something more profitable or stable, so we have a sort of arms race where everyone is trying to make as much money as possible just to keep doors open.
Yup some companies charge up to 25% just to host the game.
So once again, shareholders are at the core of what makes an industry suck.
Zephirenth Pretty much. I blame internet investors and the firms selling pre built portfolios
It may have saved a lot of misunderstanding if this had been part of last week's video, or at least alluded to better. That said, in your example here, you are muddying the waters by including startup costs with operating costs. And I have to admit, $10k/month for average compensation packages sounds awfully high (not regarding what people should earn, but what people actually do earn).
I do think it is important to do at least one or two more videos to finish discussing this topic, including counterpoints and addressing the hubbub last week's video has so enthusiastically generated. You lot are seen as a voice of reason and fairness in the games industry, and many people were discouraged by your incomplete treatment of this subject last week. This week adds to the topic, but doesn't complete it.
I agree. To be fair, we did state previously (in the first episode) that we were devoting several episodes to this topic, but I think by the time people had gotten to that point in the video they had already typed out their comments, as tends to happen. Keep in mind that we make these *months* in advance--like, as of right now, the scripts and art are done for at least the next 3 episodes. I do agree that this episode should have been more heavily alluded to, if only to save me the headache of dealing with way too many folks who should really get their blood pressure looked at.
--Belinda
That 10k wouldn't just be direct salary. Don't forget things like the employer contribution to Social Security, unemployment insurance, 401k, ect. That alone may run 15%+ or more of base salary. Then factor in other potential expenses, such as health insurance, paid time off, administrative personnel costs, hiring costs (even this stage could run over $3000), potential workmans comp cases, and so on. These numbers can add up.
jrggrop - Yes, I'm aware of this, and factored it in. I'm also aware that my perspective is a little skewed because I live in a pretty rural part of the country, and living in a major city like LA or New York is much more expensive all around. That said, I also haven't known many AAA devs living in a metro area who pull even $50k/year.
Many people don't consider that full-time compensation includes those things (and those things cost the employer money), so I'm glad you brought it up.
Belinda - For what it's worth, I'm sorry for all the bullshit you and the team have had to endure this last week. At least you know there is a discourse, and that has always been the goal of EC. Silver lining.
+Xaos Bob
I think some of the (for the lack of a better word) hateful comments come from people who are also fans of the Jimquisition: a show in which the host Jim Sterling looks at some awful business practices that some AAA or Independent companies do, and I do have to admit. He's a bit too harsh with the negativity... But he does bring-up some good points in his rants, he's also pretty good at predicting things that companies will do, and he's really quick with the news as well.
Sorry, but the consumers never asked for big budget Hollywood actors to do voice over work. (Some have been great, but the majority have been pretty bland) we also don't need money spent on old school marketing techniques. Seriously, what AAA game came out that nobody knew about until they saw it in billboards or a tv ad. That's a pretty lame excuse. Espically since the cost of marketing is way cheaper nowadays and most gamers know about games through word of mouth or just by going through things like game informer or something. Hell, perpetual hype machines like E3 make everyone know about pretty much most AAA studios upcoming games months or years ahead of time. I don't know any consumers that are saying games are cheap to make and that's why they don't want to pay 60 dollars. Nor are they totally against making any sort of extra revenue. (Weve all enjoyed DLC on games we like). All this comes off as, is some sort of PR excuse for EA and the like. And sorry but, I'm not gonna feel sorry for a company that openly cares more about it's shareholders than it's consumers. I'll stick to playing things like Dust: an Elysium tale, or little nightmares, fallout, or Mario: Odyessy.
J M we spoke with our dollars. The dollars were misinterpreted and a thousand other things went wrong but video games aren't exactly literature when it comes to education or discourse. What do games provide you? Are they essential to your life? Can you make sense of the world without them?
Games provide many things. Games like fallout or skyrim provide escapism and power fantasies. Co-op games like payday, cuphead or Minecraft provide good times with friends or family while accomplishing a goal. Games like Mario and shovel knight help remind me of my youth and the bright spots during that time. Rythem games like DDR and rock band get me out of the constant sitting position and get me some exercise. And games can very much be literature in things like Bioshock, deus ex, final fantasy, and mass effect. Games where you fall in love with the characters and cry or make you sit back and think about yourself and question yourself and maybe help change the way you think. No. You don't NEED video games to survive in life, but technically neither do you NEED books, movies, tv, internet, phones, or music. But do you really want a world without any of those things. I think some games can very much help you make sense of the world or at least certain aspects of it.
+J M
if a game studio is planning to make a movie based game like star wars or some marvel movie, they will hire the same actors who were in that movie
Then why they need new games? Why should we count those people as a target audience?
“Fallout”
Oof, this comment did not age well.
Too bad triple AAA companies have been letting us down recently. This is the real problem, some of the game sucks yet they take the spotlight.
This is actually important. The problem isn't the price raise, it's the lack of consumer confidence. The people who purchase games seriously enough to sustain a AAA industry have been suffering through so much abuse since the DLC generation started that they no longer trust the companies that provide it. We dealt with the jump from $50 to $60 with grumbling back during the 360/PS3 generation jump with grumbling, but back in those days we still trusted the publishes to sell us complete games.
Now the industry has been so abusive for so long that customers only see greedy tyrants. They CAN'T legitimately raise the price, because they also can't stop loot boxes, DLC, DRM, Online Only, etc.
IDK, this whole argument seems backwards to me.
Why do games need production teams of 500 and $5 million game engines? Because that's what everyone else is spending and you need to keep up.
It's an arms race of inflated budgets and expensive graphics engines that is leading to the risk aversion and predatory monetization that is happening just now.
I work in film, and it's the same reason why movies take 3-4 months to shoot and have crews of hundreds, while television can shoot 90 minutes in a couple of weeks. It's not because it *has* to take that long, it's because they think they can afford to and feel they need to to keep up.
Underqualified smaller teams mean drawn out development time. Remember Duke Nukem Forever?
Also the longer the turnaround process is, the riskier it gets, because games aren't making back the money until it hits the market. So if you wait 8 years for a game to be made, that's 8 years without any revenue. Now compare that to 2 years
Underqualified I agree with you, arms race is a good way to put it. But, the way I see the industry as an outsider, movies as a whole are still being propped up by these big budget blockbusters. That's what brings the attention, the eyeballs, and the infrastructure. Television or indie film provide some alternatives, but they don't fully replace that market either. I'm interested: do you see a solution forming or getting talked about in film?
Omg yes! This is what I have been saying for the last couple of years! Especially in the MMO industry, they basically start development with an artificially inflated budget
Cyrribrae I actually took 6 months off work last year to try and set up a humble bundle style service for niche and indie films, so my reply might might have a bit of a bias..
Film and tv are going through a golden era due to platforms like netflix, hbo, starz etc. making people think that good content is worth paying for again! So there is no one at the top pleading poverty right now.
Unfortunately, the indie scene is terrible for film, much worse than in gaming (from an outsider in gaming). And I think it has a lot to do with monetization.
When you go to the cinema, it doesn't matter if you see a big summer blockbuster or a 20 man indie darling, both tickets cost the same price, both of them offer overpriced popcorn, and the blockbuster has a bigger screen better screening times.
Whereas, indie games can offer a much better value proposition than AAA games. We all know that when we buy COD, or an EA or Ubisoft game, as well as the $60 up front price there will be storyline dlc to buy in a couple of months as well as multiplayer map pack dlc, limited time offer exp boosts "hurry only $1.99 soon to be $5.99", and constant popups reminding you that new cosmetics are available or the next season of lootboxes has started.
But indie games offer much better value because as well as usually costing between $15 to $30, if they end up being successful like terraria, FTL, or stardew valley, there is an expectation that you will continue to provide updates and more content for as long as you can reasonably afford to.
So, in conclusion, yes. You're right. The Hollywood system is set up so that only the big superhero movies make money, and smaller films only exist to find new talent. But no one's talking about fixing it because the people on the inside are making plenty of money and the audience isn't asking for it because the biggest movies offer the best value proposition.
Mixing up standard company running costs with project costs and adding them all up into one “price to make a game” sum. Yeah, I can see this is going to be a thorough discussion...
Are you claiming that devs don't cost the amount EC claims? That they don't work for the amount of time claimed? Sure, they don't buy a new laptop for every dev for every project, nor office space. But the large bulk of the cost is just time spent, and you still arrive at a fairly large number that most non-business minded people in this comments section would balk at.
Fun fact: standard company running costs are part of the project costs for a AAA game as they are an actual company. Company costs are factored into the budget of any company project anywhere. What else are they running the company on?
I used to work in a project-based company (ITS infrastructure). You always, ALWAYS factor in company overhead into project costs. Because there will be times when your company is not getting paid for the project (trying to get your pitch approved/bidding for your next project, etc.), but you still have to pay salaries for your entire staff. So frankly EC was extremely conservative when they said $10,000 per person for 2 years. That number assumes everyone is working on something that makes money everyday.
Plus they did bad math. If it's $10k/month for 200 people - that's $48m, not $40m. (They seemed to have forgotten that there are 12 months in the year.)
To be fair, in certain games you could probably cut voice acting all together, or have VERY limited voice acting. Just look at breath of the wild. Game did great and had VERY little voice acting in it.
YuraMayZing depends on the game
It really depends. NeR is a low budget AAA game that focuses on story and emotions, so it cut down thijgs like graphic to be able to afford great voice actors as Laura Bailey and Liam O'Brien
The problem I see is that the cost of developing a game is increasing much faster than inflation would dictate. If the price of making a triple A game keeps going up without a similarly expanding customer base, then alternative revenue sources are just a band-aid on a much bigger problem. The big budget games industry needs to find some kind of equilibrium, or I can't see it lasting forever.
+Jane Black You're sadly incorrect. A large majority of unemployed and underemployed people around the world get through their days only because they can play video games all day. Video games are the modern day circuses from the "Bread and Circuses" of the Roman Empire. Take that away and you're probably looking at massive social unrest and upheaval.
Well, the thing is the shareholders want more and more, because the way they often see it (especially institutional investors) a games company is no different from a company that makes, for example, luxury cars.
This video feels like a very defensive response to people's criticisms of last week's video. I realize you're mostly just laying out information about the status of the AAA industry. However, because you don't repeatedly and explicitly come out against how this system works, these two videos both read like you're defending an industry model that, from the outside looking in, is very very obviously an unsustainable bubble that is going to burst. I hope defending it wasn't your intention; if it wasn't, then you need to be extremely clear about your position.
Thom Cote no they dont they really try to stay away from taking a position these vids are mostly just them laying out info from their own experiences and nothing more
I'm not sure if you're familiar with our channel, but it takes us *months* to make these videos--we don't really do "response videos." (As stated in that first video, we're taking a few weeks to explore this topic of game costs and lootboxes). You are more than welcome to peruse our archives (where we have a *lot* of videos talking about predatory monetization practices from years and years ago--for starters, you can look at this playlist: th-cam.com/play/PLhyKYa0YJ_5BiTUDF5EPpVquSpsSZ0gSe.html ). We try to keep the focus narrow for each video, and we always hope that our viewers will use our videos as a starting point for their own research. --Belinda
We got some fucking inside numbers. That's awesome. Now we know costs with variables and can roughly compile game costs.
Thom Cote they don't need to do anything. EC exists because they want to improve the discussion. I think they are reacting to the recently escalated internet flamewar concerning loot boxes and micro transactions. Video game bubble popped in the 80's and we can prevent it from happening again by educating ourselves.
VallenChaosValiant
Agree, EA can go bankrupt but the game industries will still here because gaming bubbles aren't as big as student debt bubbles.
My grandma always say "If you can't handle the fire then don't go to kitchen", that is similar to anyone who wants to go to gaming industry business.
You know..... im not 100% sure on this one. Like would anyone be too upset if games didnt look much diffrent from PS3 games?
and dont most people care more about visual style than graphics proper?
Cid Aghast Maybe not people who are super fans of the medium, but they’re not the only ones who buy games. People who don’t have in-depth knowledge of how games are made and only care about when the next COD is coming out will care. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Magnus Prime I'm not entirely convinced that the people who are invested in the next Call of Duty can really tell the difference between a PS3 and a PS4 game and that's not me knocking them I just mean that graphics are getting better at a much lower rate but costing exponentially more and people that aren't very invested in graphical output may not notice if a game looks last-gen because there's not a huge difference it's not like jumping from PS2 to PS3 anymore
Sadly, if you ask this on TH-cam you'll have tons of people echoing the (obviously more logical) opinion of graphics being second to a lot of things when that is not the case for a ton of people.
Look at Twitter for #Witcher3 and see all the "OOOH LOOK HOW PWETTY THE SUNSET IIIIIS" and all the reddit posts of the same flippin sunset. I've seen so many Witcher 3 sunsets by now that I kind of didn't even wanna see the sun IRL anymore, I was sick of it. People care. SO. FUCKING. MUCH. And it's really maddening, because a lot of great games are underlooked because they don't pump their game full of crazy particle effects and Hyper-high res textures and 5 billion polygons for a single blade of grass.
Graphics are basically marketting on their own and if you were to go a bit back, sure a lot of people wouldn't mind especially in the PC space if the game's fun. Heck, World of Warcraft is STILL one of the biggest MMORPGs together with Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV and other than WOW, all of those came around exactly that Era of PS3/Xbox360 games that you're talking about. (with FFXIV actually having been on the PS3 for a long while.) So it CAN work. But in the console space, a lot of people still argue to this day "Which console is better" and get defensive. What do they talk about? Graphics of course.
I'd love for a world with people who didn't give a shit if a game looked new or old but instead looked at a game and saw whether the graphics are *coherent for their world*, which is far more important in measuring an artworks beauty and games ARE art. The aforementioned WoW has a cartoony yet at times violent and grotesque artstyle that just works wonders, especially looking at how the next expansion features tons of atmospheric details.
Instead people want their 4K 30 fps games to look pwetty and it drives me nuts.
I think you might underestimate how far graphics advance, look at Witcher 2 and Witcher 3, there are only 4 years between those games(2011-2015). Without a doubt, the beauty of the Witcher 3 helped its sales.
Are you saying Witcher 2 looks dated? You might have to double-check if you actually played at max settings.
I'd rather have worse graphics and or slower progression for cheaper games; and no cost in the world is worth making our children addicted to gambling mechanics
MadMatic I’d don’t want our adults addicted to gambling mechanics either.
Yeah, those poor people addicted to real gambling should be better protected too. Although the gaming-gambling is less of a threat to them than the bone-crushing brutes of a casino who will not only send you bills...
But i got kinda good news(sadly only for the country i live in). One German University made a study about video game lootboxes and it is now scientifically proven, that lootboxes act the same on our psyche as normal gambling and our Landesmedienamt ( the state-organisation for media-regulation) looks into banning lootboxes alltogether. But i only believe in the ban once its in act.... the lobby might want to have a word in that
I think the creator specifically was against that, in particular. JS.
Don't buy them on release day then, in 2-3 months every game(other than mega hits like pubg\overwatch) costs 30-50% less.
MadMatic uuuuuund es ist nichts passiert :) wie zu erwarten war
The more I hear these arguments, the more I feel like the real problem is not the actual cost. The real problem is this kind of "Prisoner's dilemma" that game companies are in. With current tooling, a AAA studio could achieve less ambitious games (let's say, early ps3 quality) for a fraction of the money they used to cost. The problem is everybody else is going to keep making unsustainably big-budget games. If everybody agreed on a set of principles for "sustainable" game development I dare to guess that we would not be questioning the $60 price tag, we could keep most games well under $30. Sadly, that's not how things work, the prisonner always chooses to betray his partner.
Pretty much this, yeah. And it's not unique to the AAA games industry, either; it's the reason why electronics are sourced from sweatshops, and food from banana republics. It's why retail is paying their employees as little as possible, even to the point of weird swap-out arrangements to make sure that they never have to pay them full time.
Because when everybody else keeps to the Sustainable Business Practices, the one company that *doesn't* creams the rest of the market.
This is why "there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" is a phrase you hear thrown around.
Ah, yes, capitalism at it's finest, and most destructive
"If everybody agreed" - not gonna happen, ever, end of story
It's a fine microcosm of the problems with capitalism. This is an issue in just about every industry. The marketing costs are where this is really a problem. They're not spending this money to "get the message out", as much as they're spending the money to try to push out their competitors.
I think a problem they do point out is people aren’t gonna pay 60 dollars up front for a game that looks like it belongs on the PS3
You could say “we’ll just lower the price to 30-40 bucks” but then you need to do even more cutting elsewhere to put yourself back in the green.
People are expect a certain technical standard and if it’s not up to par with others in the same price range it’ll get review bombed and then likely flop regardless.
Meanwhile I'm making an indie game with my friend on a budget of less than $500. I'm a college student whose parents pay my rent and food, so I guess I don't count. It's fucking hard to complete a game with little money, little free time, understaffed; years of labor and almost nothing to show for it.
What's the game and how soon are you to completing it?
rageoftyrael It's actually two games. We make a point of designing games that defy genre so bare with me. The current smaller game is a 2D grid platformer but also a puzzle game that is also a sandbox point and click adventure. On top of that, you play as two people at once, one with each hand. We expect to release it early spring on computers. I think I'd be perfect with Joy cons, so I want to make a Switch port one day. The bigger game on hiatus is equally bonkers. It's equally RPG and Horror. You play as a paranoid traveling shopkeeper who lives in a surreal tribal world and has the option of nondeadly tactics. It looks like a PS1 game, but plays like Paper Mario TTYD on steroids, and is also a point and click adventure game, and a Tactics RPG in many respects. We've spent two years world building and are struggling to code the game. We expect a release a few years out. I refuse to apologize.
Haha, guys, please don't subscribe to this TH-cam account: we don't upload videos here. Search for Otyugra Games on Facebook or Twitter instead if you're trying to support us.
Did you ever finish it? Probably not lmao
@@ruthenican No, we never completed either. We decided to work on a new game of a smaller scale instead. It's a turn-based roguelike that is humbler in all ways, except for it's story which is actually rather deep and nuanced all things considered. I have even less time to work on this game but I'm doing well financially and so is my coworker. That's all that matters. Releasing a game would only be a bonus.
So something occurs to me. At least some of that 60-70 dollar price tag is the game store, right? How much of that money is actually going back to the developer? How many copies does the company actually need to sell to recoup its losses?
Also, including things like office equipment in the price is a little dishonest. I doubt Nintendo buys new chairs and walls for every game it makes, you know?
We actually do know those numbers. Speaking broadly here, but it roughly amounts to a dev gets about 17 dollars, the publisher gets about 30, and a retailer gets about 2 dollars from every $60 game. The rest generally is lost to costs in producing the game, shipping, and other fees.
I work in an electronics store that sells video games. I know that my company pays $48 for games that we sell for $60. Some of that goes towards shipping, and I don't know if there are any other middlemen taking their cut. I just know we make a $12 profit for every 'AAA' game we sell.
The game industry is modeled on the movie and music industry. There are a ton of channels that money moves through.
Let's say for the sake of argument that the $17 can't be reduced by more than a few %. I feel like the other $43 can be slimmed down a lot!
It really can't though. The biggest chunk of that still goes to the publisher, the person putting the money up to make the game, so they kinda do need the largest cut of the profits. If you tried to take that money away then they would simply either give out less money, which causes more issues for the dev's needing to cut corners and causes problems for them, or they demand that the sales have to make up for the lost cost, resulting in them demanding an extra million or so copies have to be sold at min. to made up for their lost profits, which also causes issues for the devs. The remaining fees make up about 13 dollars in the current breakdown, and even then there's not a lot you can do to make that cheaper. The most you might be able to do is shave off a dollar or two, but things are already very tight in terms of budget.
The issue is stockholder dividends and expectations. It is that greed that drives the constant need for more revenue streams. Why don't you address that?
Agreed. I work for a company that pulls everyone together for a quarterly event where the whole C-team tells everyone how the company is doing, and all the records we're breaking. The company acquires more assets and expands the product line. They buy giant machines that easily replace workers. Meanwhile, they eliminate, redefine, and consolidate positions, which limits upward mobility. Wages have stagnated even though the cost of living in the area creeps higher. But hey, sometimes we get breakfast tacos, so everything must be great, right?
I don't think we should blame corporations for doing what they can to maximize on profits - they're a money-making machine and it's what they do. But it's the corporate demand, not just for profitability, but *growth* is what is killing everything. That's where the greed comes in. As a society we have to do what we can to reign them in and make them work for us in a responsible long-term way. Otherwise they will spin out of control, and we'll all be shucked like oysters.
Because dividends dont contribute to the quality of the game, and therefore arent justifiable. Better to just imply that devs would starve without a 50% price hike.
6:51 "Having the hottest-looking screenshots and trailers of the season practically guarantees success in that environment."
It also and mostly guarantees that people with at best average computers are gonna skip on it because it's not gonna run well on their machines. Dial down graphics, dial up aesthetic.
from my experience gorgeous graphics can be toned down to an acceptable level - but with a low-end computer that will likely still not run very great since from also my experience, big AAA games that have gorgeous trailers usually have big, open worlds that take a lot of power to render, and the render distance usually can’t be lowered unless the world is literally infinite (minecraft, if you ignore the world border)
it’s not the graphics by themselves, it’s the other stuff that usually comes with gorgeous graphics that cause me to skip games like that
I'd like you put more emphasis on the "this needs to change" part of the video, I get the feeling that you're OK with all this madness just because you like nice graphics and big games... maybe we don't need more Witcher 3s or Horizon Zero Downs until they are actually affordable? Maybe we don't need AAA games at all.
The industry needs to change before it kills itself.
I think it's safer to just present the facts then let the viewer decide. Predicting a bursting bubble is a fairly bold thing to put out there.
Well, they don't need to go apocalytic about it. You can focus on the needed change from other angle, it's clear that there's a lot of problems on every end. Shareholders aren't happy, devs aren't happy, players aren't happy... The issues are there.
So you're saying we don't need high-quality games because other companies are competing with others?
That logic is stupid
if you feel like 60 dollars is out of your price range you maybe need to look into your personal budget, its not like you need every single game that comes out every year, you should only really be buying 3-5 new games every year max and thats if you're really into gaming more than that then you're just wasting your own money because theres just now way youre actually going to put enough hours into all those games to justify the cost to yourself
Man, I won't get into a discussion with people that uses words like "stupid" and "moron" on their first post...
Let's just say that there're differences between quality content and a tech arms race that bring stress and problems to everyone involved.
I'm not saying $60 is too much, it may be too little. My problem is that companies are trying to exploit people's minds into spending as much as they can into their games. If that's required to make AAA games, then I don't want those games.
Why not make the graphics stylistic (like Jet Set Radio or Wind Waker or Mario) and not realistic? Would that take the cost down?
A Blob probably not as much as you'd think. You still need to hire all the artists, modelers, riggers, lighting tech, etc
It might MIGHT be less intensive, but I don't think as much as you'd think
Nah, I know that'd still take a lot of effort but I think it could take the cost a bit more down. A bit.
The majority of gamers wouldn't touch those games, they're too superficial and focused on realism and graphics.
Bullcrap super mario odyssey just got 9 millions in sales www.vg247.com/2018/01/31/switch-overtakes-wii-u-lifetime-sales-as-super-mario-odyssey-hits-9-million-units-sold/ and when u look at switch compared to a ps4 it's still not as powerful yet nintendo made games still look just as good. Like this guy failed to address WHY video game costs have just balloon astronomically over the years(www.newgamernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/vgdevcost.jpg), it doesn't take much to realize when games like Tomb raider sells about 3.4 million and is considered "under preforming" or Final Fantasy 15 needing 10 million to be considered a "success" (it's recent put it at 7 million sold). Another is that this guy also ignores that these companies has MASSIVE tax exceptions via loopholes (th-cam.com/video/SFKnv1YzI3k/w-d-xo.html). Here's a more better look into the "AAA" industry (th-cam.com/video/l0FI3iUt9H4/w-d-xo.html)
That's because it has mario in the title
Seeing as you’re going over how much games are costing to make, could you guys do a video on the possibility of another game industry crash?
Ay Matthew Mercer!
Lucas Ballard helo fellow critter, how do you want to do this?
😉
I don't think I've played any AAA that I've liked, but I can name lots of $5-$20 games that I've absolutely fallen in love with.
You sound like a hipster that can't accept anything mainstream
Like do you think AAA is bad? Like what?
Most of the games I like you would probably consider mainstream.
Some of the games you like i would probably consider AAA.
Well, how do you define AAA? To be honest, I'm not really familiar with the term besides knowing it involves a game with lots of marketing, a huge budget, and a large publisher.
Checkmate.
"I don't think I've ever played any AAA that i've liked,"
“Our low budget, AAA game”
Translation: “our low budget, high budget game”
Like I have an idea. Maybe make a game that doesn’t take 200 people 2 years? Idk. Just a thought.
The entire premise of this video is that only high budget games matter, and they use this to prove that only high budget games matter. That is circular logic.
Welp, that settles it. Big games are just too expensive to make, the AAA industry is going to collapse under its own weight, and in a few years only inde games will be left. Enjoy it all while it’s still here, folks.
97Multiphantom way ahead of you. All my favorite games were made like 20 years ago. :)
Enjoy what? CoD and Assassin's Creed? Indie games have been far more enjoyable for a decade already.
Indie games have better managed budgets, they also achieve similar graphics quality and soundtrack quality, so honestly most of the cost isn't worth it for AAA games.
Your prediction might come true... for a year or two. Then some new AAA studios will come in to fill the resulting gap such a collapse would leave in the market. Might be fewer AAA games then we have now if you believe the market is over-saturated now, but the basic principles remain the same. Consumers demand it, so someone will provide.
shivore Yeah, that's what an industry collapse is. The video game industry has already gone through two or three collapses and it's heading for another.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, Current Triple AAA is an unsustainable buisiness that sooner or later will go plop.
If you have to throw millions of dollars at marketing a system that is clearly customer unfriendly, then you are doing it wrong.
Make a good product that people want for a reasonable price, and you don't have to spend millions convincing/marketing your product to sell it.
There I fixed the industry, feel free to hire me.
yeah that aint gonna cut it because word of mouth will never spread enough to cover for the gains you could have made but lost
because you did not spend anywhere near enough at the marketing end to actually sell enough copies to meet the bottom line.
Wages have been basically stagnant for the last 40 years... The purchasing power of Americans keeps on getting lower...heck the average American is still literally thousands of dollars poorer then they were before the great recession of 2008. For publishers like EA the developing cost has been decreasing since 2013 ... These companies are highly profitable... Activtion, EA,take two literally store billions of dollars in the Netherlands to avoid paying taxes... These companies are NOT cash or credit strapped.. Not to mention the patent and IP they own... It basically comes down to greed of upper management and maximizing profits for share holders... you guys are really mistaken if you think that if games cost 90 bucks that they would get rid of loot boxes... They have a fiduciary responsibly to maximize profits for share folders.
mAybE AAA games could be a lot cheaper if you wouldn't aim for more than +270% profit like EA.
www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ea/financials?query=income-statement
The point is, games are expensive to make, but that isn't the reason of exploitative monetization.
If I take the upper estimation from above, the 100mill, you "only" need to sell ~1.7 million copies to turn positive. Now compare that number to the very few statistics we have from AAA sales.
+NoESanity Uh no, he has a point. This video isn't just about game budgets but also as a continuation of the last video about why publishers are forcing more monitization into their games. EA doesn't put those extra monitzation schemes into their games because the games are too costly to make and turning a profit is too hard... they do it because they demand their games have a +270% profit. If they were willing to accept less profit, then they might not need to change a thing... The previous Batttlefront more than likely made an enormous profit for EA; without the controversy, BFII would have likely done even better. And yet, EA still forced in lootboxes simply because they wanted even higher returns.
The problem is not that games "cost too much to make" but simply that publishers demands for profits are far too high. They aren't happy with just being successful, staying in the black, and growing; they demand MORE. Its pure simple greed.
I see, TH-cam at its best. The video above details why AAA video games cost a lot to make. That's fair, it even seems to Match the EA statistics. My comment's third line acknowledges that. The video however doesn't seem link the identified high cost to predatory monetization practices. Seems fair again. The point is that one still shouldn't make that assumption. Almost all comments of this video appear to just do that, everyone beleives AAA games must be flawed if they need so much microtransactions and DLC to cover their production costs, while in reality, you need that to have some juicy profit.
This video was mostly about how the price for games comes together. Sure, most "Big AAA" companies (as weird as that sound) aim for stupidly high profit margins. Especially EA, let's not kid ourselves, are just idiotic. But the price still stands and it explains why some companies despite not being complete assholes still opt to go for Lootbox-based systems or go more and more to the 60 bucks + more bullshit added route.
Is that cool? No. Don't support games like those if you wish for them to just...Stop. See Need For Speed Payback, that game sold horribly, played only...OK-ish, the story was absolutely dumb and robotic and I can't even fathom who had the idea for tuning to be part of a literal SLOT MACHINE.
That upper estimate from the video is also considering good decisions are made, and you don't have stupidly high costs for your employees. I reckon EA pays its higher ups quite a nice amount of money, prolly a lot more than some higher guy gets in another business.
The most easy solution:
Tell the graphical fidelity spectacle creep to go eff itself and focus on gameplay and use stylized graphics. You'd shave off at least half of the developers and middleware .
Players don't demand super graphics. The AAA publishers are pushing the narrative to scare away any competition and protect their oligopoly.
You say that, but when Andromeda's graphics weren't up to snuff, people rioted
Ok, who here has ever bought a game because it had a certain voice actor?
Because I know I never have. I never even know a famous person did any voice acting on that game until I actually get the game and hear their voice on it! Notable examples would be Fallout and The Sims Medieval.
So you could easily cut that out and not lose anything. These are games we're talking about, not movies.
It wouldn't alleviate that much strain from your budget, but it would definitely work without losing anything.
As for lowering the budget in general. I'm pretty sure AAA games back in the 90s didn't cost that much to make, even when you adjust for inflation. So there's definitely room to have lower budget games out there. Games that obviously won't sell as much, but also don't need to sell as much (since games back then sold a fraction of the amount that they sell now, yet still made a profit).
I feel like they did use to be a bridge between Indie and AAA games back during the PS2 era. I use to call them B Games (like B Movies). But they just sort of disappeared. Maybe it's time for them to come back.
DanVzare yeah exactly I didn't buy overwatch beacause Matt mercer was in it no I brought it cause I actually thought it looked like a good game. It's not a movie where you actors can make the movie good beacause with games if the mechanics are broken and the story is boring well I'm sorry no voice actor is going to convince me it's a good game
Agreed. At most I've bought a game because the art designer was someone whose style I liked. But VAs? I can't say that I'm interested in them. It probably doesn't help that there are actually very few VAs with distinctive enough sounding voices that I can point to them and say "I know that guy's voice!"
The B games still exist, it's just that most of them have migrated to the 3DS since it has lower development costs and expectations than a full sized console while having an audience that's bigger than any single console. For example Marvelous moved their popular farming sim Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons to the 3DS specifically because they felt development costs on home consoles would be too high, while the development costs for a 3DS title were manageable.
I did actually keep an eye on (but ended up not buying) one game purely because Jennifer Hale (femShep, Bastila Shan, Avatar Kyoshi and many many more) voiced the main protagonist. I don't even recall the title of the game, but you played a battlemage and it had a 'elaborate crafting system' for the spells you could sling around... which ended up being a slightly retooled equipment screen, where you would plug runes that did AMAZING EFFECTS such as damage +3% to the base spell.
Lichdom Battlemage was the title (it just came to me as I was typing that last bit)
Dishonored 2 has Steven Russell (the original va for Garret in Thief) and that forced me to pre-purchase the game instead of waiting for a sale like I do most games. Voice actors are a selling point, you are an idiot.
Certainly it is not a selling point for some people. But their fame attract consumers to notice the product. Just like movies, you maybe do not see it because the cast, but you notice the movie because some big name, even if you don't go see that movie there are other people that will do because of those reasons.
It seems to me that the AAA scene needs some kind of a reform. O don't know how or what but I don't think it being destroyed is a net gain.
Skyrim had a budget of 85 million dollars. You're saying a scappy game can cost 100 million to make. Somehow the math doesn't check out.
MA: Andromeda didn't cut corners in facial animations either. It is clear they worked a lot to make those crappy animations. The reflections, facial detail, independent motion, they are all there, the thing is, they sucked at their job. You can spend money inefficiently. That's the problem with the AAA industry.
Skyrim is a bit older now, the cost increased since then as you can use more detailed 3D models, which take more time to make aswell as better textures which are a lot of work. There are ai features that skyrim did not have but are standard by now. All those things mean additional work.
And yes, Andromeda did cut corners. If it didn't they wouldn't have hired people who can't do the job perfectly. Or they had given their people more time for polishing.
Mandos Aldmer andromeda was scrapped and the game we got had less than a years worth of development time. The facial animations were all automated and, with a few noticeable exceptions, we're never touched up, something that process was not made for.
There are a HELL of a lot more variables to this, but this video does well on scratching the surface on the tangly mess that is the AAA industry.
Thank you for being a voice of reason in this sea of folks talking about how studios like EA or Activision Blizzard needs to die.
Thank you so very much, you genuinely made my day just being saying this! ^^
@ArgentumEmperio
Taxes, maintenence of all kinds, staff capacitation, insurance policies, social security, working equipment and I'm not even getting started here... Did I mention TAXES?? Cuz that's kind of a big deal...
Accountancy exists as a profession for a reason. Lol
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you, the regular consumer should care about this stuff, but that also doesn't entitle anyone to be dicks towards companies, if you really hate a company, if a company's policy is do scummy and shady, the best way to hurt them is to ignore them, Insulting them won't do crap to them.
Ironically the strongest, most harmful message a company like that can get is no message at all.
DON'T BE A JERK!
Companies are doing a fine job being a dick to consumers, so if they don't care to be nice, why should we treat companies any different?
so you showed a lot of numbers in this video but you neglected to make the final (and in my opinion the most important) one
100.000.000/60=1.666.667
This means that if a game with a budget of 100 million sold roughly 1,7 copies, it would make its money back. Despite this,
EA's CFO Blake Jörgensen recently announced that due to battlefront 2's dissapointing sales of 'only' 7 million copies (and that was despite the massive backlash), they would have to put the microtransactions back in the game. This is why I simply refuse to believe these mulit-million dollar corporations pleading poverty while they shove their predatory monetization schemes down our throats.
Furthermore, if you're telling me that an assasin's creed or call of duty game can't make it's money back by just selling the product then the only conclusion I can draw is that the executives behind these games are fucking idiots who don't deserve to be in this business.
Even if you cut the game price by 30% (what Valve/Sony/Microsoft take for instance on digital downloads), that's about 2.5 millions copy. Monster Hunter World sold for 5 millions IN 3 DAYS. Most triple AAA make over 5 millions very easily when proper marketing is done for it. And this video is telling us making more than twice your original investment is not enough? Really? AAA games wouldn't be so common in the first place it it wasn't making a lot of money, that's just how capitalism works, there's no need to make something if you know you won't make money out of it.
Jelle Hondelink I agree with your point, but just to expand the conversation further let's remember that, in buisenesses your objective is not recover the money you put in it, is to gain something over your initial investment. So in this case maybe the profit of those 7 million copies was not up to the return value they expected.
please don't grill me, I DO hate microtransactions and every game I played in 2017 did not have them (to my knowledge at least).
But yeah is healty to remember that gaming companies WHOEVER they are (for the most part), are not our friends they are in for the money and not the passion (again, for the most part).
That's not a failure for the studio itself, its the failure for shareholders who expected more.
Not really.
Keep in mind that as a company, you want to make enough profit that your shareholders will invest their money in YOUR company instead of something else.
Any decent economic class will tell you that you want to have your company make a profit of at LEAST more than what you would get from a basic savings account.
Celestial Gecko I think you're the one getting too focused on the numbers here. I realize that battlefront 2 probably had a much bigger budget than 100 million (although AAA publishers have always been notoriously silent about such things so we can only assume) but my main point here was that I simply don't believe that these publishers actually need all these additional monetization avenues. And if they do, if EA genuinely can't turn a profit just selling a game with a star wars license (which may as well be a license to print money), then they're completely incompetent. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that these loot boxes are not motivated by necessity, but by pure and simple greed. Because a company like EA is never satisfied by just making money, they have to make all the money in the universe. They've demonstrated that time and time again. Besides, if a game can sell over seven million copies and still be 'dissapointing' then this industry simply isn't sustainable.
The big flaw with this video is that your cost estimation is using a newly created studio with a newly created franchise to estimate the cost of an already well established company releasing a game in a well established franchise.
They don't need to repay for the engine they already bought and pay for the features they already developed. Hell most AAA games literally just modify the previous game, Ubisoft being the perfect exemple of that but also sports games by EA are even worse.
They also don't actually need to market it that much, "No one is gonna know about your game", like really? People are not gonna know about the new Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed or FIFA? These games sell themselves, don't tell me they need those indecent marketing budgets and superstar voice actors to sell.
Besides, they're already making a huge amount of money, why are we even treating this as an issue? AAA games have gotten less and less expensive to make over the years while selling more and making more profits. If anything they should be costing less because they're not getting better in any significant way.
"They don't need to repay for the engine they already bought.." actually that's not accurate - most engine licences are typically done on a per-product basis, so a studio has to re-license it per developer seat for each distinct game they make. Also, things like upgrades and technical support for the engine is often a recurring subscription-like yearly cost for the studio using it.
Everything else I agree with though. I love EC, but I don't think they've really made their case on this one.
How much of the shelf price do you think the publisher gets? Unless the publisher is only selling digital copies direct to consumers, then the distribution chain takes its cut on the way through. And if they are selling digital copies direct to consumers, then that adds its own overheads...
rjc0234 I really doubt it cost that much and if it did, it’s a complete mismanagement. It reuses a lot from the previous game: engine, features, assets, infrastructure, etc. and it’s a fucking Star Wars game. This thing should have been one of the most low effort most profitable game ever made.
@Morp. No need to license since all the big companies use their own engines for the most part.
"No need to market?" Sure, you might know about every new game that's coming up, but I'd bet that millions of people who would be interested in playing a game aren't "true gamers", and thus don't spend half their lives keeping up with every new announcement from every major studio. Heck, even I'm pretty uninformed as to what big games are coming out outside of Nintendo.
didnt you yourself say "noone buys a game for the voiceactor"? I would only know Matt Mercer, and him only from critical roll, and i wouldnt care if he was VAing or not...
The thing with VAs is that you only notice them when they're not good, and the really good ones aren't common.
They mean getting a celebrity, like how Call of Duty had Kevin Spacey and Kit Harrington. Household names.
You say these are all fhe common practices but here's the thing: WHY are these the practices?
Why do you need 200 people when there have been amazing and profitable games made with MUCH smaller studios?
You also said alot of these are practices to sustain the annual releases but WHY do they need to be annual?
They don't!
You also claim that the main topic on andromeda was the graphical issues: that's patently false. Sure that was ONE topic but it was faaaaaar from the only issue people focused on.
All of these are stupid costs, but if these costs are necessary: then why dony the triple a studios just offer all the money they keep from avoiding income tax?!
Marek Dobrotivý they do make a profit
Most aaa game studios release all their earning reports and tax records as public knowledge and Ubisoft, EA, etc all earn hand over fist.
They're making more money than ever, and get to keep more due to a lack of income tax
Marek Dobrotivý You're also implying turning a profit is contingent on these practices; its not.
There are plenty of companies proving that's false
Senua's sacrifice is the most recent example
Binding of Isaac
Undertale
Hyperlight drifter
PUBG
Warframe
All these games are testements against these practices
Why do you need 200+ people? Because you can't make a AAA game with less in a reasonable time frame. Remember, we're talking about AAA here, not indie. And you you mean we don't need AAA games, have you seen the steam top sellers of 2017? Out of the top 24 (ignoring f2p) at most 5 of them weren't AAA - h1z1, pubg, rocket league, CS GO and arc-survival evolved, and none of those are really indies, they're all no less then AA. Clearly there's a demand for them, meaning people want them.
The reason for which some of the most popular games have an annual release schedule is to make sure that they keep their players, a too long break between releases might cause their players to get board with the game and possibly not return for the later sequel, having found something else they enjoy. This is a more questionable practice, even ubisoft suspended their annual assassins creed release last year. However could you please time-stamp where in the video it said anything about annual releases, because I couldn't find a single mention or implication of that.
I also googled "why did mass effect andromeda fail" and read the first 4 articles, every single one of them either started with animation, or put animation second, right after bugs, which can still be partially attributed to buggy animations. Yes, it wasn't the only problem, but it was definitely the first problem anyone would think of, and therefore probably the most influential one.
Finally yes, indie games can make a profit, but as the video said, there are hundreds of indie games released every week. Got to the steam store, search for indie games sorted by release date and honestly ask yourself how many of them you have ever heard of. If game publishers would want similar profits with indie games, they'd need to release a LOT more games then they currently do, flooding the market even more, and causing their own games to compete with each other.
Prioritizing profits can cause some disasters and terrible practices (battlefront 2 for example), but in can also create great games. Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, Witcher 3, GTA, Dark Souls 3, Total WarHammer, Stellaris, Arma 3, City Skylines, Xcom 2, Civ 5, Divinity Original Sin 2, ect, all great games that would be impossible to make if they weren't made and funded by profit seeking businesses.
Here's a shocker: it doesn't matter how fast or slow the development cycle is; a specific amount of work needs to be done before a game is finished regardless of the time frame that work gets done in. This is the concept of "man-hour". A game that takes 200 people to make in a year will take 10 years if you cut the team down to 20. Small teams don't make miracles.
Each employee in those small teams will cost 10 times as much (hired for 10 times as long), resulting in a grand total saving of $0 for a game delayed by a decade.
Man the AAA game market is not worth it anymore. For game developers and players. I find myself playing and getting more hyped for indie stuff then AAA like every year. When a game developer makes a game they want to make, I find myself enjoying it alot more. And it seems that most AAA At this point are just trying to make their money back. In a way, digging their own graves.
This is why I don't play AAA games anymore. They always feel too designed by committee. I like my indi darlings that focus on game play
Don't forget the mid-tier games, they still exists.
I love indie games too, most of my games are indies nowadays. But I do still pick up the odd bigger game, Total Warhammer and the Hyperdimension Neptunia games are my standouts outside the indie scene.
still, if games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Witcher 3 can be massive successes and make money without Microtransactions, I still won't accept them in a game. If needed, I'd much rather just see them go up to $70
I actually agree with increasing the price of the base game; but the thing is, I don't trust the AAA's to not put in... uh, "moneymaking extras".
They still will put in microtransactions somewhere.
W8 The Withcer 3 has Microtransactions?
Horizon and Witcher were also developed in Amsterdam and Warsaw. 2 areas with lower costs of living than usual so any profits they made were magnified for them. (This is especially why Witcher had cheaper DLC with more content than it's competitors). Witcher was made for around $50 million. A game of that size would have been around $150 million in the US
Most other studios don't have that as they are usually based in locations like California and Japan with higher costs of living
Warsaw, yes. But Amsterdam and low costs of living?
This still boils down to the simple truth that the AAA game industry has grown to unsustainable levels. It's a bubble, and it's going to pop, especially if the industry truly believes there is no way to change course.
still waiting for gta 6 :(
I guess I just won't buy AAA. My average for a year is two $60 titles near launch. I can't afford more and honestly, most big releases aren't worth the price. Here's hoping for the next cinema and gaming market crash.
ProcrastPerfection or we could spread awareness with we'll reaolsined multi-part TH-cam videos that help educate the public in order to preserve the video game industry without putting millions of people into economic hell
Maybe people shouldn't be forced to prop an industry that seems to be dead set on sinking itself?
The fact that the majority of people can't afford to keep up is less of a fault with the industry and more a fault with the economy. If there's another cinema and gaming market crash, it'll be because everything else is burning.
@@emPtysp4ce This, tell people more of this. All of the structural antagonisms that come with free market liberal capitalism. All of it is just unsustainable
ProcrastPerfection No, don’t hope for that.
I appreciate the effort and some good points are made, but thank god for Jim Sterling.
Jim exagerates too, the truth probably lies inbetween.
people have a very black and White mindset on this topic.
thank god for that arrogant cocky, yet totally correct man. Like an ass hole with integrity.
@@Texelion on which parts? I know ive thought that about some of his stuff in the past, but not really all that much. Hes just usually not very nice or elegant saying it, which is probably why its heard in the first place though.
'Not a lot of room to shave' and yet, 'no one game production is the same.' Sorry, I usually love these series, but the transparency of income/distribution per-worker is extremely wishy-washy.
Then you proceed to make a hypothetical of the 'general costs' of a game production. You're pulling numbers. And while I appreciate you bringing up the many people that are involved in a production, I still can't justify the need to hike up the prices/ support gambling tactics in games until we have a look at actual productions and see 'why these choices were made.'
Because the impressions I'm getting isn't to 'cover costs' as it is just to 'get more money'. While we know the bottom line for a business is 'making money' there is such thing as demanding too much.
In general- businesses of all shapes and sizes, not just game studios, need to be more transparent about where their costs go. Telling people 'maybe we should be paying more, or allow them to implement microtransactions/DLC/Gambling in our games' is putting a bandaid over a problem and enabling more careless choices in the productions of a AAA game.
Many successful indie productions and games being made without the AAA stamp/micro transactions/paid dlc/gambling and prices on them are proving every year that there clearly IS other ways about making a successful game.
From where I see it, triple A games have a large customer-base to satisfy, where indie games keep it small. It is just a general overview of what is to be expected when running a game industry. Naturally you will get more in-depth information than what EC provides when you are actually working in the industry, likely on the business side of things.
@@gnd-tmr1106 Well said.
If 👏 AAA 👏 games 👏 cost 👏 so 👏 much 👏 then 👏 maybe 👏 it's 👏 time 👏 to 👏 drop 👏 the 👏 AAA 👏 system 👏 altogether 👏
Scale things down. Stop annual releases, don't pay mountains of benjamins for graphics (added bonus to that is consumers don't need outrageously costly computers either). Not all games need to be AAA-standardbreaking. Just remove one, even two of the As if needed and see how things work out.
Don't cut down on the graphics, but rather, cut down on the technology used to render the great graphics.
Notice how people are able to make Skyrim, a game from 2011, into a game that looks not out of place in 2017.
If studios use a very standard graphic-production process, and have a completely different team add the fancy touch ups, it will certainly cut down production costs by a ton.
Also celebrity voice actors aren't recognized in games unless they are blatantly advertised for the game (such as Kojima's own Death Stranding with Norman Reedus), hell, not everyone knew that Liam Neeson was in Fallout 3.
So using non-celebrity voices in games will not affect the game's overall marketing.
so good we've got an expert here
Celebrity voice-actors often suck too. They're used to acting, but not to voice-acting. Professionql voice actors are better at voice acting than professional actors. There's a reason why David Hayter's Snake is better than Kiefer Sutherland's one
they should also rely on neural nets to automate the creation of assets
Thank goodness for voice-actors like Scott Mcneil, Steve Blum and Paul Dobson. :)
Problem of this argument is that quality of many AAA games is decreasing rapidly. If all games would be like Witcher 3, then you can argue about increasing costs. But if we talk about AAA games like SWBF2 and Destiny 2, how are you going to convince me as a customer to buy these "products" for 60 bucks or more?
Uhhh, so -
I know this sounds harsh, 'cause the AAA game industry provides so many jobs - and it really would be putting a lot of people in an insecure spot to even consider this,
But aren't way too many games coming out from any production background, at too fast of a rate? Like, just any one AAA studio can dish out games - heck, from the same franchise - so quickly that people seem to be having a hard time keeping up with all this. A lot of people I know will often skip out on the latest Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty because they have a bit of fatigue they didn't have time to recover from. It's not uncommon for them to skip one game or two in those series!
But I'm thinking, wouldn't it be more profitable to slow those franchises down a notch? Give consumers a bit more time to really get excited for the next game, and by the same token make that game more meaningful? 'Cause I'd really love to see what can happen when a game can garner as much of its regular audience as possible, rather than make that audience more tempted to skip around!
Like, the industry is so bloated with games and those games even compete with themselves. It's crazy!
The unfortunate part to that is that, obviously AAA studios would have to force a lot of their employees out the door if they were to follow such a plan.
Edit: Oh and yeah, if big franchise games were coming out just a tad less frequently, I'm sure that more people would actually be willing to pay $70 or $80 for those games.
Mandew5 all it would take would be one publisher to make games faster and they would rake in profits. Its a prisoners dilemma.
But thank you for recognizing peoples jobs must be sacrificed to downsize. Nobody else seems to see that.
I get what you’re saying but it makes no sense for the firms or the consumer. If they’re not seeing any significant decrease in demand for their products, they have no reason to decrease supply. People are still consistently buying video games, it’d be nonsensical to just say ‘slow down’.
The problem is less about AAA companies not slowing down - it moreso has to do with the fact that they've accelerated a bit beyond their consumer's capability to keep up
Mandew5 that’s clearly not true if you look at the statistics though. Games are selling and probably more so than ever. Although the market becomes more flooded by the day there’s nothing to suggest these bigger studios are oversupplying as once again: they’re making money.
These numbers sound unbelievable. You've hit $100m quite easily even as we have real world numbers for games that are nowhere near this figure - Horizon Zero Dawn cost $47m, the Witcher 3 cost $32m, and Detroit: Become Human recently had its budget of $36m get leaked.
I highly doubt those cover every single cost involved, and likely dont take certain factors such as offices into account, since those companies likely already had offices
He included marketing cost in his vid
AAA game development really sounds like a game of chicken, where whoever blinks first goes bankrupt.
BlazeHedgehog good image. It's been that way since Atari vs. Williams
And if no-one blinks, the whole industry is on a countdown
Till the time their eyeballs start to rot. It's like a winning hot sauna contest, but 90% of your skin gone forever. Worst thing is I can't see soft resolution of that situation.
It's basic maths. Let's say you make a AAA game for $50,000,000. Then you spend the same amount on marketing, so your whole budget is $100,000,000. You sell the game for $60, and actually get $40 of that. You'll break even just by selling 2,500,000 copies of your game - and that's a really low number of sales for a AAA title. COD titles often sell over 20,000,000 copies, for example. I've heard reports Witcher 3 sold over 25,000,000 copies. Even Mass Effect Andromeda reportedly made a profit, and that game was terrible.
Rod H $40 per game is pretty high imo. Maybe on PC as I know valve takes a 30% cut. But on console, you have the retailer cut, plus licensing fees to sony/MS/Nintendo, plus the cost of producing and shipping a physical copy etc. And then a large chunk of those profits have to goto the tax man.
And how many of those millions of copies actually sell at the full $60 retail price? I bought the witcher 3 plus season pass for $25. Clearly cd project red isn't going to earn $40 off my $25 purchase.
But breaking even also isn't good enough. Gamers expect sequels to be more polished, have more content and higher production values than their previous iteration. Plus If you want new franchises like overwatch and destiny to get funded, then you need games like call of duty to produce revenue well beyond what they cost to make. If activision only earns enough money off call of duty, to fund the next call of duty. Then they will only ever be able to make call of duty games.
No sir, I don't relish high fidelity graphics. The polish a game is given is what really sells a game for me. The interface, button mapping, camera control (where applicable), and cohesive aesthetics are what make or break a game, not the 4K
For you. not for 90% of the market.
@Marko Stamenkovic
Source?
People love to say "the majority loves great gameplay" or the opposite, "the majority loves good graphics" but nobody ever backs it up with real evidence, only flawed reasoning like "well they keep buying the games." Yes people buy the games but that doesn't tell us why they did so, or if they were really happy about doing it.
I would say that the majority of the market is "casual" gamers, but that doesn't necessarily mean all casuals only care about graphics, so that doesn't work, either.
I'd really love to actually know for sure which side is right, but I'm not sure the data exists.
Then you didn't undertand a thing.
People that analyze games in depth are not the main target for AAA, tha avarage AAA customer demands good graphics, open world and multiplayer they don't even realize if the gameplay is unique or if the UI is good (unless is really broken).
And even then programming gameplay is still more expensive than 4K graphics so either way AAA will still cost a fortune.
Xfushion2, graphics take a good chunk of the budget. The focus of most AAA titles is selling a game on the pizazz and wow factor and less focus on the internals of the game. The common practice of the "day one patch" is an extension of this. Pour budget into flash and use the preorder sales and predicted week one sales to finish polishing the game.
It sounds like we need more quality products and less products in general, like with PC gaming so many games come out with almost no hope of competing with the general market.
It's really ironic that you have used Witcher III as an argument for expensive AAA titles..
Rabarbarzynca it is a AAA title. And i had expensive graphics.
Guess Who and the most pro consumer publisher ever that aparently doesnt extra money to pay for those expensive graphics
Wonder how much they could shave off just by developing in cheaper states and cities. Do they really need to be in California or Stockholm where life costs are so high?
Not to mention how the dlc cost 30 bucks put together and added up to another games worth of content.
Witcher 3 was made for 81 million USD. It was in production way longer than 2 years, 240 people worked on it. Using Extra Credits calculations it should cost ~3 times more.
A Few of You. I feel like it was a LITTLE underestimation.
Like 25% of those that down-voted the video "little" underestimation.
LastofAvari If I've learnt one thing from being a part of the gaming community is that we're a passionate bunch, for good and worse. Good example is our rejection of lootboxes. Bad example is right here. Extra Credits are an amazing group and they clearly know their stuff since we've been watching their great content for years now. But they say one thing which we don't like and suddenly we know better? Sure they can't be right all the time but they know people in the industry and have also worked in it. We just spend a few bucks and get to play the damned things. I don't see how we as a group can think we know everything when we ao obviously don't. That's why we watch channels like this isn't it? To learn stuff?
"We like our sweet graphics..." - Which is why Undertale runs on the CryEngine and Mario Odyssey has 100% mo-cap realistic graphics.... ::sigh::
Is Undertale a AAA game? then it has no place in this topic.
Mario is Mario and sells because is Mario, I mean having the brand of the most popular character in the world kinda helps.
He never said photorealistic graphics made a good game, he said the *standar AAA consumer* will demand those kinds of graphics, and for the record Mario Odyssey in fact has sweet graphics cause of the art-style but the mayority of AAA consumers don't give two cents about art-styles.
Xfushion2 then I push you towards a hat in time and while not being a triple A game so to speak yet has a similar design concept to mario oddesy is a bit less graphically inferior to mario oddesy and was realeased in the time frame of one of the most hyped games going for last year, and yet still sold 150,000 copies at $30 smashing it's $230,000 kick started budget to the tune of $4.5 million dollars. This is an new IP selling basically off of filling a hole in the industry the triple A publishers would have told you is not what the "players" want. Going back to mario oddesy yes it would have sold a lot of copies beacause it was mario but I think your not really realising how much that game lived up to its expectations by being a good inventive platformer oh and actually justifying the price of the switch so that even more people brought it just for mario oddessy. And what's that they don't have the predatory Microtransactions that EA would have you believe are required to turn a profit? Something tells me that that's weak justification for them wanting to make all of the money they possibly can customer satisfaction be dammed.
@Grant Mitchell Thats because Mario is an established braned from an established mega game company, and Hat in Time is a small time indie product. 150K copies is pretty astronomical for a 30$ small indie game.
This model is flawed. You don't need expensive voice actors, motion capture and a team of 500 hundred devs to make ultra realistic graphics to make a good game. Making games to a mainstream public (to justify the costs of production) in most cases makes the game shallow and alienates the real fans.
There are always niches, but looking at how 3A games morph themselves into these days, it's apparent that publishers want to meet more groups' needs, to try to make a product as diversity friendly as possible, and as mainstream as possible.
An industry that can not make a profit without predatory tactics should not exist
Deo Temp what do you mean by "should" or "shouldn't". If emotional manipultion is seen as pedatory. Basically all industries need to be put down. Every ad on the TV is there to exploit lack of self confidence in someway or another.
Well it was the consumer that made the predatory practices in the first place.
Stop prentending this is the industry fault because it isn't, some jackass decided to implement microtransaccions, and others million bigger jackasses decided to blow over 60$ in them rather than 60 in a single game. The consumer voted with their wallet and the only way this is gonna stop is when people get a grip and stop buying these kind of crap and from the looks of it, is not gonna happen anytime soon.
I am sure he means in terms of things like lootboxes, and how they nurture gambling habits. Surely, you are not saying using special colors to appeal to children is equivalent to gambling addiction.
Devious Oatmeal Yes, things such as loot boxes and patented algorithms to get people to buy micro-transactions are way more invasive then basic marketing. So I am just talking about those and similar predatory systems
Xfushion2 Yeah it's almost as if gambling addicts exist or something. The consumer didn't "make" the predatory practice, we just encouraged it because the average consumer throws their money at anything shiny like it's nothing. You can't blame a collective of totally unrelated people from different backgrounds and with different thoughts and beliefs and reasons for doing what they do, but you can blame a group of multi-million dollar organisations whose main goal is and always will be to make as much money as possible regardless of ethics.
Wow, I'm really surprised games continue to be made considering they don't turn a profit...
Oh, they do turn a profit? Then what's the problem? In my opinion, none of the costs associated with making a game should matter if the game is already making people filthy rich. You're basically telling us why already wealthy people need more of our money.
Excellent point. Obviously their costs have gone up if they're trying to make more money now. Same way superhero movies costs way more now than they did when they started. They must be going down, their cost went up like 10 times!!! ...as did their profits, lol.
The reality of game development being costly combined with the reality that companies will do everything for their bottom line will result in some consequences. The point of the video is to show why we are where we are, much the same as an explanation on why we pay $3-4 per gallon of gas. We the viewers may not like some facts presented (be it the cost of dev or the monopoly of fossil fuel supply), but they are what they are and our opinions hardly have anything to do with it.
As soon as you said janitor, I thought sim-devteam. Having a dev-team sims game where the devs sleep under their desks could be hilarious and realistic.
lol bruh
I know that the market demands the "Bigger, better looking, Open-world" type of AAA game, but I really feel that AAA studios could cut costs significantly by not chasing those trends. Operate like an Indie studio but with a AAA budget.
It's not about lowering the budget, it's about doing more with what they got. Being more efficient. Use as little of the budget as possible while making the best game possible. Down-scale. The Trends say go bigger, but those trends will lead to the industry crashing. Do not chase trends, create them. It's risky as fuck, but it's far more sustainable in the long run.
DemonGrenade274
All of you guys who say these type of things dont realize that if they (the AAA game studios) fail a game they *LOSE* a lot of money which can lead to many bad things.
TL;DR:
They can‘t afford risks so they go with the trend.
If you can't afford to exist... if you need to trick people into thinking your product is cheaper than it is, if you need to scam your customers, just to stay in business, you shouldn't be in business.
garjian You do understand that Microtransactions aren't inherently evil, correct?
Please point out the part where I said that.
60 bucks for one shitty AAA title, that adds nothing new and removes a lot from what they've shown on E3, or 6-12 great Indie games that I would enjoy for several months? Tough choice!
Mr. Smart Important Self-centered here thinks everyone on the videogame market likes the same things as him. You should check the sales numbers on the shitty AAA title and those indie games.
Indies are garbage boy. They lack the gameplay and the content that makes seem worth it
George Bush Indies arent garbage. AAA games arent garbage too.
Does the tripple A gaming scene not represent a bubble, it has to get bigger or it will collapse. Walpole would be impressed by the size of it.
it is a bobble if and only if you charge $60 per game (The sing authors argue against)
If the price needs to raise at a higher rate than the purchasing power of consumers, then it is a clear (and already doomed) bubble.
Not necessarily, Yearly AAA games are mostly safe as they have the most established presence and fanbases. (Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Need for Speed, Just Dance and COD aren't exactly flopping every year).
It's the games and studios closer to the middle that are at the most risk.
So at most, there will be a small recision but not a full-on collapse.
That's like saying Hollywood will collapse despite how many people will go on to watch superhero films.
I would say Hollywood is also approaching a collapse (similar to previous ones they already faced). Blockbusters are less profitable every year. Budgets are increasing faster than income. That happened before, in the 70s, and Hollywood crashed. You only need a year with 2-3 tentpoles bombing hard (which is somethign unpredictable) to start a chain reaction. A soft, but consistent, decline over many blockbusters would have a similar effect.
Walpole's bubble was like 40% of England's economy.
Indie games take more time, AAA games cost more money.
Assassin's Creed can take about 1 year to make a game (kind of),
and the original Cave Story was about 5 years in development. (Before being ported to every new Nintendo console under the sun)
Styler427 That's not really how game making cycles work, the games come out annually because AAA publishers have games being worked on at the same time...So let's say when Assassin's Creed 7 is halfway done; the dev team is split and one half starts working on a new one. Then when the first game ships, there's a break (or some workers being laid off since this is the gaming industry)and the 1st half of the team rejoin the 2nd half on what they have been working on (Assassin's Creed 8) .Basically, it still takes a good 3 or even 5 years for some to make, depending on the dev cycle of the publisher.
This is probably the best episode of Extra Credits. It tells a lot about game development. I loved it!
Why have the last 2 episodes give me a feeling of dread?
Nicholas Lindberg because you're emotionally attached to an ideology
I know I'm ignorant when it comes to the budget plans and expenses that video game publishers have to deal with when they make games, but there's something that I can't wrap my head around...
This video suggests that a "small" AAA game will cost somewhere between 75-100 million dollars to make. That's a hell of a lot... but...
If we do some simple math, and multiply $60 (the supposedly average game price) times "failing" game launch numbers... say 7 million copies sold, we end up with $420 million. Minus the highest level of cost suggested by this video, and we now have $320 million in profit. This is, of course, not taking into account the fact that games usually end up selling for higher than $60, since there are also deluxe editions, dlc, season passes and the like, which end up inflating the cost of the game overall. But lets be modest, and just round that all off to, say $70 a game. That still brings us $490 million in sales, of which $390 will be total profit. Considering that this more than covers the costs suggested, where is all that extra profit going? Or is $390 million per average game launch just too little to keep this industry going (and keep in mind, I'm using modest numbers here...)? If it is too little, then doesn't that mean that this industry simply isn't sustainable, and maybe, just maybe, a crash is not only possible, but maybe even necessary to normalize things? Even something as cool as the Concorde was shut down when it was discovered that it would just be too expensive to keep going.
Again, I know I'm ignorant, but just wondering here. Someone please enlighten me.
There was another EC video that explained that developers actually get about $27 of the $60 sell due to other middlemen taking cuts in the process. That means they need to sell some over 3.7 million to break even on a $100 million game. However, they need money so that they can work on their NEXT game, so that even break doesn't actually count as profits, and may actually not be enough if they want to make their sequel bigger and better. Usually movies need to make 2.5 times their budget in profit to actually be considered "successful", and applying that logic to the game means that just under 13 million copies need to be sold. Only 7 million would be about half of what they want.
Those cuts depends on the type of distribution... With full digital distribution (for example: steam, or even better their own digital distribution system, like EA and ubisoft (they will get 100% revenue)) they get around 60-70% of the revenue (that is around 39$)... And guess what; digital sales are skyrocketing. So if we recalculate it, you need around 3 million sales to "break even" (with 17 million pure profit)...
"Usually movies need to make 2.5 times their budget in profit to actually be considered "successful", and applying that logic to the game means that just under 13 million copies need to be sold." Why? Those are movies and we know that this thinking is why that industry is bloated as hell.... That kind of thinking will only generate a bubble, also what happened to market research for a game? you know to budget accordingly? when you budget a game you need to do market research and that will tell you more than some focus group will tell you; "You don't need a 100+ million budget to make a good AAA game ".
you are making a false statment here.. and i mean with "However, they need money so that they can work on their NEXT game," if you want add it for reduce profit and you must add in the start of productions for reduce.. that is, of 100m 20m where already got from released games.. Now is a fallacy in your case but this video put it correctly the profit of one game must cover the lack of sells of other game.. if your game make 100m in profit and other 3 or 4 games make a lose of 20M you only win in 20-40M
I guarantee you neither Ubisoft nor EA gets 100% of the $60 paid for sales through their digital distribution platform - Uncle Sam still takes his cut. And there's also the additional costs associated with running a digital distribution platform to add to the budget.
true still as other has posted is something like 30 usd.. little more little less.. and with 7m in copies that means 210M that is the number people say.. they already win .. and as i said up.. well at least is probably not valid for starwars battlefront...
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice made back its budget after only 300k sales at 30 dollars a copy. They made it with a staff of 20, not 200. This video relies on a ton of really terrible assumptions and has some enormous blind spots, most particularly the enormous cost of AAA Publishers, their executives, and their shareholders. That $10k/person average is covering both the $100m/year CEO and the hundreds of temp contractors the company is paying peanuts to make the thousands of art assets needed to populate an open world game. None of this is inevitable.
Jetsetlemming hellblade is lighting in a bottle, hell they were even bragging how to show other companies how to manage budgets, That's like saying every game should be like undertale, there will ever be only 1 game that is like undertalen you can't make it the standard way to make all games.
Hellblade's success involved luck, but not their budget. You might play too many video games if you think they made a game for 20x less than Assassin's Creed because they rolled a critical success on a finance skill check.
I agree, despite Senua's low budget, i believe it was a pretty safe bet. Making a game for a niche audience they knew existed and only needing to sell very little to make it back. There was kinda no way they wouldn't make that money back, but cause it was good, it made the money back fast.
The reason EA isn't doing the same thing is cause they're not interested in the petty profits senua did. They want millions and billions. So they invest millions. It's really their choice and they shouldn't act like a victim cause of it.
codec69 People seem to act like indie successes come out of nowhere and their deviations from standard "AAA" practice is thus meaningless, but you're right that Hellblade was definitely a safe bet: Ninja Theory isn't some new startup and Hellblade wasn't their debut game. Their similar past games had been decent successes but not enough for Publishers to care, so they just made another without the publishers this time.
Yup and the probably didn't even spend much...or any money on marketing, since all the game media always is interested in what succesful devs and publishers are working on. Meanawhile EA spends twice the money on marketing, cause just reaching every gamer who ever followed any game outlet on social media isn't enough, they also need everyone who hasn't heard of cod, every non-gamer to buy their game too.
So, I did the math (simple division actualy). Even assuming a game costs roundabout 200 millions, you need about 3.5 million copies at 60 bucks to break even.
Now, sales figures are sometimes hard to come by, as publishers are quick to accuse critics of being "missinformed" when voicing criticism, but are a lot slower in providing information to prevent said "missinformation" (that's like calling someone out for being dirty while refusing to let them use the shower but I digress), but I'm reasonably certain even the disapointing Andromeda sold more than that.
From what I could gather, the last CoD sold about 20 million copies in the first two months or so (at 60 bucks that's a gross revenue of 1.2 BILLION. Even if your game cost you half a billion, that still sounds like a tidy profit. And were not even counting special editions, DLC and so-on).
So...
I still don't think production cost is the main factor for the increased - and increasingly predatory - monetisation.
No. My money - pun intended - is on the investors demanding ever higher and faster return on their investment.
That's something I think about often. Seeing sales figures in the millions, multiplying it by $60 and seeing the crazy figures. Though Sony and Microsoft require a percentage of the profits on games sold on their consoles, then the store you bought it from (Best Buy, Gamestop) gets a percentage, but these are all things that should be taken into a game's budget. Nintendo likely has an easier time with this since their AAA's sell like crazy, yet they never have crazy graphics and since it's their game on their console, they don't have to pay any royalties. I also consider JRPG's and how much content they offer, like Xenoblade or Persona, and with just a million sales they're considered a huge hit. If devs would just stop pumping tens of millions into flashy graphics and focused more on style and game content like the aforementioned games, things would be a lot easier.
"Even assuming a game costs roundabout 200 millions, you need about 3.5 million copies at 60 bucks to break even"
No you don't, only a fraction of the profit actually goes to the company.
Vitorruy1
How much off a cut do brick and mortar stores get? 6% is a number I once heard. (not much at any rate)
The cut the console companies take is actually added to the 60 bucks - at least where I live. 60 for a PC game, closer to 70 or even over for a console game.
And don't forget digital distribution. If EA sells a game via Origin, they pocket all the revenue at a very low cost.
Then there are the deluxe editions that cost 30% more...
So, even counting all the distribution costs and being pesimistic on sales of the deluxe editions, how many more copies do you have to sell? Another 500 k?
I don't think that hurts my original point.
" If EA sells a game via Origin"
IF. Most companies don't own or can't rely on their own distribution platforms. And running a platform has its own costs.
"How much off a cut do brick and mortar stores get?"
How many games still rely on retail as their main distributor? In 2016 26% of games were sold physically while 74% were sold digitally.
"6% is a number I once heard"
Steam get's a 30% cut.
"I don't think that hurts my original point."
You also have investors to pay. Activision Blizzard generated $6.6 billion dollars of revenue in the last fiscal year. Pretty impressive huh? Guess how much of that they got to keep? 5 billion? Half perhaps? around 3 billion? Sure they must have had 2 billion! Well, it was 1 billion.
Less than 1/6 of the money you payed for the game actually went on as profit to the company. Now 1 billion is still a lot, they are not starving with a number like that, but Blizzard is a giant, imagine how those profit margins should feel for someone not so gargentuous. Take Two Interactive closed three of the last five fiscal years at a net loss even tho its main series, Borderlands, was a big hit on the market.
"IF. Most companies don't own or can't rely on their own distribution platforms."
Actualy, most big AAA publishers - and that's who we are talking about here - now do. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard. And Activision is working closer with Blizzard, so they are getting in on blizzard.net
"And running a platform has its own costs."
Yes, but how much is ist per copy sold?
"You also have investors to pay. "
THAT IS my original point.
That's exactly why I think the publishers are monetizing their games more agressively.
As I wrote in my original post.
It's funny to me that you say marketing budgets are often "almost as much as the development budget" when most of the AAA games coming out in recent years have budgets WELL in excess of the development budget, some times 2 or 3 times the development budget. That's what people talk about when they talk about bloated budgets. That's why people get angry when companies try to push the "games are too expensive to make" shit. You seem either out of touch or completely biased.
It's also funny that you showed Breath of the Wild as an example of "excellent graphics". While it's an excellent game with a fantastic aesthetic, the graphics are a pretty mediocre tbqh.
Agrees, Netist. I am so sad right now. Extra Credits DID THEIR OWN VIDEO on the difference between aesthetics and graphics quality. I feel like they, of all people, should know better than this!
That's only the huge publishers that bloat out their marketing. Smaller publishers don't do that. Devolver digital is a good example.
@@fartsniffer2722
Smaller publishers don't bloat out their marketing, because they can't even if they wanted to. They don't have that kind of money to spend.
@@shauncameron8390 And thus they remain small publishers.
They already cost more than $60. Game+season pass+ live/ps plus= too much
Remember when cheat codes were free or at least a bunch of codes for the price of a magazine.
this is why i switched to pc. better prices and i dont need to pay for yearly live or plus sub.
i get it, i see what your saying. The competition is good. Playstation has killer exclusives and Xbox has a good infrastucture. On my end i feel the shackles are off. maybe ive been looking for a more open and free platform and not be so confined according to what microsoft and sony wants to do. I do have a ps4 and a switch so i do still support consoles. I just cant justify paying 50 a year for online when i already pay my ISP. i know theres cloud saves and free games which makes paying for the service a better value but its not for me.
Watch the last vid, if the game cost more out of the box the dev/publisher won't have to rely on DLC or lootboxes, but will players accept the new cost?
Storm Wings I don't think players would like that at all. I remember people getting their tit in the ringer when games jumped from $50 to $60. I can't forget EA's online pass B.S.