Astral Dog
Member
What would be some good examples of "mid tier" Indie titles? Trine 2 proyect CARS and puppeter? it seems to me that most indie titles still lack something, to replace mid tier games
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Epic: About 1/3rd as many AAA games in dev this gen, but each with 3 times the budget
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but there is a particular type of movie that tends to do well: Basically dumb high budget action movies that have lots of shit happen. 300: Rise of an Empire is a good example of this; utter shite, but none of that matters because all people expect is a big high budget action movie. It will sell, just needs a big budget.
Team size is not everything. In Western AA development, quite often huge chunks of the art is outsourced to China (Virtuous) and India (Dhruva) and while cheaper than doing it in the West, it still costs a LOT. So it depends a bit on how much money Sucker Punch used for outsourcing.
Lord_Byron28
Member
So it hasn't been my imagination that both the PS4 and Xbones lineup isn't nearly as diverse as 360/PS3's and that on top of that a lot of the big releases are just cinematic, dudebro romps.
Killroyskbg
Member
The same can be said about a lot of AAA games IMO.
I can't say, because I don't represent Epic, but I can't imagine the likes of The Legend of Zelda and X (you can throw Bayonetta 2 in there, too, if you want) being anything but very costly games.
In general, I think that's a fair description of their games. But there are outliers, like the ones mentioned above.
Here's an interesting piece of relevant info: you would have to sell 700,000 copies of a Fire Emblem entry on the Wii U to break even on raw development costs alone. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen or played an FE game, but, normally, games in its genre deal in budgetary conservatism. For them to have to sell that much tells me that even with their ability to effectively manage costs, they can't sidestep the financial realities of having to develop on more and more powerful hardware (whether it be handheld or home console).
Upcoming/released ones could include Torchlight 2, Legend of Grimrock 1/2, Grim Dawn, Assetto Corsa, Pillars of Eternity, Natural Selection 2, Book of Unwritten Tales 2, Endless Space, Planetary Annihilation, Path of Exile, Wasteland 2, Red Orchestra 2, Elite Dangerous, Divinity: Original Sin, Star Citizen, No Mans Sky and maybe The Forest, Banished and Routine.
And I know what it lacks, Japanese and console games/genres circa the PS2 era (Japanese Action, JRPGs, 3D Platformers, fighting games). With the way Japanese people apparently view Doujin games and the fact that the indie scene is so much more developed on PC (with PC/western specific genres) it's left a gap.
flyinpiranha
Member
Is The Witcher 3 "mid-tier"? They don't have hundreds of millions budget do they?
To be fair, Hollywood tends to be a bit brighter than this by surrounding bigger pics with lesser ones.
Warner did 300 Rise of an Empire, which is actually cheap end for big budget films
But also did The Lego Movie a month earlier which was super cheap.
They did Her and The Hobbit 2 around the same time last year.
Godzilla and Blended next month.
5,10, and even 20 million dollar games were the mid tier. Indie budgets don't seem to approach anywhere near that amount of cash.
It's a AAA budget for their country, Poland has a much lower cost of living compared to traditional countries with development houses.
flyinpiranha
Member
But is it comparable? I mean, do they have a 300 person team and an (equivalent) $300 million budget?
So would something like Shadow Warrior be considered "indie" "mid-tier" or "AAA" my first assumption is that it would not be considered AAA, but it had some really nice visuals excellent gameplay, and overall solid production values.
How about something like No Mans Sky which is doing some pretty ambitious things that even AAA devs like Bungie won't risk doing?
Or maybe the first party funded indie developed games like Rapture,Rime, etc, Are they now considered "AAA" because they are getting funding from a publisher?
I think we are coming to a point were we need to rethink the way we label what these games are because what is possible from smaller teams is getting much more varied thanks to tools like Unity.
How about something like No Mans Sky which is doing some pretty ambitious things that even AAA devs like Bungie won't risk doing?
Or maybe the first party funded indie developed games like Rapture,Rime, etc, Are they now considered "AAA" because they are getting funding from a publisher?
I think we are coming to a point were we need to rethink the way we label what these games are because what is possible from smaller teams is getting much more varied thanks to tools like Unity.
You didn't really think that through. If you consider Bulletstorm to be a game of lower production quality than that means Epic is overestimating the number of high budget games even if they are overestimating the increase in development costs.
If they are getting funded by Sony, they are by definition not indie any more.
They are not AAA either, it isn't an either/or situation.
So one thing I should note on this is that the 400 people aren't actually on the project the whole time.
Basically how development at this scale works is as follows:
1.) A preproduction team of around 20-40 people work on a game for a year or so until the majority of things are prototyped, tested, and planned for.
2.) At this point, a giant army of people floods into the project and fills out all the details that were planned during the first year of development. They iterate through content very quickly and build an astronomical amount of content. This is also usually only about a year.
3.) The team shrinks back down to 20-40 people to give the game a final layer of polish for a few months.
There are changes to the game made during stages 2 and 3, but the crux of how the game is designed, especially in terms of things like level design and asset creation, is pretty much locked before stage 2 hits as it's vastly harder and more expensive to do large scale changes at that point.
Things like balancing, smaller new features, moving enemies around, changing abilities, and related things can all be done during production and polish.
This giant army blob moves between a variety of staggered projects in order to support them as they enter the production phase, so most of the 400 people on Dragon Age will immediately switch over to Mass Effect as soon as Dragon Age is done with the main production phase, and the Mass Effect team has to have most things planned out by that point, and then they can move over to the new IP as well.
If you have enough projects you usually have multiple blobs of varying sizes so you can get everything out in a timely fashion and they don't all switch over on exactly the same day, but the general concept remains.
Part of the reason Dragon Age Inquisition took so long is that is spent closer to 2-2.5 years in pre-production because they had to massively overhaul the engine, decided to notably redesign the game mechanics and scope of the series, and also threw out their entire prototype of Dragon Age 3 that was on the previous engine.
The next one will probably have a 2-2.5 year development cycle since they're almost assuredly going to make a game quite similar to Dragon Age Inquisition instead of rebooting the series every single entry, which is what caused Dragon Age 2 to feel so rushed as opposed to Dragon Age Awakening which felt much more thought through since it was an iterative development on top of the existing framework despite a short development cycle.
Generally speaking the number of people in the mega blob doesn't go down because they still have to make a huge amount of content and also use the fact they have a strong base to go and expand the scope of the game, so that's why costs often remain the same or even higher on sequels.
Ok but if there is no more mid tier games then what are they? Seems like the general consensus is that it IS an either/ or situation and if a game is not AAA then it is "indie".
gundamkyoukai
Member
This is what i mean for eg a Gust game would now become a indie game when it was a mid tier game during the PS2 gen.
The indies market is everything under AAA and people need to see it like that .
It won't shock me if a Gust game or Tales game cost even less this gen compare to last gen .
This doesn't account for the completely ridiculous amount of time people now spend playing particular games. What we are seeing is fewer "AAA" games but more content being poured into the ones that people are buying. I think somewhere along the way the value proposition of games that you don't play for months on end has gotten hurt by having the same price as multiplayer games, rental services like GameFly, Youtube Channels, etc.
Stuff like inFamous Second Son selling well will become the anomaly, because you don't spend 400 hours with it like you would with Battlefield. So yes, variety of games will definitely take a tumble on the boxed retail side of things. Downloadable games might make up for it, maybe not. But people have pretty consistently been voting with their time (in addition to their wallets) on both PC and console that they like games with endless replay value.
Indie games are nice bite-size snacks in between the AAA main courses.
It'll be the opposite. Less overall software for you to buy.
babyghost853
Member
Please explain?
As far as I can tell the industry has not moved since the ps2 era. Consistently having ~150-180 mil gamers . With around 260 mil consoles sold last gen, still a healthy 150-180 mil gamers (taking into account multi-console owners and people that just wanted to be a part of the wii fad) . It's far to early to call this gen, but let me pull some numbers out my ass. Lets say 120 mil PS4, 80 mil Xbone and 25 mil WiiU ltd's at the end of this gen. That's still 225 mil consloes sold, with about 160-170 mil gamers, taking into account multi-console owners. Which I do not see as the industry contracting, but rather remaining stagnant.
But what about all the studios that shut down last gen? While it is never a good thing for people to loose jobs (hopefully most of them found new jobs at better studios), most of these studios brought it upon themselves. If you continue to put shit out that no one wants you deserve to go under. If you continue to spend more than you have hoping to have a mega hit, you deserve to go under. It does not take a $100 mil budget to make a great game. When publishers learn that not every game will sell 10 mil copies and budget accordingly, studios will stop going under. But they prefer to go, "GTA just made 800 mil in a week, we need to do that". Without ever considering that they don't have a product that can do it.
About my previous comment about wii being a fad (at lease in the US), I have always believed this to be true and will continue to do so. Case in point, I don't remember seeing WiiU on Goodday NY, Oprah or Ellen, do you? There were so many people that bought it just so they could feel like a part of the in crowd, and say I have a wii. Can anyone tell me what game Oprah has played since wii fit? Does she still count as a "gamer"? In the EU I believe it was more a matter of price, and it took of there because it was something different at a relatively cheap price, and everyone else was getting one. Overall I believe there were enough people who were not into gaming, or never really liked gaming and just bought one because it was the in thing, to call it a fad.
I think that this cycle will just repeat, with "indie" slowing becoming bigger and being invested in and then low and behold they become AAA devs.
Team's move, people move but right now the level of Indie games will grow to be more like what we used to class big games as, with this generation more than ever being very strongly pushed on the off-the-shelf engine method, that much smaller teams can make a game with less expensive coding needed, and work within smaller or at least more pro-active dev times.
AAA will always be around but I see this being smaller along with less games in general (which is not a bad thing) as some great games can get lost in the whirlwind, DLC and episodic content along with Premium Packs will continue to grow for sure!
I can't agree with that. In the end I just see them as games, some AAA games I spend a few afternoons with them before throwing them aside (Tomb Raider, South Park), while others I spends weeks or months with them (Civ V, Dark Souls). Likewise with Indie games, some I spend a day with (Gone Home, Amnesia), while others I spend months with (KSP, Endless Space and Natural Selection 2). There's a whole lot of meat out there in regards to indie games, they're taking up the majority of my time right now.
And most of them look really uninteresting so far. This is just sad
Reminds me of early Hollywood:
"our films aren't making money, what do we do?"
"up the budget, that'll fix it!"
Well, this industry really wanted to follow Hollywood, right?
They sure are succeeding.
Right, there is definitely a ceiling raising effect on indie games currently.
The main question is how high that goes, and if that ceiling is high enough to cover basically anything of worth from the mid-tier.
Like, say, if ZeniMax decides to kill off The Evil Within due to poor financial status, can someone make high quality games like Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, or The Evil Within on an indie budget, or is that genre largely gone at that point (or reduced in quality/scope the the point it isn't really the same anymore).
Some of this seems like companies contracting Namcosis and having incredibly strange expectations when they have years of data available to tell them how many copies a certain type of game will sell. When you see companies disappointed with sales of games like Tomb Raider or BioShock Infinite, I wonder what the hell the publishers thought these games offered that would make them sell like games that feature a lot more content.
gundamkyoukai
Member
With things like kickstart and better tech it going to be even harder to tell what the ceiling is.
That is not taking account big size companies making download only games which going up the ceiling also .
Totally agree with this. Indie games have been pigeonholed into something they're not anymore. I get just as excited at seeing an interesting new indie game as I do a AAA one, the line between them is basically nonexistent.
I think the issue is more that they're all public companies and thus have a mission to grow, have to handle opportunity cost (making a $50 million game that makes $500 million is better than a $30 million game that makes $150 million if you're using the same staff), and are concerned about certain games becoming unprofitable due to rising standards combined with the lowering sales of non-mega-blockbusters at retail.
As such, they try to take what they have and make it bigger in order keep going.
It did kind of work for Tomb Raider. They eventually made a profit, shipped 6 million copies, and revived a brand that was largely a 1-2 million mostly dead affair.
The success stories are what drive the rest of the attempts.
Yes it's not implausible that someone could make one as a digital title.
However, our best examples of this current (Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Call of Juarez: Gunslinger) unfortunately kind of require the base game existing for the digital game to.
That said, there are at least three companies that have something in this genre already that they can harvest assets from.
That1BlackGuy
Member
Not really surprising, as I've often said this generation would be a continuation of last generation, development trends demonstrably so. Concerning mid-tier development, as Nirolak posted earlier a lot of those mentioned titles wouldn't fall into indie territory IMO, especially for someone like myself who owns a majority of mid-tier games. Indies, at least conceptually, are the new mid-tier games without actually being mid-tier in terms of development/perception. Note that I am not intentionally excluding downloadable titles like Double Dragon Neon and Strider HD and comparatively smaller budgeted boxed retail games like Yaiba, Lightning Returns, SudaGames, etc. I'm" more so saying that these games are much smaller in release volume compared to smaller budgeted Indies so Indies take more mindshare.
As much as I would like to see a resurgence of that market in the home console space, the media and consumer expectations forced them out of the market over the past decade. Most of the mid-tier developers who weren't destroyed moved to and flourished on PC and/or Portable Consoles where those consumers are more conditioned to diverse video games in terms of development and design experiences.
As far as cheaper means of development, I'm" surprised the Industry hasn't addressed this, especially for a hobby that's supposedly so socially connected. Many Industries have enthusiast/community driven hubs where people produce content for free and share them (think something akin to Mozilla Firefox or Wikipedia) and are largely ran off of donations. To my knowledge, game development has no similar platform. Talking something such as free coding, an asset pool, tutorials and educational courses, etc. all delivered through a community driven platform.
As much as I would like to see a resurgence of that market in the home console space, the media and consumer expectations forced them out of the market over the past decade. Most of the mid-tier developers who weren't destroyed moved to and flourished on PC and/or Portable Consoles where those consumers are more conditioned to diverse video games in terms of development and design experiences.
As far as cheaper means of development, I'm" surprised the Industry hasn't addressed this, especially for a hobby that's supposedly so socially connected. Many Industries have enthusiast/community driven hubs where people produce content for free and share them (think something akin to Mozilla Firefox or Wikipedia) and are largely ran off of donations. To my knowledge, game development has no similar platform. Talking something such as free coding, an asset pool, tutorials and educational courses, etc. all delivered through a community driven platform.
prag16
Banned
Hell, we were sometimes even told budgets could actually DECREASE due to improved tools, and more straightforward architectures. (I guess in reality those factors may just be preventing budgets from increasing even more.)
Good times.
Now that I think of it - you don't have to wait until Evil Within to see if Bethesda has reasonable expectations for single player games that are not Elder Scrolls or Fallout. We'll get to see what their reaction is to Wolfenstein sales well before then. If I turns out good I'll definitely buy it... but i don't think there are another ten million people with the same idea.
Barry Burton
Member
Less AAA is most definitely a good thing. Give me more games that take a few risks.
Some would argue that Outlast at $20 is one of the better horror games to come out in years particularly because it didn't have to compromise its goals to reach a wider audience.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
Studios might go bankrupt before their flop even sees release, maybe even before it's announced, and we'll have no idea what happened.
Could you explain how you arrived at that number?
ArkhamFantasy
Member
I read a interview from guerrilla games that ps4 budgets wouldn't be much more than ps3. Was that just a 1st party developer protecting their console?
McHuj
Member
The answer is probably it depends. I bet the costs for the company make AAA game that maximizes the hardware to the fullest potential with the highest caliber of assets is much more than last gen.
But I also bet for a developer making a smaller game, the development costs aren't that much more than last gen. You could probably use the same assets as last gen and throw your extra processing capability at framerate and IQ.
If anything both next-gen consoles are very similar and basically PC's, so it's almost like developing for one platform instead of having to deal with PC and the two different console architectures.
not at all. There are, and there will be, tons and tons of indie games anyway.
Some may not be the "mid tier games" someone is asking for but personally I don't care. There are 4-5 AAA games per year at most that interest me anyway, nowadays.
So personally I see this a good thing, more focus on creativity.
SpinningBirdKick
Banned
If Sweeney is whining about his engine business contracting now, then he must be having night terrors about how dire things will be for him when (if?) PS5/XBtwo will be released.
Losing another two thirds of his high end business won't be something he will be looking forward to at all. Indies won't take up the slack and suddenly start using high end engines either, the costs are too great.
Epic and other companies selling the picks and shovels to AAA development teams on a per title basis are like the dinosaurs roaming the earth after the asteroid strike, they're dead men walking. Of course, they know this...
Losing another two thirds of his high end business won't be something he will be looking forward to at all. Indies won't take up the slack and suddenly start using high end engines either, the costs are too great.
Epic and other companies selling the picks and shovels to AAA development teams on a per title basis are like the dinosaurs roaming the earth after the asteroid strike, they're dead men walking. Of course, they know this...
That's a question you would have to ask Hitoshi Yamagami; it's his figure.
*Hitoshi Yamagami is a Nintendo producer who oversees the development of RPGs.*
Riposte
Member
The situation is of extremes, which is a good thing for a clever, ambitious, and talented developer you can overcome the demands for a bigger reward. It's a rare thing, but the best games yet made will make the wait worthwhile.
Sounds very petty. What should people do? Lower their standards and consume worse games with a smile, perhaps? Why do you relish in this? Does it make you look good for having a taste for cheapness others failed to developed or something?
Being miserable that fewer games appeal to you is also petty; there's a life outside videogames and videogames outside the current generation. If you've somehow managed to extinguish the latter, you likely haven't gone many places with the former.
I can't really relate to this predicament. In addition to my disappointment in individual games being very tempered, my taste is broad to the point I find many games in the so-called "extinct" mid tier even now. I'm also pretty blind to "indie" vs. "AAA" brand war and have no problem playing "dudebro" games. Not to say I don't lament the shrinking of many markets and developers, but nothing make me bitter.
Sounds very petty. What should people do? Lower their standards and consume worse games with a smile, perhaps? Why do you relish in this? Does it make you look good for having a taste for cheapness others failed to developed or something?
Being miserable that fewer games appeal to you is also petty; there's a life outside videogames and videogames outside the current generation. If you've somehow managed to extinguish the latter, you likely haven't gone many places with the former.
I can't really relate to this predicament. In addition to my disappointment in individual games being very tempered, my taste is broad to the point I find many games in the so-called "extinct" mid tier even now. I'm also pretty blind to "indie" vs. "AAA" brand war and have no problem playing "dudebro" games. Not to say I don't lament the shrinking of many markets and developers, but nothing make me bitter.
Is there any chance or even any way for devs/pubs to scale back projects to offset the increase in cost? For example, scale back in terms of certain things like graphics, shorter campaigns, fewer weapons/abilities/enemies/bosses/etc., smaller sandboxes for sandbox games, fewer cutscenes, fewer and less "epic" in-game cinematic events (Uncharted is the prime example for long and elaborate cinematic events), no celebrity voice actors, less use of mocap, either single-player or multiplayer focus instead of both, and so on. Or is this unacceptable for AAA-devs for various reasons?
I just don't think there's a need for games to be as expensive as they are without there being something that can be scaled down.
I just don't think there's a need for games to be as expensive as they are without there being something that can be scaled down.
IrishNinja
Member
sounds alright by me, this broken model (exacerbated by the one-size-fits-all pricing scheme) needs a shakeup and i'd like to reward more AA efforts.
what game is this? looks neat
What's the difference between a "traditional" mid-tier game and something like this?
I'm more than fine with less AAA games.
what game is this? looks neat
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
This doesn't bother me in the least. Actually with fewer games to rely on, I hope that means publishers and developers will focus on improving the quality of their games. Of course this also means that they'll be less willing to take risks, but that's where the smaller guys will pick up.
Forsaken82
Member
I think that depends on your idea of High Quality...
I personally think ANY type of game is doable on a small budget.
JordanN
Banned
The AAA situation was really dumb. There could have definitely been a market for AAA and b-tier if Publishers came together and made agreements rather than watch the fallout.
I also don't think graphics are at fault. A B-tier market could have taken advantage of pushing for the best image quality possible (i.e 1080p, AA, AF) and throw in some "gimmicky" next gen effects so it doesn't have to be regulated to looking like a PS2 game.
Well, I just hope Publishers come to their senses sooner and they create more games. That's all I want to see at the end of the day regardless of budget.
I also don't think graphics are at fault. A B-tier market could have taken advantage of pushing for the best image quality possible (i.e 1080p, AA, AF) and throw in some "gimmicky" next gen effects so it doesn't have to be regulated to looking like a PS2 game.
Well, I just hope Publishers come to their senses sooner and they create more games. That's all I want to see at the end of the day regardless of budget.