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[Trogdor1123]

What's a AA game?

 

[fastmower]

How do you get and retain talent if you aren't in a location where it exists or can't pay for it?

Remote development is pretty rare in games and almost non existent if you do console work.

Maybe more studios should set up in cheaper yet cosmopolitan city's like Atlanta?

 

[fenners]

Maybe more studios should set up in cheaper yet cosmopolitan city's like Atlanta?

What's the college talent pool like? What's the established dev scene like? How much will you have to pay to get established developers (engineers, designers, artists, production etc) to move from their established bases? What state tax incentives are there?

If you reduce the costs by 20% so the 10k burnrate is now $8k, that two year, 75 person project is now $14.4m. Is that enough of a reduction for the difficulties in moving to the other side of the country? What's the difference in talent would you attract?

 

[Jubenhimer]

Hopefully the Switch can save the day. It's built with off-the-shelf tablet hardware, making it pretty cheap to develop low-mid budget titles for it. We're already seeing it's of it with Project Octopath Traveler and Guaru Metal.

 

[Clear]

Ironically its not the Ninja Theory's that are doing it, its the biggest and most successful publishers pushing micro transactions and lootboxes.

Yeah but NT and Hellblade is kind of a peculiar case. It strikes me that at least part of the function of that product was to act as a promotional piece for their mo-cap tech; its just too elaborate a setup not to be justified as a business opportunity in itself.

 

[fenners]

Hopefully the Switch can save the day. It's built with off-the-shelf tablet hardware, making it pretty cheap to develop low-mid budget titles for it. We're already seeing it's of it with Project Octopath Traveler and Guaru Metal.

Cost of the hardware doesn't make game development cheaper or costlier per se, it's the cost of the devkit + the right to develop on that platform, just to be clear.

 

[TheYanger]

Ironically its not the Ninja Theory's that are doing it, its the biggest and most successful publishers pushing micro transactions and lootboxes.

That's not ironic at all. That's literally the only way AAA development gets paid for now.

 

[Mario]

Microtransactions would be pennies unless you sink your teeth on some whales.

It's not like cosmetics cost the same amount as a game ($60). What if a dude buys a $5 in-game shirt and that's it? The game is still going to flop unless you can bring the amount of players (and who want to spend serious money) up.

On a $60 retail game, the publisher is going to have a net revenue after cost of goods of about $15-25. Some of that may have to be split with a developr if they used a third party entitled to royalties.

With an additional $5 DLC/microtranscation sale, they receive $3.50 after platform fees. An additional $3.50 on a $15-25 initial net revenue is actually meaningful incremental income.

Every (incremental) dollar counts in this business.

 

[Renekton]

Hopefully the Switch can save the day. It's built with off-the-shelf tablet hardware, making it pretty cheap to develop low-mid budget titles for it. We're already seeing it's of it with Project Octopath Traveler and Guaru Metal.

How friendly is Nintendo to 3rd parties these days?

 

[g23]

I mean you basically gotta strike gold like Larian or Ninja Theory or get lost in a sea of shitty steam games for competition.

 

[Jubenhimer]

Cost of the hardware doesn't make game development cheaper or costlier per se, it's the cost of the devkit + the right to develop on that platform, just to be clear.

Yeah, even still. Switch dev kits are only $500. By console standards, that's dirt cheap.

How friendly is Nintendo to 3rd parties these days?

Let's see, Nintendo...

- Went out of their way to make the Switch as easy to develop for as possible

- Made sure nearly every modern engine from Unreal 4 to Unity was supported day one

- Promotes the hell out of indie titles, as well as treats them like royalty evidently

- Specifically went to companies like Bethesda and Psyonix asking if they could bring their games over, even going as far as to suggest they bring them over as soon as possible

What do you think?

 

[ramuh]

Just stick with your original vision and don't let feature creep or the need to market so much affect you.

 

[fenners]

Yeah, even still. Switch dev kits are only $500. By console standards, that's dirt cheap.

If you're paying $100k per head per year, is $500 or $1k for a devkit going to make a significant cost difference? It matters for very small indies, sure. Big AA/AAA devs? Not so much.

 

[LordRaptor]

If you're paying $100k per head per year, is $500 or $1k for a devkit going to make a significant cost difference? It matters for very small indies, sure. Big AA/AAA devs? Not so much.

Well, no, but it would add up, and its unlikely you would have one devkit shared across the entire studio for the same reasons you wouldn't have one Wacom and one copy of photoshop shared across an art team

 

[Poetic.Injustice]

Just stick with your original vision and don't let feature creep or the need to market so much affect you.

Marketing is necessary in an age where 70 games are released every day on Steam. You can't rely on word of mouth alone.

 

[Ahasverus]

The game industry Needs to come together and create common tools. Like, it's a necessity. Development is too damn inefficient as it is now.

 

[Callibretto]

Costs rising is real, but I have to question the whole thing a bit. Why are they rising? What is the specific component that drives prices up. It's gotta be graphics, right? Rising expectations are cited, but tbh I haven't seen this in real life. It seems like the games that sell gangbusters are many times pretty damn primitive when it comes to visuals, at least when compared to the AAA-crowd. It just doesn't seem to me like the market at large is demanding better and better graphics, especially from mid-tier studios. So am I just a stupid fucking idiot or could there be some self-imposed aspects to this as well?

I literally don't know anyone IRL who demands for better and better graphics. Do they like them when they see them, of course. All my friends are hard core gamers and most of the games they seem to play are way behind the curve graphically. I hear even less demands for better graphics from the more casual call of duty crowd.

To be fair, I am a graphics whore through and through as in I really admire good well done graphics, but they don't get me to buy games nor do they deter me from buying games if they look fun.

I think I've seen plenty of games getting slammed by reviews for being more of the same. developer probably would want to be more ambitious and add more stuff for their next game, it could be graphics, but I imagine adding new gameplay features can add a lot to the cost also. like what if you make an open world game and it get good reviews. for the next game, you decide to make the world bigger, or make it so you can enter a lot more building.

even if you're using the same engine and similar visual level, it's now a more expensive game compared from the first one.

 

[Fisico]

I'm interested in seeing a Line item break down of how its hitting 10k+ a month

Welcome to IT, this is the same cost no matter what you make there in every top economy countries (NA, Western Europe, Japan, Korea), and in videogames people are pooring more time a week than in any other IT project for the same income!

 

[Granjinha]

I don't think Hellblade and Divinity 2 are really good examples. That is the exact opposite of "rising costs" or "budgeting issues". Hellblade was made so that about 300k copies would pay for all it's development costs and Divinity 2 was a smashing, huge success that was way above expectations when it was around 500k copies sold (its nearing ~850k if we count GOG, i think).

If anything, those seem like good examples for mid tier studios. I could be wrong though.

There are also other great examples like Shadow Tactics which was a huge success for the team at about 200k sold.

I mean you basically gotta strike gold like Larian or Ninja Theory or get lost in a sea of shitty steam games for competition.

There are a ton of other examples besides Hellblade or Divinity 2 when it comes to mid-tier success stories.

 

[Widge]

This has been an issue since the start of the PS3 and 360 generation. Tons if companies died because of HD. Nothing was done to solve the issue this generation. Things will only get worse.

THQ was the big casualty I remember.

 

[CecilRousso]

Just stick with your original vision and don't let feature creep or the need to market so much affect you.

Something Brian Fargo could do well to think about a bit. I don't think that it was fans expectations that causes Wasteland 2 to grow as big as it did.

I would rather have a smaller RPG from them, then one larger designed as a service based game.

 

[bosh]

Cut on costs in places then like also reduce marketing costs

Marketing is an essential for any business and the same goes for video games. If no one knows about your game, who is going to buy it? Marketing isn't just giant TV ads, online ads (Even a free post on Gaf/Reddit) is done by an employee which has to be paid) and product positioning in the digital space are huge.

The marketing budget is usually stopped at the point where investment doesn't lead to a huge increase in revenue which if you are a AA company trying to survive you are probably watching your budget like a hawk.

In the physical space (At least in the grocery industry) the spot a product sits (What shelf/height from floor) is paid for out of the marketing budget. Eye level buy level.

 

[Alexander DeLarge]

AAA companies can spend 200 million on their full priced games while including loot boxes/microtransactions/season passes/draconian DRM mechanisms that are bypassed by pirates within 8 hours of release. The indie and AA scene will continue to do incredibly well without that nonsense while supporting their products in a decent, pro-consumer way and hopefully when they see all that success, they won't repeat the same mistakes.

I think indies and lower budget titles in general will be very appealing to the average consumer going forward if these awful trends continue in the AAA space.

 

[Some Nobody]

We don't. It is fine if people want to learn about it, but we do not need to, and most consumers will never give a single fuck how they're made or how much they cost to make. All that will matter to the majority is if it looks like something that they want to play.

This is not a problem that the consumer has to worry about. It isn't with the movie industry, nor with the car industry, nor with any other industry. This is solely a problem for developers and publishers, and they'll have to find a way to get around it if they want to keep working in these titles. Because this is a problem that the majority of consumers won't ever worry about.

Nah. This opinion is bad, and you should feel bad. Devs are being yelled at by fans who misunderstand how development works, so people need to know what the fuck they're talking about before they run their mouth. Or at least be less vitriolic in how they speak to people.

And the truth is, if we don't make our voices known, then the lootbox controversy is the beginning of our problems as gamers.

 

[Dr. Feel Good]

How is this new? Mid tier games collapsed almost immediately when PS3 and Xbox 360 released.

 

[Mattenth]

My 2 cents: the problem isn't rising costs but a shrinking market.

Ultra-engagement games like PUBG, MOBAs, CS:GO, Overwatch, Destiny 2 take millions of gamers out of the market for months (or even years).

Meanwhile, the back-catalogue continues to grow and be heavily discounted. You can pick up The Witcher 3, the entire Mass Effect trilogy, or Uncharted 1-4 for less than $30 now. That's a problem for mid-tier titles that used to thrive at this price point.

 

[AColdDay]

How is this new? Mid tier games collapsed almost immediately when PS3 and Xbox 360 released.

yeah, I was about to say..."What mid-tier games?"

 

[BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO]

This is what AAA want iirc, less competition.

 

[TSM]

Isn't this article about a decade late? AA pretty much died after the PS2/Xbox/Cube era. We saw a resurgence of sorts in the last 5 years or so, but just look at the PS2 library to realize just how much it had fallen off. Most of the interesting stuff died off on console early during the 360/PS3 years for awhile before the indie scene picked up. The PC/Steam and XBLA were a huge reason AA gaming was able to make such a strong come back.

 

[TheNotoriousAFG]

THQ was the big casualty I remember.

Didn't THQ go under because they bought all those shitty tablets that no one bought?

 

[InStrangerAeons]

My 2 cents: the problem isn't rising costs but a shrinking market.

Ultra-engagement games like PUBG, MOBAs, CS:GO, Overwatch, Destiny 2 take millions of gamers out of the market for months (or even years).

Meanwhile, the back-catalogue continues to grow and be heavily discounted. You can pick up The Witcher 3, the entire Mass Effect trilogy, or Uncharted 1-4 for less than $30 now. That's a problem for mid-tier titles that used to thrive at this price point.

This pretty much governs what I purchase anymore.

I get invested in longer-term multiplayer titles and I buy maybe one single player title a year now at full price. The value proposition of "pay $60 for a game you can get a hundred hours out of" is leading to a devaluation of other, smaller products with less replayability.

Also I'm a terrible person that likes to buy cosmetics in the games I put a lot of time into, so that's less money I could potentially spend on other titles. Which I don't anyway, because of the above.

 

[RandomHopeInc]

This is why I never complain about loot boxes that are fair, I want the industry to thrive, and I buy indies at full price, unlike some that buy cross region to cheat the dev a few bucks. Shameless.

 

[Spaced Harrier]

This is why I never complain about loot boxes that are fair, I want the industry to thrive, and I buy indies at full price, unlike some that buy cross region to cheat the dev a few bucks. Shameless.

Literally none of that helps mid tier developers.

Also buying from different marketplaces is not cheating, the world has globalised, for better or more likely, worse.

A smart consumer would use that to their advantage.
And as an EU national it's my right.

 

[scitek]

Sounds like indie devs could use some well-made marketing material (like trailers) to help them stand out. Hmm...