Many many years ago, I read an article that said making a game world like the kind you see in grand theft auto would become so expensive that game companies would all start sharing the same maps for different projects, keeping costs low and splitting the profits.
Well, they were right about the costs becoming too high, but we’re wrong about companies sharing resources between one another.
They’d rather make nothing, then make something for just a little less profit.
I don’t understand how it can get more expensive, let alone prohibitively expensive. Is it things like increasing costs of buying the engines to make the games from things like Unreal or something? I would have thought that building more helps develop the tools and skills to make it quicker and better next time.
Content generation is the largest cost. This means specialized labor with specialized tools from vendors that nickel and dime (Autodesk mostly). On top of that, the two largest contractor firms (KeyWords and Technicolor) are at capacity, and running on the margins.
Engine licensing is a negligible cost at this point, even if the pricing becomes predatory. That said, in AAA spaces, Epic Games owns the space and this means they can control the fate of almost all. Building game engines is extremely difficult even though the commoditization of x86 and ARM removes a lot of technical challenges that are being piled on by Nvidia.
It cost Take Two somewhere close to a billion to make GTA 5 (development, marketing, and sync rights) and not only did they make it back in three days, they turned around and made many more over its lifespan. Everyone wants that level of success. The market can’t support it. Developers can’t support it. The products can’t support it. A crash is inevitable and it will probably take out a lot of capital for indies, further consolidate publishers, and maybe one of the console vendors with it.
Palworld and Helldivers 2 cost less than 5 million to make each and they’re the most talked about and played games of the year so far, maybe there’s a shift going on.
Don’t forget the marketing teams that are massive money sinks that have made themselves untouchable.
Eventually, some risk analyst is going to run their own ROI assessment on marketing and see just how much grift is going on in there.
The new god of war games cost more to make than the GDP of Greece I remember hearing. Making a videogame requires a lot of technical skilled labour and you’ve got to run in the red for years until you can release the finished product.
I feel like some bean counter figured out somewhere that the big money is making a Skinner box instead of the older model of a basic game combined with DLC.
I feel like every company is taking advantage of the mass layoffs going on everywhere, which lets their own layoffs get lost in the news of endless layoffs. I think theyre simply laying off staff just to save on labor costs.
I’ve been saying the same thing for a while. Same with the massive waves of ‘inflation’ and enshittification.
Isn’t it one of the quickest ways to increase profits in the short term? If they’re not essential and you have a quarterly profit report coming up…
Yeah. Corporate at my work is always looking to keep labor costs at a minimum because its “easy to control”. Yeah, it saves money, but it’s so damned shortsighted.
Following the news that they have no major releases planned until April, 2025:
Looking at Microsoft’s line up, I feel like 2024 is shaping up to be a “meh” year for the platform exclusives overall. Most of what I’m curious about are the 3rd party titles.
To be honest it’s been kinda meh for the past few years. There have been a couple of exceptions, but even Nintendo has been under delivering (I personally thought Mario wonder and TOTK were just okay).
Its quite the meh generation. Which is sad, considering the consoles this gen actually had some grunt.
We had great games in 2022 and 2023 because we finally caught up to the COVID delays. It’s gonna be slim pickins now as companies adjust.
We did? Please name some that aren’t Baulder’s Gate cause I feel like I had nothing worth playing the last two years beyond the Spider-Man games on PC.
There are lots of great games. There’s no need for more games! Shut it all down everyone go look at a leaf
To paraphrase Devon Banks: I’m gonna shut it down. Think how much people will need lightbulbs then!
(Also; I sold the E to Samsung. They’re Samesung now.)
Guess I’m buying a new copy of Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree on PC. I’m not supporting these companies that are doing mass layoffs after profitable years. It should be illegal.
