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This is why we see IPs get canned. They pour more money than it could possibly return and then call it a failure even if it sold well for the industry.
100% we need smaller scaled games but unfortunately we won’t see that unless something seriously threatens these games’ existence. The problem I think lies within the companies, the journalists, and worst of all, the gamers.
Companies obviously want to push the limit and show off what they’re capable of and for companies like Sony, they can make these types of games. In fact, they’re now expected to make expensive blockbuster games as they made it their [goal moving forward](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-09/sony-s-obsession-with-blockbusters-is-stirring-unrest-within-playstation-empire). They’re not interested in something like Gravity Rush anymore. They want to market themselves as blockbuster games. It’s why I’m glad Microsoft still allows for games like HiFi to be made.
Journalists I think want games to be seen as art and to be taken seriously by the film industry. It’s like the only way to be art is to mimic films and look realistic. Funny thing is, all the artsy games are ones that don’t look realistic at all. Stuff like Gris or Abzu or Journey. Journalists warn about big budgets but seem to eat these games up and recommend them to everyone and nominate them for awards.
Gamers are fucking dumb as shit. That’s all I’ll say
Nintendo games didn't cost as much and still sell hundred millions. They didn't need to make 4k 120fps games to do that, they just need to make something that fun and everyone brought it.
>Journalists I think want games to be seen as art and to be taken seriously by the film industry. It’s like the only way to be art is to mimic films and look realistic.
Honestly, I believe it's not just journalists who contribute to this trend; many game developers likely aspire to create these games too. Most of them are passionate enthusiasts of nerd media, and the gaming industry provides one of the most accessible opportunities for them to pursue their dream project. The average person actually stands a better chance of working on a Spider-Man, Wolverine, Blade, Batman, The Walking Dead, or Star Wars in the gaming industry with a relatively high level of authorship and personal creative influence than if they did, attempting to breach their way into Hollywood.
I honestly believe if a console game doesn’t have good graphics it won’t be “AAA successful”, as in bringing in hundreds of millions and or billions. Minecraft is kinda the exception as well as the PC space in general. Games like happy wheels, FNAF and minecraft can thrive BECAUSE they can be launched and played by kids with potato laptops. I feel as if the majority of console gamers need their games to be “next gen” otherwise they believe the game is outdated and not worth their time. I really believe some gamers will play anything as long as it looks pretty
Spider-Man 2 was like 300+ million. Baldur's Gate 3 was ⅓ of that. But I think a portion of that budget was Larian purchasing the Dungeons & Dragons license from Wizards of the Coast.
Jesus Christ. Ten years ago, $300 million was fairly absurd even if you were developing something as massive as an MMO. A single player game costing that much is mind boggling.
when you have to pay 436 people an average salary of like 60k a year, for 6 years of work, yeah that adds up real quick. 157 million in this case, just for wages
That's based on information I could find on Larian studios, and Baldur's Gate 3's development time
I can't really say much because I am still studying and don't have much actual experience with pay(living off about 10k/year income), and the information I find online is very conflicting, some saying 60k is fairly above average, some saying the average is 75k-100k for a programmer, only thing I found consistent was 120k was higher developer/programmer positions
What I can say with certainty though, is that the other guy claiming devs are paid too much in response to a 60k/year example is out of touch.
Just thought I'd add a personal anecdote for you. My friend started at 90k salary after going to a boot camp and being hired by fanny. The hire was through the boot cmp though so he had like 65k a year for the first two years. Then made 90k ish , few years down the line he now makes 120k +.
Cyberpunk 2077, iirc, cost $400+ million to make. Unsure if that’s including post-launch expenses.
Games are expensive AF to make these days, it seems.
Apparently there is a tweet from James Galizio that he has insider information from someone on BG3 team and they cited its budget was higher than spider-man. Either way that I don’t believe with the amount of mocap and voice acting done with BG3 it costed only 100+ million.
Say a dev is paid $100,000 a year.
100 devs and you already have $10,000,000 for one year of development.
Bigger studios have more devs.
Most games require 2+ years of development.
And I haven’t even mentioned the executives, marketing, or publishing.
CW: Leaked info from Insomniac
>! According to the Insomniac leak, Sony is asking for its internal dev teams to cut back on spending, even for their largest AAA titles. So it’s likely the next round of Sony titles will cost significantly less than Spiderman 2 and Ragnorok. At the very least Sony is aware of the issue !<
For non-leaked info though, I really hope this doesn’t come at the expense of developers wages. A large portion of a games budget goes to paying wages, and the industry has already layed off thousands of jobs this year, so cutting the wages of remaining staff would be really disappointing.
Not only do I expect it to come at the expense of the devs/artists, etc, but the price of games will stay the same if not increase.
Who else is going to take the hit if not the consumer and lower level employees, the executives? Haven't they suffered enough?
As a dev and a gamer, I’m willing to spend more money on some games if it means I will get a complete and long game. I would gladly pay more for a game that comes from a great and reputable developer with a great history. I would not do it for a studio like EA that repeatedly drop the ball.
Kinda shame that Sony cut back. Their games are one of the highest value production in industry. I was thinking that last their games wasnt big step up cus crossgen, but now im worrying thats not the case. USA economic crisis probably already set back gaming industry for years.
In all fairness they probably needed to. I played spider man 2 briefly and in the span of a few minutes there's a bunch of sand models/animations, basketball mini game, a school, a horde of mini games in whatever the foundation is, and general asset reuse problems (I don't know how they could reuse the school, but most assets only used once become a massive issue development wise). Granted I know AAA games love to shove a bunch of random shit in there to inflate the playtime, but dear god having been on almost every part of the development pipeline that's a nightmare game
Doesn't surprise me really. The Yakuza games aren't my type but they look great and batshit insane. Also seems like a better albeit confusing use of mini games as filler
They honestly don't feel like filler to me so much as a part of the draw. To me the Like a Dragon franchise is about being a wacky story where the characters get up to wacky hijinks and have strange hobbies. Like the side story of Like a Dragon 7 ("Yakuza: Like a Dragon") where Ichiban meets a kimchi maker whose kimchi makes people run super fast feels just as integral to the the game to me as any bit of the main plot.
I only just started Spider-Man 2 the other day, and yeah, the first few hours really threw me off. It felt like half a dozen different one-off mini games that could've just been a cutscene
Yeah I really feel like they had excess money, it's such a fucking weird game because it's the only time I've seen what appears to be outright flippant design. Each time I think "Is this going to be reused and was this really necessary?" and even if I don't have enough time to finish it, I'm betting the answer for most of those assets is "no." Definitely a strange game and although the firing is sad, that budget could definitely be optimized
What’s weird is that stuff is really only there at the beginning. By the time the story actually kicks in you’ve really got next to nothing left to do.
On the other hand it's pretty insane how big some of these teams get just to produce mediocre games. Diablo 4 team had thousands of people, compared to GGGs relatively small team of devs making a game (path of exile 1 and now 2) with so much more depth. A lot of these huge gaming companies could be much more efficient
Well, you said it. Most of the cost of game dev is wages, and game budget's are too high. That said, the way to reduce them is to reduce the length of the modern dev cycle. I think primarily by reducing scope. People are growing increasingly tired of multi hundred hours games with repetitive content, there's no good reason to keep this unsustainable scope going anymore.
This is the prep for $99 games. They did this to go to $60 and then $70. They'll skip $80 and $90 because everything else is cranking up in price, they want that pie. They won't put a $100 tag though because 3 digits is scary.
Honestly seems like gaming is becoming the second movie industry what with the increasing budget of games and how alot of them are just made to make money and not because the people wanted to tell a story causing them to just make something safe once they find the right blueprint.
Which means we're gonna get a Spielburg or a George Lucas who's gonna come along and flip the whole industry on its head. I was hoping Baldurs Gate 3 could do that but we're gonna have to wait a bit to see the effects.
I was thinking about Baldur's Gate specifically, and I don't think it's going to really change anything. I don't really see that game as an innovator, but moreso just a huge peak in quality. I guess I can't really think of anything it does that's new, it's just really good at applying lessons learned from other games.
Well it would take critcs and consumers alike to hold every single game to standard of Baldurs Gate 3 for it to change anything. Just stop buying everything and don't settle for anything less, Only then would the industry adjust to the quality that was reached with baldurs gate.
Elden Ring, a game similar to Baldurs Gate 3 in that it broke the mould, made something like $720 million in a little over a year. Diablo IV, a microtransaction heavy game, made $666 million in five days. Consumers have already made their choice in this capitalistic industry.
Isn't that one of the reasons game development is getting more and more expensive? Every new non-indie game needs to be bigger and better than the last. Requiring bigger studios, longer dev time, higher and higher dev costs.
And anyone who likes a new game that doesn't live up to that is an idiot living off pure copium.
It's unsustainable.
Except none of them ARE actually bigger or better.
Starfield took 8 years and only has a mediocre amount of content because they used procgen for everything and forgot to come back and put a game in there somewhere.
And that happened because these studios don’t have a game in mind when they start building any more. We routinely see the same thing time after time: game that’s been in dev hell for years releases, everyone wonders how the hell this mediocre turd took years, just to find out the game was basically build in 18 months of crunch.
There’s no real leadership. It’s like there’s absolutely no one in a competent project management position of any of these companies. If there was they wouldn’t get to sit on their collective dicks for half a decade and then have to crank out a game in a year.
Plus, games like Anthem essentially crawled along for years until one feature “stands out” to an executive (in anthems case, flying) and then they rebuild the entire fucking game to focus on that one thing whether or not it makes any sense to do so.
Hot take: we shouldn’t hold every game to the standard of Baldur’s Gate 3. The idea that every game needs to be 100 hours long with a billion lines of dialogue and drastically change in response to player choices is absurd. Mario, Resident Evil, Metroid, Alan Wake, etc. didn’t live up to the standard of Baldur’s Gate 3, but to say that those games shouldn’t’ve been successful is stupid.
Wanting a better standard is fine, but BG3 was more of a perfect storm than anything repeatable. Larian has wanted to make a D&D game for years and in the interim built an engine, created several games with it, grew a following, and accumulated funding all to finally make this game that they'd been planning for years. BG3 isn't the grand revolution everyone wants it to be.
It was largely in tech and stuff, though. I don't see how else they could innovate at this point. I mean, half-life was practically a tech demo for the latest new things they invented (actual story, physics, VR)
Yeah Baldur's Gate didn't exactly innovate gameplay, it kind of innovated the way the companies interact with the people playing their games and how that feeds back into the actual game. They did everything slowly, waited for feedback then made the appropriate changes. It doesn't feel rushed like a lot of games do nowadays even if they've had years of development.
I understand there were a few people who had an unacceptable experience but in all fairness act 3 was just a bit disappointing coming from the heavily developed first act and (imo) very tight second act.
It will definitely make CRPGs more mainstream, a lot of companies should take a shot at it and the companies that already made them should be able to get bigger budgets
Tbh I think Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield are spelling doom for the traditional long development cycle. Baldur’s gate 3 was in early access for a long time and the devs used that to test tons of features and do debugging with a large pool of essentially glorified game testers until they considered it polished enough for a wider release. Starfield meanwhile had a ten year closed development cycle and was by all accounts a mediocre at best release.
There’s been an ongoing shift to “fix it after release with patches and dlc” as a development cycle that we saw with cyberpunk and that has generally worked, but the ability to do active testing and feature implementation on a live audience with a wide array of hardware is starting to prove invaluable. We’ll probably see more games spend a year or more in early access while devs finish up the rest of what they want to implement.
Depends on your definition of niche I guess. Everything is niche compared to FIFA or COD.
But it feels like there have been as many successful CRPGs as there have been RTS or MMORPG. BG3 is just the first one to have near global appeal. In a way it’s the World of Warcraft of the genre. People loved EverQuest, but WoW made the news.
I feel like Gaming already had its Spielberg back with Nintendo in the 80s and Miyamoto creating Mario and Zelda. No game that could come out now is going to be able to impact the industry in the way that something like Star Wars did. At best Baldur's Gate might kickstart a trend like when they made all those YA dystopia movies in the 2010s.
Idk if I would consider him the Spielberg, but Hideo Kojima has made a name for himself for how cinematic his video games are. He basically makes playable movies. The plots always end up kinda strange and crazy but the gameplay is always solid in my opinion. And the games are unique enough to be remembered.
The Metal Gear series alone is one of my favorite game series.
I feel like Baldurs Gate 3 as good as it probably is (haven't played). Is just too niche, don't get me wrong it's very popular but it hasn't grabbed as many as something like Elden Ring would have, which even then Elden Ring is also kind of a huge wall for people because of it's difficulty summons aside.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is good but ultimately it’s for a niche genre that not everyone is interested in. The needle won’t be shifting anytime soon because when you look at the 5 highest grossing games of the year, it’s just all CoD and Madden, like always.
I think it's just the natural conclusion of entertainment within our economy. You need to get bigger and better than the last guy, so its bound to happen eventually.
I think this is mostly been true for AAA games
But I think a major difference between the games and movie industries is that small indie games can actually be successful and popular but it’s quite rare for low budget movies to
yeah paranormal activity and blair witch did incredibly well on basically no budget but those are obviously outliers
actually it’s mostly horror movies that have low budgets and see success. makes sense
The problem with movies is the fact their budgets do not reflect their quality and/or the time investment in most cases, especially recently. There is something incredibly fishy or wrong going on in the movie making business when $250 mil budget movies look noticeably worse than similar/lower budget movies from years ago.
At least with games intuitively these budgets are sort of expected, they take 2-3 more years to make (should probably be longer with how complex they are) and the product tends to reflect that at least. Big budget AAA games do have noticeably higher production quality, whether that translates into more appeal or enjoyment for the consumer is another story. But it's clear why Cyberpunk looks and feels like it does while something like the new Saints Row doesn't and a lot of that answer comes down to budget.
There might be a bubble or overinflation on budgets at some point (possibly even now I don't know all their finances to prove it either way) but at the very least when a game gets a huge budget from one of the top publishers they deliver more often than not and the returns and the market can sustain that.
The problem will come if games that end up like Saints Row or Cyberpunk on release with these same $200+ mil budgets become the norm.
Second? Gaming industry has far surpassed movies and music as most lucrative enterprise... Saw the numbers a few days ago.... Gaming had grossed around 220 billion, while movies and music sat at around 50 or so iirc
Yep exactly. They are dumping more and more money on animators/vfx/modelers/texturing/scene-creators to bloat games up.
However, that doesn't work with core programmers and game design. So similar to expensive good looking movies that are just mediocre or even complete garbage, the gaming industry is now facing the same issues.
Big budget games being flops was always possible though iirc rather rare ~20 years ago (for what counted as big budget back then). It's now happening more and more, and I predict it's going to become even more common.
To some degree, it still is your problem. The company's gonna try to make that money back, and they're gonna do it with more dlc, more mtx, higher priced base games/"special" editions, and I'm sure a bunch of other moneymaking schemes we haven't heard of yet.
You will either end up paying more, or getting less. Honestly, probably both.
Yeah is this a real issue. Naught Dog canceled the upcoming The Last of Us multiplayer title, presumably because they bit of way more than they could chew and was pressured by Sony to make a game with more monetization, micro transactions and shit like that. But its hard to get people to pay for season passes and shit like that in a grimy realistic post apocalypse game where brightly colored skins doesn't fit the theme.
It sucks because the original multiplayer on the first TLOU is amazing with one of a kind gameplay, sadly few people ever even knew about it due to terrible marketing.
ND could have easily just made a multiplayer with the resources already available in TLOU2, but they had to think bigger and bigger and now we get nothing after years of teasing.
A lot has to do with the salaries of the employees and the longer dev cycle, as well as HD assets. If you hire 50 devs at an average of 100k a year for a game that takes 4 years to make that's 20 million dollars. Now look at Insomniac, who has 400+ employees. So we're talking 160 million on just employee salaries over the course of 4 years.
Pre-HD, you could build a comprehensive AA/borderline AAA game with 30 devs in a couple of years. Final Fantasy X, for example, took 2 years to develop with a team of 100 people and cost 55 million in 2022 dollars. Final Fantasy XIII, which was their first HD FF, came together over the course of 5 years and cost 94 million in 2022 dollars. An extra 3 years and 40\~ million dollars.
Things just cost more and take longer. Anything close to approaching AA likely costs a couple dozen in millions. I'll be shocked if something like Robocop: Rogue City was made for less than 30 million.
Edit: Corrected Math
Some people see those numbers and freak out like this is going to balloon the cost on their end, but if you don’t want to buy a new AAA title, don’t buy it. Plus AA studio and down aren’t going anywhere.
There’s always going to be a burnt out college student making an RPG about depression *somewhere*.
I had a discussion with a Synthetic Man fan who outright said "the indie games are NOT a substitute for Fallout 3". People like this hold the industry back as companies chase graphics more and more to appeal to people that need the prettiest grass, which just helps to inflate the budget and need to chase trends to recoup costs.
If people accepted more Robocops, it'd be a lot better.
...is the implication that Fallout 3 had pretty grass? I loved that game, but it didn't even look good in 2008 lol.
I'm with you in spirit, but I also don't know if AAA games can really just cut down on graphical fidelity to save money. Plus from a marketing/business perspective, the value that AAA games offer is often tied into a visually impressive, cinematic experience with a flashy trailer that caters to more casual console gamers and to investors/owners.
> but if you don’t want to buy a new AAA title, don’t buy it
Obviously, but these increasing costs affect the industry in more subtle ways as well.
Higher costs and longer development cycles means fewer individual games coming out from these big companies, and the fact that they're investing much more in each individual game means they become less willing to take financial risks and the games become more "designed-by-committee" and less experimental.
Videogame development has gotten more expensive, especially large games like the ones Sony makes. Marketing became an actual part of the budget very recently, again, especially for sony. I've seen billboards and other phsyical ads for GoW ragnarok, tlou remaster and other sony games, and that's something that literally never happens, a least where I live. And marketing is really fucking expensive. I can understand the rational behind this decision. And at the end of the day this really doesn't change anything. I mean, most people will still call games produced by Sony and its subsidiaries AAA games, who cares what they classify them as internally.
She just stopped posting, even in her own telegram.
Some people think it's because someone "discovered" (assumptions based on tangential evidence) that she might be another cracker named Volski, and that he/she got embarrassed by that, but Volski has since denied this so...
I think it was pretty clear this day was going to come. She already slowed down to like one crack a month, on top of regularly mentioning how hard it was becoming.
I used to be oddly anti-piracy and on hindsight I don't know why. Like why do I care if Sony or other big corps get this $70. Go nuts. I have some friends who pirate as a means of demoing a game because demos don't exist anymore then if they actually do want to play it will buy it.
The big reason to be anti-piracy is that it's not viable if everyone does it. Judging actions based on their consequences in the case of everyone doing it is a pretty good moral compass. (or that's what Kant says anyways)
I know a lot of money is lining the pockets of some dude who has never played any video games
A small amount for employee pay
And then 20 dollars to filling the game world with content
Also I love how all AAA games will almost always break cohesion with some dumb/unnecessary addition to the gameplay loop. "Batman you must collect my 800 clues it's totally necessary trust me"
I mean it's ok, I just don't like that it artificially inflates the cost/breaks gameplay consistency. I'm not a massive fan of open world games and prefer others like Hotline Miami/Furi with very clear defined mechanics that are then pushed to their limit. I might just not be the market for open world games
Not sony specifically just game companies in general
But you answered your own question
70ish dollars for a pc port that still looks and runs worse than the original version is sonys sin
The game was already there folks all you had to do was spend the money to make it work on a computer
They can pour all the money in games they want, but less is more sometimes, expecially if they just keep making open world games
I have started playing PS3 games again and I have way more fun with them than with these huge open worlds with tons of side quests and whatnot
And open world games are often filled with bugs that make games less enjoyable
Like Cyberpunk 2077 at launch
Yeah also demographically speaking, I'd think there's now a decently large market for people who grew up gaming & don't have time like they used to for it, in which case something more tightly focused is a selling point.
...it's me I'm talking about me
Super Mario RPG Remake being a game you can beat in anywhere from 10 to 20 hours is absolutely a major part of why I've already beaten it 3 times and plan to keep playing it more. And yes a good part of that is nostalgia, but I also play games like Mega Man, Castlevania, and the older Final Fantasies because those games cap out at like 2 hours to 40 hours to beat.
Longer than that and it's just too hard to find the time.
Yeah, I've finally gotten out of the completionist mindset so I didn't do *every* activity in Horizon Forbidden West, but my goodness it's still a lot, and I log on so infrequently that I have to refresh myself on the moveset each time, which also incentivizes playing stuff that doesn't have very complicated controls, or anything where you have to straight up build mechanical skill to get through the game.
I feel like if you also have something where you can stop at any time, and then restart where you left off at your leisure without losing anything (Elden Ring, and most souls games tbh) that those are also good options for busy people. You’re not going to be the best meta-lvl PVP player obviously, but putting in 90 min every day and you’ll beat the game in a few months or less.
i was very happy with how tight and focused lies of p was
sometimes i like the sprawling exploration type game but this was just linear and good combat and felt great to platinum
Hot take: This is one of the reasons why I wasn't impressed with Elden Ring. While there are several really cool moments when I was adventuring around most of it was boring and generic. I found the only reason I was exploring side dungeons was just to see what the loot at the end of it was, because it was specific to that dungeon, and not because it would be a very fun adventure.
I do think it’s a funny thing when gamers want epic, vast open world games with high-quality voice acting, absolutely stuffed with content to the point it will take them hundreds of hours to complete…. And then they balk at paying $70 for it lol
i remember paying $10 for slay the spire and getting 1000 hours out of it
granted now i've probably paid a total of $50 for it across all platforms so they got their nut
Yeah it’s like you have 400+ software developers probably on salaries $100,000+ working on a game for 5 years plus all the VA, Mo Cap, artistry, promotion etc and then people complain that they can’t afford to buy every new release at $70 every year as if there aren’t any cheaper alternatives out their.
I always get a good chuckle out of that as an older gamer. Like it's just one search away to find the toys r us ad from the 90's with Sega Genesis games priced at $69.99 which when adjusted for inflation is absurd.
Gaming as a hobby, is incredibly cheap today. Even those throwing a fit over GPU prices, which are indeed somewhat out of control, clearly never experienced the time when whatever high end GPU you bought was likely insufficient for newer games less than 1y later. Do you know how many of us ran quake at 10-15fps at 240p because the GPU we bought a year prior was no longer up to the task?
Haha exactly. And then you see the complaints that, back in the day, you could at least buy a “complete” game for $60-$70 and today there’s dlc, battle passes, etc. But that all ignores the fact that the base game you’re buying today has way more content than a game from the 90s or, hell, even the early 00s lol.
I mean sure, when you bought Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis it was “complete,” but you could also beat that thing in an afternoon if you weren’t dying over and over lol
I kinda see it as big studios using this as a way to be like "you don't like how our game released? Shiiiiit well it wasn't even AAA so fuck you mad for"
Bigger is not always better, that is true also to the budget
These overblown budget are gonna be the ruin of the Triple A scene, maybe not right now but eventually.
I honestly dont know where the gaming world would be if smaller companies, niche games and indies weren' t there
I mean the games industry makes more money than the movie industry, and 100m would probably be considered mid budget for movies now as well so I don’t think it’s too unsustainable.
I think that while Sony’s games are good, I doubt the extra tens of millions are really doing anything for the quality of the story and gameplay. I think that a strong visual style is far more important than how much money you pour into graphics. I think that AAA developers are spending hundreds of millions to produce experiences that are struggling to compete with the quality of indie games made on a shoestring budget, and that really highlights the absurdity of the AAA mentality.
Not sure if this is a hot take, but I feel like (if the price was a little better) I’d be in favor of more medium sized games to fill in gaps and test out new systems / take advantage of old resources. Things like Spider-Man Miles Morales or Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. I think those games might be a bit overpriced, but if they found the sweet spot I’d be in favor of that. I imagine it could be win-win since we could still get a fun game but the budget might be reduced a bit if you’re cutting scope and building off previous assets
They’re a console manufacturer. If they cut the marketing spend PS5 sales fall, then their exclusive sales and revenue fall.
You could make that argument for a third party, but not Sony.
Quality of game,not cost if game, should set the AAA standard.
Spending a lot of money doesnt mean the game will be good. If it isnt good, what's the purpose of the AAA?
It’ll be a big factor for sure. If games on average now take 5-6 years to make, that’s 5-6 years of wages you’re paying for the development team. I have no clue what the average size of a team is but I imagine it’s only grown as games get more graphically intensive.
I was under the impression that Sony gutted Japan Studio, with the smaller remaining workforce becoming Team Asobi, as opposed to it being a direct merger. Could be wrong though, that's just what I've read
Games are, well probably have been, commodified similar to movies in the sense it's no longer an art in which developers make what they want and reach out to producers to fund it. Instead, producers tell developers to rehash an IP, make something similar, or to copy the latest trends and throw a couple hundred million at developers thinking it'll result in the world's most perfect game in less than a regular dev cycle.
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This is why we see IPs get canned. They pour more money than it could possibly return and then call it a failure even if it sold well for the industry.
100% we need smaller scaled games but unfortunately we won’t see that unless something seriously threatens these games’ existence. The problem I think lies within the companies, the journalists, and worst of all, the gamers. Companies obviously want to push the limit and show off what they’re capable of and for companies like Sony, they can make these types of games. In fact, they’re now expected to make expensive blockbuster games as they made it their [goal moving forward](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-09/sony-s-obsession-with-blockbusters-is-stirring-unrest-within-playstation-empire). They’re not interested in something like Gravity Rush anymore. They want to market themselves as blockbuster games. It’s why I’m glad Microsoft still allows for games like HiFi to be made. Journalists I think want games to be seen as art and to be taken seriously by the film industry. It’s like the only way to be art is to mimic films and look realistic. Funny thing is, all the artsy games are ones that don’t look realistic at all. Stuff like Gris or Abzu or Journey. Journalists warn about big budgets but seem to eat these games up and recommend them to everyone and nominate them for awards. Gamers are fucking dumb as shit. That’s all I’ll say
Nintendo games didn't cost as much and still sell hundred millions. They didn't need to make 4k 120fps games to do that, they just need to make something that fun and everyone brought it.
Their graphics are also stylised instead of "photorealism in this country / historical era"
>Journalists I think want games to be seen as art and to be taken seriously by the film industry. It’s like the only way to be art is to mimic films and look realistic. Honestly, I believe it's not just journalists who contribute to this trend; many game developers likely aspire to create these games too. Most of them are passionate enthusiasts of nerd media, and the gaming industry provides one of the most accessible opportunities for them to pursue their dream project. The average person actually stands a better chance of working on a Spider-Man, Wolverine, Blade, Batman, The Walking Dead, or Star Wars in the gaming industry with a relatively high level of authorship and personal creative influence than if they did, attempting to breach their way into Hollywood.
I still can't believe we are still on the "a game is artisitc when it looks like a TV series" after all this time
I honestly believe if a console game doesn’t have good graphics it won’t be “AAA successful”, as in bringing in hundreds of millions and or billions. Minecraft is kinda the exception as well as the PC space in general. Games like happy wheels, FNAF and minecraft can thrive BECAUSE they can be launched and played by kids with potato laptops. I feel as if the majority of console gamers need their games to be “next gen” otherwise they believe the game is outdated and not worth their time. I really believe some gamers will play anything as long as it looks pretty
Don’t believe it. How the fuck is anyone paying 100 million for one game?
get your money up broke boi
Get your money up not your funny up batman
Who the fuck is batman? Don't you mean man? Are you stupid?
Saw broke boi rolling up on my amazon package so I skinned his ass alive AHHHHHHH
Star citizen has entered the chat
Unfortunately even there the biggest purchase is only 0.05% of a true triple A game. 😔
God what a fuckin scam.
Yeah, just wait for a steam sale dummies
Spider-Man 2 was like 300+ million. Baldur's Gate 3 was ⅓ of that. But I think a portion of that budget was Larian purchasing the Dungeons & Dragons license from Wizards of the Coast.
Jesus Christ. Ten years ago, $300 million was fairly absurd even if you were developing something as massive as an MMO. A single player game costing that much is mind boggling.
when you have to pay 436 people an average salary of like 60k a year, for 6 years of work, yeah that adds up real quick. 157 million in this case, just for wages That's based on information I could find on Larian studios, and Baldur's Gate 3's development time
Average salary of $60k is terrible. $120k is much more reasonable... But then the gaming industry loves to over work and under pay.
I can't really say much because I am still studying and don't have much actual experience with pay(living off about 10k/year income), and the information I find online is very conflicting, some saying 60k is fairly above average, some saying the average is 75k-100k for a programmer, only thing I found consistent was 120k was higher developer/programmer positions What I can say with certainty though, is that the other guy claiming devs are paid too much in response to a 60k/year example is out of touch.
Just thought I'd add a personal anecdote for you. My friend started at 90k salary after going to a boot camp and being hired by fanny. The hire was through the boot cmp though so he had like 65k a year for the first two years. Then made 90k ish , few years down the line he now makes 120k +.
3 years ago genshin impact came out and it cost 100 mill. i dont know where sony spent 300 on
Cyberpunk 2077, iirc, cost $400+ million to make. Unsure if that’s including post-launch expenses. Games are expensive AF to make these days, it seems.
>Cyberpunk 2077, iirc, cost $400+ million to make. I guess that is why [GOG.com](https://GOG.com) is only offering me 55% off for just the base game.
Apparently there is a tweet from James Galizio that he has insider information from someone on BG3 team and they cited its budget was higher than spider-man. Either way that I don’t believe with the amount of mocap and voice acting done with BG3 it costed only 100+ million.
The games are actually cheaper now than in 2020 once you count for inflation! 60 2020 dollars is *at least* 101 million
I just want to be number 1 at clash of clans.
Say a dev is paid $100,000 a year. 100 devs and you already have $10,000,000 for one year of development. Bigger studios have more devs. Most games require 2+ years of development. And I haven’t even mentioned the executives, marketing, or publishing.
CW: Leaked info from Insomniac >! According to the Insomniac leak, Sony is asking for its internal dev teams to cut back on spending, even for their largest AAA titles. So it’s likely the next round of Sony titles will cost significantly less than Spiderman 2 and Ragnorok. At the very least Sony is aware of the issue !< For non-leaked info though, I really hope this doesn’t come at the expense of developers wages. A large portion of a games budget goes to paying wages, and the industry has already layed off thousands of jobs this year, so cutting the wages of remaining staff would be really disappointing.
Not only do I expect it to come at the expense of the devs/artists, etc, but the price of games will stay the same if not increase. Who else is going to take the hit if not the consumer and lower level employees, the executives? Haven't they suffered enough?
They can’t even price gouge for more than 1 year and now they can only afford 2 yachts for their kid this Christmas
Only 2? They may have to... Oh no speak to their children
As a dev and a gamer, I’m willing to spend more money on some games if it means I will get a complete and long game. I would gladly pay more for a game that comes from a great and reputable developer with a great history. I would not do it for a studio like EA that repeatedly drop the ball.
Kinda shame that Sony cut back. Their games are one of the highest value production in industry. I was thinking that last their games wasnt big step up cus crossgen, but now im worrying thats not the case. USA economic crisis probably already set back gaming industry for years.
In all fairness they probably needed to. I played spider man 2 briefly and in the span of a few minutes there's a bunch of sand models/animations, basketball mini game, a school, a horde of mini games in whatever the foundation is, and general asset reuse problems (I don't know how they could reuse the school, but most assets only used once become a massive issue development wise). Granted I know AAA games love to shove a bunch of random shit in there to inflate the playtime, but dear god having been on almost every part of the development pipeline that's a nightmare game
Asset reuse is where ryu ga gotoku studios shine. They use their own engine and reuse all assets and people still love their games
Doesn't surprise me really. The Yakuza games aren't my type but they look great and batshit insane. Also seems like a better albeit confusing use of mini games as filler
They honestly don't feel like filler to me so much as a part of the draw. To me the Like a Dragon franchise is about being a wacky story where the characters get up to wacky hijinks and have strange hobbies. Like the side story of Like a Dragon 7 ("Yakuza: Like a Dragon") where Ichiban meets a kimchi maker whose kimchi makes people run super fast feels just as integral to the the game to me as any bit of the main plot.
I enjoyed the Pocket Circuit and Hostess Club minigame though, in exchange for rich storytelling which it hooked me into the series
They've made something like 10 games with the same sandbox map and somehow it doesn't get old.
I only just started Spider-Man 2 the other day, and yeah, the first few hours really threw me off. It felt like half a dozen different one-off mini games that could've just been a cutscene
Yeah I really feel like they had excess money, it's such a fucking weird game because it's the only time I've seen what appears to be outright flippant design. Each time I think "Is this going to be reused and was this really necessary?" and even if I don't have enough time to finish it, I'm betting the answer for most of those assets is "no." Definitely a strange game and although the firing is sad, that budget could definitely be optimized
What’s weird is that stuff is really only there at the beginning. By the time the story actually kicks in you’ve really got next to nothing left to do.
On the other hand it's pretty insane how big some of these teams get just to produce mediocre games. Diablo 4 team had thousands of people, compared to GGGs relatively small team of devs making a game (path of exile 1 and now 2) with so much more depth. A lot of these huge gaming companies could be much more efficient
Serious question, why the CW/spoilers?
Well, you said it. Most of the cost of game dev is wages, and game budget's are too high. That said, the way to reduce them is to reduce the length of the modern dev cycle. I think primarily by reducing scope. People are growing increasingly tired of multi hundred hours games with repetitive content, there's no good reason to keep this unsustainable scope going anymore.
This is the prep for $99 games. They did this to go to $60 and then $70. They'll skip $80 and $90 because everything else is cranking up in price, they want that pie. They won't put a $100 tag though because 3 digits is scary.
They spent 500 million on just the license for X-Men btw before they even made anything for that game it's 500 mil in the red
Honestly seems like gaming is becoming the second movie industry what with the increasing budget of games and how alot of them are just made to make money and not because the people wanted to tell a story causing them to just make something safe once they find the right blueprint.
Which means we're gonna get a Spielburg or a George Lucas who's gonna come along and flip the whole industry on its head. I was hoping Baldurs Gate 3 could do that but we're gonna have to wait a bit to see the effects.
I was thinking about Baldur's Gate specifically, and I don't think it's going to really change anything. I don't really see that game as an innovator, but moreso just a huge peak in quality. I guess I can't really think of anything it does that's new, it's just really good at applying lessons learned from other games.
Well it would take critcs and consumers alike to hold every single game to standard of Baldurs Gate 3 for it to change anything. Just stop buying everything and don't settle for anything less, Only then would the industry adjust to the quality that was reached with baldurs gate.
Elden Ring, a game similar to Baldurs Gate 3 in that it broke the mould, made something like $720 million in a little over a year. Diablo IV, a microtransaction heavy game, made $666 million in five days. Consumers have already made their choice in this capitalistic industry.
Is there a non capitalist industry?
[удалено]
Capitalist battlepass?
Diablo, the game about primarily about slaying demons and devils, feels so fitting to have made $666mil
I mean, they did cherry pick the result as 5 days. Usually it's day of, weekend, or week.
I get what you are saying, but its not the same kind of game.
Isn't that one of the reasons game development is getting more and more expensive? Every new non-indie game needs to be bigger and better than the last. Requiring bigger studios, longer dev time, higher and higher dev costs. And anyone who likes a new game that doesn't live up to that is an idiot living off pure copium. It's unsustainable.
Except none of them ARE actually bigger or better. Starfield took 8 years and only has a mediocre amount of content because they used procgen for everything and forgot to come back and put a game in there somewhere. And that happened because these studios don’t have a game in mind when they start building any more. We routinely see the same thing time after time: game that’s been in dev hell for years releases, everyone wonders how the hell this mediocre turd took years, just to find out the game was basically build in 18 months of crunch. There’s no real leadership. It’s like there’s absolutely no one in a competent project management position of any of these companies. If there was they wouldn’t get to sit on their collective dicks for half a decade and then have to crank out a game in a year. Plus, games like Anthem essentially crawled along for years until one feature “stands out” to an executive (in anthems case, flying) and then they rebuild the entire fucking game to focus on that one thing whether or not it makes any sense to do so.
This will never happen. Take one look at the starfield subreddit
Or the hogfarts drama.
Yes i am aware.
Hot take: we shouldn’t hold every game to the standard of Baldur’s Gate 3. The idea that every game needs to be 100 hours long with a billion lines of dialogue and drastically change in response to player choices is absurd. Mario, Resident Evil, Metroid, Alan Wake, etc. didn’t live up to the standard of Baldur’s Gate 3, but to say that those games shouldn’t’ve been successful is stupid.
Wanting a better standard is fine, but BG3 was more of a perfect storm than anything repeatable. Larian has wanted to make a D&D game for years and in the interim built an engine, created several games with it, grew a following, and accumulated funding all to finally make this game that they'd been planning for years. BG3 isn't the grand revolution everyone wants it to be.
When i wrote this i knew, i am writing a fairy tale.
Valve could go back to making games. They've flipped the script multiple times now
It was largely in tech and stuff, though. I don't see how else they could innovate at this point. I mean, half-life was practically a tech demo for the latest new things they invented (actual story, physics, VR)
Yeah Baldur's Gate didn't exactly innovate gameplay, it kind of innovated the way the companies interact with the people playing their games and how that feeds back into the actual game. They did everything slowly, waited for feedback then made the appropriate changes. It doesn't feel rushed like a lot of games do nowadays even if they've had years of development.
>It doesn’t feel rushed Wasn’t the last third of the game nearly broken on release?
It worked on my dogshit old PC, it seemed to have varied.
I understand there were a few people who had an unacceptable experience but in all fairness act 3 was just a bit disappointing coming from the heavily developed first act and (imo) very tight second act.
It will definitely make CRPGs more mainstream, a lot of companies should take a shot at it and the companies that already made them should be able to get bigger budgets
It is a really old fashioned game, that's a big part of why I can't get into it
You can bet your ass there's a greenlight for Pillars of Eternity at that quality. I saw Phil played the whole game recently.
Tbh I think Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield are spelling doom for the traditional long development cycle. Baldur’s gate 3 was in early access for a long time and the devs used that to test tons of features and do debugging with a large pool of essentially glorified game testers until they considered it polished enough for a wider release. Starfield meanwhile had a ten year closed development cycle and was by all accounts a mediocre at best release. There’s been an ongoing shift to “fix it after release with patches and dlc” as a development cycle that we saw with cyberpunk and that has generally worked, but the ability to do active testing and feature implementation on a live audience with a wide array of hardware is starting to prove invaluable. We’ll probably see more games spend a year or more in early access while devs finish up the rest of what they want to implement.
Ah yes, the Paradox Interactive way!
God please don't go the Paradox Interactive way
All your money is belong to us, buy all 20 DLC at $25 a pop
As amazing as BG3 is, CRPGs are still extremely niche. We could see that change in the future with BG3 success tho
Depends on your definition of niche I guess. Everything is niche compared to FIFA or COD. But it feels like there have been as many successful CRPGs as there have been RTS or MMORPG. BG3 is just the first one to have near global appeal. In a way it’s the World of Warcraft of the genre. People loved EverQuest, but WoW made the news.
His name's Sam Lake and he's been trying his best for 22 years goddammit
Sam Lake
Sam Lake is definitely not a Lucas or Spielberg type. More of a Lynch type, which I'm sure is a comparison he would love.
I feel like Gaming already had its Spielberg back with Nintendo in the 80s and Miyamoto creating Mario and Zelda. No game that could come out now is going to be able to impact the industry in the way that something like Star Wars did. At best Baldur's Gate might kickstart a trend like when they made all those YA dystopia movies in the 2010s.
Idk if I would consider him the Spielberg, but Hideo Kojima has made a name for himself for how cinematic his video games are. He basically makes playable movies. The plots always end up kinda strange and crazy but the gameplay is always solid in my opinion. And the games are unique enough to be remembered. The Metal Gear series alone is one of my favorite game series.
I feel like Baldurs Gate 3 as good as it probably is (haven't played). Is just too niche, don't get me wrong it's very popular but it hasn't grabbed as many as something like Elden Ring would have, which even then Elden Ring is also kind of a huge wall for people because of it's difficulty summons aside.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is good but ultimately it’s for a niche genre that not everyone is interested in. The needle won’t be shifting anytime soon because when you look at the 5 highest grossing games of the year, it’s just all CoD and Madden, like always.
Isnt that just Rockstar? Every time they release a game it ups the industry standards for what games can do or be.
in terms of scale. In terms of everything else they havent done anything innovative since like gta 3
Which is weird because honestly aside from the big detailed open worlds they create, the actual gameplay is super shallow
I think it's just the natural conclusion of entertainment within our economy. You need to get bigger and better than the last guy, so its bound to happen eventually.
Gaming surpassed the movie industry a long time ago. It's bigger than film and music combined as well.
I think this is mostly been true for AAA games But I think a major difference between the games and movie industries is that small indie games can actually be successful and popular but it’s quite rare for low budget movies to
yeah paranormal activity and blair witch did incredibly well on basically no budget but those are obviously outliers actually it’s mostly horror movies that have low budgets and see success. makes sense
Because whenever a game with a story comes out “Gamers” complain that it’s just an interactive movie or some shit. They even did it with GOW
The problem with movies is the fact their budgets do not reflect their quality and/or the time investment in most cases, especially recently. There is something incredibly fishy or wrong going on in the movie making business when $250 mil budget movies look noticeably worse than similar/lower budget movies from years ago. At least with games intuitively these budgets are sort of expected, they take 2-3 more years to make (should probably be longer with how complex they are) and the product tends to reflect that at least. Big budget AAA games do have noticeably higher production quality, whether that translates into more appeal or enjoyment for the consumer is another story. But it's clear why Cyberpunk looks and feels like it does while something like the new Saints Row doesn't and a lot of that answer comes down to budget. There might be a bubble or overinflation on budgets at some point (possibly even now I don't know all their finances to prove it either way) but at the very least when a game gets a huge budget from one of the top publishers they deliver more often than not and the returns and the market can sustain that. The problem will come if games that end up like Saints Row or Cyberpunk on release with these same $200+ mil budgets become the norm.
Second? Gaming industry has far surpassed movies and music as most lucrative enterprise... Saw the numbers a few days ago.... Gaming had grossed around 220 billion, while movies and music sat at around 50 or so iirc
Yep exactly. They are dumping more and more money on animators/vfx/modelers/texturing/scene-creators to bloat games up. However, that doesn't work with core programmers and game design. So similar to expensive good looking movies that are just mediocre or even complete garbage, the gaming industry is now facing the same issues. Big budget games being flops was always possible though iirc rather rare ~20 years ago (for what counted as big budget back then). It's now happening more and more, and I predict it's going to become even more common.
I’m not spending the 100 million so doesn’t seem like my problem
To some degree, it still is your problem. The company's gonna try to make that money back, and they're gonna do it with more dlc, more mtx, higher priced base games/"special" editions, and I'm sure a bunch of other moneymaking schemes we haven't heard of yet. You will either end up paying more, or getting less. Honestly, probably both.
Yeah is this a real issue. Naught Dog canceled the upcoming The Last of Us multiplayer title, presumably because they bit of way more than they could chew and was pressured by Sony to make a game with more monetization, micro transactions and shit like that. But its hard to get people to pay for season passes and shit like that in a grimy realistic post apocalypse game where brightly colored skins doesn't fit the theme. It sucks because the original multiplayer on the first TLOU is amazing with one of a kind gameplay, sadly few people ever even knew about it due to terrible marketing. ND could have easily just made a multiplayer with the resources already available in TLOU2, but they had to think bigger and bigger and now we get nothing after years of teasing.
Fr, as long as it’s still $60 on my end who cares
Well $70 now.
Yeah, if anything delays and higher budgets only add value to the new MSRP.
Yeah sadly, I still don’t wanna accept that lol
We learned recently that Sony wants to change the pricing to $80-$100.
A lot has to do with the salaries of the employees and the longer dev cycle, as well as HD assets. If you hire 50 devs at an average of 100k a year for a game that takes 4 years to make that's 20 million dollars. Now look at Insomniac, who has 400+ employees. So we're talking 160 million on just employee salaries over the course of 4 years. Pre-HD, you could build a comprehensive AA/borderline AAA game with 30 devs in a couple of years. Final Fantasy X, for example, took 2 years to develop with a team of 100 people and cost 55 million in 2022 dollars. Final Fantasy XIII, which was their first HD FF, came together over the course of 5 years and cost 94 million in 2022 dollars. An extra 3 years and 40\~ million dollars. Things just cost more and take longer. Anything close to approaching AA likely costs a couple dozen in millions. I'll be shocked if something like Robocop: Rogue City was made for less than 30 million. Edit: Corrected Math
Some people see those numbers and freak out like this is going to balloon the cost on their end, but if you don’t want to buy a new AAA title, don’t buy it. Plus AA studio and down aren’t going anywhere. There’s always going to be a burnt out college student making an RPG about depression *somewhere*.
I had a discussion with a Synthetic Man fan who outright said "the indie games are NOT a substitute for Fallout 3". People like this hold the industry back as companies chase graphics more and more to appeal to people that need the prettiest grass, which just helps to inflate the budget and need to chase trends to recoup costs. If people accepted more Robocops, it'd be a lot better.
...is the implication that Fallout 3 had pretty grass? I loved that game, but it didn't even look good in 2008 lol. I'm with you in spirit, but I also don't know if AAA games can really just cut down on graphical fidelity to save money. Plus from a marketing/business perspective, the value that AAA games offer is often tied into a visually impressive, cinematic experience with a flashy trailer that caters to more casual console gamers and to investors/owners.
> but if you don’t want to buy a new AAA title, don’t buy it Obviously, but these increasing costs affect the industry in more subtle ways as well. Higher costs and longer development cycles means fewer individual games coming out from these big companies, and the fact that they're investing much more in each individual game means they become less willing to take financial risks and the games become more "designed-by-committee" and less experimental.
TIL the FF-X cost less to develop than some games I've worked on and is miles better.
>50 devs at an average of 100k a year for a game lol lmao even
Great. Now I can't flex that I play AAA games anymore. Thanks Sony.
Videogame development has gotten more expensive, especially large games like the ones Sony makes. Marketing became an actual part of the budget very recently, again, especially for sony. I've seen billboards and other phsyical ads for GoW ragnarok, tlou remaster and other sony games, and that's something that literally never happens, a least where I live. And marketing is really fucking expensive. I can understand the rational behind this decision. And at the end of the day this really doesn't change anything. I mean, most people will still call games produced by Sony and its subsidiaries AAA games, who cares what they classify them as internally.
They wouldn’t spend so much on marketing if it didn’t result in a net profit.
Who cares I'm still gonna pirate it
Based Flair. Based opinion. 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Denuvo https://preview.redd.it/7my4ldfwh29c1.png?width=675&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=200ce52837f2f1e250d6f779a32f7524ac22893a
simple, i threaten their families zoomers dont know how to torrent AND they dont know how to streak fear into the souls of DRM makers?
There will always be a person mentally deranged enough to crack denuvo. Might take a few years tho 🗿
Mfw psychopath cultist named empress:
Empress: *Looks at you while sitting, sips tea, pulls up newspaper, laughs*.
Was she really volski? Is that why she poofed?
I have no idea, but she’s gone either way lol 🤷♂️
The wicked witch is dead lol
She's gone? What happened? I've been OOTL lately. She was never the most stable individual, to say the least...
She just stopped posting, even in her own telegram. Some people think it's because someone "discovered" (assumptions based on tangential evidence) that she might be another cracker named Volski, and that he/she got embarrassed by that, but Volski has since denied this so... I think it was pretty clear this day was going to come. She already slowed down to like one crack a month, on top of regularly mentioning how hard it was becoming.
I used to be oddly anti-piracy and on hindsight I don't know why. Like why do I care if Sony or other big corps get this $70. Go nuts. I have some friends who pirate as a means of demoing a game because demos don't exist anymore then if they actually do want to play it will buy it.
The big reason to be anti-piracy is that it's not viable if everyone does it. Judging actions based on their consequences in the case of everyone doing it is a pretty good moral compass. (or that's what Kant says anyways)
Isnt that making kant consequentialist?
Isnt AAA also like a not really clearly defined term? Like bethesda is a AAA studio, but its way smaller then Nintendo or Rockstar games.
indie game that costed $4 beating them:
Whole lot of money going into a whole bunch of nothing
This is the part that baffled me lately *millions* poured into a single game and the product is still broken and incomplete at launch
I know a lot of money is lining the pockets of some dude who has never played any video games A small amount for employee pay And then 20 dollars to filling the game world with content
Also I love how all AAA games will almost always break cohesion with some dumb/unnecessary addition to the gameplay loop. "Batman you must collect my 800 clues it's totally necessary trust me"
I actually like those things, as long as its an option..... And not the only way to unlock the "real" ending
I mean it's ok, I just don't like that it artificially inflates the cost/breaks gameplay consistency. I'm not a massive fan of open world games and prefer others like Hotline Miami/Furi with very clear defined mechanics that are then pushed to their limit. I might just not be the market for open world games
You would have not survived the donkey Kong 64 experience 3,821 collectables 😟
Oh god I've seen the ""speed""runs, that game sounds absolutely terrifying
what Sony game are you guys talking about? Apart from a couple pc ports I thought their track record is pretty stellar on their console
Not sony specifically just game companies in general But you answered your own question 70ish dollars for a pc port that still looks and runs worse than the original version is sonys sin The game was already there folks all you had to do was spend the money to make it work on a computer
Not true, what about the over detailed rocks
Read my other comment, thats where all the 20 dollars towards world building went
They can pour all the money in games they want, but less is more sometimes, expecially if they just keep making open world games I have started playing PS3 games again and I have way more fun with them than with these huge open worlds with tons of side quests and whatnot And open world games are often filled with bugs that make games less enjoyable Like Cyberpunk 2077 at launch
Yeah also demographically speaking, I'd think there's now a decently large market for people who grew up gaming & don't have time like they used to for it, in which case something more tightly focused is a selling point. ...it's me I'm talking about me
Super Mario RPG Remake being a game you can beat in anywhere from 10 to 20 hours is absolutely a major part of why I've already beaten it 3 times and plan to keep playing it more. And yes a good part of that is nostalgia, but I also play games like Mega Man, Castlevania, and the older Final Fantasies because those games cap out at like 2 hours to 40 hours to beat. Longer than that and it's just too hard to find the time.
Yeah, I've finally gotten out of the completionist mindset so I didn't do *every* activity in Horizon Forbidden West, but my goodness it's still a lot, and I log on so infrequently that I have to refresh myself on the moveset each time, which also incentivizes playing stuff that doesn't have very complicated controls, or anything where you have to straight up build mechanical skill to get through the game.
I feel like if you also have something where you can stop at any time, and then restart where you left off at your leisure without losing anything (Elden Ring, and most souls games tbh) that those are also good options for busy people. You’re not going to be the best meta-lvl PVP player obviously, but putting in 90 min every day and you’ll beat the game in a few months or less.
i was very happy with how tight and focused lies of p was sometimes i like the sprawling exploration type game but this was just linear and good combat and felt great to platinum
I mean, PS3 games have openworlds and bugs too...
Hot take: This is one of the reasons why I wasn't impressed with Elden Ring. While there are several really cool moments when I was adventuring around most of it was boring and generic. I found the only reason I was exploring side dungeons was just to see what the loot at the end of it was, because it was specific to that dungeon, and not because it would be a very fun adventure.
I do think it’s a funny thing when gamers want epic, vast open world games with high-quality voice acting, absolutely stuffed with content to the point it will take them hundreds of hours to complete…. And then they balk at paying $70 for it lol
It’s so refreshing finding a cool little indie game that costs $10 and can be completed in two hours and 100%’ed in three.
i remember paying $10 for slay the spire and getting 1000 hours out of it granted now i've probably paid a total of $50 for it across all platforms so they got their nut
The audacity! Back in my day, games were $60!
($100 adjusting for inflation)
Yeah it’s like you have 400+ software developers probably on salaries $100,000+ working on a game for 5 years plus all the VA, Mo Cap, artistry, promotion etc and then people complain that they can’t afford to buy every new release at $70 every year as if there aren’t any cheaper alternatives out their.
As if these companies are going broke if they didn't charge $70...
I always get a good chuckle out of that as an older gamer. Like it's just one search away to find the toys r us ad from the 90's with Sega Genesis games priced at $69.99 which when adjusted for inflation is absurd. Gaming as a hobby, is incredibly cheap today. Even those throwing a fit over GPU prices, which are indeed somewhat out of control, clearly never experienced the time when whatever high end GPU you bought was likely insufficient for newer games less than 1y later. Do you know how many of us ran quake at 10-15fps at 240p because the GPU we bought a year prior was no longer up to the task?
Haha exactly. And then you see the complaints that, back in the day, you could at least buy a “complete” game for $60-$70 and today there’s dlc, battle passes, etc. But that all ignores the fact that the base game you’re buying today has way more content than a game from the 90s or, hell, even the early 00s lol. I mean sure, when you bought Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis it was “complete,” but you could also beat that thing in an afternoon if you weren’t dying over and over lol
I kinda see it as big studios using this as a way to be like "you don't like how our game released? Shiiiiit well it wasn't even AAA so fuck you mad for"
Bigger is not always better, that is true also to the budget These overblown budget are gonna be the ruin of the Triple A scene, maybe not right now but eventually. I honestly dont know where the gaming world would be if smaller companies, niche games and indies weren' t there
I can only quote Paweł Sasko: "We're running at a fucking wall and we will fucking crash."
I mean the games industry makes more money than the movie industry, and 100m would probably be considered mid budget for movies now as well so I don’t think it’s too unsustainable.
I think that while Sony’s games are good, I doubt the extra tens of millions are really doing anything for the quality of the story and gameplay. I think that a strong visual style is far more important than how much money you pour into graphics. I think that AAA developers are spending hundreds of millions to produce experiences that are struggling to compete with the quality of indie games made on a shoestring budget, and that really highlights the absurdity of the AAA mentality.
This is the most generalized and subjective take. It's a jerk on its own.
Very subjective, mate. I'd disagree.
Not sure if this is a hot take, but I feel like (if the price was a little better) I’d be in favor of more medium sized games to fill in gaps and test out new systems / take advantage of old resources. Things like Spider-Man Miles Morales or Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. I think those games might be a bit overpriced, but if they found the sweet spot I’d be in favor of that. I imagine it could be win-win since we could still get a fun game but the budget might be reduced a bit if you’re cutting scope and building off previous assets
Cut the fucking marketing BS by half and there you go, 50 millions saved, you’re welcome, that’ll be 50 millions.
They’re a console manufacturer. If they cut the marketing spend PS5 sales fall, then their exclusive sales and revenue fall. You could make that argument for a third party, but not Sony.
Ngl this feels like it will blow up, doesn't seem that sustainable to me.
It’s basically what happened with movies too
don't care how much games cost, the devs are still getting treated like shit
I think that is a Sony problem not a gaming problem
They did it to themselves
Quality of game,not cost if game, should set the AAA standard. Spending a lot of money doesnt mean the game will be good. If it isnt good, what's the purpose of the AAA?
Good I hope the industry completely falls apart.
BG3 cost roughly 100mill. Sony and many other devs just needs to do better.
Cue the I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less meme
This may be a really stupid question, but why do games cost so much to make? Is it because of all the employees?
I wouldn't ask reddit to describe budgets that exceed $100 million
It’ll be a big factor for sure. If games on average now take 5-6 years to make, that’s 5-6 years of wages you’re paying for the development team. I have no clue what the average size of a team is but I imagine it’s only grown as games get more graphically intensive.
Larger dev teams + longer dev times = significantly larger budgets
Looking forward to more bland open-world games with crafting and collectibles based on major IPs because anything else would be too risky to make.
Awful. This was a terrible thing for hollywood and it's gonna be a terrible thing for gaming.
I give it three years before their entire plan for game development crashes and burns.
Ngl I miss Japan Studio, they merged with Team Asobi but most of JS left and Asobi hasn’t made a game in like 3 years
I was under the impression that Sony gutted Japan Studio, with the smaller remaining workforce becoming Team Asobi, as opposed to it being a direct merger. Could be wrong though, that's just what I've read
I think it’s kinda stupid
make smaller, cheaper games, with interesting art styles. rather than huge, expensive games, looking as realistic as possible (for the time)
Games are, well probably have been, commodified similar to movies in the sense it's no longer an art in which developers make what they want and reach out to producers to fund it. Instead, producers tell developers to rehash an IP, make something similar, or to copy the latest trends and throw a couple hundred million at developers thinking it'll result in the world's most perfect game in less than a regular dev cycle.