Mark Darrah (Former Bioware) on why AAA games cost so much

[Shifty Geezer]

This game was made by a single person a less than a month apparently. So I believe that gaming is just too inflated.

It's a load of bought assets and a super basic gameplay loop. It proves nothing about nothing. All this shows is the entry-level creation, what's possible by indies, is a much higher base standard than yesteryear thanks to the availability of such assets and engines that can piece them together and make them look good with no effort.

So I believe that gaming is just too inflated. While I like the last of us, the story is not that good.

You may not like it, but it's widely well received and sold a lot of units, and done great on TV too where story is everything and gameplay nothing. Objectively, the investment in TLoU's story paid off and you are the outlier.

Whereas the game could be made with unreal assets in a few months

This is an utterly clueless statement. Sure, all these games that take forever to get made can be cobbled together in a few months on Unreal... That's why in the past 3 years we've had over 40 AAA Unreal Engine 5 games that blow everything out the water. Not even one UE5 game has overrun release schedule because you can bang out a world-class title in 6 months or less, it's so cheap and easy to use!!

and be nearly indistinguishable from the end result, minus the cutscenes

So lose the cinematic part of Sony's cinematic story. Or use UE4's automated facial tech from 2010-2013 instead of motion capture and copy/pasted animations.

 

[XboxKING]

To create a realistic looking bus takes a few people a few weeks work. Most people would not even notice nor care if the bus in the last of us is the same bus as in resident evil 3, a bus is a bus. Yet developers will waste essentially tens of thousands of dollars on a single asset..

Now multiply that by thousands of assets and you know why the costs are so much right now.

Also get some local drama/theatre school actors who will probably do as good a job as the more expensive ones. As for the music, basically same thing. Publishers pay for the name and that they can have the big names do a press tour, but the results can easily be achieved with a fraction of the cost. If anything, I’d like to have more varied actors and voice actors

 

[XboxKING]

Sure, all these games that take forever to get made can be cobbled together in a few months on Unreal... That's why in the past 3 years we've had over 40 AAA Unreal Engine 5 games that blow everything out the water. Not even one UE5 game has overrun release schedule because you can bang out a world-class title in 6 months or less, it's so cheap and easy to use!!

Case in point:

This is also made by one or two people.

Imagine what 50 people could do?