So what?
Licenced music from not so very known actors can hardly account for much costs, neither will hiring 12-40 unknown actors to record voice.
What's the average development cost for next generation?
- Thread starter DeadlyNinja
- Start date
So what?
Licenced music from not so very known actors can hardly account for much costs, neither will hiring 12-40 unknown actors to record voice.
Yeah, I understand you very well and agree with your sentiment - I make my living as a game developer in a niche genre, making games for several orders of magnitude less than the numbers discussed.
However, I wanted to point out that the Japanese kept their budgets in check by sacrificing their standing in the market, not out of some miraculous know-how.
Oh, I wasn't implying that (though maybe the OP was). And mostly I was talking about truly niche companies, like GUST or Idea Factory or Nippon Ichi, which were never huge in the market anyway.
specwarGP2
Regular
$250 million? Are you insane? That's $50 million more than what it cost to film Terminator Salvation.
Ubisoft and Capcom won't survive alone yet Sega will?
I don't think costs will rise dramatically. Metal Gear Solid 2 cost around $10 million to make. Ghostbusters cost $15-20 million but that game had licensing and high profile voice actors. And then there's inflation.
It's hard enough to get a publisher to commit to finishing one game yet alone 3! But in general I agree with your point. The shamefull waste I see in games development is hurting us.
Take a story based game: uncharted, gears, and the HL2 episodes are the best example:
When I finish a great story game, I just want the story to continue. At this point I have invested in the story and don't care about the tech. So why do so many companies suddenly plan more tech? I really don't get it.
Ok sure there may be a new mechanic required for story telling, but do we really need to rewrite the camera system, and don't get me started how many times I see trigger boxes rewritten.
Most games don't even get to part 2... And even if you're lucky there, you still can't delay return of investment for 3 projects. That's 6 years even with a killing schedule!
Not to mention that assets have to be remade to keep up with the fresh competition. Both Gears 2 and Uncharted 2 have significantly reworked returning characters, in some cases to the extreme. In Gears the Brumak and some other monster were completely re-done, although it was partially because the player was allowed to ride them and get the camera closer. But even Drake got some more polygons and completely re-done textures and shaders.
Not to mention that assets have to be remade to keep up with the fresh competition. Both Gears 2 and Uncharted 2 have significantly reworked returning characters, in some cases to the extreme. In Gears the Brumak and some other monster were completely re-done, although it was partially because the player was allowed to ride them and get the camera closer. But even Drake got some more polygons and completely re-done textures and shaders.
Building and playtesting levels takes a long time, more then just a few months. More of the same will only sell to the hardcore fanbase, the rest of the market expects you to fix problems and introduce more fun.
They may need to rework other, invisible systems (scripting, rendering), sometimes they need better efficiency to free up resources for other stuff... who knows? They probably don't want to waste money either, so it probably has a reason.
The skyrocketing development cost has gone out of control, I hope they don't release another round of consoles anytime soon, the cost structure just isn't there to support all the asset creation and we're destined for another crash. $20 million is already a tremendous risk to take, budgets need to go down, not up.
Middleware is not a cure-all, it's not like you don't need artists and game designers and programmers still. Who's actually using Crytek to make games right now?
Ready At Dawn hasn't even made a single current-gen game, they need to prove that they can make a current-gen game with their own engine before they can convince people to use it.
It's just my opinion, based on projects I've worked on over the years, and the focus testing we've done. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that you have the "hard core" / "more of the same" situation reversed.
Oh, they always say they need to rework those systems, programmers always do (and I'm one of them). But does it really? I suspect not in most cases. I think you'll find that throwing away code / refactoring / rewriting etc are not as carefully thought out as you'd think.
Most programmers need someone to TELL them when to stop doing something, otherwise they never do. And the tendency for "neverending improvements" is typically directly proportional with how smart the person is.MrFloopy said:
And I'm fairly certain that by the age we actually develop self-control, most will be changing careers or field of work already
and don't you think that is stupid ?
Lets use Mass effect for an example.
You build your engine and your textures and what not. Release part 1. Release dlc for part one using same assets. While working on part one and the dlc have part 2 in development. Reuse assets adn textures from part 1 and dlc in part 2. While part 2 is in production start work on part 3. Release part 2 and dlc . Before part 3 comes out re release part 1 and 2 with the dlc in some game of the year edition or something. Release part three and DLC.
Sure you might make a shitty game. But bigger publishers can push past that and not every shitty game sells badly , look at assasians creed 1... its getting a sequal.
With my senario above you should be able to able to keep a steady stream of profit coming in while developing the other parts of the game and you should be able to continue to reuse assets even as you continue to add more and work on enhancing the engine to keep it fresh.
There is no reason to continuely remake the same assets over and over again and remake engines over and over again.
In fact take what i said above but instead of using the engine just for mass effect use it on every bioware game , or now every ea game where it could fit and just keep using it (yes i know it was based on the unreal 3 engine)
Spot on.
And I'm fairly certain that by the age we actually develop self-control, most will be changing careers or field of work already
I have started to see some change in this recently, so fingers crossed it really happens this time. But when you have trigger boxes being rewritten or 4 different base entity classes on 4 different projects it's hard to get too excited.
There's rumors Killzone 2 cost 160 million. Far fetched sure, but just the mention of the number means something. Of course we will NEVER know the real cost. But one of the data points was a newspaper article that said it cost more than the most expensive Dutch film, to get back to your Terminator comparison.
And how does Terminator Salvation's budget say anything about videogames? Hell, honestly the first thing I think when I see T Salvation or Transformers 2 is "nice graphics". Yeah, you can practically think of summer blockbusters these days in terms of which has better graphics just like they were a game, they have so much CG involved.
All this talk of reusing assets and using mddleware engines ignores that imo it's not the best for the final product.
I mean, look at all the criticism Halo ODST got for "re-using assets". People are much more excited for Reach and it's new (presumably expensive) engine.
It's the same with UE3, engines are a floor on graphics (a UE3 game will never look too bad) but also a ceiling (they will never look amazing either). That's not a new thing, the same issue existed a decade ago when Quake 3 engine dominated.
specwarGP2
Regular
It's been said that the bulk of the cost in producing a game is from creating artwork right? Well the artwork used for CGI in movies like Terminator Salvation is much more expensive to create than the artwork used in video games. I've read that CGI costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1million per minute. Teams working on JUST the CGI for a movie like Terminator Salavation or Transformers are bigger than the entire team for a video game.
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