You really should give it a chance, it's quite good. Pretty much the only Rockstar game I've ever liked...Major_Tom said:
dont fret, fellow MP3 lover, they're getting the opportunity to continue working with rockstar, they've all been offered jobs at rockstar toronto.kman123 said:
you make it seem as if the company did something evil. just becuase you didnt like the game, dosent mean anyone deserves to have to relocate. at least they didnt lose their jobs.Major_Tom said:
I could agree that it's at least that estimate. None of these studios begin to understand the general "law of diminishing returns". In this case, they put a whole lot of money and effort into something that was half game, half movie.grigjd3 said:
Why the FUCK would a company pay each of it's 150 employees $10,000 a MONTH?!grigjd3 said:
Programmers cost money. They'd make a lot more if they worked in fields other than gaming. You also have to understand that's an average that includes benefits like health insurance, disability, retirement packages, payroll taxes, etc. For straight up salary, we're talking about 60% of that figure. So an employee might "make" $72000 a year pre-tax but cost his company $120000. For skilled people in the tech industry, these are not big numbers. For people with five to ten years experience and just the slightest bit of mathematical savvy, they can easily double that working for a bank, healthcare company or engineering firm. Game programmers are in it because they want to be, not because it pays well. Seriously though, that's the cost of doing business.Khanht Cope said:
I think game companies are doing triple-A development because they want to be. Everyone wants to be in the major leagues, right? Well, everyone wants to be making the most awesome, cutting edge gaming experience out there as well. Trouble is, they aren't always keeping their heads on straight when analyzing the cost versus benefits. Max Payne was never a title on the same level as Halo or Call of Duty or even as BioShock and yet they gave it a budget that was out of this world. The thing I wonder about is, if the fans had been treated to a game without all the high end graphics, would they have even managed to buy a million copies? Would they have been willing to pay full price? They gambled and came up short. Of course, it would be helpful to get an idea of what people are willing to pay for games that aren't completely cutting edge, but as of yet, there's not enough data to correctly estimate these things.Baresark said:
I was actually thinking about this on the way to work. Not this specifically, but a similar thing in games. The buzz word/phrase a lot of businesses use is "minimum viable product". This is essentially as it sounds. The least amount of work that must go into a product for it to be viable as a product that people will actually buy. I don't know if it's the same in development houses, but I'm willing to be that is how it works for publishers. If they are sinking in the millions for just the minimal viable product, game development is in trouble. Just because a product is viable, that doesn't mean it's fit for release. So you get these titles that are riddled with issues after they spend $25M+ on them. It's not uncommon for games to have clearly not had enough testing time and money is always cited as the reasoning.grigjd3 said:
I didn't know there was a term for it but it's what I have been wondering about. There seems to be an issue with the concept of "budget games". I don't, however, know how real this is. I wonder if game developers have simply been following the technology and up until now, it hasn't hit them at this level. I mean, last gen, when games would cost only 10 million to make, half a million sales meant major profit margins. With the current gen, prices have ballooned. I realize our expectations are higher but I wonder if anyone has actually experimented with pricing models and cost analysis and seen whether there is a space for more affordable game production.Baresark said:
