Support NeoGAF

[LimanimaPT]

Funny thing is that all this is common sense and random dudes from an internet forum know this and have been calling it for ages.
It puzzles me how the CEOs of this companies fail to see this.

 

[Orbital2060]

Devs are paid way too much, theyre not worth it. All the way from the bottom to the top - corporate and personal greed. Thats why consumers have to pay out their asses for a simple videogame.

Well Im not buying a game at that 70-80 dollar price. Im not paying for your Porsches and Thai slaves.

Time for the games industry people to look at themselves in the mirror and ask hey maybe Im the problem here?

 

[DenchDeckard]

I feel he is right. Triple A gaming isn't sustainable.

I think Last of us 2 was the start of the end. Budgets have blown to such a huge level to get real time motion capture etc. It's too much money. No one could take any risks.

I think it will be a good thing. I've never been a graphics whore so it's fine with me.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Just stop making games that feel like a 2nd job.

There is a reason why gaming was best when you could rent most games at the video store and finish them on the weekend. More smaller games like Space Marine 2 need to be made. They can be made faster, teams can be more creative and they have to sell less to break even.

We can still have our GTAs and Elder Scrolls, but those should be the exception rather than the norm.

 

[mdkirby]

1000%. Like it literally wouldn’t be an issue for even the ideological games that are alienating large groups of their audience, if they simply didn’t spend mind boggling amounts of money on development where you can’t afford to drive away huge demographics. Spend 50mil and you can make games with more narrow appeal. Spend 300 mil and your fucked unless it sells absolute game busters. 50mil also lets you take more risks and not fall into tired formulas.

Kingdom come 2 sold enough to cover its dev budget in 24hrs. That’s what games need, or at least be pretty likely of recouping on long tail, which is generally the case with all of remedy’s games, who have always maintained pretty good budget control for the quality of games they make. I really don’t know how badly mismanaged or wasteful a studio has to be where 200mil+ has become the norm.

 

[Physiognomonics]

He is right. All the game I find the most interesting, and play the most, are either small independant games or with reasonnable budget.

 

[Nikodemos]

One massive problem few talk about is MBA suits shoehorning AGILE procedures into game design. It's terrible and makes games developed using it feel disjointed. And the basic premise behind it is fundamentally flawed, returning to the whole "nine women carry a baby to term in one month" issue.

What ends up happening is the game dev version of the Kriegsmarine problem in 1944: the vast majority of Type XXI sections were badly build, and required extensive remanufacturing to fit together into an actually usable sub.

Having 500 people working on disparate parts of the game, at different speeds, sometimes with different guidelines, in multiple different parts of the world, more often than not results in needing even more work to make the bits fit together (from a narrative, or system, or aesthetic p.o.v., or a mix of several).
That is, if all the bits are ready at roughly the same time, which is absolutely not a given.

 

[Drell]

Maybe what I'm saying will be full of shit, I won't pretend I'm an expert on this subject but, isn't a big part of these excessive budgets linked to over the top marketing using the latest "hyped" rap song or absolutely wanting to have a 3D model of Keanu Reeves in your game? I know costs of devs themselves have dramatically risen this last decade and even more these last years but I can't help thinking some money could be used better than paying for american soft power in order to promote your game.

 

[Wildebeest]

Wasn't Space Marine 2 made in Russia? Not exactly paying California salaries.

 

[Kadve]

I didnt even realize the primary developers of Space Marine 2 were Saber St. Petersburg?
I imagine they moved development to another studio or relocated the studio entirely once the war started.

Nope they are still there. Saber has in fact 4 different studious in Russia.

 

[Boss Mog]

They only cost that much because of DEI hires that take 10 times the time to do something compared to a skilled worker, and then they can't even do it right.

Most big budget AAA titles could easily have their work force cut in 2 or even 3, trimming that blue-haired fat would reduce dev costs significantly.

 

[kruis]

The same kind of inflation happened in films. For example, Disney's Star Wars sequel are among some of the most empty and unoriginal movies in their entire library. On paper, these are basic movies, which should have landed USD$100m budgets at most. Yet, they each cost more than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Massive budgets are thrown around on unambitious slop because these industries believe they know what their audiences want, but they've grown so disconnected from the actual audience that they can't tell what's good from what's trash. When you're game is ambitious as Cyberpunk 2077, a USD$400m budget can be explained. It's an absolute marvel and amongst the best games of all time. But when you're making unambitious crap like Concord, it standards as a monument to why an industry crash is damn-near required.

The reason why Disney movies cost so much is because the enormous budgets are essentially troughs filled with money with many, many people getting filthy rich. Not a problem at all when those movies make money hand over fist, but now that those days are over it's seemingly hard for the people who gorged themselves on that free money to realize the feeding days are over.

 

[notseqi]

He's right but ignores the other side of the coin...

"I think if anything has contributed more to the growth of industry jobs, it’s the multi-hundred million dollar budget"​

sustainable growth is a different animal tho

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

He's right but ignores the other side of the coin...

"I think if anything has contributed more to the growth of industry jobs, it’s the multi-hundred million dollar budget"​

I mean, yeah, you have to hire lots of people to fire lots of people.

Maybe if all those hires learned to, you know, make good games that actually made money, then a lot of those layoffs would not have happened

 

[Black_Stride]

Nope they are still there. Saber has in fact 4 different studious in Russia.

The game was completed in Russia?

I'd think they would complete the game in Armenia, Estonia, Serbia or Belarus because sending funds to Russia became an absolute headache once the war was full scale.

The game is still getting support and there should even be a new update soon.

I would assume the Russian teams would have trouble moving to Europe or the US, and if they were mission critical to completing the game they would move to eastern Europe.

 

[Trilobit]

no voice, actors union

The American desire for self-harm still amazes me at times. "Please big bossu - punish me like the bad boy I've been! I want you to have power over me, senpai!"

 

[Black_Stride]

AAA don’t need to cost that much. Cut costs!!! no big city office, no office perks, no voice, actors union, no 200% tax, no coffee bar in office, no baby changing table in bathroom, no nap chairs in break room, have a room, made out of two by fours in plywood, make game in room and with remote workforce.

Pay licenses for unreal and pay for IP but stop wasting money on extravagances, taxes, and culture wars that you don’t have any business in. consultants, DEI consultants, incredibly, ridiculously expensive rent every month for a gigantic facility in downtown anywhere, intimacy coordinators, these are all leeches to steal your money and make your game cost more, and you do them because HR tells you to, you do not have to do it anymore.

Costs will continue to balloon until you cast the leeches off and learn to take advantage of AI and remote work like every other industry. You also cannot carry under performing employees!

Or pay execs less and that covers all the "savings" you would make from your first two paragraphs.







P.S I'm going to assume your post is a joke post.
Cuz that shit is funny

 

[RoboFu]

Ehh that's the symptom not the cause. It's people who want interactive movies and not games. As long as those people keep spending money then 400 million budgets will keep being a thing.

But also even those games don't need to be 400 million. It's all bs built off of business men spouting bs to gain investors. They have built this ecosystem of consultants and third party resource farming that's all made to gain investors and milk budgets.

 

[Kadve]

The game was completed in Russia?

I'd think they would complete the game in Armenia, Estonia, Serbia or Belarus because sending funds to Russia became an absolute headache once the war was full scale.

The game is still getting support and there should even be a new update soon.

I would assume the Russian teams would have trouble moving to Europe or the US, and if they were mission critical to completing the game they would move to eastern Europe.

No indication that any non-Russian studios worked on from what i can gather. Saber itself was originally founded in Saint Petersburg and their largest development resource remains there. Even if they are "technically" an American company nowadays.

The company states on its Russian website that it had 700 employees as of 2022. However, its LinkedIn page shows that the employee count can be much higher: up to 900 associated members, with over 400 stationed in St. Petersburg, Russia.

 

[hemo memo]

He's absolutely right.

 

[Sethbacca]

Why are these games costing so much? For the most part they don’t make their own engines so they don’t need to hire expensive software engineers.

I'm convinced fully more than half of it is the idea that popped up somewhere along the way that game length is more important than game quality. It's an idea that just needs to fucking die.

 

[Bond007]

Hes not entirely wrong. But if it were that easy everyone would go that route.
Its not solely the answer and its abit more complicated than this across multiple spectrums.

 

[SHA]

Facts, cheaper games are more secured.

 

[SHA]

With AI which is something new and not quite capitalized I could see a $1B games that costs less than $200M. It's not the end of the world and stealing people's jobs.

 

[RCX]

Graphics were more than good enough in Gen 8. If anything I'd be happy to go back to gen 7 levels and just focus on performance.

Hooray, the leather on that armor looks so real! But what does it matter if I can barely perceive it when its in motion?

Space Marine 1 kicks ass BTW. Haven't played 2 yet but its on my list for this year.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

He's right but ignores the other side of the coin...

"I think if anything has contributed more to the growth of industry jobs, it’s the multi-hundred million dollar budget"​

If increase in industry jobs means hire more purple haired white-male-hating, LBGTQ+ entitled woke activist GenZs, then no.... do. not. want.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it but he's essentially saying teams should have been smaller to begin with or paid less. Those aren't good for the industry either.

No. He's saying reduce the scope of your game, or move your studio outside of the Bay Area of San Fransciso. And considering the quality of devs that saturate that part of the US, it would be good fucking riddance.

California and Montreal were two of the biggest gaming hub in the west. They're now cesspools of activist wankers whose mission is to destroy everything the straight white male looks to for entertainment.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

“You’re not going to tell me it doesn’t have a Triple A vibe to it. You may say, ‘Oh it’s double-A plus.’

i just want a good game.
doesnt matter how many As it has.

 

[Trogdor1123]

It was/is such a good game. And it keeps getting better.