Why exactly are Triple A development costs being ALLOWED to rise so much?

[Oly J]

Before I start I'm just gonna throw up a little disclaimer: everything I say is pure speculation, I know nothing about being on a development team, hell I don't even know what AAA stands for.


This has been bugging me for a while and I'm certain I'm not the first one to think or even say this, there will have been countless others, whenever the subject of the price of video games comes up in conversation. (or really just the general subject of money in relation to gaming) the next thing to be brought up is the positively MASSIVE costs in development, as if that's an absolute necessity in a game, of course we all know it isn't.

Call me paranoid or conspiracy-minded or whatever else might come to mind, but sometimes I have my doubts as to whether AAA development is really as expensive as publishers tell us it is, because if it was, they shouldn't even be THINKING about releasing new consoles and thus having the costs climb even more.

and that's another thing, why exactly are the costs climbing in a rate so disproportionate to the advancement of technology, surely as the technology to create games evolves so too does the amount of ways to use it right? The current consoles have been available for the better part of a decade, surely they must have found ways to make development cheaper, and if not, why not?

It seems to me that instead of pumping stupid amounts of money into a project, a more sensible thing to do would be to find ways to develop the same game for less, I simply cannot believe that in the 8 years companies have had to develop for current-gen consoles they haven't found a way to make it more cost-effective.

so yeah, what do you guys think about this?

captcha: easy as pie

well I wouldn't go that far

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

ironic that I happen to be watching this when I saw this thread

 

[Oly J]

ironic that I happen to be watching this when I saw this thread

that was mostly the inspiration for that little rant, that and in GAME yesterday I saw a PS3 controller marked at £47.99 I know completely different businesses but they're charging day-1 prices for a piece of hardware that has been readily available for 8 years, there is no WAY it's still expensive enough to make to justify that price

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

I think you underestimate how irrational companies can be. As we've seen from various booms and busts, recessions, and bankruptcies, business can quite easily convince itself that past growth, equals future growth, and that potential custom, is predicted custom. So a company will look at Game 1 selling 2 million, Game 2 selling 5 million, and conclude that Game 3 will sell 10 million. It's the kind of gamble that leads to industries making terrible mistakes.

 

[Oly J]

I think you underestimate how irrational companies can be. As we've seen from various booms and busts, recessions, and bankruptcies, business can quite easily convince itself that past growth, equals future growth, and that potential custom, is predicted custom. So a company will look at Game 1 selling 2 million, Game 2 selling 5 million, and conclude that Game 3 will sell 10 million. It's the kind of gamble that leads to industries making terrible mistakes.

but...but that is just stupid...how are these people permitted to be in charge of anything?

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

Well I mean a lot of the times it works, that's how businesses grow and succeed, by investing and making more sales. It's just difficult to predict when growth is unsustainable in a case by case basis, but it seems increasingly obvious to us on the outside. But then, maybe we're wrong.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

I honestly don't get it either, I mean there are some people who agree with it, there are some people here who have argued that consoles should be obliterated so that all games can be made to melt the top end video cards the way Crysis does but the the popularity of the Wii shows that the opposite exists in abundance. Hell just the popularity of consoles shows that people are after SOMETHING other than the top end graphics.

All we can hope is that these companies will learn from THQ but it doesn't look like it

 

[Greg White]

Okay...remember the kickstarter for Skullgirls, the one that cost $100,000 to add one character to an existing game?

Now imagine making a AAA game from scratch, involving hundreds, maybe thousands of employees of various professions, and taking months, possibly years, to achieve the level of polish needed to be a AAA title, and costs can get well into the millions very easily in order to achieve the level of excellence gamers demand of such a title.

High end graphics, multiplayer, story, sound, all of that costs money to be top-of-the-line, and this isn't even including the marketing costs, which REALLY hurt some game's final budget, like Tomb Raider.

As to how it got to this point...we, the gamer, demanded bigger and better and these companies are trying to deliver.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Side-question here; when companies say that it cost let's say £200M to make a game, what exactly did they spend that money on? Is it all wages and marketing? Because if so, I think they could cut down costs by maybe firing the dude that makes the tea and the person that photocopies the paper, because that's a crazy amount just to pay people. Or do they have to spend money on stuff like pre-existing engines etc?

 

[luckshot]

I think you underestimate how irrational companies can be. As we've seen from various booms and busts, recessions, and bankruptcies, business can quite easily convince itself that past growth, equals future growth, and that potential custom, is predicted custom. So a company will look at Game 1 selling 2 million, Game 2 selling 5 million, and conclude that Game 3 will sell 10 million. It's the kind of gamble that leads to industries making terrible mistakes.

but...but that is just stupid...how are these people permitted to be in charge of anything?

part of the problem is that many of the companies ceos are from different industries, where throwing money at a problem can work.

need to make more pies, throw money at a smaller pie making company so they will turn out a few hundred of yours

unfortunately that doesn't translate well to video game development/sales,

if your dev team is behind in designing levels hiring another company/team to take a few can lead to different styles that can confuse rather than delight. Shamus young had an article on this
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=16538

other times it might just be the AAA companies trying to apply math to an equation that has a lot more involved
ie: game+$1million=2 million sales

 

[Oly J]

Okay...remember the kickstarter for Skullgirls, the one that cost $100,000 to add one character to an existing game?

Now imagine making a AAA game from scratch, involving hundreds, maybe thousands of employees of various professions, and taking months, possibly years, to achieve the level of polish needed to be a AAA title, and costs can get well into the millions very easily in order to achieve the level of excellence gamers demand of such a title.

High end graphics, multiplayer, story, sound, all of that costs money to be top-of-the-line, and this isn't even including the marketing costs, which REALLY hurt some game's final budget, like Tomb Raider.

As to how it got to this point...we, the gamer, demanded bigger and better and these companies are trying to deliver.

I'm not disputing any of that but high-end graphics and everything else (at least on consoles) have been at more or less the same level of potential for a long time now, there must be ways to make it cheaper, as opposed to releasing new consoles and raising that level of potential making it ever more expensive to utilize, and if there isn't then they should find a way to make one.

 

[AgedGrunt]

It seems to me that instead of pumping stupid amounts of money into a project, a more sensible thing to do would be to find ways to develop the same game for less, I simply cannot believe that in the 8 years companies have had to develop for current-gen consoles they haven't found a way to make it more cost-effective.

You're assuming way too much of the people calling shots and the name of the AAA game is, to them, go big or go home. Probably similar to the Hollywood blockbusters. A game like Dark Souls stepping out into the world isn't money in the bank for its company. With SWTOR, it's easy to see why it was a money pit.

 

[Doom972]

Because it works for games like Call of Duty and Uncharted and major publishers try to clone that success. They have the impression that if a game is cinematic enough it'll sell more copies. For a game to be like that, you need an army of animators, top voice actors, etc. and these don't come cheap.

 

[Greg White]

I'm not disputing any of that but high-end graphics and everything else (at least on consoles) have been at more or less the same level of potential for a long time now, there must be ways to make it cheaper, as opposed to releasing new consoles and raising that level of potential making it ever more expensive to utilize, and if there isn't then they should find a way to make one.

Even on to consoles technology has been evolving and shifting to get as much as humanly possible out of the aging hardware. Better game engines, better graphical optimization, better resource management on the system itself.

The 360 and PS3 devs have gotten a lot better at all of that since the console's release.

Things have been far from stagnant for most of the past decade, and that's not even including PC in the equation.

 

[MammothBlade]

I think you underestimate how irrational companies can be. As we've seen from various booms and busts, recessions, and bankruptcies, business can quite easily convince itself that past growth, equals future growth, and that potential custom, is predicted custom. So a company will look at Game 1 selling 2 million, Game 2 selling 5 million, and conclude that Game 3 will sell 10 million. It's the kind of gamble that leads to industries making terrible mistakes.

Yes, the corporate bigwigs and investors push for mass-marketing, maximum reach, etc, but they're not realistic about their goals. The predominant "AAA" games marketing doctrine demands that everything competes with Call of Duty for sales and popularity. What they don't get is that the gaming market is very diversified and that people don't just buy games in the same way they do cinema tickets.

A game like Dark Souls stepping out into the world isn't money in the bank for its company. With SWTOR, it's easy to see why it was a money pit.

lol

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-05-08-dark-souls-sells-over-a-million-to-push-namco-bandai-financials-forward

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Okay...remember the kickstarter for Skullgirls, the one that cost $100,000 to add one character to an existing game?

Now imagine making a AAA game from scratch, involving hundreds, maybe thousands of employees of various professions, and taking months, possibly years, to achieve the level of polish needed to be a AAA title, and costs can get well into the millions very easily in order to achieve the level of excellence gamers demand of such a title.

High end graphics, multiplayer, story, sound, all of that costs money to be top-of-the-line, and this isn't even including the marketing costs, which REALLY hurt some game's final budget, like Tomb Raider.

As to how it got to this point...we, the gamer, demanded bigger and better and these companies are trying to deliver.

this is the whole point, no one NEEDS that crap and most of us don't WANT that crap. A good story driven single player game doesn't NEED multiplayer, games don't NEED photo realism and it doesn't actually cost millions to write a good story.


I wish I could remember where I posted that "polygons is emotions" video so I could add that one

 

[Glongpre]

Side-question here; when companies say that it cost let's say £200M to make a game, what exactly did they spend that money on? Is it all wages and marketing? Because if so, I think they could cut down costs by maybe firing the dude that makes the tea and the person that photocopies the paper, because that's a crazy amount just to pay people. Or do they have to spend money on stuff like pre-existing engines etc?

I believe most of that is attributed to marketing/advertisement. I wonder how much superbowl ads cost, probably a silly sum.

 

[Lilani]

As to how it got to this point...we, the gamer, demanded bigger and better and these companies are trying to deliver.

Well, that and publishers started taking the wrong approach to making games. EA is trying to make a game's development cycle 18 months. That is crazy--the usual development time for a game is 2-4 years. The figure if they just throw enough people at a project, the whole process will go faster and they can release more games. But as Jim Sterling pointed out, this violates the baker and cake principle. Let's say it takes one baker one hour to make a good cake. No matter how hard you try, you are not going to get 12 bakers to make that same cake in 5 minutes. That simply isn't how cakes work. And that isn't how games work, either. They need time to incubate and develop, being creative works by nature.

But rather than utilizing incubation and using their resources wisely, AAA companies just hire up a bunch of people and get them to generate 4 year's worth of work in 18 months, which results in a sloppy mess of a game that is somehow both shallow and bloated at the same time.

 

[MammothBlade]

High end graphics, multiplayer, story, sound, all of that costs money to be top-of-the-line, and this isn't even including the marketing costs, which REALLY hurt some game's final budget, like Tomb Raider.

As to how it got to this point...we, the gamer, demanded bigger and better and these companies are trying to deliver.

There is no "we, the gamer". Different people want different things from games.

I for one don't feel like splashing out so much for so little in terms of gameplay and content. Tomb Raider looks good, but I don't like spending £30-40 when I know it's only ~10-15 hours in playtime despite being the price of 8+ cinema tickets (£6 each) which could easily give me 16+ hours of enjoyment. Or the price of 3-4 novels (£9.99 each) which give me weeks of enjoyment.

A lot of marketing costs are rubbish, since all you need is a trailer and a website, even just a youtube account, and the internet will literally do the marketing for you. That's one way to look at it.

 

[Greg White]

There is no "we, the gamer". Different people want different things from games.

I for one don't feel like splashing out so much for so little in terms of gameplay and content. Tomb Raider looks good, but I don't like spending £30-40 when I know it's only ~10-15 hours in playtime despite being the price of 8+ cinema tickets (£6 each) which could easily give me 16+ hours of enjoyment. Or the price of 3-4 novels (£9.99 each) which give me weeks of enjoyment.

A lot of marketing costs are rubbish, since all you need is a trailer and a website, even just a youtube account, and the internet will literally do the marketing for you. That's one way to look at it.

Taken as a whole, yes, there is a "we, the gamer" to the games industry. This is especially true for when the industry is trying to figure out what works best by looking at what people are buying.

People are buying more of X, so we should include that, but they're also buying a great deal of Y, so that should be included too, and the end result is the mess of games by committee that get made. Makes perfect sense on paper, especially from a business point of view, but things rarely work out as well as they hope.

Well, that and publishers started taking the wrong approach to making games. EA is trying to make a game's development cycle 18 months. That is crazy--the usual development time for a game is 2-4 years. The figure if they just throw enough people at a project, the whole process will go faster and they can release more games. But as Jim Sterling pointed out, this violates the baker and cake principle. Let's say it takes one baker one hour to make a good cake. No matter how hard you try, you are not going to get 12 bakers to make that same cake in 5 minutes. That simply isn't how cakes work. And that isn't how games work, either. They need time to incubate and develop, being creative works by nature.

But rather than utilizing incubation and using their resources wisely, AAA companies just hire up a bunch of people and get them to generate 4 year's worth of work in 18 months, which results in a sloppy mess of a game that is somehow both shallow and bloated at the same time.

But therein lies a major problem. 2-4 years for a project that may or may not be good is, from a business standpoint, a horrible investment, and there have been major flops in the past for the industry to be wary of.

Look at Daikatana. Look at Too Human. Look at Colonial Marines.

I can hardly blame them after such grand flops as those.

this is the whole point, no one NEEDS that crap and most of us don't WANT that crap. A good story driven single player game doesn't NEED multiplayer, games don't NEED photo realism and it doesn't actually cost millions to write a good story.

Therein is another unfortunate reality of the games industry. By what we buy and what we trade in, we demand multiplayer in single-player games because games with multiplayer tend not to get traded in while those without it tend to be traded shortly after the player finishes the main game. From the developer's point of view, they need graphics to get your attention and a competative multiplayer, preferably one with leveling, to keep you there.