Whatcha playin? (Video games wise.)

The Drifter

New member
Finn said:
Hmm. P'haps it has something to do with the natural ability to see variety in a northern landscape.

As an inverse example, I might be complaining that every corner of Sahara looks the same, only to have a confused bedouin tell me that no, it really does not.



<small>It could also be all those mods.</small>

It very well could be the reason. I loved Oblivion, but just didn't care for Skyrim. I even made a character that looked like Conan and pretended I was in Cimmeria, but that didn't even work!

Go shove your PC up your bum! Master race my arse! :p
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Finn said:
Indeed. It's practically ridiculous that you can sell an amount of copies that reaches seven digits, and still not pull a profit. If you fail in that, one should definitely look if the bar of costs has been dragged too high during development.

I think certain publishers have visions of Call of Duty-like sales. If Activision can do a billion in sales, we should be able to half that with our ultra-niche title nobody has heard of!

If the numbers I scrounged up are correct, then retailers are purchasing their games @ approximately $52/copy. So on a million-copy selling game, the publisher is netting $52-million in revenue. That means a game like Sleeping Dogs pulled in approximately $91-million in revenue.

Despite Activision's original claims of sky high development costs, I can't see total development exceeding, say, thirty million bucks. I doubt they put more than fifteen million into advertising which would put Square-Enix's net profit at ~$45-million. I wouldn't sneeze at that kind of profit margin.

Again, if the numbers hold true, Tomb Raider netted approximately $177-million in its first month of release! I can't find current sales figures, but I expect that they've gone up in the subsequent three months. I don't think it would be unfair to say that it's pushed its way north of the $200-million mark. While video game advertising tends to remain a low cost, high yield venture Square-Enix went out of its way to ensure you knew this was coming out. There has to be some profit in there somewhere.

Did they spend an additional $100-million on advertising? I don't think so.

Fun read: The Business of GameStop, Part Two.

I have very strong doubts that Tomb Raider cost $100-million to make. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that the Uncharted series cost in the neighborhood of $20-25-million each. David Cage said Heavy Rain cost about $50-million to make including marketing, and made Sony $130-million.

Which is why I remain seriously skeptical of "the numbers". They don't add up based on empirical evidence.

I suspect the truth is closer to this: Since the gaming industry has gone increasingly corporate in both product and outlook, so have the expectations. (Insert AAA-title here) made money, but didn't make enough money. Profits weren't maximized.


Finn said:
At least it's a Bethesda RPG. It's not like he's just experiencing the same sights and sounds over and over again. In fact, it could be argued that they are NOT meant to be played in the vanilla state.

I get the same sight everyday -- the collector's edition box staring at me from the floor where it's been for, like, two years now! I rather liked what time I spent with the game, but opted to wait for Bethesda to patch the... uh, problem with overly large save files corrupting on PS3. Never did get back around to playing it, though.

Sure, the dragon statue is cool, but why did I buy the "collector's edition again?" It's not like I need any more plastic junk.

Myself & I said:
Port Royale 3 Early impression: 7/10

You want to stick with that impression? Yes, yes I do. Though I did discover a new favorite thing I can't do -- I can't defend my towns with my fleet!

Yep, the slimy English can sail right into Santiago de Cuba and proceed to bombard my fort. That fleet of wargalleons? It doesn't even appear on the map during the attack. I had a second battle group stationed nearby, but when I attempted to bring them in on the action I'm informed that the "harbour is blocked by battle."

No 'ish! I'm not trying to trade with the town, I want to break their naval blockade! Instead, I get to watch their ships decimate my defenses, watch the town get "annexed", then I sail in and retake the town. Repeat ad infinitum. Seriously, Santiago has changed hands six different times in the past thirty minutes. It's ridiculous.

To top it off, the other nations have been getting angry with me for "attacking" the English when I'm actually defending myself. So now I'm in a war of attrition with France, the Dutch, England, and Spain. I've burned through 2.5-million reales in the process, and don't see any way to repair my reputation with the other nations... yet.

There is still a significant amount of depth on display, but there's a lot that's missing or broken. Specifically, on the warmaking side of things.

Back to the mill stone.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Le Saboteur said:
I think certain publishers have visions of Call of Duty-like sales. If Activision can do a billion in sales, we should be able to half that with our ultra-niche title nobody has heard of!

If the numbers I scrounged up are correct, then retailers are purchasing their games @ approximately $52/copy. So on a million-copy selling game, the publisher is netting $52-million in revenue. That means a game like Sleeping Dogs pulled in approximately $91-million in revenue.

Despite Activision's original claims of sky high development costs, I can't see total development exceeding, say, thirty million bucks. I doubt they put more than fifteen million into advertising which would put Square-Enix's net profit at ~$45-million. I wouldn't sneeze at that kind of profit margin.

Again, if the numbers hold true, Tomb Raider netted approximately $177-million in its first month of release! I can't find current sales figures, but I expect that they've gone up in the subsequent three months. I don't think it would be unfair to say that it's pushed its way north of the $200-million mark. While video game advertising tends to remain a low cost, high yield venture Square-Enix went out of its way to ensure you knew this was coming out. There has to be some profit in there somewhere.

Did they spend an additional $100-million on advertising? I don't think so.

Fun read: The Business of GameStop, Part Two.

I have very strong doubts that Tomb Raider cost $100-million to make. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that the Uncharted series cost in the neighborhood of $20-25-million each. David Cage said Heavy Rain cost about $50-million to make including marketing, and made Sony $130-million.

Which is why I remain seriously skeptical of "the numbers". They don't add up based on empirical evidence.

I suspect the truth is closer to this: Since the gaming industry has gone increasingly corporate in both product and outlook, so have the expectations. (Insert AAA-title here) made money, but didn't make enough money. Profits weren't maximized.
Your numbers are off.

First of all, I don't see it that outlandish that the total costs associated to an AAA title can reach up to $100m these days. But because you never know if the numbers given are related to everything or simply the core development costs, there's simply no point in saying stuff like "I don't buy Tomb Raider costing $100m if Uncharted only costed like $25m", unless you can be sure that the numbers cover the same expenses.

Another infallacy: that $52 you report is exactly as you say, a retailer price. It refers to shelf copies only, and most likely even then to console units. The latter fact is actually pretty easy to deduce, given how a regular PC copy is a tad cheaper than its console counterpart. No retailer sells anything with a zero margin.

Finally, most copies of PC games sold these days are actually digital, direct-download ones, and given the sources I've seen, 90% of pc game sales are already digital. And they drag the median price of a copy even lower.

Let's take the retailer sales of Tomb Raider. See here, here and here.

PS3 version has sold 1.24m copies up to early June, X360 1.05m and PC 0.17m. If we add up, that makes... 2.46m copies sold. Hey, there's million copies missing. That's the digital PC sales. You add that number to the shelf PC sales and you get roughly 1.1m copies sold on PC, roughly evening out the sales on all three platforms.

Which obviously brings us to yet another multiplication formula fail in your deductions. That retailer $50-per-copy range naturally only applies to the console shelf units, which have sold about 2.3m copies up to this date. That's around 115-120m revenue.

Given how the digital distribution puts the median price of a single copy for PC all across the board - but for the sake of getting some kind of number, let's put it at $30. And I'm actually being gracious here. That amounts, naturally, to $30-35m of revenue for PC copies.

That means the Tomb Raider total revenues jump up to the $150m mark. And if we are to buy the reports that claim that the total costs of the game were that $100m, it gives us $50m in profit. It's a profit all right, but I can somewhat see why the corporate executive wouldn't be completely happy with it.


Sleeping Dogs sold 1,5m console retail copies (per VGChartz), which means the PC sales are sitting roughly at 250 000 copies sold. $50 * 1,5m is roughly 75m and the PC copies standing on top of that, $30 * 0.25m make around 7m, totaling the sales at bit over 80-million mark.

Now, I don't think the total development costs of Sleeping Dogs were at $100m, but even if you place them at $50m or a bit over, you'll still get only around $20-30m in profit. So yeah, I can actually see why the suits are calling these two titles financial disappointments.


The bottom line is that I can see a modern game costing $100m total to create. I can also attest that there is nothing wrong with the way the industry does its math. However, they do have to start figuring out ways to cut down their costs, because it's obvious the current budget models can't all stand in such a contested environment.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Finn said:
..there's simply no point in saying stuff like "I don't buy Tomb Raider costing $100m if Uncharted only costed like $25m", unless you can be sure that the numbers cover the same expenses.

Short answer: Bollocks. A slightly longer, less snarky response: Similar products have similar costs, and things don't get much closer than Uncharted & Tomb Raider. They operate in the same genre with the same play mechanics, have similar production values, and have similar-sized teams. Crystal Dynamics could have had horrible cost overruns with Tomb Raider, but $75-million worth is hard to swallow. I'd sack myself too. How much could they have saved by not developing its useless multiplayer component?

Marketing costs aren't our concern either. That's strictly a publishing decision. We're only concerned with development costs. Publishers could very easily shave off a few millions from the marketing budgets.

Finn said:
Another infallacy: that $52 you report is exactly as you say, a retailer price. It refers to shelf copies only, and most likely even then to console units.

Now you're just being obtuse. For the sake of this topic though, we're only concerned with those aforementioned retail sales. Why? Because Square Enix has explicitly indicated* that those sales figures don't include digital downloads. I can only assume that those numbers are actual, physical copies then. No Steam, GOG, PSN, or XBL.

* -- Scroll down to the...ah, fourth slide.


Finn said:
Let's take the retailer sales of Tomb Raider. See here, here and here.

See above. There's a significant disconnect between Square-Enix's in-house sales figures and what VG Chartz is reporting. Didn't Wired & Gamasutra report that the site isn't what you would call a reliable source? Yeah, here's Gamasutra's article.


Finn said:
So yeah, I can actually see why the suits are calling these two titles financial disappointments.

I can too. It's not a fair assessment, though. By all accounts, the games made money. Not making an accurate sales forecast is a management problem, and with zero ancillary markets (movies, books, etc.) to artificially boost sales Square-Enix was setting themselves up for failure. Tomb Raider has never done the kinds of numbers they were talking about it when it was new, and with a five year gap between titles it might as well be a new IP.


Finn said:
However, they do have to start figuring out ways to cut down their costs, because it's obvious the current budget models can't all stand in such a contested environment.

No argument there. Except rather than figure out how to manage those costs, they want corporate welfare. You must buy new, give up all concept of ownership, and pay through the nose for the industry's excesses. The platform holders recognize that the money is to be made in the so-called casual market, but publishers have clearly forgotten that the core market was never that large to begin with.

Finn said:
Of course, these are luxuries only available to the master race...

Master Race? Maybe. But it's very clear that the dirty console peasants are paying the freight. Without the console's ascendancy the entire industry would still be in your proverbial mother's basement.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Le Saboteur said:
Short answer: Bollocks. A slightly longer, less snarky response: Similar products have similar costs, and things don't get much closer than Uncharted & Tomb Raider.

They operate in the same genre with the same play mechanics, have similar production values, and have similar-sized teams. Crystal Dynamics could have had horrible cost overruns with Tomb Raider, but $75-million worth is hard to swallow. I'd sack myself too. How much could they have saved by not developing its useless multiplayer component?

Marketing costs aren't our concern either. That's strictly a publishing decision. We're only concerned with development costs. Publishers could very easily shave off a few millions from the marketing budget.
Your comprehension is off. So I guess I'll clarify.

Yes. Similar products tend to have similar development costs. That means costs sans publishing and other fluff that doesn't directly involve the geek squad hammering away at their keyboards.

Now, what we don't know is what Square Enix has included into the alleged $100m vs. Naughty Dog's 25m. If the former reports the total costs, including every possible penny into the figures and the other simply the core ones, there can be that large a discrepancy. But then the figures aren't comparable in the first place.

Do I think Tomb Raider's dev costs were 100m? Hardly. But I've got no doubt that they could have been higher than Uncharted's. First of all, Tomb Raider is a game that is more advanced than any of Nate Drake's outings. It's clearly got more of what Cliffy B calls "visual fidelity", which do crank up the costs - as he says. (For the record, I think that aspect is far from crucial to making a good game - so I'm not defending the habit, simply stating the same fact. The better-looking game is the more expensive game.)

You mention the useless MP component, which probably could (and should) have been cut to reduce costs. But then again, Uncharted has MP too, and it didn't apparently overly bloat Naughty Dog's budgets.

There is one more thing where Uncharted (and Heavy Rain too) and Tomb Raider differ, though. See, one of them is a PS3 exclusive. The other is a multiplatform release. Which means one dev only needs to hone up a working game for single kind of setup. But do you have any idea how much more QA it takes when you've got to take multiple kinds of hardware combinations into account? I'll put it in single syllables: A lot. There's plenty more work to be done when one has to make sure that the product is stable across a wide range of setups. And this I have from the horse's mouth: A person working in the industry directly stating to a roomful of people that striking an exclusivity deal lightens the workload quite a bit.

I can easily think it's plausible that the core development costs of Tomb Raider hitting 60m, especially if they allowed some extra bloat to float in. Add $30m worth of additional costs, and you're not far off from the $100m mark.

So unless we have someone from Square Enix/Crystal Dynamics stating that the alluded $100m was the core costs, or someone from Sony or Naughty Dog clearly saying what's covered in their figures, your argument doesn't have a solid base. But if they're indeed both talking about the same thing, then there's definitely something funny in Square's camp.

Le Saboteur said:
Now you're just being obtuse. For the sake of this topic though, we're only concerned with those aforementioned retail sales. Why? Because Square Enix has explicitly indicated* that those sales figures don't include digital downloads. I can only assume that those numbers are actual, physical copies then. No Steam, GOG, PSN, or XBL.

* -- Scroll down to the...ah, fourth slide.
You'll have to quote it out to me, as I don't see it.

Besides, it makes no sense for the publisher to exclude certain figures. A sold copy is a sold copy, whether it's off the shelf or down the tube.


Le Saboteur said:
See above. There's a significant disconnect between Square-Enix's in-house sales figures and what VG Chartz is reporting. Didn't Wired & Gamasutra report that the site isn't what you would call a reliable source? Yeah, here's Gamasutra's article.
The article rags agaist VGChartz's ability to make early sales estimates and retcon their earlier ones, which is admittedly ambiguous behavior.

However, almost four months (or 10 months in the case of Sleeping Dogs) down the road from the initial release, it's fair to assume that they've got better data, given the release sales spike has passed. It may not be 100% accurate, and even a decimal or two off can admittedly make it scientifically unreliable, but given how we're only dealing with rather crude math here, they should be quotable.

In other words, there's no fault in taking the numbers with a grain of salt, but Gamasutra is not telling us to mistrust ALL their numbers. Given how we have a pair of high-profile AAA titles and there's been substantial time from release, I'd be hard pressed to believe that the figures I referred to are off by millions.


Le Saboteur said:
I can too. It's not a fair assessment, though. By all accounts, the games made money. Not making an accurate sales forecast is a management problem, and with zero ancillary markets (movies, books, etc.) to artificially boost sales Square-Enix was setting themselves up for failure. Tomb Raider has never done the kinds of numbers they were talking about it when it was new, and with a five year gap between titles it might as well be a new IP.
Yeah. It's pretty obvious that the income didn't match the investment, which means that they're not talking out of their backsides when they air their disappointment. But when they start looking for guilty parties, it's pretty obvious that the biggest fault is in their own expectations.


Le Saboteur said:
Master Race? Maybe. But it's very clear that the dirty console peasants are paying the freight. Without the console's ascendancy the entire industry would still be in your proverbial mother's basement.
Like I've said before, I welcome any and every development that makes gaming more mainstream. There is nothing wrong with felling those technical hurdles that might stop the non-geeks from adopting a gaming habit.

However, at the same time I'm vehemently against any and every development that threatens the diversity of gaming. If the result is that the industry decides that there's no point in making a Witcher if the peasants are quite happy with their yearly Call of Duty, I'll go happily back to the basement.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Le Saboteur said:
So, anyway, thoughts?

Yes.

I thought a rather softball question would elicit more discussion, but not much you can do with a dead scene.

Finn said:
Your comprehension is off. So I guess I'll clarify.

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.

To extrapolate this out: Disney is on the hook for a reported $250-million on The Lone Ranger. That's the actual cost to bring the image to the screen; i.e., sets, costumes, equipment, extras, post-production, etc. It doesn't include marketing expenses (easily north of $100-million), the principle actors, the director, and the script. Depending upon how the deals are structured, Disney could be on the hook for a very, very cool $600-million on up-front expenses. The important take away though, is that those production costs are fixed. Want to blow up that bridge? It's going to cost x. Everything else is a variable expense.

From an investor standpoint, would you be happy with a capital expense of $600-million for a movie that didn't make a profit? Or, as a gamer, you're now forced to subsidize the industry by giving up your rights as a consumer, because they can't control their costs?

Finn said:
You mention the useless MP component, which probably could (and should) have been cut to reduce costs. But then again, Uncharted has MP too, and it didn't apparently overly bloat Naughty Dog's budgets.

The original Uncharted, Drake's Fortune, did not have a multi-player component. It was only after Sony had proof of concept (read: sales figures), did they think about how to boost sales. Obvious answer: Include a multi-player component. Dudebros love shooting each other in the face. Square would have been wise to take a similar tack for aforementioned reasons:

  1. Five year gap between titles.
  2. Ballooning production costs.
  3. Lack of ancillary markets.
  4. Franchise sales figures.

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.

Finn said:
First of all, Tomb Raider is a game that is more advanced than any of Nate Drake's outings. It's clearly got more of what Cliffy B calls "visual fidelity", which do crank up the costs - as he says.

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.

Finn said:
There is one more thing where Uncharted (and Heavy Rain too) and Tomb Raider differ, though. See, one of them is a PS3 exclusive. The other is a multiplatform release. Which means one dev only needs to hone up a working game for single kind of setup. But do you have any idea how much more QA it takes when you've got to take multiple kinds of hardware combinations into account? I'll put it in single syllables: A lot. There's plenty more work to be done when one has to make sure that the product is stable across a wide range of setups. And this I have from the horse's mouth: A person working in the industry directly stating to a roomful of people that striking an exclusivity deal lightens the workload quite a bit.

I am deeply worried about your social calendar, Finn, if you spend your free time listening to speakers discuss the financials of QA-testing. Everything else you've otherwise stated is obvious; of course QA across multiple setups is a significant investment of time and resources, but you are aware that the Bay Area is chock full of those jobs? Most of them are temporary gigs that might pay twelve bucks an hour, with all the pizza and soda you can handle. I've been a part of a couple of those that lasted the course of a weekend and didn't even get my name in the credits. I suspect that the likes of SCEA and Electronic Arts have a permanent staff they filter amongst the various titles, but even if a specific studio had a permanent team of 100 QA testers (they don't) making a reasonable $40-grand, you've added a total of $4-million to your bottom line.

Skryrim on the PS3 says hello.

Full disclosure: I've done QA testing for a large gaming studio since '09. My compensation: A copy of the specific title in question, and the related expansion packs.

Finn said:
You'll have to quote it out to me, as I don't see it.

Besides, it makes no sense for the publisher to exclude certain figures. A sold copy is a sold copy, whether it's off the shelf or down the tube.

It's a superscript on the same slide as the sales figures. "2. - Does not include downloads." No, it doesn't make much sense. The explicit calling out though is what makes it suspicious; are they masking something else? The scuttlebutt from various message boards and comment sections is that Square-Enix is hemorrhaging money from their Japanese studios, and are using the "weak" sales to cover that fact. The various iterations of Final Fantasy haven't sold as well over the years, and other titles have been in development since '08 without being canceled. Kingdom Hearts III was specifically mentioned.

Finn said:
Given how we have a pair of high-profile AAA titles and there's been substantial time from release, I'd be hard pressed to believe that the figures I referred to are off by millions.

I'm inclined to think they're off because we have top end data from Square-Enix that does not include digital sales to account for the missing millions in sales, and because they're a collection of amateurs. Not in the sense that they're bad, but they're not doing this fulltime. Do they really have the staffing to track the hypthetical four or five copies of Sleeping Dogs sold last week with The Last of Us dominating the news? Or do the major titles consume all that focus?

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.

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.

Finn said:
However, at the same time I'm vehemently against any and every development that threatens the diversity of gaming. If the result is that the industry decides that there's no point in making a Witcher if the peasants are quite happy with their yearly Call of Duty, I'll go happily back to the basement.

Despite focusing on financials this entire conversation harkens back to diversity. Sleeping Dogs was dumped because Activision couldn’t see it doing GTA-like numbers. Why? Dudebros like guns, and ain’t wanna play no Asian guy. If gaming continues to become mainstream, then the kind of returns publishers want to see will only be brought about through very, very specific AAA-titles like CoD, FIFA, and Assassin’s Creed. You can probably attribute the fact that this entire generation seemed to revolve around shooting each other to that very concept – violence sells. 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.

Devs are going to be a significant problem too – you don’t deserve a six figure salary for designing trees. Well, at least not right off the bat. Robert Downey, Jr. wasn’t pulling in $50-million in Chaplin. You need to work your way up to that kind of payday. That doesn’t happen, then budgets are only going to go up and up.

I have no sympathy for tech workers. Their outsized salaries have destroyed an entire American city. If a few dozen tech firms go out of business a year, nobody is going to lose any sleep. That includes Double Fine.
 
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Finn

Moderator
Staff member
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.
 
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Le Saboteur

Active member
Finn said:
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.

It's worth talking about because it goes towards the health of the overall industry. Both Ubisoft and Electronic Arts reported spending a billion plus dollars on game development in FY2012 and posted the shockingly low profit of $48 and $79-million respectively. That's an appallingly bad rate of return for even the most casually business oriented person. They should be in the $100-million plus range to be considered healthy.

Speaking of which, it's only a matter of time before Zygna vanishes. They're working on a billion dollars in debt!

So, the obvious happens: Developers are shuttered, and people get fired. Assassin's Creed becomes an annualized series (III generated ~$650-million in revenue alone), and Cliffy B. shoots off his mouth demanding corporate welfare. And then Tweets some more once Microsoft does an about face on their nanny service.

Cliffy B. said:
More studios WILL close and you'll see more PC and mobile games.

Of course you will. With an install base of several billion users who don't mind drooping a couple of quid on a diversion, that rate of return is going to be very nice. Rovio made a very nice $71-million in profit on about $200-million in revenue in 2012. I don't care who you are, a nearly fifty percent ROR is hella nice.

Cliffy B. said:
I want developers who worked their asses off to see money on every copy of their game that is sold instead of Gamestop. F*** me, right?

He is aware that developers are contracted employees, right? Cliffy B. may have seen a cut of sales given his position, but devs get their paychecks regardless of the game's success. Shareholders see the dividends. So, yes, 'eff you.

Cliffy B. said:
Brace yourselves. More tacked on multiplayer and DLC are coming. You're also about to see available micro transactions skyrocket. HATS FOR EVERYONE.

Like it was going to go away? No, the amortization of gaming is here to stay. That genie is out of the bottle, and no way publishers stop charging you for something now that gamers have proven time and again that they'll pay through the nose for it.

Wasn't there an audio clip of some executive indicating that at some point they'll start charging you for ammunition in on-line games?


Finn said:
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...

Sure, the complete cost is plausible. Especially here in the States. I can't remember the amount of billboards I saw just around here, but the ads on public transit were just as abundant. I believe one BART station was blanketed with nothing but Tomb Raider banners. Oh, and television commercials. My god, but were there television commercials. At least one during every commercial break on certain channels.

A magical way to reduce expenses that don't require actually selling anything? I would like to introduce you to the concept of the write down. Depending on how they do their budgeting, there are other ways to reduce debt as well.


Finn said:
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.

No, not justify. This has been an off the cuff analysis of the fundamental problem facing the industry today. You can amortize an engine's cost across several different titles or sequels, but core costs continue to drive the industry towards insolvency. I wouldn't be surprised to see another massive crash in the near future.

Finn said:
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.

Nobody wastes money like Hollywood, but they have the ancillary markets to, at the very least, recoup their money. The gaming industry doesn't have that ability.

Finn said:
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.

See: Tomb Raider (PC) & Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception screen captures. Courtesy of NeoGAF.

I haven't been clear.

The PS3 has been notoriously difficult to develop for given its architecture, and as such it should have been the most to expensive to achieve the desired results; those results being comparable visual fidelity to Uncharted: Drake's Deception. So, assuming both games were in the neighborhood of ~$25-million to develop on the PS3 that leaves us ~$35-million off your $60-million figure. Let's assign another $10-million for optimizing the game on the X-Box. And with the final $25-million in hand, Crystal Dynamics went about making the whiz bang PC-edition.

Now, looking at those screen captures I can objectively say that Tomb Raider on a tricked out PC looks better. There's a greater draw distance, the image looks cleaner, crisper, and Lara is noticeably... uh, smoother. From that screen grab of Lara holding the torch, it looks like the light reflects far more naturally off her skin, but I would have to see it moving to say for certain. All things that, as you say, would add to the overall development cost. The aforementioned TressFX and tessellation too.

Is it worth an additional $25-million in fixed costs? No. It doesn't look that good. If I'm the money man, PC is the first platform to get axed during the budgeting process. Especially looking at the sales figures from the Master Race. If Square truly is discounting digital sales, then they lost an ass load of money on the assumed $25-million.

This, right here, is why Rockstar doesn't develop their titles for the PC concurrently. Allow the peasants and their consoles to the pay the freight, then maybe develop for the PC down the line.


Finn said:
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.

Yes, it certainly cost more. It didn't have to cost as nearly as much as it did, though. A sober eyed forecast would have turned the game into a monster hit, and Square-Enix could have blown their wad on the sequel.

It also sounds like Naughty Dog is very conscious of their budgets, too.

Since Sleeping Dogs came up again, it was one of my favourite games of last year. Found this review yesterday. It's chock full of spoilers, but a very cogent look at the game. There's also a nice look at how United Front came to realize their version of Hong Kong.
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Le Saboteur said:
It's worth talking about because it goes towards the health of the overall industry. Both Ubisoft and Electronic Arts reported spending a billion plus dollars on game development in FY2012 and posted the shockingly low profit of $48 and $79-million respectively. That's an appallingly bad rate of return for even the most casually business oriented person. They should be in the $100-million plus range to be considered healthy.
This is indeed a worthy topic to talk about. I was just surprised about how much vitriol we managed to generate despite wholeheartedly agreeing on the core principle: The dev costs are too high and the industry shouldn't try to get a pass on it by taking the check to the consumers.

All we disagree on is how the math goes. That is not the key issue here.


Le Saboteur said:
Speaking of which, it's only a matter of time before Zygna vanishes. They're working on a billion dollars in debt!
Given this particular company's reputation, I bet many people are saying nothing but good riddance.


Le Saboteur said:
Rovio made a very nice $71-million in profit on about $200-million in revenue in 2012. I don't care who you are, a nearly fifty percent ROR is hella nice.
As a sidenote, I wonder how much of Rovio's income comes from selling games and how much comes from licensing their franchise to market other products. I don't know what the situation is in the US, but on this side of the pond they've gone absolutely nuts with that. Apart from having some of your regular plushies, I can't walk past a single shelf in my local grocery store without running into a bird. There's Angry Birds sweets, Angry Birds soda, Angry Birds juice... and even friggin' Angry Birds beans of ground coffee. The thing I find myself constantly asking is if people really buy 'em. I know I don't.

Let's hope the rest of the industry don't get a whiff. I don't want to run into Ezio or Lara when I'm buying a pack of salami.


Le Saboteur said:
The PS3 has been notoriously difficult to develop for given its architecture, and as such it should have been the most to expensive to achieve the desired results; those results being comparable visual fidelity to Uncharted: Drake's Deception. So, assuming both games were in the neighborhood of ~$25-million to develop on the PS3 that leaves us ~$35-million off your $60-million figure. Let's assign another $10-million for optimizing the game on the X-Box. And with the final $25-million in hand, Crystal Dynamics went about making the whiz bang PC-edition.
Given how technology has marched on, I'd say a better dividement of the costs between the three platforms would be: Core development (which gives us the PS3 version) $35m, X360 version $5m on top of that (because it's still nothing but the simple process of porting the game to another stable-hardware platform of roughly equal computing power), and finally concurrent development of a PC version for roughly $20m.

But again, this is the maths sideshow. Yours is still off, but there's no point in getting into this dance again, given we're in agreement over the fact that no matter where the money goes, there must be means to avoid at least some of those pitfalls.

<small>I wonder what the dev costs for The Last of Us were. Those figures would likely make a better point of comparison than Uncharted.</small>


Le Saboteur said:
Is it worth an additional $25-million in fixed costs? No. It doesn't look that good. If I'm the money man, PC is the first platform to get axed during the budgeting process.
You know, I agree. One way to cut the costs is to compartmentalize. I wouldn't mind one bit if all plans to develop PC versions of all the so-called action adventure titles were dropped. PC gamers are whining of bad ports and other shtick as it is. If they wanna play those, make 'em buy a console. Pretty much the only reason I don't own one now is that there's enough of them going around on my preferred platform. But if there weren't, I'd have no issue with acquiring one if I felt they were a required dish on my platter. I'd be quite happy with that, as long as PC remains as the main platform for all FPS, RTS and (most) RPG. Because frankly, it is the go-to setup for those genres.

So Rockstar and Naughty Dog actually have the right idea. Don't develop concurrently for too too many platforms and the result is very likely a better product - and the costs should stay at check at the same time. For the master race, CD Projekt is the gold example. Honestly, I don't even know anymore which I love more, their products or their business practices.


Though it'll be interesting to see what kind of an effect the next-gen consoles will have to this aspect of development, since they'll be closer to PC architecture than ever before. By all means it should mean lowered budgets, since those QA costs I keep alluding to? I'm not actually referring to software QA, bug squashing and such, which can indeed take only a fraction of the costs. It's the hardware QA that's demanding, making sure that the game is stable on a variety of platforms (and of course, finding out means to utilize that extra power when applicable).

On the other hand, I've also heard people say that the very reason keeping the current dev costs at check are the limitations in the current-gen hardware. With those removed, the devs can truly go off the deep end, which means that while the costs of cross-platform development go down, the core development costs skyrocket. And the one left holding the check will again be the consumer.


Le Saboteur said:
Especially looking at the sales figures from the Master Race. If Square truly is discounting digital sales, then they lost an ass load of money on the assumed $25-million.
Square is actually not "discounting" the PC sales, but simply keeping them in line with the competition. There is a reason why PC games have been traditionally cheaper. Even more so in the age of digital download, which by conservative estimates makes up around 80-90 percent of PC game sales these days. Which definitely makes it odd that Square would just happily exclude such a hefty chunk of income.

But anyway, the reason why PC games go even cheaper these days is the fact that there are practically no distribution costs whatsoever. No need to print discs or cases, or make sure they find the retailer. All it takes is a couple of hours of a single employee's time to make sure that the software package reaches the server.


And yes, some people say that illegal downloads* also affect the PC game prices, because you have to discount in order to compete with "free". But I'm not saying one thing or the other for those claims, given how some other folks say that they indeed have to jack the prices up to make up the lost income.

What I have heard though, is that many publishers have been saving a pretty penny after the industry-wide decision to drop the most draconian DRM schemes...

<small>*For the uninitiated, please don't call it "piracy". That stands for a) stealing stuff on the high seas, and b) copyright infringement with profit in mind. The geek squad spreading stuff won't get a single dime from anyone when they up the torrent to the Pirate Bay.</small>
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
I couldn't tell you who Mark Cerny was before February, but Sony is certainly winning the messaging race be trotting him out as the public face of the PS4.

He's incredibly confident about the system he's designed, and about the type of experience the Sony ecosystem wants to deliver with the forthcoming generation. If you have 47-minutes of free time, take a gander. If not, watch the second half where he gets into the system's details.


I would have never pegged him as being basically fifty.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Finn said:
Then, Tomb Raider. Surprisingly enough, I didn't really enjoy this much as I thought I should have. I mean, it was a good game and all, but it lacked something... a soul. It became quite clear pretty early on that while the devs were out to make a good game, they were not out to make to an unique game. There was practically no features whatsoever that would have made it memorable. It simply recycled the most reliable tricks in the book with an extra layer of polish.

Criticism or observation? Given your fondness for Clive Cussler, I'm inclined to believe that it's the latter. I've finally popped it in, and given it a fair workout. I just made it... ah, Shipwreck Beach. Anonymous White Hipster needs my assistance. While I largely agree with your salient points thus far, I am enjoying it far more than I thought I would. Rhianna Pratchett is no Amy Hennig, but she's at least given Ms. Croft a personality.

Tomb Raider does do two things I've wanted to see from Uncharted: a gunfight in a driving rain storm and a bit of detail from the collectible relics.

Finn said:
I wonder what the dev costs for The Last of Us were. Those figures would likely make a better point of comparison than Uncharted.

I suspect that they would end up being less. Naughty Dog has used the same engine throughout this entire generation, and that's a nice chunk of change saved right there. I mention it primarily because Sony just announced that The Last of Us sold 3.4-million units in its first three weeks. Not only did it do the same exact numbers as Tomb Raider, but Sony considers it a success.

Interesting aside: It took Max Payne 3 about a year to do four-million copies, and was one of Take Two's largest contributors to its net revenue.

Kevin VanOrd said:
It was at sea that the visuals impressed me most. Weather will be a fearsome element, forcing you to work harder for victory at sea during heavy bursts of wind, and filling the screen with chilling sights like water spouts. A fort liberation mission entailed barraging a heavily fortified installation with cannon fire. As the Jackdaw pelted the fort's artillery, a blaze erupted and billows of smoke rose into the air, not just making a frightful sight, but also affecting visibility during battle. But dominating a fort with your ship isn't enough to make it yours: you must also infiltrate it on foot, going head to head with your foes, sword in hand, before liberating the fort and gaining access to the new missions it might harbor.

Why, yes, Kevin VanOrd they are quite impressive. It's about damn time too. The 17th Century Caribbean is a wonderful setting. I'm glad that Ubisoft is, at the very least, putting a lot of work into the setting. Enjoy the snippet of Edward doing his very best Queequeg impression!




Oh, and more footage of this game was released too. I think some of the assembled faces are looking forward to it.

 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Le Saboteur said:
Criticism or observation? Given your fondness for Clive Cussler, I'm inclined to believe that it's the latter. I've finally popped it in, and given it a fair workout. I just made it... ah, Shipwreck Beach. Anonymous White Hipster needs my assistance. While I largely agree with your salient points thus far, I am enjoying it far more than I thought I would. Rhianna Pratchett is no Amy Hennig, but she's at least given Ms. Croft a personality.
When I pick up a Cussler novel as a paperback for meager few bucks or with not a cent at all from the local library, I don't think they're too obliged to criticism. Especially when I know exactly what I'm getting from the start. A video game I've paid something ranging from 30 to 50€ instead...

Though you're right. I never called it a bad game. Just a little bland one. I had fun with it for as long as a playthrough lasted, but somehow it failed to leave any kind of lasting impression onto me.

It's a good notion though that Lara does have more personality here than all her previous iterations combined. So maybe I was being a bit unfair when comparing it to wider standards of storytelling rather than its predecessors, which were similarly fun and mindless action platforms with little to no story to hold them together. Still, it's hard to ignore all the shortcomings in it, when it constantly and consciously attempts to draw ones attention to the "great drama" going on, while it's obviously having some obvious difficulties to execute itself properly.


Le Saboteur said:
Oh, and more footage of this game was released too. I think some of the assembled faces are looking forward to it.
In a sense, I'm happy it's not getting a simultaneous PC release. (Well... I think there's no word yet if there's going to be a PC release at all). Because I could see it becoming yet another massive backlog jammer.

---

Speaking of those, I keep having a grand time with Skyrim. I've taken the slow approach this far, actually more taking in all the quaint sights and sounds than anything else. Being a Bethesda RPG, you can see the occasional stuff cracking through the seams, especially for someone who constantly stops and smells the roses (and I wonder how bad it would be without all the fan-made fixes), but damn, the world they've crafted here is just so full of scenery porn giving a true man of the north like yours truly constant mental hard-ons. I could probably lose hours in this land even if it didn't have any quests for me to do.

Speaking of the quests, I have kinda mixed feelings about the so-called "radiant" story mechanic. On the other hand I like the spice and variety it brings, but I also find myself constantly checking the wiki that the random location I just received isn't used as a backdrop for a more unique quest later on. It would just feel silly to go back to a place I already visited a while back in order to slay some bandit chief. My compulsion to keep my comings and goings and the story provided as synergized as possible is pretty bad with more linear RPGs as it is, so one can only imagine how it is here where talking to some guy standing in the corner can just randomly send me anywhere from the house nearby to the other side of the province.

Oh well, at least I can take in some majestic sights while I traverse.
 

DiscoLad

New member
League of Fighters

I don't know how many of you guys play League of Legends... pretty sure it's for frat boys only. :]
But still.

I got accepted as an animator for a new game called "League of Fighters" based off League of Legends. It's a Street Fighter style fighting game where players play as champions from League. Thought someone would be interested.

I'll definitely be playing that when it comes out. :hat:
 

Goodsport

Member
The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC versions of FIFA 14 are scheduled to hit stores on Tuesday, 9/24/13, with the demo to be released on Tuesday, 9/10/13.




The PlayStation 4 version is scheduled for stores alongside the launch of the console system itself on Friday, 11/15/13. The Xbox One version is scheduled for stores alongside the Xbox One's launch, whose launch date has yet to be announced as of this posting.





Which team(s) are you planning to play as in this game? :)


-G
 

Goodsport

Member
It seems that the PS3 / Xbox 360 / PC FIFA 14 YouTube gameplay trailer in the previous post is no longer available, so here's an earlier version:





-G
 

Goodsport

Member
The Xbox One version is scheduled for stores alongside the Xbox One's launch, whose launch date has yet to be announced as of this posting.
It's just been announced that the Xbox One will launch on Friday, 11/22/13, so I suppose that's when that console's version of FIFA 14 will hit stores as well.


-G
 

Goodsport

Member
The FIFA 14 demo is now available for the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC, with Camp Nou as the included stadium and with the following teams included:


fifa-14-demo-slate-header_656x369.jpg




-G
 

Dr. Gonzo

New member
I'm not much of a gamer... In fact the only games I own for my Play Station 3 are Mortal Kombat and Red Dead Redemption... but I'm gonna be headed out in about an hour to my local best buy to pick up this Grand Theft Auto V

...that is unless folks that are more in the know than me (you guys), tell me other wise before then...

I just feel like I'm doing my PS3 a disservice. And Hell, the game looks ridiculously fun to my eyes.
 
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