Comment on Why Video Games Cost So Much To Make - Jason Schreier
user_6282638282@sopuli.xyz 20 hours agoI think anyone with a fairly basic understanding of economics (and that is admittedly a declining number in many places) understands the idea that “salaries and benefits are expensive”.
What he doesn’t explain that would actually be helpful is why teams are so big. Like what are all the departments that work on AAA titles, what do they do, how many people on staff relative to other departments, what does a 3D modeler make vs. a gameplay programmer?
He also doesn’t talk about anything outside of staffing, like marketing, cinematics, voice acting, localization, bribing Geoff Keighley…
This would all be more useful than the baby math lesson provided.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Can you not see the difference in money on the screen between Halo 1 and Destiny 2? One person can make Halo’s relatively simple models, complete with nutcracker-esque mouth syncing, much faster than you can make the likes of Destiny’s quest givers with far more complexity to them. So if you want to make more of those kinds of NPCs, you need more people making them. The same goes for any other discipline involved in making a game.
That all comes out in the average cost per employee, which is the same ballpark math the publishers are using to estimate, and he says that in this video.