Ubisoft: A 50 million Euro game takes 2.5 million sales to break even

[ERP]

Was it purely the extra time that killed the games in question, or other additinal factors? If a game has a great premise, is coming together well during the course of development, yet doesn't appear to be able to meet its given schedule, I can't see how affording the devs an extra few months of polish would somehow kill a game? If the game wasn't working at all, then of course, more time to polsih a turd will still produce a turd at the end of the day.

Time, or rather lack of pressure will kill a game, because teams lose focus.
Very few designers have sharp focus, everything is over designed, it's worse on large teams with many designers. Every feature you add is important to someone, so cutting a feature is a painful process, without time pressure what happens is features get added but never really finished. This can continue indefinitely as far as I can see.
When pressure finally is applied (sometimes years later) rather than cutting and distilling the experience what happens is teams try and ship everything at a reduced quality bar.
What this delivers is an unfocussed often shoddy experience.

I'll give you an example, I worked on a game where you could drive between locations in an action game, driving was really just a form of transport in the game, but because there were 6 designers on the project, one of them was tasked with designing it. He produced 60 pages of design, the vast majority of it superfluous to the core gameplay. To him the driving part of the game was the focus of the game, because it's what he focussed on.

Like films games need editing, and the designers/directors are often not the best people to do that. Without time pressure there is no reason to edit.

I think I said this here when E3 was cancelled, I hated it because of it's timing, but I'd seen it rescue games because teams were forced to pull things together and focus on the core experience.

 

[ERP]

100 people * 2 years @ 30k€/year = 6M€ I wonder what they do with the remaining millions...

You are VASTLY underestimating what it costs to employ someone. And I very much doubt the average salary at Ubisoft is 30K euros.
The number we used to use and it's just an estimate is $200K/person.
The employee only sees a small fraction of that, when you add in payroll taxes, healthcare, retirement, and office overhead and average it across the workforce it really is that much.

Also 100 people isn't a big team anymore for the big 3rd parties, I worked on a team at EA that had 300 people on it, and that's not even the biggest I've heard of.

 

[Mobius1aic]

They employ another 200 people and ship the game after 3 more years.


Most programmers care about the tech they work on - they largely don't give a damn about the title it's in (beyond general recognition and potential bonus schemes).

I'm sorry, I was interchanging programmers with developers, though even still, programmers are an integral part of a game, since if anything, it's the bugs players seem to remember more these days instead of the actual game features.

 

[ERP]

I would assume splitscreen addition was more a by-product of their 3D implementation. The previous games from both devs had neither ;-)

I happen to know that split screen predated 3D.
Having said that I also know ND spent a LOT of time and effort on 3D.

 

[Fafalada]

Also 100 people isn't a big team anymore for the big 3rd parties, I worked on a team at EA that had 300 people on it, and that's not even the biggest I've heard of.

Yup. My current team is over 100people, and while that's large for the type of project we're working on, we're absolutely dwarfed by teams working on "standard" console AAA projects.

I'm sorry, I was interchanging programmers with developers

I figured - my point was also that this isn't exclusive to programmers. Like ERP mentions in his post, people tend to focus on their area of responsibility as being THE most important thing in the project, and many are perfectly ok taking pride in what they accomplished in their area - even if the overall product wasn't up to scratch.

 

[Rodéric]

Yup. My current team is over 100people, and while that's large for the type of project we're working on, we're absolutely dwarfed by teams working on "standard" console AAA projects.

I worked on AAA games including a MMORPG and 100 people is already a BIG team.
(I also know of two AAA console teams and both are roughly around 100 people during peak production.)
Can you name the companies/games having such big teams ? (It sounds a little over the top to me.)


I don't think I'm too wrong about the salary at UBISoft, however I did only account for what people are paid, not what the company pays, which is likely 50%-100% more because of taxes.

I'm also curious to know how such a big budget is spent, so if anyone could shade a light...

 

[Prophecy2k]

My appreciation to ERP and everyone else for sharing some of their experiences with us all on here.

It's always nice to get a bit more of an insight into what goes on for real in VG development. I guess there are so many factors at play when teams so large (>>100 people? WOW) are working hard on trying to develop a single cohesive product.

I also remember some comments from Jade Redmond on the Gametrailers.com Bonus Round segment, where she commented on the difficulties in manging these crazy huge teams, with people with lots of differing views and ideas, and how it generally all seems like a mess up until the end when it finally comes together.

Well done chaps.

Although to ERP, did you perhaps work for Sony? (Or are you not allowed to say)

 

[Sigfried1977]

I really don't get the impression of creative bankruptcy from the Assassin's Creed series. That series has seen far more changes and overhauls than, let's say, the Uncharted series. And B team (which I think is a little insulting. Ubisoft simply employs a ton of people which work on different projects if needed. Nintendo does the same) or not, AC Brotherhood is generally considered the series' pinnacle regardless.

 

[Prophecy2k]

I really don't get the impression of creative bankruptcy from the Assassin's Creed series. That series has seen far more changes and overhauls than, let's say, the Uncharted series. And B team (which I think is a little insulting. Ubisoft simply employs a ton of people which work on different projects if needed. Nintendo does the same) or not, AC Brotherhood is generally considered the series' pinnacle regardless.

I'd say that the AC series has seen more significant changes since the first because the first iteration required so much change in the first place. Beside the addition of MP, since AC2 the changes have been piecemeal and far less substantial than the jump from AC to AC2. As a whole I think it all balances out, plus you're comparing an open-world series (thus by definition far more varied a genre) to a linear action shooter game. There have also been more AC games than Uncharted games.

Imo, both series have seen progressive improvements in quality. I also wouldn't bring a complaint of "creative bankruptcy" against Ubi for that franchise. Nor many of the big popular franchises for that matter.

 

[aselto]

My thoughts on this thread:
-Future Soldier cost that much because it was in development for 5 years. After GRAW2 (early 2007) it was rumored that Ghost Recon would see big changes in its gameplay and we wouldn't see tha game until 2010. Well it slipped in development for another 2 years, I can imagine it was a costly delay. The delay was caused by the fact they weren't happy where the game was going at one point (as the developer said in one interview)

-Assassin's Creed 1 was very innovative game, the parcour gameplay mechanic was something new and fresh at the time. However, subsequent games (in single player at least) were innovative within the series, but not within games overall - AC2 slapped proper game structure on top of game mechanics from AC1, Brotherhood's new/refreshed mechanics were stolen from Batman Arkham Asylum

-Uncharted 1 didn't seem too creative or innovative to me at all. It recycled combat from Gears of War and platforming from Prince of Persia. It bombed very hard on release and it wasn't until heavy advertising and media hype for Uncharted 2 when the series took off

-Ubisoft is a publisher that seems to be willing to take a lot of risks (then milk to death those that prove popular). GR Future Soldier is actually the second shake-up the series has seen, GR Advanced Warfighter was also very different from Ghost Recon 1. A lot of their other franchises underwent similar reboots. Sadly I am rarely happy with the directions they take their series in, most of the time preferring the original formulae (GR, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Rainbow Six).

-AAA game publishers are in general too tentative with their releases. Major games in late 2007 - Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, COD4, Bioshock. Major releases in late 2012 - Halo 4, COD Black Ops 2, AC3, Bioshock Infinity (this one got delayed recently, but I used it to illustrate). I think that's the biggest reason console market has shrunk so much over the last couple of years.

 

[nightshade]

Big Huge games developers of Kingdom of Amular had to close down because the game wasn't a financial success. They revealed that in order to break even they needed 2.5 million sales, it means it probably cost them about the same as Future soldier but looking at the game it doesn't has the tech R&D like Future Solider, neither does it has a development time that long and nor does it has a marketing campaign as aggressive as Ghost Recon, yet somehow it costs about the same. How?

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/05/24/report-38-studios-lays-off-entire-staff

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They were developing an MMO at the same time. I think they mean 3 million for the company to break even or something, with KOA being used to generate funding for the MMO. If they really, honestly, budgetted for a 3 million seller in KOA, they were damned fools. What's the point of spending that much and throwing that money away, unless you have a VERY good reason to think that you'll sell many more million and make a lot of profit?

 

[Rodéric]

They aren't a developer-publisher like UBISoft, so their share on a unit sale is likely 8-10, not 20.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Whatever their returns were, they should have budgetted more realistically. "We're gonna sell at least 5 million copies of this game, so we can blow the first three million sales worth on development," is a dumb way to run a business. Looking at games sales this gen, 3 million would have been a good sales number for a new IP, so budgetting for half that would have been a more sensible investment.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Whatever their returns were, they should have budgetted more realistically. "We're gonna sell at least 5 million copies of this game, so we can blow the first three million sales worth on development," is a dumb way to run a business. Looking at games sales this gen, 3 million would have been a good sales number for a new IP, so budgetting for half that would have been a more sensible investment.

Perhaps they were looking to get publisher funding for their MMO and things simply didn't work out. I dunno... there could be many reasons.

I did think that KOA did pretty well though. Thought it broke at least a million worldwide. I played the demo and thought it was great. Still yet to buy it though (yes i'm part of the problem).

There have been lots of studios folding this gen due to mismanagement. I can understand why companies are becoming more risk averse, and why it's become so hard to keep a studio afloat making AAA games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It sold ~1.5 million. As you say, that's not bad. So budgetting for a 3 million sales breakeven point was ludicrous; the decision of someone completely out of touch with the market and expectations. I think they just threw money at the project expecting the more they spent to result in a better product and more sales. Reading of employees who lost their health insurance with no forewarning makes me angry (they found out when an employee's pregnant wife was in hospital that they had no insurance). IMO upper management should be beholden to their employees just as it is the other way round. Upper management cocking everything up and then running off without being accountable for their mismanagement means this isn't an isolated story and won't be the end of it.

 

[Cornsnake]

They were developing an MMO at the same time. I think they mean 3 million for the company to break even or something, with KOA being used to generate funding for the MMO. If they really, honestly, budgetted for a 3 million seller in KOA, they were damned fools. What's the point of spending that much and throwing that money away, unless you have a VERY good reason to think that you'll sell many more million and make a lot of profit?

I thought the whole making an MMO, a new IP, with a new developer was a pretty stupid idea to begin with. It's probably the most expensive and high risk game you can make. Even if they were somehow able to make a great game, there was still great chance it would fail like others with a lot more brand recognition have.

 

[Rodéric]

I don't know when they started, maybe the market seemed sustainable at the time.
After STWOR though, I'd bet investors are going to think long and hard before investing in MMOG.

 

[RobertR1]

It's pretty safe to say that in this generation, making games isn't cheap.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There are lots of different tiers of games. It can be as cheap/expensive as the publisher.developer chooses., thansk to downloads elliminating the $60 minimum game price. They could have gone with a cheaper, smaller game and sold episodic content, tested the waters, and built up to the full game. Then for a larger reach they could have bundled that all together for a disk title. Then they could have added MMO elements, or at least had an audience to sell the MMO to.

The very close-minded thinking of modern game development is holding the industry back. In part that's due to the awkward regulations of the gaming networks, with patches and changes costing the developer money, but mostly I think it's due to short-sighted management.

My testcase for this is Snowblind Studios. They've released one game in 5 years, LOTR:WITN, which was mediocre. They made a name for themselves with BGDA and similar 3rd person top-down action games, especially with coop. They could have started this gen writing a simple BGDA/CON-esque download game, like Dungeon Hunters:Alliance and Dungeons and Dragons:Heroes, only much better. They could have tested new gameplay elements knowing they had a solid userbase who would buy a game in that vein, helping to fund technological research and whatever large-scale AAA project they'd want to move on to. Okay, SB Studios had business issues and a cancelled project and a change of hands, and perhaps with a large headcount already they didn't think it was worth risking. But personally I've seen the download market as a perfect place to create small 'tester' products and build up a fanbase to fund more securely future projects. This just isn't happening though. Someone decides to do a big game and throws money at it and crosses their fingers.