Full post: Exact budgets of video-game productions can be tough to corroborate (more transparency from publishers would be nice!) but the numbers I’ve heard floating around AAA game dev these days are $300 million or more — sometimes much more! — which I think helps explain the current state of the industry
To address some frequently asked questions:
- These are US and Canada productions. If you’re wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
- These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)
300 million moneyz? And still most games feel empty, dumb and copycats with the ambitious flow of a snail with slime-deficit-disorder?
Sad…
Can’t take risks when you put in that much money
Sure, i understand the motivation, but…meh. Since when is it the customers job to care? we just pay. Take e.g. Once human or Where winds meet. Also a nice fat budget, but interesting, creative games worth to play. And they even cost nothing. Unless you need fancy clothes. We’re just so americanized we don’t seem to mind. Even the most stupid empty shell of a silly game that is it’s fourth+ re-iteration of a franchise gets sold for at least 59,99 plus release-DLCs, bonus packs and pre-order-boni. Why should they even change if it works so well.
Oh I don’t say that it’s a good reason, it’s just why they do it. Shareholder value must go up. Trying something new risks that numbers go down, can’t do that.
Personally I don’t care for “triple A” games anymore. The last one I bought at full price shortly after release was 2019 for Jedi Knight, and that was a huge exception because the last before that one was 2010 for Mass Effect 2. All my other games in my way to big library are indies or games I bought on sale for less than 20 bucks and only because I’m interested in. I have blocked big publishers like EA or Ubisoft on Steam since a few years because of their attitude, enshittifiaction and mostly because their games are the same over and over again.
Edit: oh and because lot’s of their games don’t run (well) on linux anyway.
I’d second that. Last AAA i bought without hesitation was CP2077. Still waited 2yrs to play it for obvious reasons. But US-american releases? no, thanks. Fool me 534times, shame on you, fool me 535 times, shame on me.
Fuck EA, but ubisoft games work fine on linux though. Not all are good, but i really enjoyed AC:Odyssey and Division2. Both great, actually.
It’s because creative direction in these comapnies sucks. It’s usually a big, bureaucratized souless machine where your connections mean more than your actual skill.
True that. But then they still expect us to pay 59,99 for the bare minimum…but yet, we do.
Couldn’t be me. I only pay full price for games when it’s exceptional games like arc raiders or quality indie games with fair pricing.
Same. I long stopped buying their shit. And also mostly shifted to indie.
With a small touch of design-by-committee on top