| Legend11 said: Do these costs take into consideration licensing an existing game engine instead of building one from scratch? What about companies reusing or tweaking existing code, tools, engine, etc that were created for previous games they've made? Are we expected to believe companies re-invent the wheel everytime they made a new game on a console they've already developed a game on? What about development kits, didn't Sony just cut in half the cost of their's (from ~$20,000 each to ~$10,000) and that's not even taking into consideration the fact that many teams are on their second or third PS3 or 360 game and that cost has already been paid for with their first game. Lets take Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for example, it's doubtful the team bought all new development kits for the game or threw out all the code from the first (AI, Physics, Art, etc). Or that they forgot everything they learned from the first game so they have to spend time re-learning everything. I'm willing to bet the cost of making Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is less than the first game. I see $20+ million numbers being thrown around a lot but it seems a lot of games with those kinds of costs are ones in which the engine and everything else for them are being built from scratch or a lot of customization of an existing licensed engine is taking place. In one camp there're games like Heavenly Sword, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Grand Theft Auto 4 in which everything is being built from the ground up. In another there're games like Bioshock, Stranglehold, and Too Human in which an existing engine is heavily modified. But in both cases I'm willing to bet for the ones that get a sequel it will cost less and take less time to make. Anyways what I'm trying to say it that this issue isn't as black and white as some people are making it out to be. |
Well the primary cost for game development is time as the more time it takes to make the game the more you pay your developers. So in that regard if we look at a game like Halo, it took a pretty long time to make the game still and it cost a very shiny penny or 3. The same is true of Mario and how long it took to make that game, from what I can tell mario had a smaller team than what Halo 3 had but it still took about 2.5 years as best I can tell. So games that are a sequel don't seem to be immune to increased or increasing costs just because they are a sequel.
I think it depends on how lazy the devs want to be. If they are just adding in new content then sure there probably isn't a whole lot of work to be done and you can probably go ahead and just get the entire project done in less than 6 months. But if you want a good game I think you have to dig down a little bit and actually and improve on the existing engine in a way the player will notice and appreciate.
There is definitely a smarter way to do it with engine re-use as you aren't doing the same things over and over, but I would hate to see devs get stuck in a regurgitation loop also.
@chadius,
Graphics don't really have a cost per se, other than what you pay your artists. It just takes longer to make quality HD textures than it takes to make quality SD textures.
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