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)
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