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)
Earlier these few months, an article popped up educating indie devs on how to attract a publisher and it basically boiled down to “appeal to their money-grubbing soulless husks”, because investors don’t care about games, they care about making profit out of an investment.
But it defended this kind of practice because profiteers care about results. They want a game to be successful, because it makes them money. However, they’ll also cut their losses early if it doesn’t look good.
Developers on the other hand just want to express their creative vision, even if this might bring them to ruin.
And it’s this cooperation between realism and idealistic, when done properly, that brings out the greatness of a game. Or so they said.Unfortunately, a lot of the decision makers involved are idiots who fail to understand the need for balance between the costs of production and unhinged desire for success, artistic or material.
Kingdoms of Amalur failed because the people in charge spent their money like crazy on comfort and knickknacks.
Concord failed because the publisher threw a large sack of money at the devs and then fucked right off without a care in the world, leaving a bunch of headless chickens to run around it with no purpose or direction.
New World failed because it was a project run by scammers looking to scam investors (or so I’ve been told).
Highguard failed because the owner was dumb. And probably still is. Also, Tencent was their silent investor, who pulled out when shit went sideways.
Indeed, the formula for a good game doesn’t guarantee success. Even the best of games will fail if the conditions allow it. Yet, for those who simply do not give damn about what they’re making, their carelessness will make damn sure they guarantee its failure.
Piggybacking on your comments towards new world, Amazon spent 1b developing their own engine for the game before they started the game. MMOs being what they are, not being the best profit generators in the industry, it was doomed to fail with that kind of price tag before even releasing the game.
I can’t speak to the scam stuff, but watching the dumpster fire that was that game was some excellent schadenfreude. Expecting to be able to compete with the MMO heavy weights that have been developing for 20 years and the type of rabid content eating gamers that play them, is just an insanely market deaf thing to do, in my opinion.
As a disclaimer, I didn’t play it, just watched it burn from the outside.
Meanwhile an indie game from a single dev: 500k players on steam.
For every one game this happens to there are thousands of others that flop every year.
Same thing for AAA studios.
Not quite. There aren’t thousands of releases per year that would qualify as AAA. In fact, since they take so much longer to make, there are very few of them in a given year anymore.
And yet, lately it’s the low budget indie games that dominate steam charts with massive successes.
And Counter-Strike, and Marvel Rivals, and PUBG, and Crimson Desert, and Baldur’s Gate 3, and Elden Ring, and (somehow) Delta Force. I don’t think you can say it’s only indie games doing so.
Of corse not only indie games. But there’s huge shift in the market from behemoths like EA, or Ubisoft towards smaller studios and indie devs.
Executives should still be accountable for inefficiencies and bad scoping.
The public is crazy demanding wrt AAA titles tbh, haters make comps when one asset is re-used in a sequel
They’re focusing entirely on appeasing the most expensive to satisfy people, at the expense of actual good gameplay.
Some players will complain about everything, the industry is the one amplifying it. For example, Like a Dragon games have been recycling assets since forever, and so did Zelda TOTK and no one cares.
In the end, the players would also benefit if the games were made through iterative improvements instead of making everything from scratch every time.
300 million would kinda make sense, as it would mean an avg of 60k/year for a five year production on a 1000 people team. But how many AAA games are actually that large?
Halve the employees and double the salary, and you’ll be closer. Few people on a team will gross $120k, but benefits are part of that cost too.
And taxes.
I’m not a tax expert, but I think the taxes are applied after gross. Taxes on money coming in, not going out. So that ~$120k is what the company spends, but it’s not what the employee sees.
Sorry that I was not more clear. The company is paying the employee 120k gross, yes, but then also paying other things behind the scenes like other taxes and unemployment insurance, etc.
They’re not a consistent size over the life of a project. They also contract out a lot of stuff later on to avoid ramping the team up too much.
Look at Epic games, ~5k staff before the recent layoff. The games they developed over the past 10+ years aren’t even AAA production levels.
Epic isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison with most other studios. They don’t just make games, they develop and support Unreal Engine for both games and film production, they operate EGS, a motion capture studio, ArtStation, Sketchfab, and a dozen other subsidiaries. It’s a huge company.
That makes sense after some thought on it because of how long games are in production. Like 5-8 years of a main studio of like 300+ people. Like if it’s plain 100k salary per person a year at 300 people, $30 million in payroll a year. Add overhead like insurance, taxes, benefits. AAA games have support studios they contract out to. Think like the credits having 1000+ names in it. Getting to 300 million for a US/Canada AAA game sounds unsurprising considering how many years games cook now
Does it count also the Publisher budget (which usually goes to marketing, advertisement, etc.)?
Haven’t read the article yet, but most likely, yes. Usually this data comes from the publisher themselves as they are the one fronting the money.
Edit : yep. Though it doesn’t include marketing, which can be in the 9 figures range too for these games…
Maybe stop locating every damn AAA studio in “most expensive city in the world, USA” too. Or allow us to work from home at least. I’d happily take a big pay cut if that meant I could fuck off to the countryside and buy a house in a few years, while working from home.
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.
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.
With a small touch of design-by-committee on top
Well yeah 300 million, but is the game any good or is it just made to be doodling with the D‘s of game “Journalists”? Just because you pay a lot of people doesn’t mean it’s good.
These are US and Canada productions. If you’re wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
Stardew Valley was made in the US. Same with Terraria, Axiom Verge, Outer Wilds, Balatro, Risk of Rain, Undertale, The Stanley Parable, Hyper Light Drifter, and a shit ton of other games.
If you’re wondering why game X costs so much less, it was probably made by a indie studio!
Jason is just lying at this point, if he believes otherwise.
This thread is about AAA game budgets, not indie budgets. Even Stardew Valley took 4 years of living off of his partner’s generosity while he earned no income. It paid off, but that’s the exception to the rule.
kinda reminds me of piers anthony advice to writers when they asked what is most needed to become a success. He said a partner who works.
Yup. People don’t realize that most professional authors are not earning a living through writing.
I mean he did after a few years but in order to have the time to make it a go he needed to devote all his energies to it. Do it full time. This was way back when books and publishers was more a typical thing. I assume its even harder today.
What’s an Overheard, did he means “Overhead”?
Last time I checked it’s neither salaries, nor overhead, nor executive budgets, but it’s the PR efforts that spend the most chunk. This shithead trying to load that over the shoulder of developers and not advertising teams.
This shithead is one of the most prominent videogame industry journalist, so his source is probably way closer to the industry and more accurate in many way.
