zarx said:
QuintonMcLeod said:
No.
Indie developers are creating games with only several 100 thousand dollar budgets. Don't give me that "Oh, the publisher will give them 20 million." Several million dollars is only needed for large AAA budget games. I'm saying making such games are disasterous in this market if done poorly. Many of these AAA games ARE done very very poorly.
Listen. 8 million is how much they have to work with after royalties, operating costs and etc. based from only 300k worth of sales.
300,000 x $60 = $18,000,000 - ($10 million for everything else) = $8,000,000. I've also rounded the expenses up so to intentionally bloat the amount of off-project expenses to further make my point.
When a game need to sell 4 million copies to break even, that's a problem! Do the math:
4,000,000 x $60 = $240,000,000 - ($220 million for off project expenses [this is a severely bloated number.]). That's ridiculous.
Secondly, an indie studio that large should not waste so much manpower on one game. With a 100 man team, you can split them to two teams of 50 people and have two projects simultaneously while NOT focusing on AAA budgets. This is how you keep food on the table while not spending ridiculous amounts of money and betting on only one or two projects to stay afloat. This is called business sense.
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You are sevearly underestemating what a AAA game costs to make these days. I wouldn't even say $20m is enough to make a AAA game these days. The most successful AAA games all have budgets well over $100m. GTA V is reported at $225m including marketing. Desteny $500m with marketing. These are the realities of AAA development, and for the mid tier projects the sub $20m (which don't missunderstand is small for a full priced retail release) games like Murdered the market just isn't there for most games. In the current market to demand a $60 boxed release you really have to be AAA or an established brand with a built in fanbase.
Anything with a sub $10m budget isn't big enough for a retail release or if it is it sure as hell won't be full price. You are talking premium downloadable titles like Journey or Call of Juarez: Gunslinger. So now you have to lower the price to $15-30 and now you need to sell 2-3 X as many copies to break even. And again Airtight Games did make smaller downloadable titles they flopped too. Publishers for the most part aren't funding a lot smaller games, they are increasingly focusing on fewer bigger AAA games which is the real reason that Airtight is going under. Because publishers aren't funding low budget titles like Murdered: Soul Suspect anymore. At least not in the retail sapace from north American developers.
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You're just recertifying my point.
Creating AAA games is risky. I've already pointed out that games needing to sell 4 million copies just to break even is a _problem_. I haven't underestimated anything. I think you're actually seeing the light.
These developers shouldn't try to make AAA titles. Many of them cannot afford to, because doing so can bankrupt them.
Scisca said:
Quinton, I don't think you know how this business works. Or any business for that matter. Just learn this - the gaming industry is like any other, if you fail to make good products, you most likely go bust. It's true in every branch of industry, it was happening in the past in this industry as well (remember the giant Westwood?), so there is no reason to overreact. Smart developers that make good products and keep a firm grip on their budgets flourish like never before - just look at CD Projekt RED. Developers who don't - go bust. |
Uhh... I don't think the gaming industry is as simple as you make it sound. Just because you make a good product doesn't mean it'll sell. The vice versa is also true. The entertainment business is a very volatile market.
Also, I was saying that most AAA developers don't have a firm grip on their budgets. That's really what the issue mainly is and what my point is trying to prove.
