Comment on Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

• DdCno1@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  …and why not?

  Because Balatro is a single developer’s vision realized without compromise, without producers, writers, tech people, art directors, etc. all meddling with the production in the usual “design by committee” approach that large studios are using. This kind of game can only exist as a solo or very small team project.

  …money?

  The mantra of big studios and publishers is to spend lots of money to make lots of money. Balatro sold a mere 3.5 million copies over the course of a year, for a price of $14. That’s just $34.3 million taking Steam’s 30% cut into account. Huge money for a solo dev (especially given that the budget was just $125,000), but both the sales figure and the sales revenue are in serious flop territory by big studio standards. Star Wars outlaws underperformed at 5.5 million copies sold, since it cost hundreds of millions to develop and market, including having the highest marketing budget of any game ever made. To put this into perspective, this means they spent significantly more than $150 million (the usual figure for a top of the line AAA game these days) on marketing alone.

  You can not generate the kind of money that large publishers and studios need to survive with little Indie games.

  source

  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    “design by committee” approach that large studios are using

    They don’t have to use that.

    This kind of game can only exist as a solo or very small team project.

    That’s just very clearly wrong.

    You can not generate lose the kind of money that large publishers and studios need to survive with little Indie games.

    Wrong again. If anything, only large publishers can lose the kinds of money that they sometimes do.

    source

    • DdCno1@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Okay, I’ll bite: Since I’m very clearly wrong about everything, show me a large studio that doesn’t use the design by committee approach, makes small games on Indie budgets and survives on that.

      source

      • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        You’re wrong because of the specific words you’re choosing to use. Even if they aren’t, it doesn’t mean they can’t.

        source

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