KZ2 and game budgeting in general *spin-off

[joker454]

Well, that's exactly what scificube is saying: why are we going 'people are creative with numbers', but no one's holding any other data to the same level of scrutiny, including yours? If we're going to say that they're not being truthful we should have a good reason for it, not 'it doesn't agree with my point'.

All numbers are under scrutiny including my own, hence why I called it a guesstimate.

 

[Asher]

I heard it from some friends that work at EA LA. It's a bit of an assembly line situation, where someone works on game X for a few months, then gets moved to game Y for a few months, etc. The entire company doesn't operate that way, but it does happen, which accounts for some of their massive credit lists. Likewise, if say an engine programmer works for one month on a engine feature, and that engine gets used on three games, then that programmer will get listed in the credits of all of those games.

My friends at EA Canada work on many games every year as well. But they get told they can choose up to 3 games they've worked on that year to be given credit on...a weird system.

 

[the ignoramus]

50 million budget ?.. 200 people ?.. Some of you guys really like to speculate when it comes to Sony ...

Let me give you some info ;
Yes , 2006 article but it doesnt say " 16 million euros spent so far " ... So 50 million seems pure bullshit to me ... Even if it is so , Sony got valuable tech , for all of its first-party devs' use , by KZ2 development ... I said it before , KZ2 is not just a game , it is like an R&D project for PS3 development tools ...

About KZ2 dev team , from GDC 09 GG slides ;
I think that 50 people are TEAM ICE members ... And developing tech for PS3 is their job [ ND tech team ] , helping GG is not an extra job , am i right ?..

I counted 29 people from Sony Cambridge credited at the end of KZ2, a half dozen guys from Liverpool, guys from the Ice team, guys from Insomniac....it was obviously a SCE WWS effort.

I'm not terribly concerned about finding out KZ2's budget, but I take issue with the absurd notion that we shouldnt expect AAA Sony games "for a long time."
I dont know what the hell that's supposed to mean. For example, I don't expect Sony to make a profit from games like Heavy Rain(which is probably just as expensive as KZ2) or Trico/Ueda's "games as art" experiments, but both games will release nonetheless.
GT5 and GoW 3 are slated for release between 09/10, are we to believe that Sony is going to be cancelling these games also?
(There are unannounced PS3 games being worked on at Liverpool and Cambridge, but as far as I know both projects are well into production, and probably wont be put on the chopping block because of KZ2's March NDP)

 

[Crossbar]

The dream is that all of this tech is usable by everyone with little work. The reality is that it's not. Makes no difference what pr firms will say in public, there is still little reusable tech out there, and the stuff that is shareable represents a minuscule amount of code in the grand scheme of things, and still requires piles of additional work to make it even remotely functional for coders, artists and tool people. Both of the PS3 exclusive studios I'm talking with are using none of the tech people here love to mention, not even Edge. One place can't afford the time needed to make some of it work, the other simply can't make it work in their existing code/tool chain. Neither one is even considering a deferred renderer. If it's so easy to share all this glorious tech, then why are these two Sony funded studios not using any of it?

I can understad this. Introducing new technology do always represent a certain amount of risk, learning curve, buggy libraries etc. If they don´t think the potential benefit matches the risk then you don´t go for it. Other things that are factored in are project size/timeline and if you already have a well working tool chain/engine.

However, looking at the current features and the ambitious feature roadmap of the phyre-engine. If they manage to release stable libraries according to plan. I would be very surprised if not these companies would like to try it out for later projects.

According to the Game Trailer video there are about "two dozens" of games in development using PhyreEngine so obviously we will see a few games using deferred shading in the future. If those games have better looking visuals than competing technologies, then we will see more future games following suit in order so stay competetive.

 

[liolio]

I'm not sure about where I should post this it looks like Killzone have sunk really low in UK:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/uk-charts-wii-fit-leads-for-12th-week

 

[patsu]

According to the Game Trailer video there are about "two dozens" of games in development using PhyreEngine so obviously we will see a few games using deferred shading in the future.

Well, Edge and PhyreEngine are already used by deployed PSN and Blu-ray games (e.g., Flower uses PhyreEngine, Grid uses Edge). There are several more listed in the link I posted above. So people are definitely getting the tech sharing benefits. Naturally some will choose other platforms based on their team profiles and project requirements.

The people who adopted PhyreEngine may use deferred shading if it makes sense for them (or if they don't mind either way). Two Sony studios not using Edge/PhyreEngine means very little. I was actually surprised KillZone 2 uses Edge.

 

[betan]

I believe a lot of companies use EDGE, or at least code inspired by EDGE.
I don't think he means two Sony studios though, just two studios exclusively developing for PS3 currently.

Also GRID and DIRT engines are "based" on PSSG, at least used to be referenced as such in PSSG/Phyre presentations.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But aren't EDGE and PhyreEngine actual RnD projects rather than the offshots from individual game developments? Has the cost of PhyreEngine been amortised in the development of a game, or is it a cost that Sony would have spent regardless of which 1st party titles benefit because they need to compete with XNA?

At this point, I'm unconvinced that the cost to develop KZ2 includes the cost to develop PhyreEngine, and as such the ongoing tech benefits cannot be accredited to that game and used to justify in part its (supposed) considerable cost.

 

[betan]

But aren't EDGE and PhyreEngine actual RnD projects rather than the offshots from individual game developments?

I'm not sure how PhyreEngine is being developed, but we know for a fact that part of EDGE consists of tools and libraries that have been originally developed for particular games by those games' developers, as opposed to EDGE only tool developer implementing what might be useful in games.

Has the cost of PhyreEngine been amortised in the development of a game, or is it a cost that Sony would have spent regardless of which 1st party titles benefit because they need to compete with XNA?

I'm not sure how those are mutually exclusive (not that I think both are true).

At this point, I'm unconvinced that the cost to develop KZ2 includes the cost to develop PhyreEngine,

Again, no idea where PhyreEngine relation comes from but the fact that newest EDGE incorporates some KZ2 tech is public knowledge.

and as such the ongoing tech benefits cannot be accredited to that game and used to justify in part its (supposed) considerable cost.

IMO, the benefit of shared tech is just difficult to quantify, that doesn't mean it's nonexistant and should be ignored all together.

 

[patsu]

Also GRID and DIRT engines are "based" on PSSG, at least used to be referenced as such in PSSG/Phyre presentations.

My bad ! Indeed it is PhyreEngine/PSSG.

Edge consists of the GCM Replay and optimized game libraries: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=39185 (used in or contributed by Resistance, MotorStorm, F1, Uncharted, KZ2, etc.)

Again, no idea where PhyreEngine relation comes from but the fact that newest EDGE incorporates some KZ2 tech is public knowledge.

I believe they demoed Edge using KZ2 in GDC 2007 too.

But aren't EDGE and PhyreEngine actual RnD projects rather than the offshots from individual game developments? Has the cost of PhyreEngine been amortised in the development of a game, or is it a cost that Sony would have spent regardless of which 1st party titles benefit because they need to compete with XNA?

At this point, I'm unconvinced that the cost to develop KZ2 includes the cost to develop PhyreEngine, and as such the ongoing tech benefits cannot be accredited to that game and used to justify in part its (supposed) considerable cost.

We probably meant Edge above. PhyreEngine folks may need to go the extra mile to extract reusable/useful components from KZ2.

According to the ignoramus' post, there are Sony headcounts committed to KZ2. Depends on how they structure their costing, these headcounts may be funded under a separate R&D budget, or sponsored by the project. Either way, the contribution should be there.

EDIT: I am not sure how it works in the game industry. Sometimes if we have problems filling in the headcount (Can't find good enough people even if we have allocated the budget), we may borrow good ones from sister organizations. In which case, we either pay for the headcount (via internal charging), or they eat the cost while we help them meet their corporate goals. More often than not though, we just couldn't find the right people to join us and some headcounts are left vacant. In these cases, we'd rather work harder than get someone new in to create more headaches.

 

[Crossbar]

The people who adopted PhyreEngine may use deferred shading if it makes sense for them (or if they don't mind either way).

Yes, that was what I meant, but didn´t express it very well. The availability of libraries and example code to support deferred shading will surely encourage some companies to try it out. The results will be very interesting to see when they show up.

 

[joker454]

Edge consists of the GCM Replay and optimized game libraries: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=39185 (used in or contributed by Resistance, MotorStorm, F1, Uncharted, KZ2, etc.)

Edge is mostly libraries meant to shift a bunch of work away from rsx to spu. GCM Hud and GCM Replay are performance tuning tools that you can use even if you aren't using Edge at all, basically their equivalent of Pix. Now they have GPad (Graphics pad) which combines GCM Replay and GCM Hud all into one, but same thing, no Edge needed.

 

[patsu]

According to early presentations by the Edge creators themselves, they lumped GCM Replay under the Edge initiative:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=956489&postcount=196
(Mark Cerny's podcast is here: http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/gdcradio-net/GDCR/gdcr_021.mp3)

I have seen some gamasutra/gamesindustry.biz article (and Phil Harrison interview) stating that basically Edge has 2 major "components/deliverables" (at that time):
* GCM Replay
* Optimized libraries as per the link above (Edge libraries)

* Animation engine - Bulk of system runs on SPUs. Very fast.
* Geometry system - SPU
* Skinning - SPU aids RSX (Warhawk NBA game use this)
* Triange Culling - SPU (Lair and F1 game use this module.)
* Blend shapes - SPU
* Data compression - SPU - Zlib decompression on SPU for very hi-speed streaming off of BR disc or HDD. Can decompress 40MB/sec using 25% of 1 SPU!

So "Playstation Edge" is really an initiative from 3 separate Sony tech groups rather than just the libraries. As time evolves, the devs may only refer to the libraries when they say Edge but I don't think that's the initial view Sony takes internally -- based on their public presentations.

 

[joker454]

It's different people though. A friend of mine works on the GPad side (there is no more separate Replay/Hud anymore) so I send him performance snapshots from time to time when I need an extra opinion. But he doesn't know Edge, that's a different group of people. They are mutually exclusive, you don't need one to use the other. Internally, GPad is it's own deliverable. You don't download Edge to get GPad, you just download GPad. Which makes sense because it's a profiling tool that has nothing to do with our code, whereas Edge libraries must be integrated into game code. I guess publicly Sony call it whatever they want, but internally when we think Edge we don't think GPad.

 

[patsu]

It's different people though. A friend of mine works on the GPad side (there is no more separate Replay/Hud anymore) so I send him performance snapshots from time to time when I need an extra opinion. But he doesn't know Edge, that's a different group of people. They are mutually exclusive, you don't need one to use the other. Internally, GPad is it's own deliverable. You don't download Edge to get GPad, you just download GPad. Which makes sense because it's a profiling tool that has nothing to do with our code, whereas Edge libraries must be integrated into game code. I guess publicly Sony call it whatever they want, but internally when we think Edge we don't think GPad.

Yes, different people. That's why they (I) said Playstation Edge is an initiative from 3 different Sony groups. The podcast highlighted it at the very beginning. The tools and the libraries are "components" of this joint initiative.

To maximize their impact, naturally the tool should work for all PS3 software, whether they are using Edge libraries or not.

 

[RobertR1]

We can guesstimate based on what has leaked out. Dev time has varied between 3 and 5 years depending on who you believe, so average it to 4 years. Team size has varied between ~50 near acquisition by Sony, to ~200 at peak. We can average that out as well just for the sake of argument. So a guesstimate at say $50,000 average yearly salary might be:

Year 1, 50 people = 2.5 mil
Year 2, 100 people = 5.0 mil
Year 3, 150 people = 7.5 mil
Year 4, 200 people = 10 mil

So a naive guesstimate might be 25mil spent on salaries. However, were there any outsourcing costs, like art perhaps? Any overtime costs? Any external team costs, like perhaps parts of Sony q/a or Sony tech teams? Any perk costs like team trips, in office masseuse, free food and sodas, etc? Yearly rent and utility costs? Marketing and advertising costs? The euro probably factors in as well since I suspect a $50,000 US yearly salary guess is likely low. After the game is done there are still shipping costs, blu-ray disc replication costs, as well as payments for better placement in stores, etc. It all adds up real fast.

As you stated, it's weird that people often forget about the many other costs associated with running a business vs just salaried employees. Even with salaries, the actual cost of an employee is much higher. In California, you can get upto a 35% employee burden (employee tax, benefits, insurance, etc..) Thus a person making 100k a year is actually costing the company 135k.

Then, as you stated, there are still have costs for:

Facilities: rent, utilities
IT budget: Computers, servers, backup system, IT staff, Internet, software licensing
Legal: compliance, IP licensing
Administrative staff: HR, Accounting, admin assistants
Office supplies: paper, copiers, scanners, pens, etc..

All these costs go up as you ramp up the staff but often seem to be neglected. Perhaps, it's due to the lack of exposure on these aspects of a company to most employees that makes them neglect such factors but start getting to a place in a company where you're looking at P&L's and you'll soon become painfully aware of these burdens on a business. It's not just "headcount."

As for sharing tech and it's "value" it's an endless argument with those who look for justification. At some point you have to close the book on a project. Once the project is complete, the budget is assessed. Any gains for future products will be reflected by the lower costs on those projects. It'd be an impossible accounting job to sit there and go "oh, because of Killzone 2, we saved 10% on MAG, 3% on HS2, 7% on Uncharted 2, so looking back Killzone 2's actual cost was X" This is a feel good mentality in conversation but is laughable to apply towards accounting principals. Many projects, even non technical, can reap rewards for a company down the road but they still had a production budget that closed once the product was shipped/implemented.

 

[patsu]

As you stated, it's weird that people often forget about the many other costs associated with running a business vs just salaried employees. Even with salaries, the actual cost of an employee is much higher. In California, you can get upto a 35% employee burden (employee tax, benefits, insurance, etc..) Thus a person making 100k a year is actually costing the company 135k.

Then, as you stated, there are still have costs for:

Facilities: rent, utilities
IT budget: Computers, servers, backup system, IT staff, Internet, software licensing
Legal: compliance, IP licensing
Administrative staff: HR, Accounting, admin assistants
Office supplies: paper, copiers, scanners, pens, etc..

The development project budget is reported to be 20+ mil Euro across 4 years. So all the relevant expenses above are already taken care of under this sum. The variance in reported cost/duration may also be due to GG unable to use all the allocated sum (allocated vs spent), or there may be more than 1 budgets/votes, or when to count as project kick-off, etc.

What you highlighted is that joker454 may have over-estimated the headcounts, but under-estimated the headcount cost. In the end, they can't run away from the overall development budget above.

All these costs go up as you ramp up the staff but often seem to be neglected. Perhaps, it's due to the lack of exposure on these aspects of a company to most employees that makes them neglect such factors but start getting to a place in a company where you're looking at P&L's and you'll soon become painfully aware of these burdens on a business. It's not just "headcount."

As for sharing tech and it's "value" it's an endless argument with those who look for justification. At some point you have to close the book on a project. Once the project is complete, the budget is assessed. Any gains for future products will be reflected by the lower costs on those projects. It'd be an impossible accounting job to sit there and go "oh, because of Killzone 2, we saved 10% on MAG, 3% on HS2, 7% on Uncharted 2, so looking back Killzone 2's actual cost was X" This is a feel good mentality in conversation but is laughable to apply towards accounting principals. Many projects, even non technical, can reap rewards for a company down the road but they still had a production budget that closed once the product was shipped/implemented.

That's why I said it will be reflected in the benefactors' budgets or expenses. e.g., KZ3 should be cheaper to make; other projects can operate more efficiently. The savings are real and spreaded out (i.e., Need to look from an overall perspective). It is fultile to try to chase KZ2 budget for the savings. Many recur and will take place long after KZ2 is closed. It makes no sense to limit the "ROI" accounting to KZ2 books only.

 

[Fafalada]

The entire company doesn't operate that way, but it does happen

Tech-sharing "does happen" too. When it comes to cost amortization, your "dreams and realities" quote applies in either case.

 

[Acert93]

As obonicus said, I didn't mention profit nor excluded marketing though it wasn't clear.
According to Forbes, retail pays ~$48.

Link please.

Google did not turn this up and these are not the figures I have heard...

As for marketing, your marketing can be substantial, even exceed development costs.

I don't know exactly whee KZ2 peaked in terms of people working on the project, but these projects that peak over 200 people have huge budgets. Salary alone will break 10M a year and once you add in outsourcing, building costs, software and tools for all these people, snacks, play testing, travel, marketing (everything from demos and downloadable video costs, kiosks and in store displays, TV and cinema adverts, webzine and magazine spreads, cross game promotions, conventions, etc) and all the manufacturing and distribution costs, Slotting fees at retail, it all comes to a huge sum. There are always the details like localization, publishers have to foot licensing fees to platform holders and any sales-based middleware agreements, developers often have all initial income going toward the funding loan they took to start the project, and so forth. And it has been a while, but I do believe that retail cut is fairly stable. e.g. as a game decreases in price retailers still keep a cut so that they are not losing money on $20 games that decreased in price due to supply/demand issues. Which is better than retailers loading up their trucks and returning unsellable product.

Anyhow, if KZ2 had over 200 people on staff for over a year and was in development, even with a small core, starting in 2005, they won't beak even for Sony until they are well past 1M copies sold.

Who knows, we may be entering the stage of "forced blockbusters" where 1M+ sales can be manufactured through investment with the knowledge that return on investment will be lower, percentage wise, and the risk of a couple big projects going south could be catastrophic. But movie studios seem to bank on the premise of a number of big titles being the the realm of relative break even in the hopes of a couple run away successes that make many-fold profits.

 

[patsu]

Anyhow, if KZ2 had over 200 people on staff for over a year and was in development, even with a small core, starting in 2005, they won't beak even for Sony until they are well past 1M copies sold.

Over 200 people reported by who ? Anywho, we only need to look at the total allocated budget (40+ mil Euro). That's the number they need to make back (whatever they spent). They are at 1M+ right now.

They need to rebalance their soldier classes fast though, so that noobs like me can fight better.