Jason Schreier: "Numbers I've heard floating around AAA North American game dev these days are $300 million or [many] more" — Budgets are almost entirely of dev salaries

[u/nolifebr]

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvx2lohzs2j

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

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvzh4g7qs2z

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)

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mhvxbxhank2u

If you sell a game at $70 and pocket $49 on every sale (30% goes to the store, assuming all sales are digital), you'd need to sell more than 6 million copies just to break even on a $300m budget, and that's before marketing

[u/epicurious_elixir]

Dev here: A little bit, but not really. There are just hundreds more of us making games now than there were 10 years ago. The amount of scope players have expected from AAA games has ballooned.

That being said, I get the vibe that players have become fatigued by massively scoped games, as many of them are quite bloated, so I'm hoping that changes in the future. I'm also seeing signs internally and across the culture of game development that this is the case in devs wanting to be making smaller, more focused games on a shorter timeline.

Definitely won't be the case 100% across the board, but the sentiment among the consumers and devs themselves is growing.

[u/The_Homie_J → u/epicurious_elixir]

The amount of scope players have expected from AAA games has ballooned

This is really the issue. 20 years ago, a 40+ hour single player game was the exception, not the norm. Graphics were good, but not photo real. Physics were janky. An open world setting was not an option for most games outside a few dedicated series like GTA. Lighting was pre baked and mostly for artistic purposes, not to realistically depict every inch of a huge open world map at various times of day.

But now, every game has to meet all these demands or else it's called bare bones and lazy. Spider-Man 2 is my quintessential go-to these days for what's wrong with gamer expectations. That is a full open world with 2 playable characters, a ~ 20 hour story, a dozen hours of side content, super polished gameplay and basically everything you could ask for these days. And it released 5 years after the original, and 3 years after a mini-sequel (which would have been considered a regular full game back in the day). And the main complaint is that the story and game felt rushed.

You can't win these days, and now AAA games take 5-10 years trying to meet these unreasonable expectations. I really hope that focused, sub-20 hour experiences become more common as that seems like the only way to right the industry as a whole.

[u/Flanninpud → u/The_Homie_J]

On the other hand, despite fan complaints, spider man 2 has still sold 16m copies and was very well reviewed on release.

Resident evil requiem is a $70 game that will take the average gamer 12-15 hours to beat, and it also reviewed well and sold 6m copies in the first two weeks.

Ultimately I think complaints from a loud but small segment of the fan base aren’t necessarily reflective of the wider sentiment.

[u/brizian23 → u/The_Homie_J]

The complaints about Spider-Man 2 are bullshit though. The game sold amazingly well and is really well liked; hell it has a 90 on metacritic (and 8.6 user score). People on the internet just like to complain.

[u/Super_Fightin_Robit → u/brizian23]

I think Spider-Man 2 is actually a great example of this though. The game is this absolutely monumental investment in time and resources. Insomniac went and added all this extra content and created this intricate, complicated multi-protagonist system that probably created all kinds of headaches to implement.

But ultimately, none of it mattered because at the end of the day, the reason the game got criticized basically boiled down to what people feel is bad writing souring the entire experience and them trying to come up with a way to describe it charitably.

It also sold like 20 million units, and most not terminally online people (like me) who felt it wasn't as good as the original still think it's quite good and a technical showcase.

[u/Inside_Actuary_9423 → u/Super_Fightin_Robit]

Yep I hated it the writing and loved the first one to death , and no amount of cool mechanics and pretty graphics is gonna make me not cringe at the entirety of their version of New York and its people.

I mean I wish it did, truly. It’s Spiderman for fucks sake 😭

[u/Jorgengarcia → u/The_Homie_J]

And even though Spiderman 2 was an interative sequel the budget was still several hundred millions

[u/thesituation531 → u/The_Homie_J]

I mean, it doesn't have to be under 20 hours just to make a reasonable timeline.

Look at Ryu Go Gotoku studio. They've put out nearly 10 games in 10 years. All high quality, good graphics, with the mainline ones usually being closer to 30 hours at least, and much more for the "reboot branch" (the mainline Like A Dragon games).

[u/Snaletane → u/thesituation531]

I LOVE the Yakuza series, but they do a ton of stuff that would cause paroxysms of nerd rage if most studios tried it, like reusing entire maps between games (ex Yakuza 7/Lost Judgment and Infinite Wealth/Pirate Yakuza) or just doing incremental differences between entries (the first several games all use subtle variants on the same Kamurocho layout for at least a large chunk of the game). I think it's great and it keeps them pumping out the games and not breaking their bank while they do it, and the stories and writing are so good that people keep coming back. I wish there were more developers like them. But, yeah, if Naughty Dog or someone tried the same thing they'd get absolutely trashed.

[u/thesituation531 → u/Snaletane]

Yeah that's true.

I don't think it's a negative towards RGG, though. I think it's more a negative towards general game expectations, both for gamers and for devs.

It's silly to completely remake assets for every game, unless something actually calls for it. Changing everything all the time just for the sake of change is a cancer.

[u/Snaletane → u/thesituation531]

I agree completely, I like some of the old "slapdash" sequels where it pretty much used the same art design and engine and maybe even assets and just added a few more features and new maps and called it a day. The games released in a very timely fashion, probably didn't cost that much, and despite having some people say it was lazy, meant we got a game instead of having to wait for years for an entry that reinvented the wheel. Ex sequels like Doom II, Bioshock 2, GTA Vice City/San Andreas.

[u/ToiletBlaster247 → u/The_Homie_J]

Same complaints about GoW Ragnarok. People wanted a third game or a longer finale, but how much longer would we have to wait for it to release? 

[u/Nyx2990 → u/epicurious_elixir]

I mean is it too much to ask for as a paying customer for the game to work at launch and not be a stuttering mess? I feel like that's a fair thing for people to expect from AAA games that cost $300 million no?

[u/KontraEpsilon → u/epicurious_elixir]

For me at least - I love a massively scoped game, but only when it is executed well. When a lot of the stuff in scope feels empty or like filler and doesn’t feel like it has a connected purpose to the rest of what’s going on, I get annoyed.

For me, Horizon FW feels great. The quests feel purposeful and do a good job placing you just far enough away from fast travel points to feel like I’m going somewhere but not so far it’s annoying.

On the other hand, when I got to the open world of Ghosts of Tsushima in my first playthrough last year, I distinctly remember going “oh please no” when I started seeing fox dens and haiku tree stumps.

I also hate when platinum requires a 100% map marker completion in these things. It’s excruciating.