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The Witcher 3's budget was $32 million (120M Zloty) plus $35 million in marketing
- Thread starter boskee
- Start date
solokazama
Banned
Check Call of Duty game budget vs marketing budget ; )
ScatheZombie
Member
It's kind of funny to me how many of you guys are criticizing their marketing budget, when it is actually incredibly small. You guys really don't know how much marketing costs do you?
Just as an example ...
Conventions are expensive as fuck. Booth space, depending on size runs you anywhere from $10k to $100k. Even indie mini-booths are like $2k. And that's just for the floor space. Now say you want to build an amazing set or have a bunch of game stations. That's even more. One year, just our booth alone cost $1.5m and we're not even that big of a developer. Then you have to remember that everyone working a convention is getting massive OT pay. Salaried employees generally get a bunch of free PTO (which doesn't necessarily cost the company money) but they are maybe ... half the people we send. The rest are hourly IT, QA, CS, etc. And if the convention is out of our area - say, PAX Prime in Seattle when your company is in LA; they get paid for every hour they are up there - crazy, crazy OT. When I worked in QA, one of my favorite jobs was working conventions because I would get checks larger than some of the damn leads that week. Extra tens of thousands in just personnel costs. Plus travel expenses. Unless the convention is literally in your back yard, you're gonna need to pay for air-fare, hotels, food, cabs/rental car for every single person you send. And for every person you actually see at a convention from a company, there are probably 2 you don't see working behind the scenes to keep things running. It adds up quickly.
And guess what? You haven't even done any marketing yet!?! That's just fucking getting there. Now you need a trailer or some gameplay. You can't just launch the game and make a video of it. There are tons of man hours spent on even a simple in-engine, in-game gameplay demo. Even more if you are doing a CG-trailer. So much editing and cleaning up and repeat takes when the monster blocked the camera or just debug text accidentally flashed on the screen. And the budget for this is part of marketing, not development. So let's just say you spent a hundred thousand dollars in man-hours putting your video together. That would actually be on the low end. CG trailers can run as high as about $5m.
Alright, you got to the convention, got a decent booth, and have a trailer you run in the background. All for the low, low price of about $2m or so. PER CONVENTION. What about running actual ads? You know like running a coinciding ad on a popular gaming website that links to your new gameplay trailer? Or those giant game billboards and banners you see all over the outside of PAX and E3 and Gamescom? Alright, you want to run a decent web ad? Let's start low with $1m-$2m. That'll get you probably a single banner for the duration of the convention across one or two big sites and a handful of smaller ones. Ok, now about those billboards and banners. Probably looking to drop another $500k-$1m. You'll have a decent presence both outside and inside the convention and across multiple websites.
So how much did we spend? Probably somewhere in the region of $5m. Give or take $2m either way, depending on what your company (or publisher) is willing to spend.
Our company spent $8m on just PAX East alone. Now multiply that by the number of popular conventions per year (PAX, E3, GDC, Tokyo, Gamescom - plus potentially smaller/less popular conventions depending on your foreign markets like Games Expo, G-Star, ChinaJoy). Then multiply that by the number of years your game has a presence at conventions.
You should probably go to the bathroom now. Because if you didn't already know this, it is likely you just shat yourself.
Just as an example ...
Conventions are expensive as fuck. Booth space, depending on size runs you anywhere from $10k to $100k. Even indie mini-booths are like $2k. And that's just for the floor space. Now say you want to build an amazing set or have a bunch of game stations. That's even more. One year, just our booth alone cost $1.5m and we're not even that big of a developer. Then you have to remember that everyone working a convention is getting massive OT pay. Salaried employees generally get a bunch of free PTO (which doesn't necessarily cost the company money) but they are maybe ... half the people we send. The rest are hourly IT, QA, CS, etc. And if the convention is out of our area - say, PAX Prime in Seattle when your company is in LA; they get paid for every hour they are up there - crazy, crazy OT. When I worked in QA, one of my favorite jobs was working conventions because I would get checks larger than some of the damn leads that week. Extra tens of thousands in just personnel costs. Plus travel expenses. Unless the convention is literally in your back yard, you're gonna need to pay for air-fare, hotels, food, cabs/rental car for every single person you send. And for every person you actually see at a convention from a company, there are probably 2 you don't see working behind the scenes to keep things running. It adds up quickly.
And guess what? You haven't even done any marketing yet!?! That's just fucking getting there. Now you need a trailer or some gameplay. You can't just launch the game and make a video of it. There are tons of man hours spent on even a simple in-engine, in-game gameplay demo. Even more if you are doing a CG-trailer. So much editing and cleaning up and repeat takes when the monster blocked the camera or just debug text accidentally flashed on the screen. And the budget for this is part of marketing, not development. So let's just say you spent a hundred thousand dollars in man-hours putting your video together. That would actually be on the low end. CG trailers can run as high as about $5m.
Alright, you got to the convention, got a decent booth, and have a trailer you run in the background. All for the low, low price of about $2m or so. PER CONVENTION. What about running actual ads? You know like running a coinciding ad on a popular gaming website that links to your new gameplay trailer? Or those giant game billboards and banners you see all over the outside of PAX and E3 and Gamescom? Alright, you want to run a decent web ad? Let's start low with $1m-$2m. That'll get you probably a single banner for the duration of the convention across one or two big sites and a handful of smaller ones. Ok, now about those billboards and banners. Probably looking to drop another $500k-$1m. You'll have a decent presence both outside and inside the convention and across multiple websites.
So how much did we spend? Probably somewhere in the region of $5m. Give or take $2m either way, depending on what your company (or publisher) is willing to spend.
Our company spent $8m on just PAX East alone. Now multiply that by the number of popular conventions per year (PAX, E3, GDC, Tokyo, Gamescom - plus potentially smaller/less popular conventions depending on your foreign markets like Games Expo, G-Star, ChinaJoy). Then multiply that by the number of years your game has a presence at conventions.
You should probably go to the bathroom now. Because if you didn't already know this, it is likely you just shat yourself.
Turin Turambar
Member
Now I want to know what's your company.
shiftplusone
Member
Isn't this the developer that worked in a dilapidated building in a hallway that they had to fend off goats from wandering in on?
I think that was a story told to GB but i could be TOTALLY WRONG
Also who pays for the "free" copies included with video cards? Is this CDPR's doing to get their game out there, or does nVidia pay them for the rights to bundle free codes?
I've always been curious about that.
I think that was a story told to GB but i could be TOTALLY WRONG
Also who pays for the "free" copies included with video cards? Is this CDPR's doing to get their game out there, or does nVidia pay them for the rights to bundle free codes?
I've always been curious about that.
ScatheZombie
Member
Probably CDPR. It depends on the contract. It's usually mutual and very low cost for both parties. Although, Nvidia is actually pretty good about this. They will actually send you engineers and build specific drivers for your game for almost nothing. All you have to have is that Nvidia logo somewhere and that "Best on Nvidia" mini-trailer thing when the game launches.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Itt: people discover why so many companies across many markets are outsourcing the work to other counties.
Also people need to realize you have to pay marketing at the price of what the country you are marketing in costs. So polish marketing will be cheap but marketing in the U.S. Will be expensive. (Marketing, barring the cgi videos they make, is most likely not done inhouse)
Also people need to realize you have to pay marketing at the price of what the country you are marketing in costs. So polish marketing will be cheap but marketing in the U.S. Will be expensive. (Marketing, barring the cgi videos they make, is most likely not done inhouse)
Projectjustice
Banned
Joke post?
Erm, CDPR is located in the middle of the Polish capital, there are no goats there
and no polar bears either
That $35 million in marketing budget was paid by the distributors who then subtract those costs from sold copies.
They are popping up rapidly, but CDPR is the best one. Other notable companies: Techland (Dead Island, Dying Light, Call of Juarez), City Interactive (Lords of the Fallen, Sniper: Ghost Warrior), the hatred one, People Can Fly (now Epic Poland), Astronauts and bunch of smaller companies/mobile devs.
There are also gaming related companies, such as GOG (CDP) or Kinguin.
jim2point0
Banned
Maybe I'm way off here, but I thought it was like that because...
1. Polish salaries are lower, so the development budget is lower
2. The folks they need to pay for marketing\advertising are not Polish and therefore would cost more money.
I don't even know if #2 is necessarily true. But I know that they did fly a lot of youtubers out to Poland in order to create preview content, and Digic Picutres (based in Hungary) did their animated trailers.
Cave Johnson
Member
Damn, that is cutting short of the full budget of the game. Imagine if they had sold only 1 million less? That would be selling at a loss.
A LOSS.
Think about that for a second.
jim2point0
Banned
I'm not nearly as impressed with the world size as I am with how much content is actually in there. The quests in this game all seem to involve a little backstory, and every witcher contract requires at least a little bit of investigation. It must have taken so much time to put all those together, and they're all pretty well done.
They got return on their investment on day 1, everything after that is for them to keep. Also they are getting more than 33% as they are self-publishing the game.
Here's today's interview with Marcin Iwinski:
http://www.develop-online.net/interview/the-wild-road-to-the-witcher-3/0207553
stan423321
Member
If #2 is true, it still may not affect the advertising costs too much since whoever did the Polish marketing (CDP? Cdp.pl? Someone else?) went absolutely crazy on it. Or maybe I know nothing about advertising. I think game would sell very well here without any billboards or in-store ads, but they were there.
Cave Johnson
Member
Interesting. I thought Namco Bandai is getting a good % of the cut.
Damerman
Member
lol how can you say this with a straight face?
stan423321
Member
This is complex. Namco gets a cut from physical copies in EU except Poland, where CDP's mother-turned-spin-off company, Cdp.pl, handles things. But digital copies exist, and it's a smaller cut than usual because they did not fund development at all.
Turin Turambar
Member
totally UNPLAYABLE. No discussion allowed.
I believe you are talking about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developers in Ukraine.
Back on topic, those giant banner ads that are going to be at E3 this year - you know, the ones that COD and BF and Uncharted get? Those are over 100K for the banner and then 500K for the space. So ONE of those banner ads is over 600K.
Here's another fun marketing fact. One day of ad coverage at IGN costs about 15K. Yes, that is $15,000 for one day of prominent advertising on IGN.
I remembered another one! One of those professional cosplay costumes runs about 80K for the costume. Then the company has to pay an actual person to wear it, which can vary greatly but not cheaper than 5K per day, and that's the really low end.
Honestly the more shocking news is that they sold 4 million copies on 35 million in marketing. That is a great return.
LurkerPrime
Member
These marketing figures are blowing my mind. It seems so expensive for what you get.
Thanks y'all for sharing 'em - it's really fascinating.
Even disregarding budgets, what the Witcher 3 accomplished in sheer quality, world size, and variety puts every other open world game to shame.
Thanks y'all for sharing 'em - it's really fascinating.
GTA5 also saddles itself with some of the clumsiest mission structuring out there, a plethora of boring minigames, and the worst multiplayer lobby ever conceived. GTA5 is as much pyrite as it is solid gold.
Even disregarding budgets, what the Witcher 3 accomplished in sheer quality, world size, and variety puts every other open world game to shame.
He's not really wrong Witcher 3 has these massive maps full of completely boring/uninteresting bandit camps, captured NPCs, guarded treasure, monster nest, and abandon sites. Outside of the witcher gear which seems to be the best gear in the game all the rest of the stuff to see along the map is kind of useless IMO.
Sure when you have to go on contract you might get something interesting but I do agree that majority of the open world content/exploring is pretty bland but it problem majority open world games tend to have.