Game developers out of control spending ?

[Hacp]

How did they manage to make torchlight in 9 months with a skeleton crew?

 

[Markbnj]

Holy crap, is this in Haiti? I'm glad I changed my major from CS to Electrical Engineering.

Game developers rarely make much money, but as partial compensation for that they get to work slave hours.

 

[StrangerGuy]

How did they manage to make torchlight in 9 months with a skeleton crew?

Because it's a Diablo clone with minimal graphics and zero mutliplayer?

 

[KeithP]

If a Game Developer can't manager their business and has to close up shop another will sprout up and take their place.

While I understand your point, although I think some of your numbers are questionable, I don't really care about poorly run businesses closing. Does anybody?

-KeithP

 

[Modelworks]

Holy crap, is this in Haiti? I'm glad I changed my major from CS to Electrical Engineering.

That is the whole point. Originally pc gaming was done for the love of making a game you wanted . It was an idea that people came up with and poured their heart and soul into, it wasn't about getting rich. The reason I asked about if people thought game developers were out of control is because I am seeing the same thing in my industry CG and visual effects. It used to be populated by people that would do the job for next to nothing just to get what they wanted created and brought to life. Now it is being flooded with people that are in it for the money and the creativity is getting overwhelmed by people that don't care what they create as long as they get a paycheck.

In the past month there have been 6 major cg studios closed and these were ones that did films as recent as a Christmas Carol in december of 2009. A lot of discussion has been occurring with people I talk to in both gaming studios and production studios for film about the lack of quality employees and inflated budgets. The dedication seems to be gone and the focus of new employees seems to be money over creativity. Developers are hiring people whose heart is not into it, it is just a job and they will move to the next one that pays better. They don't really care about the product they are working on. The few who may care about a project end up filling in for those who don't care and eventually burn out. I can't say what game studio, but a major one that closed last week had this issue as the reason. Out of 11 programmers only 3 actually cared if the product ever shipped. The other 8 had continued looking for jobs from the time they signed up.

I posted in another thread about how an artist I know took a job for the scorpion king II, a terrible movie with horrible effects, and when I asked how he could turn out such trash when I knew he could do better the reply I got was 'well if they wanted better they should have paid me more'. The industry is being ruined by these people . Publishers see the losses caused by those in it for a quick buck and the rest of the people wanting to really put effort into it can't because there is no funding.
I'm secure in my income, but I know many others who are not. There a lot of very good indie game companies where they still believe in what they do, please support them.

 

[Modelworks]

How did they manage to make torchlight in 9 months with a skeleton crew?

Dedication.

 

[DruidRegalia]

Higher budgets for mmo's at least make some sense. Even with a piddly 100k subscribers you're at least raking in a million a month gross. An actually successful mmo is a license to print money.

Mmo players are also pretty fickle. If you screw up the launch they'll flock back to WoW, so it makes sense to spend as much as you can to make your product shine.

Sadly most mmo's still fail to do that.

Then why can't Wow get Patrick stewart lol.

Yeah WoW pretty much has the market. Star Trek Online had a great deal of potential too, it's just too bad it was absolute shit at launch.

 

[Zenoth]

Dedication.

And experience, the team behind Torchlight originally worked on Diablo II, they're not just some beginners, well most of them anyway, especially not the music composer and the lead designer. Also this whole subject brings me memories of the days when the industry cried when it was revealed how much it cost SEGA to make the original Shenmue, that game's production costs - unprecedented at least back then and during many years to follow at $70 million - played a significant role in the companies' financial problems late during the Dreamcast days, not just the PS2's arrival, but that's an extreme case, I concur.

 

[duragezic]

Dedication.

Yep. Also they had just got done spending a year on Mythos, so while they did have to start all over, I'm sure it was a "running" start. They had a lot of very relevant experience. I think they outsourced some models and art too.

Plus some of those guys worked tons of hours. And Travis Baldree is a monster. During Mythos development, he would put forum updates and basically sounded like he worked 16 hours a day at times.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally pc gaming was done for the love of making a game you wanted . It was an idea that people came up with and poured their heart and soul into, it wasn't about getting rich.

The way to get rich by developing PC games is to make a game that a lot of people want to pay for. All transactions are voluntary and therefore I don't follow how this is a bad thing.

I'm secure in my income

Do you like what you do? If so, why aren't you doing it simply for the love of your profession rather than trying to earn money from it? I see these sort of arguments all the time but have a hard time understanding the tendency to assign a higher moral impetus to others than to yourself.

 

[JoshGuru7]

How much did X-Com, Fallout, Tie Fighter, Doom cost to create?

A lot less than Mass Effect 2, StarCraft 2, SW:ToR, etc. Is this relevant? Is there any reason to believe that development costs for SW:ToR should be similar to any of those?

Why do we still remember them vs. well... all the big-name shooters we've forgotten about from two years ago?

It could be because we're mostly all longtime PC gamers here that loved those games when they came out and feel nostalgia towards them. This makes us not very representative of the overall PC game buying public. Look to the assassins creed 2 DRM thread where nearly every poster here said they would be boycotting it and then it sold very well anyways.

 

[Murloc]

a high quality games takes a lot of time and lots of ppl to make, which means it needs a big budget.
It's like movies, they have to spend on special effects to make an action film not suck.

You can develop java phone games (or iphone games now), or even flash games with weird ads to put on facebook if you don't want to invest huge amounts of money.
Farmville is a stupid and simple game that makes shitloads of money just because stupid ppl buys money or cool buildings.
Browser textual games are highly popular too.

 

[Hacp]

a high quality games takes a lot of time and lots of ppl to make, which means it needs a big budget.
It's like movies, they have to spend on special effects to make an action film not suck.

You can develop java phone games (or iphone games now), or even flash games with weird ads to put on facebook if you don't want to invest huge amounts of money.
Farmville is a stupid and simple game that makes shitloads of money just because stupid ppl buys money or cool buildings.
Browser textual games are highly popular too.

Or they can outsource the engine and art and focus on the gameplay?

 

[KaOTiK]

I worked in the game industry and while yes people are in it for the money more so now, it isn't solely their fault for wanting the money. In the case of a developer being owned by the publisher it comes down to the publisher being at fault. They (the publisher) want the project finished asap, then when it does get released they end up canning a good portion of the dev studio to cut costs. So now they are out trying to find a new job just to keep the money coming in. Unfortunately loyalty and hardwork aren't rewarded anymore (exceptions are always there, for anything though!), so most people just do the work they have to regardless of how they feel about the project at hand and when they get into that last 8month stretch of a project you see them starting to look for a new job already.

I can't blame other developers because of the way the system has become. Publishers are pulling in some crazy figures nowadays in the game industry and the people who actually made the game see little to known of that, so they want a good paycheck at the least for their work. I got into the industry because of my love for gaming, but left after two and a half years and went to the military simulation field (where I do the same damn work but have a secure job and better pay to boot, oh and feel great knowing I am helping save our soldiers lives). Reason I left was in those 2.5 years of being shitted on and watching my colleges being shitted on by the publishers you can only take so much. My pay was good, but the fact was I never knew if I had job still by the end of a project and that was very unsettling. Sometimes I was one of the lucky few that kept, other times I wasn't and it sucked seeing coworkers get canned that worked so hard and cared about their work just get let go to cut costs (and even bigger kick in the nuts cause the game would pull in big profits).

The game industry is starting to lose a lot of its veterans to other fields that need the same skill sets due to the way it treats its workers. Do I miss the industry? At times yes, I miss working on games even with the amount of BS that is involved. But in the end, I am glad I got out. I have a steady higher paying job doing the same exact work I was doing but now I am helping train and save lives with my work.

 

[VashHT]

The way to get rich by developing PC games is to make a game that a lot of people want to pay for. All transactions are voluntary and therefore I don't follow how this is a bad thing.


Do you like what you do? If so, why aren't you doing it simply for the love of your profession rather than trying to earn money from it? I see these sort of arguments all the time but have a hard time understanding the tendency to assign a higher moral impetus to others than to yourself.

I don't see what's so hard to understand, haven't you ever met anyone who doesn't give a shit about the company they work for as long as they get paid?

 

[you2]

well a few things to consider:
They did not start from scratch;
They are not owned by a large publisher
The game itself is relatively simple;
One talented person works much more efficient then 10 employees
(some of it is talent but some of it is communication of ideas; often on large projects there is a bit of a gap between concept and implementation; and those gaps can cost weeks if not months to correct).

How did they manage to make torchlight in 9 months with a skeleton crew?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I think your numbers are a bit off. I starting person with BS in Computer Science is like average of around 57k a year. That is entry level. Even mid career median is like 85K+. I'd say your numbers are off.

Is it easy to actually obtain entry-level jobs in those fields or is there a glut with lots of unemployed and underemployed people just like most other fields? Are most CS grads able to actually obtain entry-level jobs in their fields?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

In spite of all the money spent on eye candy and famous voices, I still think that high quality, addictive game play trumps fluff. I still think the original Unreal Tournament (1999) has some of the best FPS game play of all time. However, it does look like the general public falls for the eye candy and fluff.

 

[KMFJD]

I used to LOVE football (and most sports games) on my console, played them all the time, dont play any nowdays.. I cant rember X+Up+LT+thmbstick down is how to juke when running the ball. Of course X+Up+LT+thmbstick down when in QB is how to handoff, or X+Up+LT+thmbstick down on defence is how to strip the ball, oh and on kickoff its how to fake.... good god, when did games get so complicated only people who have more free time then "normal" people can be the only people to play um?

THIS....thankfully Tecmo is re-releasing Tecmo Bowl!!!!

 

[JoshGuru7]

I have a hard time understanding the tendency to assign a higher moral impetus to others than to yourself.

I don't see what's so hard to understand, haven't you ever met anyone who doesn't give a shit about the company they work for as long as they get paid?

Most of the people I meet fall into this category, and while the rest do care about the company it's at a much lower priority than they care about themselves. But what does that have to do with what I said?

In spite of all the money spent on eye candy and famous voices, I still think that high quality, addictive game play trumps fluff. I still think the original Unreal Tournament (1999) has some of the best FPS game play of all time. However, it does look like the general public falls for the eye candy and fluff.

I agree on both points and I think the second point is really the key. Blizzard is spending a lot of money developing SC2 and D3. Unless somebody thinks they've done more research into the target Diablo 3 demographic then Blizzard has, it seems terribly presumptuous to assume Blizzard is doing it wrong as a first take on the situation. Why would all of these for-profit companies be drastically overspending if they could just release things with decade old graphics engines?

 

[Modelworks]

Do you like what you do? If so, why aren't you doing it simply for the love of your profession rather than trying to earn money from it? I see these sort of arguments all the time but have a hard time understanding the tendency to assign a higher moral impetus to others than to yourself.

I love what I do. I once worked as an EE earning over $300K /year but I was miserable in the job. I started doing what I loved vs what others wanted me to do. I now make less than 20% of what I made before and am certainly not in it for the money.

The problem with any art form, and game creation is an art , is you cannot pay your way to a great product. Publishers are of the mindset that money = talent and it doesn't work that way. They are using the methods used for mass producing consumer goods where if you have a big enough factory, with enough people, and can sell enough product then you can be a success. Creativity isn't something that can be mass produced .

I have no problem with people wanting to make money off what they do, but art isn't something that works if the only reason you are doing it is for the money, and it really shows in a lot of games . I see things all the time in games that could have been easily fixed but were not, things that nobody could possibly miss. It is like a carpenter built a door into a house that was 4 foot tall and everyone entering keeps hitting their head as they enter. Either the carpenter wasn't qualified or he didn't care as long as he got paid.

 

[Modelworks]

The game industry is starting to lose a lot of its veterans to other fields that need the same skill sets due to the way it treats its workers. Do I miss the industry? At times yes, I miss working on games even with the amount of BS that is involved. But in the end, I am glad I got out. I have a steady higher paying job doing the same exact work I was doing but now I am helping train and save lives with my work.

There are a lot of people I used to know who were in it and now are not mainly because of publishers treatment of them. I started getting concerned about the time that westwood studios was sold. They had a lot of good talent their that went to EA and shortly after left the industry. I don't think that was a coincidence. Some people have managed to stay in the field though long term. Yahn Bernier is still with valve and I remember talking with him before anyone ever thought of valve being successful, back when he had another day job and was working on a bsp editor as a hobby. About the time he joined valve is about the same time I started to work full time in CG. It is sad how publishers have hurt the community .


There is no worker rights for people in the game industry now. Last year when Mythics CEO said he saw no reason to include people in the credits who were not their on the last day the product went gold , no matter how hard they worked on the title was to me the final straw in showing how the industry looks at its workers now. They re-enforce the idea that it is just a job so why not make all you can and get out.

 

[Hacp]

Computers are cheap.Information is cheap. It is relatively easy to hire someone in India who knows how to code and keep a skeleton crew in the us. Its just business.

 

[shortylickens]

Computers are cheap.Information is cheap. It is relatively easy to hire someone in India who knows how to code and keep a skeleton crew in the us. Its just business.

And yet, the games still cost 40 million.
:hmm:

 

[BenSkywalker]

A developer near me was able to turn out a very good selling title for:
8 programmers @ 50K /year
7 artist @48K /year
2 sound effects and composition @40K/year
$1500 month rent office space
$29K hardware cost
--------------------------
Just over $1 million per year

In what country? The programmers are making about $5K less then the average new college grad; artists are about the norm for entry level with no experience, sound engineers are all over the place but you are certainly way below average although starting wages for them tend to be very low as they all get lumped together and the small time studio engineers get lumped in with those that go to work for major labels/studios. There is also the issue of no benefits? Scraping the bottom of the barrel and providing WalMart level benefits is another $5K per employee per year. Also, no project manager or testers? Yes, you can have your programmers do the testing for you, but on an economics basis it makes a lot more sense to have a college CS student testing part time for $15 an hour then it does to pay your programmers $25 an hour do it. Moving the pay scales to the average starting fresh out of college level with minimal benefits you are looking at an additional $125K per year without a project manager(which would be in the $80K per year range for someone new to the position, and will likely end up costing you more in lost productivity then someone who would run ~$120K but trying to keep it cheap). Who is maintaining the network btw? You just have your programmers put it all together for you?

Next is rent, you had to of missed at least one zero. $1500 a month doesn't get you a decent 2 bedroom apartment in most cities. If you go to a small town you still aren't going to have the space to deal with 17 full time people for anything remotely in the realm of $1500 a month in the US. Also, no utility costs? $1500 a month could probably pay your electric bill, so that would be covered at least(probably not quite enough in the extreme weather situations, but should average out to roughly that given your very cheap hardware won't be taking up a lot of energy).

Even using a team that small, realistic numbers in the US has you at closer to $2Million a year being an atrocious place to work with terrible benefits, fully inexperienced team from top to bottom, cramped working conditions, no professional writers, no marketing budget and noone to ensure employee needs are taken care of(no HR). Perhaps in India, or an Eastern European nation that kind of budget could work, in the US today seems a bit outside of the realms of realistic.