Game Industry Fights Rising Development Costs 111
An anonymous reader writes "Video game development budgets have been rising for years, and the recent launch of a new generation of consoles has only made it worse. Developers of AAA titles are now fighting to keep costs manageable while providing the technological advances gamers have come to expect. Just a few years ago, budgets ranging above $100 million were considered absurd, but now Activision is committing $500 million to a new IP from the studio that created Halo. Alan Roberts, technical director for Playground Games, says development teams keep expanding: 'Our in-house development team is roughly 20 per cent bigger than it was on last-gen, but we're doing even more with outsourcers this time in order to create content to the level of detail required by new generation games.' He adds that one way studios are trying to defray costs is to put more effort into building great tools for content creators."
Another example I forgot (Score:3, Interesting)
I-Novae studios are doing something similar, AFAIK with a bit more budget and limited to terrain generation:
https://www.inovaestudios.com/Technology [inovaestudios.com]
This may be a better example of what a large game studio might go for. Overall a bit more conventional than Limit Theory, and needing more manpower, but still a big win in not having to model the terrain by hand.
Woe be to self-inflicted wounds, (Score:3, Interesting)
I have worked in the game industry since the late 90's. This is a smokescreen. It is, internally, a well-understood principle that your games needs a minimum of $70k today for marketing *alone*.
That does not include development at any level.
Beyond that, I am confident in saying that *at least* 50% of actual development costs are wasted due to poor management, marketing-driven-design, and a general lack of focus.
When the game industry decided to raise the retail cost of their games to $60, (with the reason of increased development costs) at that time it was already a sham.
Now that this article has come out on their struggles against the costs of development, I want to make one thing clear to everyone who has the chance to read this:
1) When a development studio goes out of business due to lack of funds, it is, every time, due to poor management and internal irresponsibility with funding.
2) The claim of rising development costs is nothing more than greedy stake-holders crying for more profit.
3) It does not cost that much to develop games today, as aside from marketing/advertising, it costs less than a million dollars to develop even the most technically challenging project today.
I had a lot more to say, but I'm too angry now. And that I won't post non-anonymously, I can't really provide anything more than this comment and my anger.
Re:What advances? (Score:4, Interesting)
IMO, the greatest video game of all time is Star Control 2 (1993)
Great nominee but I'd go with Mail-Order Monsters [wikipedia.org] (1985), personally.
Voice acting... ugh (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a huge waste of time and money imo. No friend I've gamed with ever really gave a flying frack about fully voice acted dialogs. Though I only beta tested, since I didn't like the game, Elder Scrolls online for example -- there was SO much pointless voice acting, with well-known to famous actors (like John Cleese). How much money did they spend on that? Most people just click through thinking 'yeah... yeah... give me the #$%! quest already'. They apparently spent a small fortune developing it, and after all that, I'd still just rather play Oblivion or Skyrim.
I also think many game companies have become obsessed with 'oh shiney!' tech and forget about basic stuff, like a good, even [gasp] original storyline -- instead of the cliched, overused, derivative crap that seems to make up 90% of the titles. I've been playing a lot more games from smaller studios, that seems to be where the real innovation in game design is imo. And no, I don't mean the tech, I mean the story, the interfaces, the character concepts, etc.