Support NeoGAF

[rtcn63]

Yeah that would be Dead Space 1, which surpassed RE4.

Dead Space had pretty basic combat and enemies. There was a reason you could beat the game using just the plasma cutter (and it was the preferred weapon too).

 

[Whitephantomzx]

I like how everyone saying this the reason we deserves loots box and shit and yet are not questioning the 60 million marketing budget and tacked on mp? Why in games are we always the ones footing the bill for company miss handel money and then not even pay there employees and then throw them in tax havens when a movie bombs we dont say ticket price needs to go up to compensate for there lack of budgeting.

 

[Monkeyball]

AAA is blowing itself up. Games are fun without crazy budgets too.

 

[Ridley327]

DS2's MP was pretty barebones. I wouldn't be surprised if a very small amount of that 60M went to MP. DS2 was constantly changing areas and every time they shifted locations they did it by flinging Issac there with a grandiose set piece. You can tell they spent a bunch of money on that campaign.

Looking back on it, it's basically what would happen if you gave something like The Thing to someone like Gore Verbinski: every dollar is right there for everyone to see, and boy, did they spend a lot of money.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

Publishers need to open studios in other areas of the country. You could cut your costs a ton by doing so. Running a studio in Texas or Georgia or Ohio would be so much cheaper.

 

[Primethius]

Graphics aren't the only reason game development is more expensive.

And I didn't claim they were. I just pointed to an obvious aspect that I would give up without a second thought.

 

[Audioboxer]

How does that happen?

Uncharted 2 had a ~15 hours high quality singleplayer campaign with some of the most impressive graphics and performance capture of its time + addition of a Multiplayer mode + a COOP mode + Naughty Dog size which is not small at all.

HOW DID DEAD SPACE 2 COST 40 MILLION MORE???

It makes no sense to me.

But then again, Tomb Raider 2013 budget was like the entire Uncharted trilogy... which seems so crazy for me too.

Your guesses are as good as mine considering there will have been assests and engine reuse from Dead Space 1.

 

[gamechanger87]

Can we stop with the 60$ bullshit, no complete games cost 60$ now, 4m for a multiplats game is just disappointing, that’s it.

People’s refusal to allow publishers to price games above $60 is one of the main drivers behind loot boxes and other things to try and drive AUSP up.

In pure dollar terms $60 today is cheaper than $60 10 years ago but gamers in genrenal throw a fit when they try and raise prices.

Seriously, how can a market bitch about publishers trying to raise game prices to match budgets that are increasing (purely through inflation, exclude all the hd asset work) and also bitch about publishers dropping in loot boxes and other monetization strategies to offset that.

I can’t figure out how people think this industry is supposed to survive when it’s customers don’t want them to make any money.

 

[Boombox On]

Hellblade is more visually impressive for the time of release and a comparable length and the dev said they only needed to sell 300k copies to break even iirc.

Dead Space 2, a pretty by the numbers sequel sold 4 million and wasn't able to break even. Something went wrong.

1) Hellblade was released 6 years after, which means 6 years of technological improvements, and significantly lower costs for an engine license.
2) Because of those technical differences, Hellblade was worked on by an order of magnitude fewer people than Dead Space 2 (I believe the number was 15 or so).
3) Ninja Theory is based in the UK, which has a significantly lower standard of living than San Francisco

Nothing "went wrong"

 

[Chezzymann]

Games need to stop focusing on cutting edge graphics and engines, maybe that would solve a lot of the problems in the industry. But I guess consumers want it so we're gonna have to deal with microtransactions and loot boxes to make these games profitable.

 

[Muffdraul]

That fucking sucks. I don't care what anyone says, Dead Space 1 was a masterpiece and Dead Space 2 was at least as good if not better. Pearls before swine.

 

[Alexander DeLarge]

The reason studios are there is because the talent pool is there. If you move your studio to the middle of nowhere you’ll get a lot less people to hire and even less willing to relocate.

That's true but it's becoming extremely clear that something about the Bay Area scene is incompatible with AAA game development if developing Dead Space, Battlefield and a Henig Star Wars game isn't self-sustainable. I've been an advocate for an exodus away from San Francisco for a long time and I'm more than willing to watch the Bay Area tech scene die if these are the budgets we can expect from a relatively unambitious title that would've cost a fraction elsewhere. Especially if they're going to implement scummy business practices and implement things like microtransactions and cutting content for the season pass to try and recoup bloated development and advertising costs.

Something has gotta give and they're out of their fucking minds if they think I'm going to buy loot boxes because they can't afford to operate otherwise.

 

[David___]

Since Horizon hasn't even sold the gangbusters 4 million copies (and it is gangbusters) does that mean Horizon likely wasn't profitable?

Anyhow, not being profitable at 4 million is fucking ludicrous.

Can't really compare 1st party expectations with 3rd parties.

1st parties can use the game as marketing along with their console to show off what it can do + get people to buy into the ecosystem(digital downloads, ps+, etc)

3rd parties just have their game to sell to hopefully break even and make a profit

 

[NoPiece]

Publishers need to open studios in other areas of the country. You could cut your costs a ton by doing so. Running a studio in Texas or Georgia or Ohio would be so much cheaper.

Every publisher does this, and especially in other countries where hiring is subsidized, and even cheaper than Texas/Ohio/Georgia.

https://www.ea.com/about

 

[Nirolak]

I need to see some receipts. I can believe it costing more, but it seems like you arbitrarily chose a budget

I’ve had people who work in notable development roles at Sony tell me that $80 million is about the floor for getting a top shelf AAA game out the door these days.

I guess it’s not impossible that Guerrilla is notably under other high end studios, but it strikes me as improbable.

 

[Baraka Obama]

And this is why we see like a fraction of the AAA games that we used to see released.

The market's refusal to go above the $60 price tag killed games like this.

We literally had a game like this release a week ago. The bigger is the amount hands trying to get a piece of the pie and unnecessary features like the multiplayer that dead space 2 has.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

People’s refusal to allow publishers to price games above $60 is one of the main drivers behind loot boxes and other things to try and drive AUSP up.

In pure dollar terms $60 today is cheaper than $60 10 years ago but gamers in genrenal throw a fit when they try and raise prices.

Seriously, how can a market bitch about publishers trying to raise game prices to match budgets that are increasing (purely through inflation, exclude all the hd asset work) and also bitch about publishers dropping in loot boxes and other monetization strategies to offset that.

I can’t figure out how people think this industry is supposed to survive when it’s customers don’t want them to make any money.

EA, Activision, Ubisoft, and Take Two are richer than any third party publishers have ever been in the history of the industry, they would be this way with or without lootboxes. You can make an argument that the rising development costs works to their advantage because other publishers like Bethesda and Square Enix have a hard time competing with their AAA output. (hence the massive marketshare those 4 companies have).

And they do sell $100+ special editions of their games, and those have MTs and Lootboxes in them too.

 

[-shadow-]

Fatal Frame has a nice sugar daddy in the form of Nintendo, though with how the games progress, they can get away with repeating a lot of content and assets to help keep the costs way down. It's a completely different scale of economics compared to Dead Space. Hell, I wouldn't at all be shocked if all the Fatal Frame games combined wouldn't cover half the budget of Dead Space 2.

Even before Nintendo even stepped in. The original never sold well on either PS2 or Xbox, but 2 and 3 happened surprisingly quickly regardless and made some huge steps forwards. Different times I guess when publishers still could make these kinds of games on a small budget with the bare minimum of sales required. Hence the little nugget in the spoiler about it not being a comparable 'AAA' type series, which undoubtedly also helps the series. And I'm with you, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

 

[LordBaztion]

and I thought DS2 was the peak of the franchise.

 

[IKizzLE]

Game devs need to open offices in middle America to have more reasonable budgets.

The most talented developers don't want to live in middle america. If they were forced to move there, they would just go to the 100s of other companies looking for software developers.

 

[Nev]

Dead Space had pretty basic combat and enemies. There was a reason you could beat the game using just the plasma cutter (and it was the preferred weapon too).

And RE4 had an isle.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

That's true but it's becoming extremely clear that something about the Bay Area scene is incompatible with AAA game development if developing Dead Space, Battlefield and a Henig Star Wars game isn't self-sustainable. I've been an advocate for an exodus away from San Francisco for a long time and I'm more than willing to watch the Bay Area tech scene die if these are the budgets we can expect from a relatively unambitious title that would've cost a fraction elsewhere. Especially if they're going to implement scummy business practices and implement things like microtransactions and cutting content for the season pass to try and recoup bloated development and advertising costs.

Something has gotta give and they're out of their fucking minds if they think I'm going to buy loot boxes because they can't afford to operate otherwise.

To add to that, the talent is only there because the studios are there. There are plenty of talented indie developers who live in other parts of the country and are able to develop good products. There is nothing special about San Francisco that produces more artists and programmers than other places, there are talented artist, programmers, designers, etc. everywhere. They are only in San Francisco right now because they have to be there to find work.

 

[IKizzLE]

$150k/year sounds insane to me. But I neither live in the Bay Area or USA.

150k per person is super conservative in the bay area. I know developers making 125k on salary alone. Let's not even talk about overhead, equipment, health, benefits, etc.

 

[Syriel]

Rough estimate but...

4 years x 150k/year expenses per person x 100 people = $60M

EDIT: Just saw that it was 2.5 years of development, so maybe something more like...

2.5 years x 150k/year expenses per person x 160 people = $60M

...or maybe $150k/year expenses are me being conservative on dev costs. California real estate is expensive and artists/programmers have a lot of options there, so maybe salaries and overhead are more competitive and push it closer to $200k/year per person average costs.

The short answer is, $60M doesn't go very far when you're running a large operation.

$150k/yr for a programmer in the Bay Area is conservative, doubly so if you're talking about total comp.

Plus on top of comp you have hardware, resources, etc. Costs add up quickly.

 

[Tapejara]

I’ve had people who work in notable development roles at Sony tell me that $80 million is about the floor for getting a top shelf AAA game out the door these days.

I guess it’s not impossible that Guerrilla is notably under other high end studios, but it strikes me as improbable.

Horizon's also been in development since what, 2011? Six years development time for a AAA open world RPG (that's also a new IP) seems like it would cost significantly more than $47 million USD, especially when you factor in the time Guerrilla spent developing a new engine in parallel.

 

[LukasTaves]

So they made less than $15 per copy sold? Even allowing for a lot of copies being sold at a discount I thought it would be higher than that. Nevertheless, if this is a justification for trying to fleece consumers rather than address the industry's own bad practices it's a pretty weak one.

If the game doesn't sell right away at $60 that's actually quite possible. In retail the the margins for the publisher drops tremendously going down from $60.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

I’ve had people who work in notable development roles at Sony tell me that $80 million is about the floor for getting a top shelf AAA game out the door these days.

I guess it’s not impossible that Guerrilla is notably under other high end studios, but it strikes me as improbable.

It‘s important to note that this is a Dutch studio and I doubt they are nowhere near in the 150k range.

Horizon's also been in development since what, 2011? Six years development time for a AAA open world RPG (that's also a new IP) seems like it would cost significantly more than $47 million USD, especially when you factor in the time Guerrilla spent developing a new engine in parallel.

Most of the studio worked on Killzone Shadow Fall. They went full production after its release.

 

[TetraGenesis]

Regarding the Uncharted 2 budget:

Clearly Naughty Dog can stretch their dollar a lot further than EA and Visceral in this case but it's important to note that the report by Evan Wells saying the budget of U2 is $20 mil is from before the game was finished. All of the various articles with that quote are from nearly six months before release and Wells clearly says "will cost".

I'm sure it didn't end up drastically above that but with crunch and all the other last minute demands, I'm fairly certain Wells was low-balling it.

Still. Much, much less than what Dead Space 2 cost to make.

 

[g11]

Two years of hundreds of people at San Francisco Bay Area salaries and benefits plus all the outsourcing needed to support it.

Not many AAA studios left in the Bay Area these days you'll notice. Crystal Dynamics outsources half their game development to Montreal as one of the few remaining ones.

I'm still kind of amazed how Double Fine survives in the Bay Area. They're kind of huge for an indie studio.

Every publisher does this, and especially in other countries where hiring is subsidized, and even cheaper than Texas/Ohio/Georgia.

https://www.ea.com/about

Problem with that is they still favor big cities where cost of living and thus pay is exponentially higher. Just looking at that map, I see Seattle, Vancouver, Austin, Montreal, Toronto(?), and L.A. The one in Florida must be EA Tiburon. I'm kind of curious who's in Louisiana. I'm sure it's hard to recruit people to a studio in the sticks, but half those cities are among the highest cost of living in North America if I'm not mistaken. There must be a middle ground.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

This is awful because Dead Space 2 has gotta be one of the best games I’ve ever played. Someday, it’s going to be a hard-to-find classic horror game that people will use as a badge of honor.

Too good for this world.

 

[TwilightPrincess]

That budget isn't actually too high. Shame that they couldn't make money from it. Making a comparable game today would probably cost at least 100.

It is too high. 60 mio for the game, 60 mio to promote it. Thats insane for this game. Witcher 3 cost 30 mio. Zelda BotW would have been profitable if it sold 2 mio. If you have to sell 5 mio untill you make profit you probably shouldn't make the game to begin with, if it's not GTA 5.

 

[Crossing Eden]

I like how everyone saying this the reason we deserves loots box and shit and yet are not questioning the 60 million marketing budget and tacked on mp? Why in games are we always the ones footing the bill for company miss handel money and then not even pay there employees and then throw them in tax havens when a movie bombs we dont say ticket price needs to go up to compensate for there lack of budgeting.

The MP was likely a fraction of the cost of the SP. Especially considering that it was made from SP assets. Do a breakdown really quick of each department and explain how they mishandled the budget?

It is too high. 60 mio for the game, 60 mio to promote it. Thats insane for this game.

According to what metric?

 

[Aztechnology]

60 U.S. dollars * 4 million =
240 million U.S. dollars


it only cost 60 mil

I don't get it .

Development costs are typically much lower than the marketing costs. Marketing is ungodly expensive. Look at most big titles and you'll see marketing costs are about 2-3x more than the game itself.

 

[Uno Venova]

It's hard to know if you should be sympathetic considering we don't really know if they were managing their budget well or not.

 

[nynt9]

It is too high. 60 mio for the game, 60 mio to promote it. Thats insane for this game. Witcher 3 cost 30 mio. Zelda BotW would have been profitable if it sold 2 mio. If you have to sell 5 mio untill you make profit you probably shouldn't make the game to begin with, if it's not GTA 5.

First party games can be loss leaders to sell the platform, use platform tools and their marketing is subsidized by platform marketing.

Witcher 3 was in Poland where salaries are wayyy lower.

 

[family_guy]

The most talented developers don't want to live in middle america. If they were forced to move there, they would just go to the 100s of other companies looking for software developers.

They can go to 100s of other companies and make more money while working less hours regardless of location. How much does location matter when you're working 80+ hours a week and you go home when it's way past sun down? If quality of life is important, being a game developer seems counterproductive.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

60 U.S. dollars * 4 million =
240 million U.S. dollars


it only cost 60 mil

I don't get it .

I would be surprised after retail cut and platform fees if even half of that is left over. That's also forgetting that they did not sell 4 million copies at $60 each, a lot or even most would be after it reduced in price or went on sale.

Also marketing costs.

 

[Scoops312]

1) Hellblade was released 6 years after, which means 6 years of technological improvements, and significantly lower costs for an engine license.
2) Because of those technical differences, Hellblade was worked on by an order of magnitude fewer people than Dead Space 2 (I believe the number was 15 or so).
3) Ninja Theory is based in the UK, which has a significantly lower standard of living than San Francisco

Nothing "went wrong"

Hellblade also had no where near the amount of marketing, avoided a retail release to ensure more money would go to the studio, and indie meaning no investors to please.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

60 U.S. dollars * 4 million =
240 million U.S. dollars


it only cost 60 mil

I don't get it .

They did not sell 4 million copies at full price, and even if they did the platform holders get 30% and the retailers take a chunk too.

4 million copies sold doesnt tell us anything, games go on sale digitally for as low as $1.

 

[Spyder_Monkey]

This sounds super dodgy to me.

 

[Mass Effect]

That seems high for a game like Dead Space... though the team being in the Bay Area makes more sense out of it.

Nirolak, do you know why publishers dont open some studios in the mid west?

You can live comfortably in Oklahoma on 40k a year, thats not an exaggeration.

Because nobody wants to live in Oklahoma (no offense). Plus as others have mentioned, the talent isn't there.

 

[The Cartographer]

Teams of hundreds of people working on insane budgets games that need to sell millions of copies just to break even: what could go wrong?

And now we know how the leading publishers are going to ''fix'' all the devolpment problems...

 

[Audioboxer]

The MP was likely a fraction of the cost of the SP. Especially considering that it was made from SP assets. Do a breakdown really quick of each department and explain how they mishandled the budget?


According to what metric?

Thinking a horror game could recoup $120m+ was mismanagement.

Dead Space was a commercial success, with EA CFO Eric Brown confirming 1 million sales in 2008 across three platforms. On August 3, 2010, EA announced the game has sold 2 million copies.

They had their proof from Dead Space 1 selling 2 million copies. Which was apparently a commercial success. So what on earth were they thinking for Dead Space 2?

 

[Crossing Eden]

This sounds super dodgy to me.

Getting flashbacks...

Thinking a horror game could recoup $120m+ was mismanagement.



They had their proof from Dead Space 1 selling 2 million copies. Which was apparently a commercial success. So what on earth were they thinking for Dead Space 2?

A horror game that was slightly adjusted to market trends AND was very heavily marketed. It wasn't mismanagement. It was an incredibly ambitious game.

 

[patapuf]

Sure. Just make games with smaller scope until, with technology advancements, you can efficiently fund bigger games.

Publishers these days are just constantly trying to one up themselves, with bigger (empty) worlds, more "content", flashier graphics (that go stale after a few years because the art is weak), and pervasive online infrastructures (that close off access to parts of the games when servers inevitably go down).

That, oft meanigless, fluff needs hundreds if not thousands of (paid) employees to produce, market and ship. No wonder they're risk averse, have unreasonable sales expectations, they kill off studios after one faux pas and they keep adding stupid, costly crap in full priced games.

The best part is that they've cornered themselves during the years, by feeding the gamers' mentality with the constant need of better graphics and bigger worlds in order to sell their games. They've done this to themselves and now they wonder why 4 million copies isn't enough. Meanwhile Nintendo, indies and level-headed mid-tier developers are quietly making their profit.

The consumer blaming, especially by consumer themselves, is revolting given the circumstances.

The vast majority of the money in games is made by a handful of titles.

EA is not going to spend money to be small fry.

Overall this is working out very well for the big Publishers. At least for now.

 

[Boy Wander]

I’ve had people who work in notable development roles at Sony tell me that $80 million is about the floor for getting a top shelf AAA game out the door these days.

I guess it’s not impossible that Guerrilla is notably under other high end studios, but it strikes me as improbable.

Is that all in? I.e. including marketing etc

 

[Bluth54]

How does that happen?

Uncharted 2 had a ~15 hours high quality singleplayer campaign with some of the most impressive graphics and performance capture of its time + addition of a Multiplayer mode + a COOP mode + Naughty Dog size which is not small at all.

HOW DID DEAD SPACE 2 COST 40 MILLION MORE???

It makes no sense to me.

But then again, Tomb Raider 2013 budget was like the entire Uncharted trilogy... which seems so crazy for me too.

According to the recent book Blood Sweat and Pixels book the people at Naughty Dog work insane amount of crunch/free over time.

 

[chromatic9]

Uncharted 2 was said to be $20 million in dev costs. When I play DS2 or Tomb Raider reboot on the same machine I'm not seeing why DS2 costs 60 million and TR 100 million (total). I don't see drastic wage rises between 2009 and 2011 or through to 2013 but alleged devs costs seem to have snowballed since U2.

 

[PayaV87]

How in the fuck did it cost that much to make?

By making a compeletly unnecesarry multiplayer mode, and running an ad campaign that hurts more than helps. But you will never see “EA marketing department got hit by layoffs.”

 

[Big Blue]

60 million??? that's high for a movie, let alone a video game.