[Jason Schreier] AAA game budgets estimated around $300 million. These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)

Comments

• lath@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  Earlier these few months, an article popped up educating indie devs on how to attract a publisher and it basically boiled down to “appeal to their money-grubbing soulless husks”, because investors don’t care about games, they care about making profit out of an investment.

  But it defended this kind of practice because profiteers care about results. They want a game to be successful, because it makes them money. However, they’ll also cut their losses early if it doesn’t look good.
  Developers on the other hand just want to express their creative vision, even if this might bring them to ruin. And it’s this cooperation between realism and idealistic, when done properly, that brings out the greatness of a game. Or so they said.

  Unfortunately, a lot of the decision makers involved are idiots who fail to understand the need for balance between the costs of production and unhinged desire for success, artistic or material.

  Kingdoms of Amalur failed because the people in charge spent their money like crazy on comfort and knickknacks.

  Concord failed because the publisher threw a large sack of money at the devs and then fucked right off without a care in the world, leaving a bunch of headless chickens to run around it with no purpose or direction.

  New World failed because it was a project run by scammers looking to scam investors (or so I’ve been told).

  Highguard failed because the owner was dumb. And probably still is. Also, Tencent was their silent investor, who pulled out when shit went sideways.

  Indeed, the formula for a good game doesn’t guarantee success. Even the best of games will fail if the conditions allow it. Yet, for those who simply do not give damn about what they’re making, their carelessness will make damn sure they guarantee its failure.

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• absquatulate@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  300 million would kinda make sense, as it would mean an avg of 60k/year for a five year production on a 1000 people team. But how many AAA games are actually that large?

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨31⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Halve the employees and double the salary, and you’ll be closer. Few people on a team will gross $120k, but benefits are part of that cost too.

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• LordDaveTheKind@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  Does it count also the Publisher budget (which usually goes to marketing, advertisement, etc.)?

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  • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Haven’t read the article yet, but most likely, yes. Usually this data comes from the publisher themselves as they are the one fronting the money.

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• ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Executives should still be accountable for inefficiencies and bad scoping.

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  • baatliwala@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    The public is crazy demanding wrt AAA titles tbh, haters make comps when one asset is re-used in a sequel

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    • ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Some players will complain about everything, the industry is the one amplifying it. For example, Like a Dragon games have been recycling assets since forever, and so did Zelda TOTK and no one cares.

      In the end, the players would also benefit if the games were made through iterative improvements instead of making everything from scratch every time.

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• Ugurcan@lemmy.world ⁨49⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  What’s an Overheard, did he means “Overhead”?

  Last time I checked it’s neither salaries, nor overhead, nor executive budgets, but it’s the PR efforts that spend the most chunk. This shithead trying to load that over the shoulder of developers and not advertising teams.

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  • psx_crab@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    This shithead is one of the most prominent videogame industry journalist, so his source is probably way closer to the industry and more accurate in many way.

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• Nikls94@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Well yeah 300 million, but is the game any good or is it just made to be doodling with the D‘s of game “Journalists”?

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• Dyskolos@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  300 million moneyz? And still most games feel empty, dumb and copycats with the ambitious flow of a snail with slime-deficit-disorder?

  Sad…

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