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[Roronoa Zoro]

Oh well then spend 1/3 of that and take more risks. I'm sure they'll still look great

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

No way.

The idea that the entire SP videogame industry got hit by some mismanagement ray gun simultaneously is fantasy.

If you believe that, then you have to believe all the managment talent magically warped into the DNA of multiplayer studios.

It's much more simple than that.

The SP games market became saturated years ago, and the bigger rats became rat kings by gobbling up all the smaller rats. The Live Service multiplayer market is still growing (and will for sometime) but the same occurence will happen there eventually too

The ceiling for the GaaS market is lower than for SP for a simple reason: those are games that need a full investment in time and will grow only by taking players off their competitors. In the mobile market this is very clear: every year some games EOS and new ones enter the market. The top dogs remain at the top unless someone shakes things up, like Mihoyo did in 2015 and more recently Shift-Up.

The competence/talent problem has been going on for at least six years, but it's now that it is making studios implode. Smaller scope SP, downsizing teams and hiring only by talent/merit is the short-term salvation.

 

[Crayon]

Recently I've been thinking about how this mission to make every game perfectly top shelf quality is causing more trouble for Sony than the gaas projects.

It is great when a seriously polished and massive production value game like gta or gt comes out, but they take a long ass time. And look at the expense. It's a double problem where it's costly and also slows output.

Their publishing is important to their success but it has to morph somehow. Those AAAA productions need to be assessed again and they need to get games that aren't small or mid-tier, but aaa's that aren't trying to be fucking Lawrence of Arabia or Titanic. Stellar blade is an interesting pick for a partnership because it fits that bill, but Sony could be diverting some talent to make an action or arpg game that doesn't break the bank or take 5 years. Less money and time for somewhat smaller audiences. Or yes, more gaas like helldivers because something in the stable should be making money. The horror.

 

[bitbydeath]

Baldur's Gate 3 budget including marketing must have been beyond $100M and isn't the biggest game of this generation.

What would you consider to be bigger?

Keep in mind it’s a 150+ hour game, has 248 actors who were all motion captured, more than 170 hours of cinematics, over 450,000 lines of dialogue, and 17,000 endings.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

It didn't become saturated the way you're thinking though. So many AAA SP games bloated in content size, it became increasingly harder for even many hardcore & core gamers to finish them in a reasonable amount of time. That's why backlogs grew so much over the past few years.

The SP AAA industry does not care whether you finish their games. They care whether you buy their game. That's an unhealthy incentive structure.

And, because backlogs grew, it seems like more gamers decided it's not worth buying everything at launch if you won't have the time to actually play the game and feel like you get your money's worth. But a lot of publishers seem to be reading that the wrong way and think their games need MORE hours of content and that way people will buy more of them.

Games are longer today because few people want to spend money on a game they believe will only last them a weekend. They want to invest in games they think will give them 80 hours of content. Again, the purchase point is the finish line, not engagement.

Also, if backlogs hurt the industry like you suggest, wouldn't we see a noticable flattening or dip as soon as gamers had access to digital libraries? I suspect we did not.

They do that, then it means budgets increase, team sizes and outsourcing has to increase, to create the needed content. And the problem just keeps compounding unto itself.

Exactly. Market stagnates. Big games eat small games lunch because the market only supports X number of dollars per year. Bigger games w/ big IP bully the new IP out of the market. We're in the brown age of AAA SP with no end in sight. Maybe AI fixes that?

The ceiling for the GaaS market is lower than for SP for a simple reason: those are games that need a full investment in time and will grow only by taking players off their competitors. In the mobile market this is very clear: every year some games EOS and new ones enter the market. The top dogs remain at the top unless someone shakes things up, like Mihoyo did in 2015 and more recently Shift-Up.

The GAAS market is the only market still growing in the core gaming space. Your hypothesis has always been correct but doesn't address why the GAAS market continues to grow and grow. It's getting deeper (See Fortnites continued growth) but also wider (See # of recent GAAS hits).

 

[Physiognomonics]

"We, publishers, want more profits. Millions are not enough, we want billions. Please reduce creativity in your games".

 

[platina]

Nah, fuck them, i don't care anymore. I'm tired of their constant crying.

- Their fault trying to cater to everyone because they want to sell to 3 billion people.
- Their fault paying their CEOs half the budget of a game.
- Their fault hiring celebrities and expensive voice and sound actors, bloating the budget even further.
- Their fault hiring useless people and activists who don't produce anything.
- Their fault attacking their main audience specifically when everything fails.

These studios want everything while breaking every marketing and math rule there is.

So collapse already. This way more smaller studios can be born from your ashes as they trim the fat by keeping only the useful and talented people.

This dammit!! What was even the budget for Metroid prime, super smash bros melee, silent hill 2, original resident evil 2, resident evil remake?? Almost certainly not over 100 million back then, their teams also consisted of like 50-100 people as well. I’m fine with AA games like this that don’t push fucking agendas!

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Fire all the wokies and other dead weight, bring everyone back to the office, start setting budgets that matter, and maybe try to spend less and make games with less scale but more actual fun instead of the same open world shit over and over

 

[Killer8]

Been saying this for ages. Half the people in the thread think it's wokeness that's ruining games but it's really the over-inflated budgets and huge development cycles that is stifling creativity. These companies cannot risk a flop and so play it ridiculously safe by chasing trends, doing copy paste open world design, making their game "a mix of X, Y and Z", instead of trying to come up with something truly new. We need to go back to the PS2 days of guerrilla game development. Smaller teams, less money at stake but more wild ideas.

 

[kyussman]

Funny how the rise of woke policies has gone along with the rise of game budgets.......proabably just a coincidence,lol.

 

[Woopah]

Sony has produced a number of new single player IP (not AAA) for the PS5. They've all been wet farts.

Their first GAAS title has taken them to the moon.

It's important to note, studios only go in one direction and that direction is always towards Live Service multiplayer, never towards SP.

If you've historically made SP games, you're now making SP + MP.

If you've historically made both, you're pushing more towards MP.

If you've only made MP, you're still only making MP.

The opposite direction doesn't happen.

Riot Games was a multiplayer focused company that has started diversifying into single games.

For Sony, Returnal did decently and we'll have to see how well Ronin and Stellar Blade do. We'll see most of the single player new IP published by Sony come from external or new partners, since current studios mostly already have successful single player IP to support.

It's a similar story with Nintendo.

 

[Laptop1991]

If they release games that gamer's want to buy and play, ie TES 6/Fallout, a new Bisohock, etc, they might get more sales to help with the rising costs, i haven't wanted to buy and play most of what's been released in the AAA market in recent years, you never know it might work

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Funny how the rise of woke policies has gone along with the rise of game budgets.......proabably just a coincidence,lol.

Well I mean look at the payrolls of big tech companies, you have a lot of payroll inflation when you need to pay the entire DEI Industrial Complex, there's DEI officers, DEI compliance department, all the DEI hires who do nothing but complain and attend basket weaving groups all day, the DEI consultancies like Sweet Baby Inc.

There is an enormous amount of grift that comes with fully embracing all the DEI shit which is why budgets are ballooning, payroll has long been the single biggest expense of any company because it's not just paying employees, it's paying for all their benefits, it's paying for infrastructure to let them pretend to work from home, there's enormous cost overhead with being all-in on DEI and nobody associated with DEI is an actual productive employee contributing to positive company revenue and profit

 

[Deerock71]

If games start costing 300 million to make and have to constantly suckle on the microtransaction tit on TOP of costing 80-100 for the base game...

 

[DrFigs]

Riot Games was a multiplayer focused company that has started diversifying into single games.

For Sony, Returnal did decently and we'll have to see how well Ronin and Stellar Blade do. We'll see most of the single player new IP published by Sony come from external or new partners, since current studios mostly already have successful single player IP to support.

It's a similar story with Nintendo.

Returnal probably made its money back, but its sales are not particularly good. same w/ ratchet and clank, sackboy, demons souls. People complain about their 200 mil dollar games, but guess which of sony's games in the past 5 years have sold 8 mil + copies.

 

[Woopah]

Returnal probably made its money back, but its sales are not particularly good. same w/ ratchet and clank, sackboy, demons souls. People complain about their 200 mil dollar games, but guess which of sony's games in the past 5 years have sold 8 mil + copies.

New IP are riskier than existing franchises, I agree with that.

I was just pointing out that, if you are to look at the mixture of new and existing IP coming out of Sony, the main factor driving each studio's work is whether they already manage an existing franchise or not.

 

[The Fuzz damn you!]

Spiderman 2 hasn't even been out a year. It seems the problem is these companies want an immediate RoI and profit within a release window. While new games probably have front loaded sales, they can make money well after their initial release date and then there are streaming rights or service based revenue for putting on gamepass or psn.

Stop preaching to your core demographic;
Stop acting like you hate them;
Stop making games longer and bigger - your players don't want this;
Stop developing games you think will work, and develop games the market wants;

There's a massive disconnect here. We want to make what we want, and take the risk people might not like it. As opposed to we will make what the market wants and it will sell well.

It reminds me of the last few years before the PS4 and XB1 where a lot of games became stale because they all felt like reskins. We're back here now imo.

This, back on the first page, with all the reacts and the quotes…

This is the fucking problem.

All of this translates to “make games that are safe and predictable.” Conduct market research. Interview focus groups. Chase the trends and the demographics. Make games that gamers say they want.

Great games are made when devs make what they think will be fun to play, not what we think we want. The problem is, great failures are made that way too. So, budgets need to decrease so that the failures don’t bankrupt the studio. But you want big-budget games as well, and they need to sell 20 million+ to justify their existence, which means they need to appeal to 20 million+ people, not just the members of an obscure forum at the arse-end of the internet.

If the solution were as simple as is being suggested here, it would have been done already.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Riot Games was a multiplayer focused company that has started diversifying into single games.

Riot Forge was their SP branch and was recently shuttered. Their SP efforts have been indie scale, and not particularly successful.

Their tentpole games all have MP. An ARPG, a fighter, and an MMO to go along with Valorant and League.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

If the solution were as simple as is being suggested here, it would have been done already.

Bingo.

Not only that, but its constantly being done to very little success. The indie and AA landscape spans the globe. Those groups aren't pumping out hits. Gamers say they want that stuff but their wallets say differently.

 

[Ribi]

Meanwhile star citizen:

"Game is too ambitious! Omg feature creep! What a scam lmao no game could ever cost that much!"

Meanwhile spiderm 2 costs 300 mil and they even reused the entire city for 1.


Gamers really are fucking scared of games with ambition. It's best to only release ambitious title trailers the same year the game comes out

 

[Woopah]

Riot Forge was their SP branch and was recently shuttered. Their SP efforts have been indie scale, and not particularly successful.

Their tentpole games all have MP. An ARPG, a fighter, and an MMO to go along with Valorant and League.

But they still moved towards SP. Just like how Sony is moving more towards MP, but their tentpole games still all have SP.

Either way, my main point still stands that SP vs. GAAS is not the main driver for Sony published ganes when it comes to existing IP or new IP.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

But they still moved towards SP. Just like how Sony is moving more towards MP, but their tentpole games still all have SP.

I think the larger trend still holds. The industry is overwhelmingly moving towards multiplayer.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

GaaS won't take over completely. It's in addition to AAA, to create revenue for continued funding of said AAA production and to keep people playing within their ecosystem in between AAA releases.

Why are some people still obtuse to everything Sony said?

Are we going to pretend like Sony's most accomplished studio, Naughty Dog, didn't just waste two years worth of development time and resources on a GAAS project that will never see the light of day?

 

[M1chl]

So umm, what is the marketing budget, because that gets conveniently obscured, so they can manufacture consent for rising the prices.

 

[Woopah]

I think the larger trend still holds. The industry is overwhelmingly moving towards multiplayer.

Yes I would agree with that. GAAS is the current trend publishers see as a new monetization method to offset rapidly rising costs.

Sony will add that to their portfolio in addition to the single player ganes. Then they'll focus their new IP publishing efforts on studios that don't already have big successful franchises (regardless of whether they are single player or GAAS).

 

[{insert code here}]

videogame execs making up excuses for their incompetence is quite a sight. How about removing all the dead weight (staff) not related to videogame production? How about not making so many lame open worlds? How about working out a cost-efficient marketing campaign? (See Palworld example). How about rewarding innovation instead of following trends?

All this without mentioning the blue-haired elephants in the room.

People like this can't get out of business soon enough.

DEI has integrated these folks into the American corporate hierarchy and as long as the system is stable they will probably remain embedded in it. I don't want the system to burn into the ground but it's in dire need of a purge of great depression era magnitude.

All the smart, competent folks sitting this out are hopefully ready, with cash, to scoop up worthy assets for pennies on the dollar when this thing comes crashing down so we can rebuild into something better than we were given.

 

[Majima Everywhere System]

The challenge is they will find a way to upset a vocal fan base. Safe IPs aren’t very safe anymore (seems like Diablo Mobile was more successful than D4). They need to abandon the model.

After FFVII part 3.

 

[Guilty_AI]

The indie and AA landscape spans the globe. Those groups aren't pumping out hits. Gamers say they want that stuff but their wallets say differently.

Not my wallet.

The reason indie and AA games work better is because they're lower risk, they don't need to sell insane amount of copies to recoup costs. As such they're free to pursue niches and work with smaller, more tightly connected teams.

A big GAAS still holds a lot of risks, they aren't really any safer of a bet than AAA single player games. In fact, getting a hit that will produce huge profits for years to come is extremely hard to achieve. By the same token, smaller scale GAAS have bigger chances of success, but just like AA and indies they aren't gonna bring in huge bucks either, at least most of the time, just like AA and indies.

Even success cases like Helldivers 2 you always bring up can only be called successful because they relied on traditional monetization models to profit, rather than the type of monetization GAAS normally employs. They sold and made money in no different ways than similar hits like BG3, Palworld or Elden Ring.

The real trend here you're not seeing isn't GAAS. Nor multiplayer focus. Its PvE, games that can be enjoyed both alone or alongside other people, usually without the need of huge time or mental investments from the player's part.

 

[onnextflix5]

If gamers were not obsessed about the open world games, maybe we would have far more healthy gaming business, another big problem there are no rules or regulations, which means gaming is turning into a gambling casino.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

The reason indie and AA games work better is because they're lower risk, they don't need to sell insane amount of copies to recoup costs.

They're generally a worse bet. If they were a better bet, big publishers would have a ton of smaller studios and pump out waves of indie & AA size titles. They've all learned the best bet is huge budget + big IP will give you the most return in the SP space.

A big GAAS still holds a lot of risks, they aren't really any safer of a bet than AAA single player games. In fact, getting a hit that will produce huge profits for years to come is extremely hard to achieve.

The industries biggest players disagree. Traditional SP AAA is only a safer bet if your goal is (diminishing) profitability. If your goal is growth, the safer bet is GAAS, which is why we see everyone go in that direction.

Even success cases like Helldivers 2 you always bring up can only be called successful because they relied on traditional monetization models to profit, rather than the type of monetization GAAS normally employs. They sold and made money in no different ways than similar hits like BG3, Palworld or Elden Ring.

GAAS doesn't denote entry point. GAAS denotes developer support post launch / post purchase.

P2P, F2P, and subscription can all be classified under GAAS. Each have their advantages and disadvantages

The real trend here you're not seeing isn't GAAS. Nor multiplayer focus. Its PvE, games that can be enjoyed both alone or alongside other people, usually without the need of huge time or mental investments from the player's part.

I could be convinced that PvE GAAS are a safer, though lower upside, bet. PvP is where the Super Carriers are though.

 

[kiphalfton]

Not every game has to be open world, have celeb face scans, and/or have troy baker in it.

All of which are awful in my opinion.

 

[T-0800]

Teams are too big. The more people you have the more time wasted. 5 people can't change a light bulb quicker than 1.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

So more remakes, remasters and sequels then? The future of AAA looks so bright. These companies need to cut down on nothing but high budget AAA games, gigantic bloated 100 hour open worlds, top tier voice actors, etc and focus on smaller, more structured AA gaming experiences as well imo. Doesn’t the Unreal Engine 5 suppose to help cut down on development costs as well?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

So more remakes, remasters and sequels then? The future of AAA looks so bright. These companies need to cut down on nothing but high budget AAA games, gigantic 100 hour open worlds, top tier voice actors, etc and focus on smaller, more structured AA gaming experiences as well imo. Doesn’t the Unreal Engine 5 suppose to help cut down on development costs as well?

Think of AAA as a stage of development rather than a set genre. The growth of the industry needed to progress in this direction. AAA served its purpose.

 

[Guilty_AI]

They're generally a worse bet. If they were a better bet, big publishers would have a ton of smaller studios and pump out waves of indie & AA size titles.

They are:

Bandai Namco Entertainment Published Games - Giant Bomb

An arcade and video game producer, part of the Namco Bandai Holdings group.

www.giantbomb.com

Square Enix Published Games - Giant Bomb

A Japanese video game company that is best known for the development of role-playing games. It is the result of a merger between two separate video game companies, Square and Enix. Its subsidiaries include Taito and Eidos.

www.giantbomb.com

Nintendo Published Games - Giant Bomb

Nintendo was founded in Kyoto, Japan in 1889 as a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards. The company went through several small niche businesses before becoming a video game company.

www.giantbomb.com

Sega Published Games - Giant Bomb

Sega is a long-running Japanese company responsible for arcade hits like Space Harrier, home consoles like the Dreamcast, and franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog.

www.giantbomb.com

Mores specifically, they try their hands at GAAS while also investing on smaller games. Notice that the ones more desperate to cut into the GAAS market, like Sony or Warner bros, are the ones that actually don't have a huge portfolio of mid-to-smaller games to show.

WB Games Published Games - Giant Bomb

WB Interactive Entertainment is the video game publishing arm of Warner Brothers.

www.giantbomb.com

Sony Interactive Entertainment America Published Games - Giant Bomb

Sony Interactive Entertainment America is the North American subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. SIEA is responsible for publishing and marketing Sony's hardware and software in that region.

www.giantbomb.com

The industries biggest players disagree. Traditional SP AAA is only a safer bet if your goal is (diminishing) profitability. If your goal is growth, the safer bet is GAAS, which is why we see everyone go in that direction.

Growth and constant revenue is the greatest advantage, but it's also the biggest hurdle. Keeping players engaged with your game is an immense obstacle, even more so paying players.

GAAS doesn't denote entry point. GAAS denotes developer support post launch / post purchase.

Thats a terrible definition for modern standards. Even BG3 is on its sixth patch and receiving endings and content, did so for years before its "release" last year too. Elden Ring will also be releasing an expansion soon enough.

I could be convinced that PvE GAAS are a safer, though lower upside, bet. PvP is where the Super Carriers are though.

How many proper PvPs were successful in recent times? As in 2020 onwards. It's probably the worst investment you can make if you want a slice of the GAAS market.

 

[yurinka]

What would you consider to be bigger?

Keep in mind it’s a 150+ hour game, has 248 actors who were all motion captured, more than 170 hours of cinematics, over 450,000 lines of dialogue, and 17,000 endings.

I meant both in sales and length, but I was mostly thinking in sales.

If it really had all these actors, cinematics, endings and dialogue make sure that didn't cost $100M at all, but way more. They mean a shit ton of work and people involved. Not only to develop them but also to manage, test, fix them and combine with everything else making sure it makes sense.

 

[Eiknarf]

So if AAA games are gonna be a thing of the past, would it make sense to spend $600 on a PS6/XBOX 6?

 

[bitbydeath]

I meant both in sales and length, but I was mostly thinking in sales.

If it really had all these actors, cinematics, endings and dialogue make sure that didn't cost $100M at all, but way more. They mean a shit ton of work and people involved. Not only to develop them but also to manage, test, fix them and combine with everything else making sure it makes sense.

I just meant from a scope perspective, GTAVI may top it but no other game deserves to be costing more than it, most others should even come out cheaper, Elden Ring included.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

They are:

Bandai Namco Entertainment Published Games - Giant Bomb

An arcade and video game producer, part of the Namco Bandai Holdings group.

www.giantbomb.com

Square Enix Published Games - Giant Bomb

A Japanese video game company that is best known for the development of role-playing games. It is the result of a merger between two separate video game companies, Square and Enix. Its subsidiaries include Taito and Eidos.

www.giantbomb.com

Nintendo Published Games - Giant Bomb

Nintendo was founded in Kyoto, Japan in 1889 as a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards. The company went through several small niche businesses before becoming a video game company.

www.giantbomb.com

Sega Published Games - Giant Bomb

Sega is a long-running Japanese company responsible for arcade hits like Space Harrier, home consoles like the Dreamcast, and franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog.

www.giantbomb.com

All of these studios you listed get an outsized proportion of their revenue and profit from their AAA SP efforts. That's what the OP is about. You suggested that indie and AA sized titles "worked better" when we know that isn't the case.

Mores specifically, they try their hands at GAAS while also investing on smaller games. Notice that the ones more desperate to cut into the GAAS market, like Sony or Warner bros, are the ones that actually don't have a huge portfolio of mid-to-smaller games to show.

They don't have "mid to smaller" games because those types of games don't work in the modern market. Hence the OP and the topic we're discussing. We're in the AAA or GAAS era now.

WB Games Published Games - Giant Bomb

WB Interactive Entertainment is the video game publishing arm of Warner Brothers.

www.giantbomb.com

Sony Interactive Entertainment America Published Games - Giant Bomb

Sony Interactive Entertainment America is the North American subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. SIEA is responsible for publishing and marketing Sony's hardware and software in that region.

www.giantbomb.com

Growth and constant revenue is the greatest advantage, but it's also the biggest hurdle. Keeping players engaged with your game is an immense obstacle, even more so paying players.

Growth and progress is, by definition, more difficult. The biggest players in the industry are now spending a massive amount of resources on GAAS because they think the increased difficulty will yield results

"Fortune favors the bold."

Thats a terrible definition for modern standards. Even BG3 is on its sixth patch and receiving endings and content, did so for years before its "release" last year too. Elden Ring will also be releasing an expansion soon enough.

I'm not interesting in debating definitions of what GAAS means. Everyone knows what we're talking about here. No one considers BG3 or Elden Ring to be GAAS. Let's not be silly.

How many proper PvPs were successful in recent times? As in 2020 onwards. It's probably the worst investment you can make if you want a slice of the GAAS market.

Let's increase the resolution a bit shall we? How many quality "Heroes Journey" PvP GAAS games have released since 2020? That's the Eureka moment. Get ready for Concord though, lol.

 

[Guilty_AI]

All of these studios you listed get an outsized proportion of their revenue and profit from their AAA SP efforts. That's what the OP is about. You suggested that indie and AA sized titles "worked better" when we know that isn't the case.

I mean they're more consistent. AAA SP brings more money, but, as OP says, they're riskier. Having a bigger portfolio of smaller titles to fall back on is a huge advantage. Not to mention some of them can turn into unexpected hits.

They don't have "mid to smaller" games because those types of games don't work in the modern market. Hence the OP and the topic we're discussing. We're in the AAA or GAAS era now.

They work perfectly well on the modern market. There are tons of successful AA and indie games we could keep listing and throwing around here.

Growth and progress is, by definition, more difficult. The biggest players in the industry are now spending a massive amount of resources on GAAS because they think the increased difficulty will yield results

"Fortune favors the bold."

And now they're laying off a whole bunch of workers and cancelling projects left and right. Very brave and stunning.

I'm not interesting in debating definitions of what GAAS means. Everyone knows what we're talking about here. No one considers BG3 or Elden Ring to be GAAS. Let's not be silly.

Considering you were confused calling Lethal Company and Palworld GAAS, i think it's very much worth bringing up. The digital market allows for constant updates, its not a feature of GAAS, its something people expect from pretty much every game nowadays. You can't get by using just that as definition.

For example, is Granblue Fantasy Relink GAAS? It has PvE, MTXs and roadmaps but its treated as a single player game as it can be played entirely solo and offline. Is the Last Epoch GAAS? It also has PvE, MTX as well as a roadmap, can be played solo and offline too, but this one gets treated like GAAS for some reason.

Let's increase the resolution a bit shall we? How many quality "Heroes Journey" PvP GAAS games have released since 2020? That's the Eureka moment. Get ready for Concord though, lol.

Instead of imaginary games, you should start looking at released ones. And even if Concord turns out to be some huge hit, it'd be just the 3rd one in 4 years of new PvP successes, with still no guarantee of a long life.

 

[yurinka]

I just meant from a scope perspective, GTAVI may top it but no other game deserves to be costing more than it, most others should even come out cheaper, Elden Ring included.

Some data from Mobygames about the amount of people in their game credits, plus the amount of years under development of them for some known ones:

• Diablo IV 9,169 people (>6 years)
• Far Cry 6 7,156 people
• Skull & Bones 6,865 people (11 years)
• Fortnite (may miss post launch staff) 5,783 people
• Starfield 4,037 people (>7 years)
• Spider-Man 2 3,816 people (5 years, $315M)
• Horizon Forbidden West 3,446 people (4 years, $212 budget)
• GTAV (from 360 version, misses post-launch GTAOnline staff and next gen ports) 3,770 people
• Baldur's Gate 3 2,944 people (6 years)
• TLOU 2 2,335 people (6 years, $220M budget)
• Elden Ring 1,668 people (4-5 years)

Make sure several games have been way more expensive to be made than BG3. Extrapolating these numbers I'd say BG3 had a budget of aprox. around the $180-250M range.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I mean they're more consistent. AAA SP brings more money, but, as OP says, they're riskier. Having a bigger portfolio of smaller titles to fall back on is a huge advantage. Not to mention some of them can turn into unexpected hits.

You think indie and AA are more "consistent"? Consistently flopping you mean right?

Again, the reason the biggest publishers don't consist of dozens of small - mid size teams is because it doesn't work. It's been AAA or nothing for a while now.

They work perfectly well on the modern market. There are tons of successful AA and indie games we could keep listing and throwing around here.

Relative to big IP AAA SP, they do not work well. Not even close.

And now they're laying off a whole bunch of workers and cancelling projects left and right. Very brave and stunning.

Meh.

Considering you were confused calling Lethal Company and Palworld GAAS, i think it's very much worth bringing up. The digital market allows for constant updates, its not a feature of GAAS, its something people expect from pretty much every game nowadays. You can't get by using just that as definition.

Again, silly.

For example, is Granblue Fantasy Relink GAAS? It has PvE, MTXs and roadmaps but its treated as a single player game as it can be played entirely solo and offline. Is the Last Epoch GAAS? It also has PvE, MTX as well as a roadmap, can be played solo and offline too, but this one gets treated like GAAS for some reason.

One thing we know for sure, PlayStation views Helldivers 2 as GAAS / Live Service.

Instead of imaginary games, you should start looking at released ones. And even if Concord turns out to be some huge hit, it'd be just the 3rd one in 4 years of new PvP successes, with still no guarantee of a long life.

You're a long way from believing GAAS is "lightning in a bottle". This is progress my young padawan.

 

[bitbydeath]

Some data from Mobygames about the amount of people in their game credits, plus the amount of years under development of them for some known ones:

• Diablo IV 9,169 people (>6 years)
• Far Cry 6 7,156 people
• Skull & Bones 6,865 people (11 years)
• Fortnite (may miss post launch staff) 5,783 people
• Starfield 4,037 people (>7 years)
• Spider-Man 2 3,816 people (5 years, $315M)
• Horizon Forbidden West 3,446 people (4 years, $212 budget)
• GTAV (from 360 version, misses post-launch GTAOnline staff and next gen ports) 3,770 people
• Baldur's Gate 3 2,944 people (6 years)
• TLOU 2 2,335 people (6 years, $220M budget)
• Elden Ring 1,668 people (4-5 years)

Make sure several games have been way more expensive to be made than BG3. Extrapolating these numbers I'd say BG3 had a budget of aprox. around the $180-250M range.

We don’t need to guess, the budget was a confirmed $100M.

Baldur's Gate 3's budget was $100 million, compared to Pillars of Eternity 2's $4.4 million.​

Josh Sawyer Would Make Pillars of Eternity 3 If Given a Baldur's Gate 3-Sized Budget - IGN

Obsidian Entertainment's studio design director Josh Sawyer said he would love to make Pillars of Eternity 3 if he was given the same budget as Baldur's Gate 3.

www.ign.com

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Are we going to pretend like Sony's most accomplished studio, Naughty Dog, didn't just waste two years worth of development time and resources on a GAAS project that will never see the light of day?

Yeah, it's the end of the world.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

When the average purple haired woke activist today requires therapy, knitting classes, safe spaces at work, free food, massages and DEI consultancy seminars taking up more than half their working day, then yeah development costs will balloon.

Even the biggest AAA games today should not cost $300m to make. That's obscene. Last gen, the biggest games were $150m and they were made with cgi-level base assets that were authored down to the LOD level models in the shipping product.

There is no rational argument to me to suggest that the base asset quality needed to be any more complex today than last gen; rather the opposite should be true, with technologies like Nanite allowing devs to forgo the need to generate different LOD versions of the same base assets.

Equally, there is no coherent argument to be made for games needing to get any bigger than the biggest of last gen. Heck, the single biggest last gen game wasn't even from the PS4 gen... It was a PS3 game (GTAV).

So I think what we're seeing here is a result of the shift that COVID brought, together with the rise of extremely unproductive gen Z devs across the western gaming industry.

Well, Sony investing heavily in Chinese and South Korean dev houses seems like an increasingly smarter move today. I hope it really pays them dividends in terms of dev creativity and leaner budgets.

The apparent monopoly in gaming talent the western gaming sphere seemed to have since the PS360 days seems to have all but evaporated.

Long live the reign of our new eastern gaming auteur overlords.

 

[cormack12]

Great games are made when devs make what they think will be fun to play, not what we think we want. The problem is, great failures are made that way too. So, budgets need to decrease so that the failures don’t bankrupt the studio. But you want big-budget games as well, and they need to sell 20 million+ to justify their existence, which means they need to appeal to 20 million+ people, not just the members of an obscure forum at the arse-end of the internet.

Developers and publishers have more freedom than ever, and indies. Engines and startups are more accessible than ever - then why are they failing so hard?

There are only so many game archetypes that can be created. It's why a game like Helldivers can succeed while games like Back 4 Blood, Anacrusis and Earthfall fail.

Not understanding what your audience is looking for is why a studio can completely fuck up a game like Payday 3. And it's why established IPs are the vehicles for these changes, because they will sell anyway.

The rejection of how they implement these formula's is just easier in new games. It's just harder to detatch from your favourite/popular games because you will accept more superfluous crap to push through. But even established IPs are not immune, like Diablo.

At the moment most games are the same at their core, and there's only room for much of the same bullshit. There is no innovation so people will just play what resonates with them from an ip level, which is what we're seeing. Look at Gears and TLOU - let's make wider more open areas, duh, innovation, new style of gameplay etc.

 

[yurinka]

We don’t need to guess, the budget was a confirmed $100M.

Josh Sawyer Would Make Pillars of Eternity 3 If Given a Baldur's Gate 3-Sized Budget - IGN

Obsidian Entertainment's studio design director Josh Sawyer said he would love to make Pillars of Eternity 3 if he was given the same budget as Baldur's Gate 3.

www.ign.com

I don't know what the source is for the $100M number that IGN mentions. As far as I know Larian never shared the budget.

In the interview to tthe Obsidian design directtor they are quoting/copypasting, when asked which game he'd like to do if he wouldn't have budget or time limitations he says:

"I think if it truly was an unlimited budget, I think I would try Pillars 3 because I know what the budget was for Deadfire, which was not a whole lot and I have heard from multiple people what the budget was for Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m not gonna talk about numbers, but if I got that budget, sure, I’ll make Pillars 3."

I didn't find any Larian quote mentioning the budget, I only found the Owlcat Games CEO estimating it aprox. around $200M saying: "But, again, we can't invest, say, $200 million to make BG3 — we don't have that kind of money yet.". Something that matches my estimations.

 

[64bitmodels]

Sony is the beacon of hope

Sony's arguably the biggest example of this. Even Nintendo who reuses the dame IP from the 80s and 90s at least shakes up gameplay with each new installment.
Sony has been coasting off of similar playing sequels since the beginning of the ps5 Gen on top of having a super slow output too.

Go outside this forum and you'll see an overt prevailing sentiment across the gaming community- "PS5 has no games"

 

[64bitmodels]

Can’t wait to see our friends on the purple forum try to cope with AI saving the AAA games industry and all their favorite blue hair twitter accounts losing their jobs over it

You know AI would also rid Miyamoto, Kojima, Aonuma, Miyazaki, etc... of their jobs too right?

 

[64bitmodels]

So if AAA games are gonna be a thing of the past, would it make sense to spend $600 on a PS6/XBOX 6?

AA games also run better with a pro upgrade as does AAA. it's just that games will run at 4k120 like we were promised instead of 4k60