One question that does arise from the cost breakdown is what exactly is the deal with Hit-box Contracting? I ask mostly because I have never heard of a Hit-box Contractor before. That seems like an overly-specific job for a contractor. Given how important hit-boxes are to fighting game characters, I'm surprised this isn't handled by the in-house developers between the designers who figure out how the character's attacks work, and the programmers that implement them. I'm wondering if there are some unique factors at play here, like if they guy who originally did the hit-boxes didn't make the jump from Reverge to Zero Labs and they need to hire him long enough to do his thing on Squigly, or something?
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"How the hell does *that* cost $X to make???" (Giant Bomb and Skullgirls)
- Thread starter dLMN8R
- Start date
KingItachi
Member
Noogy, RagingSpaniard and Keikaku Thanks for sharing your knowledge and just wow at the ignorance.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
So I read up on it and I apologize. It seems more fair when you realize it could be a lot more.
Man this thread....
I've read it all...
Do people really beleive artists work for 0$?
In a game where Characters is EVERYTHING, it should be surprising it dosen't even cost MORE.
And now if I say that the Cameron's Titanic Movie cost 200M$, would people say that they can do some of the effects in the movie in their house? Like seriously?
I've read it all...
Do people really beleive artists work for 0$?
In a game where Characters is EVERYTHING, it should be surprising it dosen't even cost MORE.
And now if I say that the Cameron's Titanic Movie cost 200M$, would people say that they can do some of the effects in the movie in their house? Like seriously?
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Everything I've been seeing from the more knowledgeable posts (i.e. Feep, Keikaku, Noogy, RagingSpaniard) all seem accurate to me. I haven't been in game production for quite some time, but the numbers haven't really changed that much from 5 years ago.
To be fair there's quite some middle ground between a 1.7M budget game and a single dev in a garage and I think there's a problem with perception and people thinking Skull Girls is a much less ambitious games than it is.
I hadn't really payed much attention to the game before this thread; I vaguely remembered thinking the animation looks nice, but I did not know there were over 1500 frames per character, or that they were completely bruteforce handdrawn with that level of quality. I don't know how much voice acting there is; when I think fighting game I think of a few screams, gruffs and the occational hadouken, which you certainly get away with much cheaper than $4000. I know of a lot of somewhat big productions that have at least partly used the dev team for voice acting with consumer grade recording equipment. So from an outside perspective it's definitely understandable to question the need for 9k for sound. It can be done to a quality acceptable for most gamers much cheaper and for most indie games it wouldn't make any sense to spend that much money on it; but for an ambitious game with publisher backing, it's still not a large chunk of the overall budget so there's no need to cut corners.
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Everything I've been seeing from the more knowledgeable posts (i.e. Feep, Keikaku, Noogy, RagingSpaniard) all seem accurate to me. I haven't been in game production for quite some time, but the usual range of numbers for budgets haven't really changed that much from 5 years ago.
Nope, Gaffers have a right to be fucking stupid without repercussion. Stupidity itself isn't inherently malevolent.
Steve Youngblood
Member
I've seen some pretty impressive characters created in WWE '13 via the create a character mode. I can't imaging making a new Skullgirls characters is much more difficult than that, right?
From what I remember, it costs 9 bucks per clean-up frame. That's line + matte + gray scale. Multiply that by about 1500, or more in Squigly's case, since she has stances. Let's use 2000 frames as a rough number. That's 18 grand just for clean-up alone. Nothing else.
I'm just echoing my little bit into this. These guys aren't making stuff up or blowing things out of proportion.
I'm just echoing my little bit into this. These guys aren't making stuff up or blowing things out of proportion.
I've seen people argue that someone asking for money from a Kickstarter should not pay themselves a wage, because asking for money from Kickstarter is obviously not the individual asking the community for money to give them the financial independence to make the project. Someone actually said that it was "greedy" and that they were "pocketing" the cash. I think it was for Republique.
In short: people are idiots. Boneheaded idiots. And games are fucking expensive to make.
To be honest, I'm more surprised that the community raised the $150,000 in about a day, rather than the fact that Lab Zero Games were asking for that amount. Big congrats to them!
In short: people are idiots. Boneheaded idiots. And games are fucking expensive to make.
To be honest, I'm more surprised that the community raised the $150,000 in about a day, rather than the fact that Lab Zero Games were asking for that amount. Big congrats to them!
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
I think Skullgirls raising $150k in a day is testament that despite a few loud people on the internet, most people find the cost both reasonable and acceptable.
In some Kickstart related discussions around the net, people seem to think that the cost of making games comes from some magic hardware or software, when in reality it's mostly paying people's wages.
People are dumb sometimes.
Where i would expect people to sacrifice their wages some, is when the completed product is sold afterwards(from which the creator gets all the profits). Develop with ramen budget and hope that it pays off. It's a bit off to me if someone asks people to donate what is worth competitive salaries when the profits of the finished product is going fully to creator.
People are dumb sometimes.
Where i would expect people to sacrifice their wages some, is when the completed product is sold afterwards(from which the creator gets all the profits). Develop with ramen budget and hope that it pays off. It's a bit off to me if someone asks people to donate what is worth competitive salaries when the profits of the finished product is going fully to creator.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
This entire topic is making me feel sorry for all developers of fighting games, in particular. Big and small.
The average person must look at fighting games and come to an "intuitive" but incorrect conclusion:
"There's just two guys standing there punching each other, and the background is two screens wide. These games must cost nothing to make, compared to Skyrim where I can walk around a whole world with lakes and animals and stuff."
Meanwhile, the unfortunate truth is that one of the characters in a fighting game requires as much work to realize and integrate into the game, as a good portion of an open-world adventure game's landscape.
But, there are people who ask why Pixar movies cost upwards of 200 million dollars to make when they're just "cartoon graphics" and not "realistic looking" like CG in Transformers.
I guess it just goes to show that common sense isn't really common, because what is intuitive and obvious to people is often just a package of assumptions and cultural bias and doesn't have to relate to reality at all.
For all the ignorance being spouted in this thread, I am so happy to see they have already collected 245.000 in their 3rd day. Congrats to Lab Zero Games for their dedication and I hope they make the 600.000 they set out for to include both the 2nd and 3rd DLC character and more, so they can finalize their vision.
wow, reading the first couple of pages of this thread and EA's notion of 70USD AAA games I really realised how many people have no idea how much a game can cost to design, build, debug, publish, marketing, and then supporting it. And I thought GAF would know better. I get "why is it so expensive to make a game of this scope? I thought something like angry birds cost less than 500USD" questions like day in day out.
Bottom line is people work for long times for things you think is minor and can be easily done in 5 minutes. There are multiple people, parties and other costs involved for "minor things". Time, quality, money is the 3 main factors you have to adjust with what you have. You can't add in more in all without charging people the same unless you don't mind losing your business. For every successful stories out there you hear, there are hundreds or more that failed. I mean, look, Bill Gates is rich as fuck, why can't you be like Bill Gates?
Bottom line is people work for long times for things you think is minor and can be easily done in 5 minutes. There are multiple people, parties and other costs involved for "minor things". Time, quality, money is the 3 main factors you have to adjust with what you have. You can't add in more in all without charging people the same unless you don't mind losing your business. For every successful stories out there you hear, there are hundreds or more that failed. I mean, look, Bill Gates is rich as fuck, why can't you be like Bill Gates?
Yep, and it's why people don't understand why a game made in Eastern Europe is so much cheaper than an american made game.
Steve Youngblood
Member
Yeah. Honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with initially looking at that 150K figure and initially raising an eyebrow as a kneejerk reaction. I really know nothing about the process and was content to more or less just accept that it was probably a fair sum (or realistic ballpark estimate) just based on my trust that indie developers that have experience completing projects are probably more interested in the labor of love/building a reputation aspect of continuing the project as opposed to looking to scam the community out of money for their big payday. So, despite believing that they're asking for that sum in good faith, some of the posts in here make the process sound even more involved than what I would have thought given that amount of money.
I think what surprises me the most is the desire to cling to one's intuition about things they clearly know little about. For instance, someone earlier in the thread seemed to be operating from a position of authority because they are employed as a software engineer, and I don't know why that is supposed to come across as meaningful. I've worked as a full-time software developer now for six years, and I'm sure that there are Wal-Mart greeters who probably know about as much as I do about the scope of working on a 2D, hand-drawn fighting game. The reason is that what I work on isn't remotely similar to a 2D fighting game, and merely working on "software" doesn't give me much insight into what the development process of such a project would be.
As such, I don't understand the stubbornness of some to cling to their own intuition in spite of what people who know what they're talking about are telling them. It's rather bizarre to me.
NervousXtian
Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
So what did the entire game cost to make then?
It's cool people are paying for it, but yeah.. $150k sounds like a lot (even if that is what it costs).
If they are saying 90k to make a new character and they already have 8.. the game costed them what, a min of $720k to make to start with?
No way they sold enough copies to recoup that.
It's cool people are paying for it, but yeah.. $150k sounds like a lot (even if that is what it costs).
If they are saying 90k to make a new character and they already have 8.. the game costed them what, a min of $720k to make to start with?
No way they sold enough copies to recoup that.
It's their call, but I would also have no objections for them using a portion of money to simply cancel out the pay cut. It appears it's not absolutely necessary, and if there's a surplus after achieving what they set out to do, it'll make their lives a little bit easier.
Steve Youngblood
Member
The linked Giant Bomb article suggests that the original game costed about $2 million to make.
Phoenixazure
Member
the game sold well and is currently selling well in japan. the Problem is their cut of the profits is being held by the publisher due to legal mumbo jumbo
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
In my experience, anything involving money makes people far more stubborn. We live in a capitalistic society where folks are made neurotic about attaching value to everything.
So people have a lot of assumptions about what things are worth what. You see a lot of offended, outraged reactions if it's thought that something "isn't worth that much money". Some of the reactions to Skullgirls come with a remark along the lines of "this crappy flash game isn't worth that much money". In other words people are applying their arbitrary value judgement and taste, to the practical reality of how much labor is involved with building something. Thus making irrational statements. It doesn't matter if you think a game is not worth money and nobody should care about it: it requires the same amount of time and labor to create.
Then there are the reactions based more abstractly on stuff like video games as a whole not being worth lots of money. This is where comparing video game budgets to heart surgery come in. In point of fact, there could be a conversation to be had there about the values of a capitalistic culture. But it's not relevant to calculating how much something currently costs to produce. Or even to criticizing the people making a thing for asking for the required amount of money.
Why would you assume the game didn't/doesn't sell?
The game is beating out Revengeance on the Sony JP PSN, and only losing out to a discounted rerelease of Jet Set Radio. It was sitting on the top of XBL and PSN when it dropped too.
Goldenroad
Member
Funny how one of the lowest costs is 1st party certification, and yet that was Phil Fish's excuse for not being able to properly patch Fez for people who bought it day one. What a cop out.
Prime crotch
Banned
I'm done gaf, you've spent me, peace.
Warm Machine
Member
Fez is a big game and probably required more testing over a longer period thus raising the cost. Also, the income Fez had generated to that point wasn't huge so even 10k is a slap. Here the community is paying for it as part and parcel of the deal.
Wyndstryker
Member
Speaking about that 10k first party certification. In the side of indie game developers, people always wonder why don't they port their stuff to consoles. When you're an indie developer that is already resource strained, 10k is a bitter pill to swallow and many would opt out. There is no guarantee that paying that 10k + costs for porting will generate enough revenue. Especially when the publishing platform takes a cut from that revenue stream.
This thread scares me.
I would have never thought that intelligent and adult members here - and sometimes even programmers or software engineers at that, if that is a more fancy name of what you do - would be unable to see why creating a new character in Skullgirls would realistically cost this much.
Basically, it needs the recognization of three things:
a. Skullgirls is not just "an indie game". or a "not graphically intensive" one at that. It is quite the opposite. It is a game that dares to do what even Capcom decided to not do, which is to go back to 2d, hand-drawn art as opposed to just creating 3d models and using those ingame. which brings us ot the second point:
b. Hand-drawn animations with the numbers that Skullgirls characters amount in the animation department means that a character would have a few hundred, or more than a thousand individual frames drawn in high detail by the end of the development.
c. That large amount of individual frames not only require more time to draw, it also needs more manpower and time to check, to cleanup, and to balance the hitboxes in addition to simply including a new character in a fighting game blindly.
So, even without the huge ambition to be hand-drawn 2d, including a new character in a fighting game would require several trained professionals, and certainly a multiple month work regarding balancing, bugfixing, and creating the assets - Skullgirls in this regards not only does not decrease these costs, but increase it, simply by having 2d, handdrawn characters in it.
So of course 150k is a lot. But not because it is a scam. And yeah, a talented developer team could easily create 2-3 full games out of this money (especially if they live in some of the lower income countries
), but that is hugely missing a point. A decent gamer on a forum on this caliber should at least know that with fighting games, new characters are the biggest deal out of anything else in the competitive department. Any game made out of $150k would not be handdrawn 2d fighters, but something way, way less ambitious when it comes to graph and fighting complexity, simple as that.
I would have never thought that intelligent and adult members here - and sometimes even programmers or software engineers at that, if that is a more fancy name of what you do - would be unable to see why creating a new character in Skullgirls would realistically cost this much.
Basically, it needs the recognization of three things:
a. Skullgirls is not just "an indie game". or a "not graphically intensive" one at that. It is quite the opposite. It is a game that dares to do what even Capcom decided to not do, which is to go back to 2d, hand-drawn art as opposed to just creating 3d models and using those ingame. which brings us ot the second point:
b. Hand-drawn animations with the numbers that Skullgirls characters amount in the animation department means that a character would have a few hundred, or more than a thousand individual frames drawn in high detail by the end of the development.
c. That large amount of individual frames not only require more time to draw, it also needs more manpower and time to check, to cleanup, and to balance the hitboxes in addition to simply including a new character in a fighting game blindly.
So, even without the huge ambition to be hand-drawn 2d, including a new character in a fighting game would require several trained professionals, and certainly a multiple month work regarding balancing, bugfixing, and creating the assets - Skullgirls in this regards not only does not decrease these costs, but increase it, simply by having 2d, handdrawn characters in it.
So of course 150k is a lot. But not because it is a scam. And yeah, a talented developer team could easily create 2-3 full games out of this money (especially if they live in some of the lower income countries
), but that is hugely missing a point. A decent gamer on a forum on this caliber should at least know that with fighting games, new characters are the biggest deal out of anything else in the competitive department. Any game made out of $150k would not be handdrawn 2d fighters, but something way, way less ambitious when it comes to graph and fighting complexity, simple as that.XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
And that's assuming you pass final cert. If you don't, you have to resubmit a new build with the appropriate fixes and pay the fee again!
Hellsing321
Member
I've never played Skullgirls. I'm not even a particularly big fan of fighting games but reading that article and the ignorant comments in the thread compelled me to contribute. Dropped $30 to get the Steam code, soundtrack, beta access, and TF2 hat.
Really I did it just for the hat
I'm not fond of it (and I've worked on games that have gone through cert quite a few times... and one game which was for a very large publisher that, well, let's just say I was mildly surprised went through cert first time), but it's at least somewhat necessary to disincentivise people from abusing the cert process as a QA process. It's worth pointing out that the bug reports I got from cert were often - by some margin - the best-crafted bug reports I had from any out-of-house QA farm.
Edit: Oh, except EA. EA's QA people were really, really good. Activision's might have been, too, thinking about it, but developing for them was even further ago.
shaowebb
Member
They did and then some. Apparently they were shocked Skullgirls could do what they did so cheaply so suck on that Giantbomb.
EDIT: I take it back. Finished reading and they did a nice job. OP made it sound like something else was going down in the article.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
All I can say is that when you have Konami avoiding to port a game because they can't afford 20 developers working on it, you know that it's not a cheap business: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=516910
This is literally chump change compared to what it costs, which is why a lot of Kickstarters can be questionable especially when they're asking $50,000 for a team of 5 people.
This is literally chump change compared to what it costs, which is why a lot of Kickstarters can be questionable especially when they're asking $50,000 for a team of 5 people.
Uhhmm, did you read the GiantBomb article? that's exactly what they did. The article was well written and researched.
Wyndstryker
Member
That and there's also ESRB.
Need to make sure that you don't break past your initial ESRB certification. Not hard to actually slip past that and end up being fined.
This thread is clearly evidence that this is a conversation that really needed to happen.
...But it still makes me sad that being honest spawned what may be the worst thread on GAF.
Wonder why more devs don't post openly here? You're looking at it.
I fully expect people to be ignorant of how this stuff works, which is why I provided the breakdown I did. It's one thing not to believe me, but I'm really confused why people are doubting Seth Killian and David Lang?
These are the same people that helped us out with hitboxes at Reverge. They're hand-picked friends of Mike's, and fighting game players themselves. They do it in their free time over the course of a few weeks while Mike implements the characters.
Hitboxes are an important element of the design, and really time-consuming, because you need to precisely tune them on 1500 frames of animation. If Mike had to do this himself it would make it hard to do the stuff only he can do, which is implementing and balancing the character, and probably significantly increase the development time of the character.
What people don't seem to understand is that you use contractors to save money by eliminating bottlenecks. Because Mike is free to focus on the things only he can do, that is time we don't have to worry about paying the rest of the staff.
Yeah, no - these are our actual costs.
There is virtually no overhead in those figures, because we don't have an office, no one is getting health benefits, and everyone is using their own computers. We're all working from home, tracking the project online. And during the development of the game, Mike and the artists frequently worked 80-100 hour weeks.
Some are necessarily estimates, but they're educated ones. For example, it's impossible to know what testing will actually cost, and I budgeted about half of what we spent testing the first patch. And I'm honestly concerned that it's not going to be enough.
In meetings people that actually know what they're talking about say that we are incredibly cheap and efficient. Out of the 100s of animations we made for Skullgirls, only 3-4 went unused. And, as RagingSpaniard can unfortunately attest, we pay our animation contractors very little - about half or less of what some other studios do, and I wish we could afford to pay more.
And, to the people saying "just test it yourselves" - that is not how reality works. We have to pay Konami's QA department test the patch for us so we can submit it and, hopefully, get it through on the first try.
The rewards are budgeted for what we perceive could be the "worst case scenario," like if we funded it entirely through some of the higher tiers with a higher cost of goods for the rewards.
It's clearly stated in the Indiegogo campaign - the budget for the core game was $1.7M, and the cost for individual characters was between $200-250k at more normal (but still below industry average) salaries.
Also, that actually only really covered development of 7 characters, because Filia was already basically completed when we signed the project with Autumn games.
...But it still makes me sad that being honest spawned what may be the worst thread on GAF.
Wonder why more devs don't post openly here? You're looking at it.
I fully expect people to be ignorant of how this stuff works, which is why I provided the breakdown I did. It's one thing not to believe me, but I'm really confused why people are doubting Seth Killian and David Lang?
These are the same people that helped us out with hitboxes at Reverge. They're hand-picked friends of Mike's, and fighting game players themselves. They do it in their free time over the course of a few weeks while Mike implements the characters.
Hitboxes are an important element of the design, and really time-consuming, because you need to precisely tune them on 1500 frames of animation. If Mike had to do this himself it would make it hard to do the stuff only he can do, which is implementing and balancing the character, and probably significantly increase the development time of the character.
What people don't seem to understand is that you use contractors to save money by eliminating bottlenecks. Because Mike is free to focus on the things only he can do, that is time we don't have to worry about paying the rest of the staff.
Yeah, no - these are our actual costs.
There is virtually no overhead in those figures, because we don't have an office, no one is getting health benefits, and everyone is using their own computers. We're all working from home, tracking the project online. And during the development of the game, Mike and the artists frequently worked 80-100 hour weeks.
Some are necessarily estimates, but they're educated ones. For example, it's impossible to know what testing will actually cost, and I budgeted about half of what we spent testing the first patch. And I'm honestly concerned that it's not going to be enough.
In meetings people that actually know what they're talking about say that we are incredibly cheap and efficient. Out of the 100s of animations we made for Skullgirls, only 3-4 went unused. And, as RagingSpaniard can unfortunately attest, we pay our animation contractors very little - about half or less of what some other studios do, and I wish we could afford to pay more.
And, to the people saying "just test it yourselves" - that is not how reality works. We have to pay Konami's QA department test the patch for us so we can submit it and, hopefully, get it through on the first try.
The rewards are budgeted for what we perceive could be the "worst case scenario," like if we funded it entirely through some of the higher tiers with a higher cost of goods for the rewards.
It's clearly stated in the Indiegogo campaign - the budget for the core game was $1.7M, and the cost for individual characters was between $200-250k at more normal (but still below industry average) salaries.
Also, that actually only really covered development of 7 characters, because Filia was already basically completed when we signed the project with Autumn games.
TheFightingFish
Member
Yeah, it is kind of a sad thread for me. I'm no game developer, but I'm a huge fan of traditional 2D animation, in particular for fighting games. So it's disheartening to see how people devalue the incredible amount of work that goes into creating and animating a 2D fighting game character. Makes me realize that my chances of seeing a big budget game that looks the way I really want it to get less and less every year.
Personally I'd take something like this:
over Killzone.gif/Uncharted.gif/Halo.gif 1000x times over.
edit: for fun, here's a kinda neat article on more of what animators have to consider then animating characters for a 2D fighter.
http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/
Personally I'd take something like this:
over Killzone.gif/Uncharted.gif/Halo.gif 1000x times over.
edit: for fun, here's a kinda neat article on more of what animators have to consider then animating characters for a 2D fighter.
http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/
I've only been able to guess that this was the case in arguments up until now. Now I'll actually be able to properly source all of my white-knight posts. Haha.
Delusibeta
Banned
Seriously, between this and the (somehow still active) loli thread, I'm going to mock anyone who thinks all GAF posters are superior to posters from A N Other website.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
I saw a guy put Little Mac inside a Smash Bros Brawl mod, and it surely didn't cost $150k! Geez, these guys are slackers!
I wish video game budgets/sales were more transparent, like the movie industry, just so we can get around some of the ignorant perceptions about how much video games cost to make.
"But if we fail, then the whole industry, including the big publishers, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of low-valued games. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if Neogaf last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour."
Yeah, it is kind of a sad thread for me. I'm no game developer, but I'm a huge fan of traditional 2D animation, in particular for fighting games. So it's disheartening to see how people devalue the incredible amount of work that goes into creating and animating a 2D fighting game character. Makes me realize that my chances of seeing a big budget game that looks the way I really want it to get less and less every year.
Personally I'd take something like this:
over Killzone.gif/Uncharted.gif/Halo.gif 1000x times over.
edit: for fun, here's a kinda neat article on more of what animators have to consider then animating characters for a 2D fighter.
http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/
About time someone posted that Darkstalkers article. Really great insight.
ITT: We discern that most GAF users' intimate technical knowledge of the industry was carefully pieced together from observing this commercial.
Steve Youngblood
Member
There's also that movie Grandma's Boy that gives great insight into the development process.
Byakuya769
Member
To you or anyone else bitching about GAF having some users who are ignorant on some subject: do most other forums have knowledgeable people readily available to correct misinformation like GAF does? Seriously, I've seen some dumb shit said out of ignorance in many areas that I have higher than normal knowledge on, doesn't mean I start shitting on GAF or going with subtle attacks on the intelligence of others.
PreyingShark
Member
I remember that commercial. Even though I was a lot younger when I first saw it I was like, "Yeah, that's a bunch of bollocks." However, that does seem like an accurate description of this thread.