No one thinks that should be reduced, they were wondering why a specific task could require so much money.
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"How the hell does *that* cost $X to make???" (Giant Bomb and Skullgirls)
- Thread starter dLMN8R
- Start date
No one thinks that should be reduced, they were wondering why a specific task could require so much money.
IHaveCandy
Banned
I thought it was pretty clear that I was asking a question, not making a false assumption.X amount of money for Y piece of work? I'm pretty sure (my amateur ass) can make Y for 1/8 of the X amount in like Z amount of time! What a rip-off!
God damn, I love reading posts like that all around.
Or like this one. Holy shit, do you even read, bro? I would quote the exact same part from the article right now but Giant Bomb is down for some reason. They'll be free from three months.
I work in [different field] and Im skeptical about [tangential element] in their budget. Despite having no game experience, I think they're asking too much and will need to see their entire business plan.
How ignorant can one be? One character is far from a "minor" thing. Not only does it take hell of a long time to draw & animate 2d assets (if they want to have at least half-decent & somewhat smooth, not janky shit animation), they need to actually implement the character into the game in a way that he/she(/it?) is not either overpowered or completely useless in the game, and this testing and fine-honing of attack speed/damage/reach needs to be done against EACH AND EVERY character, which means meticulous testing. That's where most of the work comes after they have the character "done" (as in, animated and voice recorded, which itself takes a lot of effort).
For voice recording, you can't just take ANYONE from the street, pay them a few dollars and get half-decent voice acting (not that paying for a professional is always much better, but it more likely is than is not)
On top of that, he's got a cool username too.
Beast Legacy
Member
Guys earlier in the thread were making wild assumptions without any evidence or experience to back it up. Your phrasing, that people cared "for some odd reason," and "online begging," made it sound like another poster that didn't know or care about why 2D animation and fighting games were produced for that much money. Plus the information about it being free initially is in bold print right in the fundraising page.
People are just tired of others ignoring the information clearly presented in the article, the fundraising page, the first post and by various industry people and Skullgirls team members in this very thread.
darkistheway
Member
I could have sworn I read a post specifically saying that...
I hope this thread will die down soon because every question people have about the cost has been thoroughly answered.
If you are just coming in now, do yourself (and us) a favor and read through the thread, it will help calm your rage
The main take-home point? It's a completely justifiable and fair amount of dollars to be spent.
The best part is that the DLC will be free for three months! All this outrage over something they asked their fans to fund and are giving away.
IHaveCandy
Banned
I know HD sprites are very expensive. Has anybody tried making 3D models that look HD? The goal would be to make a game look 2D, but made with the same method of 3D models.
Marty Chinn
Member
It's crap like this which is why I think we're heading for a crash. Consumers expect a ton, but want game prices to drop, and don't understand the economics of it all why it's not feasible for what they want. With rising dev costs, and higher expectations, it's only going to lead to problems. I actually didn't think people on this board were that bad about understanding dev costs though, so this catches me by surprise.
RedAssedApe
Banned
I guess this is why 2d fighters are dead? seems extremely cost prohibitive.
How much did a game like Persona Arena cost to develop?
How much did a game like Persona Arena cost to develop?
GordonHalfman
Member
How many people defending this budget would be saying the exact same thing if they had asked for twice as much?
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
If they can justify it by breaking it down to individual costs than sure. I'll defend that.
I have no clue what point you're trying to make here (if you even have one), because the budget isn't twice as much, and they aren't asking for that. So why bring it up?
If you literally need to invent a scenario where the budget comes off as unreasonable, your original point is probably incredibly flawed.
You can use cel-shading but you can't make 3D models which move like this. The kind of animation Skullgirls uses just can't be translated to 3D with the current level of technology or at any reasonable cost.
"If you had a completely different opinion, boy you'd be wrong then!"
How many people lambasting this budget would be saying the exact same thing if they had asked for half as much?
She's quite nice from what I've heard, used to do stuff on the Voice Acting Alliance board iirc not to mention still does youtube stuff from time to time. (She's also in another 2D fighting game, Blazblue as Noel)
Anyway back onto topic...
Reading through this thread, I was shocked at the amount of people who can't seem to understand the costs and claim that the in-house staff do nothing not to mention claiming they could do better. I suppose stuff like this is why companies don't like giving budget break-downs like this.
This here is a fantastic post, thanks for posting this
darkistheway
Member
I wonder if this thread would exist if the developers had just asked for the money without a breakdown of costs.
You can try, and with a good rigg you can get nice stretches, deformations, etc. But nothing as versatile as hand-drawn animation. Plus 3d animation often (not always, but often) looks too fluid to pass as hand-drawn, even when you reduce the number of frames per second to 12.
In the end, you can probably get the look right, but the moves and crazy stuff the Skullgirls do, not that easy.
Beast Legacy
Member
The SG scene died really quickly because the devs kept promising/teasing balance changes and characters that never came--players didn't want to bother perfecting combos/tricks that weren't gonna work post-patch, so they stopped working at the game and waited for the patch to drop... and waited, and waited, until finally the patch dropped after most players had moved on (and even then only on PS3).
We've since learned that the patch has been held back by all sorts of financial/bureaucratic bullshit that was beyond Reverge/Lab Zero's control, so people are seeing this Indiegogo thing as a way to bring momentum back to the game and cultivate the scene it deserves. The recent Japanese release is gonna go a long way towards helping, too, I think.
All that being said, there's definitely a skeevy MLP/Touhou-esque level of fanaticism that keeps this game alive, and I don't doubt that they're the ones making most of the donations.
DiscoShark
Banned
She's hardly the most expensive character of all time for just requiring two voice actors instead of one. The reason Squigly was chosen to be worked on before anyone else was because work had already been completed on her before they were layed off, they had finished about a third of the character by that point. It's also why the character is 150k vs. the full 200k that they're now trying to raise as a stretch goal for Big Band.
???
Ignoring the fact that Skullgirls is a completely new IP going up against popular fighters of established franchises going back decades a lot of the reason the competitive community of the game dropped off was because of the announcement of a fairly large balance patch after a couple months in the game's life (May-June area, game came out in April of 2012) that wasn't able to be put out until November. A lot of people stopped playing in order to wait for a patch that got delayed for a number of reasons (like everyone getting fired).
Beyond that the art style being hit or miss for people, an all girl roster, 2012 being such a huge year for fighting games, and the inability to expand the roster beyond the original 8 up until this point haven't helped the game either.
It's pretty great though, try the demo.
Tizoc
Member
^I wonder fi those who complained about the roster would buy Senran Kagura Shinovi for the Vita =P
I don't think 'dead' is the proper term dude. 2D animation for fighters is rare, but many fighters end up being on a 2D plane of play.
I don't think 'dead' is the proper term dude. 2D animation for fighters is rare, but many fighters end up being on a 2D plane of play.
Double's design is fascinatingly disgusting.
Also kind of ridiculous I mean jesus christ how much time did it take to make her?
I don't know, but it was absolutely worth it. Double is easily one of the most mesmerizing pieces of 2D character animation I've seen in games.
Jex
Member
They're certainly a labour of love. I think Bahi JD did some of the animations, if I'm not mistaken.
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
Well double did recycle quite a bit of unused animation frames from other characters if I remember correctly.
Honestly though, I'm still kinda sad I can't play this game because it is IMPOSSIBLE to find any games in australia.
Honestly though, I'm still kinda sad I can't play this game because it is IMPOSSIBLE to find any games in australia.
sorakirosaki
Member
Man that animation sends chills down my spine O_O its so good
baphomet
Member
The fact that people who, more than likely, gave nothing to the kickstarter are complaining about the asking amount for something they know nothing about is mind-boggling stupid. The goal was hit in less than 24 hours. Obviously they have fans who support them enough to give them money for what they're offering to provide.
Would I have cared if they'd asked for double what they did?
Not at all. I would have given them twice as much money.
Would I have cared if they'd asked for double what they did?
Not at all. I would have given them twice as much money.
In 3D, or skeletal-based animation in general, the look of a character is technically completely separated from the actual animation. So changing something about a character is much, much easier. The animation frames don't need to be redrawn if the character design changes, new frames don't need to be made if an anim changes. Instead we just act on the skeleton.
What's more, the inbetweening (where a good chunk of the frames come from) is automatic in skeletal animation. It's not quite free since in return there is the rigging phase (creating all the strings the animators will use to drive the puppet, so to speak) but it can be streamlined.
All this makes it faster to animate in 3D, while in 2D your only options are outsourcing or removing frames or graphic complexity.
Yes, and imagine if they had asked for ten times as much, and threatened to murder our families if we didn't give it to them? Hohoho, the people defending them would look pretty silly, then!
Look, as long as the costs can be reasonably detailed and explained, as they have here, then there isn't much left to discuss. This is apparently not just normal cost, but relatively low cost for the sort of material they are making. Frankly, that's all one can ask for unless you want these developers to bend economic realities to their will, in which case I'd ask why they aren't just reducing the cost to zero with their magic economic wand and producing an infinite number of characters for free.
GordonHalfman
Member
My point is extremely obvious actually, I don't know how you didn't get it. A dozen other people apparently didn't either so don't feel bad.
What I'd like to know is how many people are arguing from a position of knowledge that these numbers are reasonable, as opposed to repeatedly and uselessly asserting the ignorance of people arguing the opposite.
FWIW I'm not arguing that the numbers aren't reasonable, but at the same time I don't see how a simple "breakdown" of the costs helps at all, since I'm not in a position to judge the smaller amounts any more than the larger one. And this should be considered a problem for KS projects. On the one hand you have a project like Sui Generis that is making an open world RPG and asked for 150K. And now a similar amount for a single character in an existing game.
OT, I saw It Might Get Loud in a movie theater. It was eargasmic. Jack White is so talented. I'm so ashamed of my guitar playing skills after Jack White pretty much gets better sounds out of that wooden plank, nail and wire. -___- ;
Yeah, that game had a whole lot of problems. Udon were not expecting how difficult it was going to be to redraw all the sprites.
Teknopathetic
Member
"FWIW I'm not arguing that the numbers aren't reasonable, but at the same time I don't see how a simple "breakdown" of the costs helps at all, since I'm not in a position to judge the smaller amounts any more than the larger one. And this should be considered a problem for KS projects. On the one hand you have a project like Sui Generis that is making an open world RPG and asked for 150K. And now a similar amount for a single character in an existing game."
1) Sui Generis kickstarter was asking for 150k *pounds* not dollars.
2) Sui Generis was already in development for over a year.
You're making the assumption (or implication) that the Sui Generis kickstarter is for the entire development of the game, when it's not. Furthermore, the Sui Generis kickstarter doesn't even really say what they are going to use the money for other than "finishing the game" which is obviously very vague, so it's not really possible to draw a direct comparison with regards to the budget. And finally, "a single character" in a fighting game (any fighting game) is a significant addition.
1) Sui Generis kickstarter was asking for 150k *pounds* not dollars.
2) Sui Generis was already in development for over a year.
You're making the assumption (or implication) that the Sui Generis kickstarter is for the entire development of the game, when it's not. Furthermore, the Sui Generis kickstarter doesn't even really say what they are going to use the money for other than "finishing the game" which is obviously very vague, so it's not really possible to draw a direct comparison with regards to the budget. And finally, "a single character" in a fighting game (any fighting game) is a significant addition.
CoconutTank
Member
Well at least regarding the bolded, we have actual game devs and folks that have worked on the project giving their take in some way, such as here, here, here, here and here. And here's a link to an art panel in which Lab Zero discusses their art process, which has been getting posted pretty often in this thread.
Noogy, RagingSpaniard and me are all coming from a position of knowledge and saying that, yes, these numbers are extremely reasonable. Your initial statement was a completely irrelevant strawman of a question that posed a ridiculous hypothetical that seemed to ignore at least 3 posts that directly answer the question of how very reasonable these numbers. It shouldn't be a surprise to you that people don't get what you're asking or why.
As for Sui Generis there are any number of factors that affect the cost. Here are a few:
- Engine was already developed and had basic implementation of physics good to go. Sans engine development costs, most of what you'll be paying for are art assets and 3D art assets are far, far easier to create and animate than 2D ones in almost all cases.
- Quite a bit of what Sui Generis is promising is essentially coming down to extensive scripting which, while it is a lot of work, seems to be one of the core areas of their engine design. Diverse NPC behaviors, open-ended story, etc. are all generally not something that has anything to do with increased art assets. Additionally, while it's stated that the world will be open world, it remains to be seen how different and original it will look. Nothing I see there looks very artistically demanding. There's a lot of heavy use of repeating texture and an extremely limited color palette from what I can see.
- Having an engine with dynamic physics, support for interactive environments, dynamic lighting and shadows and what looks like dynamic animation (it looks quite rough if it's not dynamic) already developed before the Kickstarter saves a lot of cost. Especially the bit about the animation. Compared to 2D animation which has to be hand drawn costs will be lower.
EDIT: Just read the post by Tekno that it had been in development for a year. Yeah, that'll help.
Actually... too often, it doesn't.
GordonHalfman
Member
Well I don't think it's ridiculous, that was my whole point. (I don't think most people are able to estimate this stuff to within a power of 2 or more.)
In any case I didn't realise my post would be so inflammatory, so FWIW I apologise.
Well, look at how long it took him to make it. That man is an ultra beast.
$150k is what is costs to make a full serious game. That's from acquisition, conception, requirements elicitation and engineering, instructional and game design, programming, animation, voice work, etc. until delivery, including profit margin, renting studios and the lot.
That usually takes a team of 4-5 persons in various makeups up till 10 weeks.
Sure it gets a lot less QA, and they'll reuse some assets, but definitely not as much as this character will, which already has the complete game around it.
This guy on the first page has gotten it right imo.
That usually takes a team of 4-5 persons in various makeups up till 10 weeks.
Sure it gets a lot less QA, and they'll reuse some assets, but definitely not as much as this character will, which already has the complete game around it.
This guy on the first page has gotten it right imo.
DiscoShark
Banned
So you've basically ignored everything in this thread up until this point huh?
That's cool I guess.
Here's some links to get you started though :
http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-little-fighting-game-that-could/1100-4587/
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyv08xUBuVkKMtgq47JwntBt87QSwqZzo
close to the edge
Member
I haven't read all of this thread but have any of the doubers actually read the full article? The bit that Dave Lang wrote was very detailed and he broke it down very well. Not to mention he is CEO of a fairly established studio that already developed fighting games, so he should know what he's talking about.