I’m not sure why so many people are down voting this. The only part I took issue with was what kind of salary Schreier said would make one rich versus middle class in an expensive city. I live in an expensive city, I don’t make anywhere near as much as some of the high salaries he cites, and those who do around me are certainly rich.
Why Video Games Cost So Much To Make - Jason Schreier
Submitted 3 weeks ago by lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
People fail to realize how rich the 1% really are was his point. Even $500k per year still wouldn’t get you into that tier of rich
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are for sure tiers of how rich you can be. But when you’re beyond the point of financial stress and can at any time stop working for the rest of your life and not worry about making ends meet, I think most of us would call that rich. If you’re pulling in a quarter million per year, even in an expensive city, the slightest bit of sense with your money allows you to accumulate wealth so quickly that I think you qualify.
Soulifix@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
I went to read the first comment to that video and someone plainly came out to say that the guy in the video didn’t really answer the question.
So, I think that alone spares me and others the time to waste 17 minutes on some guy who for the life of him, can’t get to the point of his headline. Much less, answer the questions that needed the answers, in his opinion.
lumpyluggage@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Jason Schreier also is not just some guy. I mean, he is to you… But he does know some stuff about the industry
ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The commenter was wrong
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s not that long of a video, and he gets to the answer fairly quickly, then outlines examples using back of the napkin math. (average cost per developer per month) * (months of development) = cost of game. And then it’s the difference between real world numbers for those in 2015 and today. Average salaries have gone up, especially in major cities in the US, as have staff sizes to make AAA games, as has time needed to develop substantially larger games than we typically made in 2015, and that number balloons very quickly.
user_6282638282@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I 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.
Airfried@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
There’s also a lot of people in game development that have no idea what they’re doing. They’re in it for the money and because gaming is bigger than cinema, TV (streaming) and music combined they’re willing to throw a lot of cash at it.
Airfried@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Hey, at least he didn’t read the entire plot summary of a game from Wikipedia for no good reason. I can tell because the video isn’t 30 minutes long.
Jokes aside, I get the feeling video essays are in kind of a crisis. There’s too much bloat out there. Even among very popular uploads with tons of views. Of course there are fantastic documentaries too but it gets harder to find good new stuff with all this meaningless slop clogging the front page and search results. (As if search wasn’t terrible enough already.)
But hey, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve become too picky. But as soon as I notice there’s more plot summary than insight in a video essay, I leave midway through. And I swear it’s getting more by the month.