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Dead Space 2 cost $60 million to make, sold 4 million copies, underperformed
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Nothing against Hellblade or Ninja Theory, but the game was always limited in scope. Open world games will never work on that kind of plan nor will the majority of current AAA games. People have to understand that 30 to 50 million is reigning in the budget. 15 to 25 million is pretty much AA at this point.
Lmao stop.
My steam account history tells me that i bought dead space 2 in 2012 for 2$. Valve got 0.6$
Callibretto
Member
in game advertising? I don't think Squenix is paying Nissin to have instant noodle in their game. got to be the other way around. Squenix is receiving money to make specific in game mission for that instant noodle.
same with the camping gear and probably other brand I don't know about.
Bronetta
Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Even linear games like Uncharted 4, Rise of the TR, or Lost Legacy are more open than Hellblade is. More open game design and less linearity in general/bigger emphasis on player agency is the trend of this gen.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
I mean, I agree. But even then it's not just Open World games with that kind of budget. The Tomb Raider 2013 reboot was famously pegged at 100 million dollars for the budget, hence the "failure" comment by Square Enix despite selling 3.4 million copies in a month. Rising costs is the main reason Epic moved on from Gears of War. Gears 1 cost 12 million to develop while Gears of War 3 cost "4 to 5 times that".
redfox088
Banned
Bro yennifer wasnt even in BOTW
GavinUK86
Member
I mean, he's not wrong. Do people really consider the Dead Space series SURVIVAL horror? They've always been third person shooters in a horror setting to me. Dead Space 2 is my number one favourite horror game. It's my number one because it's a shooter. I don't like survival horror games where I'm always short of ammo. I never felt like that with any of the Dead Space games.
nkarafo
Member
So they waste way more money than they should on the budget and then expect the game to be sold to every living person or else it's a failure. And then the studio has to pay the price of that failure, even though they had nothing to do with the failed marketing and budget. And this is how a shitty company like EA is still around.
He's not wrong, though. DS1 had a fantastic art direction, but it wasn't a survival horror game. Survival horror in a sci-fi setting is rather games like Alien Isolation.
redfox088
Banned
Well i Sucked at DS1 on the highest difficulty and always felt like I didnt have enough ammo so it was survivor horror to me atleast.
More_Badass
Member
The shooting back part and the limited ammo is what makes it survival horror instead of just horror, among other elements. Dead Space 1 was definitely that on the harder difficulties. 2 was its Aliens, more action.
Although to be fair, DS always leaned more toward the less scary side of the survival horror spectrum
CassidyIzABeast
Member
I've never agreed with the DS1 is true survival horror while DS2 was some action game departure stuff. DS1 had a literal asteroid shooting gallery segment in it.
I'd also imagine it's because Nintendo didn't spend a whole lot of money on voice acting, and the art assets in BOTW don't look as expensive as the ones in Battlefield or something.
Dead Space was always action horror. RE4 is action horror. RE4 isn't even a scary game, people admitted that back in 2005. It's one of my favorite games, but it isn't an horror game. Survival horror to me is something like Resident Evil 1, Penumbra, Amnesia, Silent Hill, and maybe System Shock 2.
On normal and hard I never felt like my resources were limited in Dead Space 1 or 2. Haven't played DS1 on the highest difficulty yet but I plan to.
nkarafo
Member
Playing any game on the hardest difficulty usually adds the "survival" label before their genre label anyway.
Alien Isolation and classic RE games are survival horror games by design.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Phoenix RISING
Banned
Funny that this game is on my list of horror games to play for the first time this month.
I am a patient man.
I am a patient man.
Alexander DeLarge
Member
Piranha Bytes does it regularly with Gothic/Risen/ELEX. Only 29 employees.
ScientificPizza
Banned
Yeah. Like those games are synonymous with a level of roughness, but it can absolutely be done
Lord of Ostia
Member
Eh, I wouldn't point to those games as some sort of gold standard. Saying that they are rough is putting it mildly
Warm Machine
Member
What makes you think this? Nintendo isnt immune to costs. There is no magic sauce that makes a game cheaper for Nintendo than anyone else. It took something like 5 years and hundreds of staff. Also its Nintendo which is global. A remake of Balloon Fight would cost them millions. The big benefit to Nintendo is that they dont have to pay a license fee on their own games. This way they keep the 30% others lose. Somehow a bullshit narrative about Nintendo games being cheap to make started and it simply isnt true.
Alexander DeLarge
Member
They're not perfect games but they're definitely ambitious and give a lot of companies a run for their money when it comes to efficient development. I'm about 10 hours into ELEX right now and while it's definitely your typical Piranha Bytes Eurojank, if they can do this sort of thing once every three years on this kind of budget with this kind of staff, I certainly can't imagine what justifies these $80-$100 million dollar titles with hundreds of people working on them. It just seems incredibly bloated.
Here's a recent example.
https://youtu.be/j-OoT-Zfyto
https://youtu.be/Y596nH0A-aM
Oh I get that, I just wanted to make sure I was reading the tweets right.
Yeah, that makes sense. Still crazy how much money is spent on marketing alone.
More_Badass
Member
Are you surprised when comparing the credits of like The Raid to Mad Mad Fury Road? Just the sheer amount of people working on AAA game is going to exponentially increase the budget. Its not merely a comparison of scope or graphics, although those things mean more people and more time and more testing, and that all means more money
Soul of the Beast
Member
Making games in the US is just too expensive, I prefer Asian way of doing things. You Americans are paying way too much money on things that shouldn't cost that much.
FFXV took fucking 10 years to make and it broke even within the first 24 hours. Nier Automata sold like 2 million copies and it was a big success to them.
Seriously, screw fancy AAA Horizon God of War graphics, they are NOT worth the risk, give me Bloodborne graphics and I will be just fine. People are WAY too spoiled by AAA production that they rather have bad art style than bad graphics.
Sometimes I wish the game industry would crash again just so the publishers and developers would reevaluate what's really important in a game, you know what? Forget what I said, keep doing what you are doing, keep ramping up the graphics and set pieces every year just to impress people, surely it's gonna be fine.
You don't need huge AAA production or photo-realism graphics to be a great AAA game or a big 10 million seller, Breath of the Wild is the best example.
''but Breath of the Wild is a Zelda game or course people would buy it''
Well, what about Player Unknown's Battleground?
FFXV took fucking 10 years to make and it broke even within the first 24 hours. Nier Automata sold like 2 million copies and it was a big success to them.
Seriously, screw fancy AAA Horizon God of War graphics, they are NOT worth the risk, give me Bloodborne graphics and I will be just fine. People are WAY too spoiled by AAA production that they rather have bad art style than bad graphics.
Sometimes I wish the game industry would crash again just so the publishers and developers would reevaluate what's really important in a game, you know what? Forget what I said, keep doing what you are doing, keep ramping up the graphics and set pieces every year just to impress people, surely it's gonna be fine.
You don't need huge AAA production or photo-realism graphics to be a great AAA game or a big 10 million seller, Breath of the Wild is the best example.
''but Breath of the Wild is a Zelda game or course people would buy it''
Well, what about Player Unknown's Battleground?
timetokill
Banned
DS1 was way better than DS2... I don't know if the budget was increased or what but I could feel them losing their way... really sad, I absolutely loved the first one a ton
AHA-Lambda
Member
It's sad but really unfortunately is that none of those numbers from the OP are surprising and fit historically with what we've seen with other AAA titles from that era, and of course it's even tougher now.
I get what some are saying about smaller titles with leaner budgets like Hellblade but that idea only works in isolation sadly.
EA, or any AAA publisher really, are massive huge organisations and to sustain themselves, let alone making money, they need huge revenues. So small projects a la Hellblade are for the most part not on their radar.
Also if EA has a lump sum they'll go for what gives the best on investment (i.e. these days long tail GaaS titles)
It's simply not enough to just "tightly budget" and make a proportional reasonable budget; if it ain't big they don't care, and yeah that's a really sad thing.
I get what some are saying about smaller titles with leaner budgets like Hellblade but that idea only works in isolation sadly.
EA, or any AAA publisher really, are massive huge organisations and to sustain themselves, let alone making money, they need huge revenues. So small projects a la Hellblade are for the most part not on their radar.
Also if EA has a lump sum they'll go for what gives the best on investment (i.e. these days long tail GaaS titles)
It's simply not enough to just "tightly budget" and make a proportional reasonable budget; if it ain't big they don't care, and yeah that's a really sad thing.
The big one was the "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" ad campaign. Apparently the ad was broadcast during an Atlanta Falcons vs. Green Bay Packers football game.
CosmicQueso
Member
You think games are bad, you should see how much we pay for avocado toast.
Plumpbiscuit
Member
Silent Hill 2's budget was around $7 - 10 million. There's something deeply wrong with modern games and marketing if you need $60 million to make a single player survival horror game. You don't need to spend that much to make a good game.
Warm Machine
Member
Simultaneously it is hard getting 250k from a publisher to fund an indie game.
What's funny is that the big Sony games are success titles despite being in top echelon in terms of graphics.
There are other things going on and graphics are not one of them.
Edit: Tho I guess not all developers have fared well since the HD era and that could partly be because of the graphics. PS2 was the golden era for gaming,
Soul of the Beast
Member
Because Sony make good games that are attractive and attractive games with good reputation always sells well.
Word of mouth are more effective than marketing hype, Titanfall 2 and Rainbow 6 are the best example.
That other thread where people talked about Besthesda's recent underperformed games are just funny to me, those games aren't even all that well received, and they all look unattractive in my opinion, maybe it's the art style or something but they just doesn't look great imo.
Even after reading through that thread I still don't want to play Prey or Dishonored 2.
There's a lot of people who also think Nintendo has some sort of magic that makes their games smaller than many other big AAA games, not understanding that stuff like the lack of voice acting and the simple, cartoon art style they use for many games that allow for simpler textures compared to realistic games are the big reasons their games are so much smaller than may other games.
More_Badass
Member
Thats like comparing The Witch to It, and asking why did It need $35 million when the Witch was made for $4m
Silent Hill 2 and Dead Space 2 are completely different in every way beyond them being horror related. That comparion doesnt make much sense
Silent Hill 2 is also a Playstation 2 title, which requires less development costs back in the day. With the HD gen, games became more complex; asset creation costs more for one and it skyrockets your budget. Working with new enigines etc. You can't compare the two.
farmerboy
Member
I'll preface this by saying I know sweet fa about game development, but........
Say, if DS2 is a 15hr game, that's 4 million dollars per hour of gameplay.
For an industry based around tech, surely you can leverage that tech to make games more efficiently. I just don't get why it costs so much.
If half of the 4 million is tools, rent etc, that still leaves 2 million. That's 20 people on a 100k a year. Surely we can get 20 people to create more than an hours gameplay in one year.
Once again, I know nothing, just thinking out loud.
Say, if DS2 is a 15hr game, that's 4 million dollars per hour of gameplay.
For an industry based around tech, surely you can leverage that tech to make games more efficiently. I just don't get why it costs so much.
If half of the 4 million is tools, rent etc, that still leaves 2 million. That's 20 people on a 100k a year. Surely we can get 20 people to create more than an hours gameplay in one year.
Once again, I know nothing, just thinking out loud.
TheMoon
Member
This feels like one of those examples for how many don't actually realize how games are made and that the budgets don't get beamed into the screen and X-level quality assets come out since it is about salaries paid to people over several years, usually, who live off of them while creating art, music, code, mechanics, etc. I honestly believe way too many people assume developers get a sack of money delivered to their doorstep, adjust a sliper from AA to AAA and then just magically play the game and yell the classic line about tightening the graphics on level 3.
edit: ah here we go
people don't place legos on a table. all that HD art you're looking at? look at same credits. ever wonder why credits for the big games from EA and Ubi are 30-50 minutes long sometimes? Yea they list everyone from the janitor to the food truck across the street but it's this god damn high definition artwork. Textures, super high polygon models of objects. Look at all the nonsense that is in a game. And god forbid if anyone changes something. Then think of what it might cost to have people speak into microphones who know what they're doing so that you don't have to read text bubbles. In several languages. Oh and that natural looking motion they make while doing so? Someone has to animate that. And the performance capture. And now we have sound. Please have the sound also mixed for my 7.1 surround set that I bought during Black Friday last year. And fully orchestrated please, no samples, that's so 1999! What did you say? That other game they showed at that event last week did something crazy with particles and AI? Well, guess we gotta implement that into our game, too. But now it breaks the lighting system. And please hire two more people with experience with advanced AI behavior so we can implement this new system we thought up.
Oh hey, fun fact. We also have multiplayer now. Who's doing that? Mike? Anna? Oh what do you mean they're busy on the opening? Well, more art, more programming, servers, more testing, a dedicated design team.... etc etc etc....
Again, it's not playing with legos.
Warm Machine
Member
The thing is, video game development is a fucked up process. Some of the games you love that were in development for 3 or more years may have actually only been made in the last year. Often a game flails with a full team and gets stopped and restarted numerous times. Do you remember SSX or Skate? Both of those were rebooted during dev an insane amount of times. Video game development doesnt have a linear approach like film does, not because it cant but because the people who make games are not disciplined enough to do that. No one in the AAA industry or even lower tiers sits down and says...this is the game we want to make, then moves headlong toward the goal hell or high water whether the creative impulse was correct or not.
Because games are very malleable and at the whim of industry fashion the developers begin changing their minds. See Fuse as an obvious example. Timeshift, is one of those games as well where they ripped it to shreds and rebuilt it all in 9 months or something. Indecision and lack of discipline often escalates the investment from something moderate to something ridiculous. Then you just have to make that money back and to do that your marketing spend increases.
Because games are very malleable and at the whim of industry fashion the developers begin changing their minds. See Fuse as an obvious example. Timeshift, is one of those games as well where they ripped it to shreds and rebuilt it all in 9 months or something. Indecision and lack of discipline often escalates the investment from something moderate to something ridiculous. Then you just have to make that money back and to do that your marketing spend increases.
Samanosuke Akechi
Member
Sad. Seems like the Games I grew up with are slowly but surely becoming extinct as this industry is heading in a different direction.
Immersive, linear single player, polished story driven games are giving way to loot boxes and other bs practices. Oh well, nice while it lasted I suppose.
Immersive, linear single player, polished story driven games are giving way to loot boxes and other bs practices. Oh well, nice while it lasted I suppose.
Fuse was rebuilt because of poor reception by focusgroups right? When EA heard about that, they kind of asked Insomniac to change everything. Was pretty strange.
Dead Space 3 was changed in favour of evolving market trends according to Code Cow. Oh man, is he still with Visceral? Hope he lands on his feet if thats the case. Dude gave us little nuggets about Dead Space development.
Dead Space 3 was changed in favour of evolving market trends according to Code Cow. Oh man, is he still with Visceral? Hope he lands on his feet if thats the case. Dude gave us little nuggets about Dead Space development.
TheMoon
Member
They made Uncharted 2 in space, multiplayer mode included. Does that still sound like a lot now? Only difference is fewer cutscenes.