Le Saboteur said:
I thought a rather softball question would elicit more discussion, but not much you can do with a dead scene.
We're keeping the doors open, but can't force anyone in at gunpoint. Sorry about that.
Le Saboteur said:
No, my comprehension is crystal. Marketing costs are a separate line item on any budget, so when you announce that x cost $100-million to produce/create/make then you're announcing that, in this case, that's what you spent for the code monkeys to pound away at their keyboards. Other above-the-line expenses, like marketing, are not included. Had Square indicated that the $100-million figure* was their total cost to bring Tomb Raider to homes, I'd be more inclined to put marketing costs in that total figure. Which is what you're saying.
*-- The argument's weak because that $100-million figure was acquired through a third-party analyst. Square-Enix/Crystal Dynamics have never mentioned a figure. It was seized upon in the trades along with the reports of Bioshock Infinite topping $200-million.
Okay, I went digging a little deeper, and there indeed is no first-party statement of the costs of
Tomb Raider, all I found was a single throwaway line from a third-party analyst.
Still, I don't really see why we need to argue over this. We both agree that $100m to the code monkeys alone for game like
Tomb Raider is preposterous. It is actually that no matter the game.
But if you include marketing, the sum becomes more plausible. And when Square calls its title a financial disappointment, I'm quite certain it includes every possible cost to that statement. The marketing costs do add to the bottom line. Unless, of course, there is some magical way they can be covered in some other way, than, you know, selling copies...
Better clarify something though. You're not thinking I'm trying to
justify these costs, are you? If you do, then your comprehension IS off. If you go back and reread, I've never said that developing games should be this expensive.
So, rephrasing, again...
can a game like
Tomb Raider cost $100m, all expenses covered? Knowing mankind's ability to waste away money, yes, it really can.
Should it cost that much? No, it really shouldn't.
Le Saboteur said:
Had internal sales figures been met, they could have released a free multi-player client post-release to boost those numbers. If not, monetize the expense across a pair of games. Instead, they jumped in feet first and got burned.
Yeah. No argument. Yet again, like I said, I can see why they're calling it a financial disappointment. However, I never claimed that it was one they could not have avoided.
Le Saboteur said:
The tessellation and TressFX are quite lovely on the PC, but, even being completely objective, Tomb Raider does not look significantly better than Drake's Deception. On a PS3 side-by-side comparison, Tomb Raider manages to look noticeably worse in parts. It's important to note that Crystal Dynamics used the PS3 as their lead platform before porting it to the other platforms.
Great. This is what, like the third time you've practically argued that "because it is like this on PS3, I can use the same figures to cover every other platform out there as well". For crying out loud... there is a scene outside the PS3-land, in case you were not aware. One that has differing variables that also happen to affect the result. So please, stop behaving like PS3 is the gold standard. I'm almost getting worried, because that borders on insane troll logic, my friend.
Tomb Raider, everything jacked up to max on a top-end PC looks absolutely gorgeous, and can blow anything any Uncharted title can present on PS3 completely off the water. Ergo, it is a more advanced game than any of the three
Uncharted titles. Which is going to ramp up costs. But once again,
I'm not saying it should be like that. It couldn't be any worse of a game if every platform followed the PS3 standards. But they don't, so stop behaving as if they did.
Regardless, the bottom line:
Tomb Raider has obviously cost more than any of the three Uncharted titles, and it shows when you know where to look for it. Another fact is that Square execs are obviously not happy with the returns versus their investments. Somebody might say it gives them a valid reason to complain. But we both agree that you don't have to spend $100m to make a game like this. So why are we arguing about the subject? Because we're having fun arguing, or because there's a comprehension problem somewhere?
Le Saboteur said:
I am deeply worried about your social calendar, Finn, if you spend your free time listening to speakers discuss the financials of QA-testing.
My free time is spent at wasting my life away at following the ongoings of various online communities, playing video games, reading books and taking hikes in the great northern outdoors.
My
professional life, however, occasionally takes me to lectures that cover a wide range of technical topics. Such is the field these days when ones education is in information science.
Le Saboteur said:
Fun fact: I was curious to see what kind of sales The Testament of Sherlock Holmes had when the next game was announced, and it looks like the PS3 had sales of 100,000 compared to 10,000 on the 360 and 30,000 on PC. That's a staggering difference.
I'd be hard pressed to call
Sherlock Holmes an AAA title. While it's a quality product, it's a game in a niche genre made by what is not exactly a major developer.
So yeah, more obscure the title, less accurate their numbers appear to be. Which is something I readily admitted.
Le Saboteur said:
An interesting infographic on
the breakdown of the average videogame budget from Game Informer. Seems I'm not so far off on my $4-million QA number.
Again, I have to question your comprehension if you're not aware that said graphic is obviously full of hyperboles. It does tell us what is wrong with the industry these days, but it does by no means tell us every dev out there is following the same formula. What comes to debug, all that graphic is really telling us is that
one developer - Bethesda - is cutting corners with it. Which is not exactly news to anybody who's played any of their titles straight out of the box.
However, there're also people who are willing to do it right. The guy I was referring to said that if you put your heart into QA, the difference in costs between an exclusive and a multiplatform title can be as staggering as 30% of the budget.
When
Alan Wake was first announced, it was touted as an advanced PC title. Then, all of a sudden, it became an X360 exclusive. Apparently the reason was that it allowed Remedy to cut 20% off the dev costs... and receive a big extra wad of cash from Microsoft in return.
Le Saboteur said:
The industry may not like it, but they might need to adopt a Hollyood-style release schedule; a scant few “tent pole” games get released throughout the year, and smaller, less expensive titles get released around them. These are your proverbial “artistic” releases that get massaged for awards season.
The funny thing is, more people get into games, more diverse should the base become. Make gaming truly mainstream, an acceptable pastime in every social niche imaginable, and you can release relative obscurity and still find wide enough audience to pull a profit. The dudebros should be happier too, given their girlfriends have no longer the moral high ground to nag about it.
But as of now, the peasants respond to their lords, all the more willing to do their bidding. But the beauty of preferring a non-closed platform? We want diversity, in the extreme end we can
make our diversity. And that is the true secret of the "master race". Freedom. It's a pretty coveted ideal, as I hear it.