relevent links

http://www.vg247.com/2012/08/01/capps-calls-for-more-efficient-development-to-sustain-next-gen/

http://www.warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_007

"Today, the world has gone crazy. Even simple short linear games are developed by hundreds of people and sometimes I really don’t have a clue what all these people are doing. You simply don’t need 300 people and 60 million dollars to make a 5 hour long corridor shooter with 5 types of weapons and 10 levels with established technology."

"Last year I received a proposal to work for one of the biggest publishers as a writer on a big franchise. They asked me what exactly I’d done in the past and so I answered that I wrote most of the game design, mission design, complete story, most of the dialogues plus I also designed controls and parts of the GUI and HUD. Of course I mentioned that I worked with other people, but I did all that stuff mostly myself. There was a moment of silence on the other side, and I believe I overheard coughing as well. ”Ehhh... We have a team of thirty people for that, sir. You would be one of them, working together with our creative director, producer, lead designer, lead level designer and lead writer.” Shit. What are all those people, plus 20 writers under them, doing on the design of a linear FPS shooter? A script for a two hour movie has 120 pages. At the speed of three pages a day I can write it in two months and rewrite it completely 6 times within a year. Who the hell needs a team of several writers to write ingame dialogues (which are usually tragically crappy anyway)? I mean what was the last game you finished and said to yourself – wow, this was a pretty damn good story."

"Yes, graphics and animations are getting more and more complex and you need more people to work on them, so it costs more money, but not that much. And yes, some of the games are so big, that they must be made by hundreds of people, but most of today’s development is just wrong. Fifteen years ago, when you needed to model a wooden box, it was just a box with a very small texture. Today it could have thousands of polygons and several huge textures and normal maps. But... Fifteen years ago, there was no Google, ZBrush, digital cameras, CGtextures, Crazybump, 30 inch diplays or Cintiq tablets."

thats still a high freaking margin, thats like 66 bucks right there. games are gettin expensive. No wonder Nintendo loves digital all of the sudden, because its so much cheaper

Super Mario Bros. 3 cost $90 when I got it as a kid.

Street Fighter II for the SNES was much the same. Games costing $70 was pretty much the norm.

If there are more Engines like UE4 in terms of very easy tools and interface, the costs will not increase to me, if they increase, it will be very small.

Yesterday when I finished Alan Wake. Quite a good story. But I mostly agree, things have gone out of control, specially in regards to AAA games.

And, if I remember correctly, last week or the week before, someone posted news of a developer working in projects for the next gen saying that they had to double the work and time spent in some parts of game design (I'll see if I can find it).

That with the fact that it is Pachter who is saying this, makes me belive that development costs will rise more than 10-15%. If only for that extra work and the yearly increase in salaries.

Btw, I'll miss your Triss avatar.

I felt it was a time for a change, tho I am still not sure about the current one I may have to try something else. 

I think the average my only go up 10-15% but the top end AAA game budgets will continue to increase at a faster rate. Digital only games will continue to become more like the AAA games of yester year. 

I'm perfectly fine with that if prices don't rise to match that AAA status.

To be honest, for me one of the most fun games of this gen has been Renegade Ops. It's a blast and, at the same time, both a breath of fresh air and nostalgia from the old arcades. So if we get more games like that instead of AAA games I wouldn't complain.

I would love for EA to make a new Desert/Jungle/Urban/whatever Strike game with the graphics and style of Renegade Ops, even more than some of their announced games.

Hopefully next gen the major platform holders will give publishers more control over buisness models and prices. Much like publishers have on PC/mobile devices now, the ability to set prices that suite the budget and genre of each game should mean a lot more games in niche genres without ether resorting to a title with a $2 million budget download only or a full retail release where the game has to compete with the latest AAA blockbuster at the same price point. 

This generation has made great strides in that direction with XBLA, PSN etc but there are still a lot of restrictions. But it has lead to a lot of great smaller titles.

It seems that Nintendo is giving developers some incentives to publish their games on their digital services, and Nintendo always seems to be the last one to adopt this kind of things.

We'll see, but I wouldn't put my hopes on it to happen, at least not soon.

Just noticed your age.