Do you have any links to support your data? Because all the searching I came up with shows entry and experienced salaries from 2000 and 2013 very close to each other, with not more that a few thousand dollars difference per year between the two time periods.
Maybe dev studios are spending more, but that's more about production philosophy than a requirement.
Pretty much entry level, depending on the position, starts around $45k - $55k. Experience programmers seem to average $75k - $88k, while leadership can make over $120k if they're experienced.
If you're going to claim that salaries have changed enough to impact revenue and the price point then you're going to have to prove it. There is enough anecdotal data out there to cast a serious doubt on your assertion.
Except all of those survey's are horribly flawed. For example, where is the breakdown between those who focus on console versus pc? You do realize that those who focus on consoles make more money because those platforms have many times more sales. Similarly the number of indians to chiefs has also gone up considerably. Look at WoW launching in 2004 with a 60 man dev team versus the 300 that Arenanet employs. With that you get extreme weighting on those averages. The vast majority of those of attend GDC are big wigs, which throws it all out of whack, which even that data shows. In particular you should look at how mmo's (games as service) are made versus "one shot" titles where any serious support is unlikely to happen. The single buy titles tend to have small dev teams, because they contract out much more of the work (the reason why they tend to have 3 or more splash screens before you ever reach a title screen), they also have much shorter dev cycles (2 years vs 5 years for an mmo) so less of the budget is spent on personnel and more is spent on other areas.
JasonJ tried to draw a corollary between the 70's music industry and the current gaming one, when a much better one is the early movie industry, particularly in the early 30's and 40's. Before the workforce unionized and formed the guilds with real rules for how employees were to be treated. You want evidence, and honestly there is not any to directly show you because far too much of it is locked behind nda's. Go hang out with devs in various IRC channels, read their blogs, you will get a much better understanding than you will from bad data.
Originally posted by Ginaz Most subs have been $15 for around 10 years now. If you factor in inflation, the price of subs has actually gone down since they haven't kept up with inflation.
I used to quote "give up one can of Mt. Dew a day and your mmo is paid for!"
But you can't buy a can of Mt. Dew for fifty cents any more.
Call Sally Struthers!
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by Ginaz Most subs have been $15 for around 10 years now. If you factor in inflation, the price of subs has actually gone down since they haven't kept up with inflation. Besides, if you can't set aside $15 a month, then you have bigger problems than paying for an MMO.
Bandwidth, servers cost, etc are way cheaper then 10 years ago...
And I'm tired of people like you always coming with the "if you can't afford to pay $15 a month".
Everybody can afford that, the thing here is that most people who don't like subs is because they feel the game is not worth that much...
So then, What's the average operating expense for a moderate sized data center today vs what it was say 5 years ago?
You don't get to summarily dismiss the data I linked. It is game developer salary data. You claimed that that the cost of hiring has doubled and inferred that $10k per month is common enough.
I can when its clear your "data" does not show what you think it does and I tell you why. sorry If i was not more clear but I was speaking about mmo's specifically since this is after all an mmo specific website. The "10k" number is from one of the Extra Credit's episodes, I believe its from one of the ones on game design/producer or crowdfunding. Its also been corroborated on shows like Monty's Minute (been rebranded and as far as I know old shows are no longer available). For the most part specific devs will not state what they specifically make because its all held back under NDA.
Provide your own links and support your claim because those links I posted debunk your claim. If you can't support your position with some facts you don't have a leg to stand on. I think Lokto was right, the new fact is "because I said so".
The problem of course being there is no specific links to the information you want. You have to dig for it. Google is an amazing tool, but it can only lead give you answers to questions that others have asked and went looking for the answers to. There is no ribbon wrapped package with the answers you seek. Which is why I told you where to go to start looking.
The number of people on a dev team is a staffing choice not a mandated increasing cost in development. In that case if those costs are higher it is because of choice not because smaller more focused teams can't operate in a more efficient manner. Just because studios are spending lavishly doesn't mean they have to in order to produce the games.
Bullshit. You clearly no nothing about animation or 3d modeling then. Unless you honestly believe that making 500 polygon models is just as work intensive as making 4k polygon models. Creating the art assets alone takes a significant amount of time. Looking at other things like building and modifying your engine, actual content creation, animation etc all takes significant amounts of time. Much more the better looking your game is. There is a reason why a 15 man team could build UO on a $50k budget in '97 and WoW cost $62m in 2004 with only a 60 man team (hooray for reusing assets!).
Seriously, stop looking superficially and look at the breadcrumbs. Do a little reading between the lines. Go to the source instead of just reading the marketing material. You will find a great deal more. IRC chats are amazing, as are personal blogs kept by various devs. Its never as simple as you want to make it, and it is never ever as black and white as you want it to be.
Originally posted by GeezerGamer
So then, What's the average operating expense for a moderate sized data center today vs what it was say 5 years ago?
There is not much in that about costs but it makes perfect sense that costs have shifted. Its true that Bandwith is cheaper, but the costs for things like cooling is getting much higher as electricity is more expensive than ever, not to mention the cost of components. Pretty much everyone switched to ssd's to further limit lag (loot lag in WoW was a database issue for example) and they wear out considerably faster and are more expensive to replace than a hdd.
You don't get to summarily dismiss the data I linked. It is game developer salary data. You claimed that that the cost of hiring has doubled and inferred that $10k per month is common enough.
I can when its clear your "data" does not show what you think it does and I tell you why. sorry If i was not more clear but I was speaking about mmo's specifically since this is after all an mmo specific website. The "10k" number is from one of the Extra Credit's episodes, I believe its from one of the ones on game design/producer or crowdfunding. Its also been corroborated on shows like Monty's Minute (been rebranded and as far as I know old shows are no longer available). For the most part specific devs will not state what they specifically make because its all held back under NDA.
Provide your own links and support your claim because those links I posted debunk your claim. If you can't support your position with some facts you don't have a leg to stand on. I think Lokto was right, the new fact is "because I said so".
The problem of course being there is no specific links to the information you want. You have to dig for it. Google is an amazing tool, but it can only lead give you answers to questions that others have asked and went looking for the answers to. There is no ribbon wrapped package with the answers you seek. Which is why I told you where to go to start looking.
The number of people on a dev team is a staffing choice not a mandated increasing cost in development. In that case if those costs are higher it is because of choice not because smaller more focused teams can't operate in a more efficient manner. Just because studios are spending lavishly doesn't mean they have to in order to produce the games.
Bullshit. You clearly no nothing about animation or 3d modeling then. Unless you honestly believe that making 500 polygon models is just as work intensive as making 4k polygon models. Creating the art assets alone takes a significant amount of time. Looking at other things like building and modifying your engine, actual content creation, animation etc all takes significant amounts of time. Much more the better looking your game is. There is a reason why a 15 man team could build UO on a $50k budget in '97 and WoW cost $62m in 2004 with only a 60 man team (hooray for reusing assets!).
Seriously, stop looking superficially and look at the breadcrumbs. Do a little reading between the lines. Go to the source instead of just reading the marketing material. You will find a great deal more. IRC chats are amazing, as are personal blogs kept by various devs. Its never as simple as you want to make it, and it is never ever as black and white as you want it to be.
Originally posted by GeezerGamer
So then, What's the average operating expense for a moderate sized data center today vs what it was say 5 years ago?
There is not much in that about costs but it makes perfect sense that costs have shifted. Its true that Bandwith is cheaper, but the costs for things like cooling is getting much higher as electricity is more expensive than ever, not to mention the cost of components. Pretty much everyone switched to ssd's to further limit lag (loot lag in WoW was a database issue for example) and they wear out considerably faster and are more expensive to replace than a hdd.
This is exactly my point. The article was not about costs, but in fact about the need to upgrade to better technology. That is a constant that never stops. IT Infrastructure is not cheap. Bandwidth at the level data centers require is also not the same as home and small business internet access. These data centers don't use the local phone and cable companies to get online..at least not in the same sense anyway. And we don't know what kind of access these data centers have to the backbone (Probably FIOS). We don't have any clue as to what their annual operating expenses are.
Comments
Except all of those survey's are horribly flawed. For example, where is the breakdown between those who focus on console versus pc? You do realize that those who focus on consoles make more money because those platforms have many times more sales. Similarly the number of indians to chiefs has also gone up considerably. Look at WoW launching in 2004 with a 60 man dev team versus the 300 that Arenanet employs. With that you get extreme weighting on those averages. The vast majority of those of attend GDC are big wigs, which throws it all out of whack, which even that data shows. In particular you should look at how mmo's (games as service) are made versus "one shot" titles where any serious support is unlikely to happen. The single buy titles tend to have small dev teams, because they contract out much more of the work (the reason why they tend to have 3 or more splash screens before you ever reach a title screen), they also have much shorter dev cycles (2 years vs 5 years for an mmo) so less of the budget is spent on personnel and more is spent on other areas.
JasonJ tried to draw a corollary between the 70's music industry and the current gaming one, when a much better one is the early movie industry, particularly in the early 30's and 40's. Before the workforce unionized and formed the guilds with real rules for how employees were to be treated. You want evidence, and honestly there is not any to directly show you because far too much of it is locked behind nda's. Go hang out with devs in various IRC channels, read their blogs, you will get a much better understanding than you will from bad data.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
I used to quote "give up one can of Mt. Dew a day and your mmo is paid for!"
But you can't buy a can of Mt. Dew for fifty cents any more.
Call Sally Struthers!
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
So then, What's the average operating expense for a moderate sized data center today vs what it was say 5 years ago?
Idunno, this doesn't seem like it got cheaper.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/06/16/closer-look-eve-onlines-new-server-cluster/
I can when its clear your "data" does not show what you think it does and I tell you why. sorry If i was not more clear but I was speaking about mmo's specifically since this is after all an mmo specific website. The "10k" number is from one of the Extra Credit's episodes, I believe its from one of the ones on game design/producer or crowdfunding. Its also been corroborated on shows like Monty's Minute (been rebranded and as far as I know old shows are no longer available). For the most part specific devs will not state what they specifically make because its all held back under NDA.
The problem of course being there is no specific links to the information you want. You have to dig for it. Google is an amazing tool, but it can only lead give you answers to questions that others have asked and went looking for the answers to. There is no ribbon wrapped package with the answers you seek. Which is why I told you where to go to start looking.
Bullshit. You clearly no nothing about animation or 3d modeling then. Unless you honestly believe that making 500 polygon models is just as work intensive as making 4k polygon models. Creating the art assets alone takes a significant amount of time. Looking at other things like building and modifying your engine, actual content creation, animation etc all takes significant amounts of time. Much more the better looking your game is. There is a reason why a 15 man team could build UO on a $50k budget in '97 and WoW cost $62m in 2004 with only a 60 man team (hooray for reusing assets!).
Seriously, stop looking superficially and look at the breadcrumbs. Do a little reading between the lines. Go to the source instead of just reading the marketing material. You will find a great deal more. IRC chats are amazing, as are personal blogs kept by various devs. Its never as simple as you want to make it, and it is never ever as black and white as you want it to be.
There is not much in that about costs but it makes perfect sense that costs have shifted. Its true that Bandwith is cheaper, but the costs for things like cooling is getting much higher as electricity is more expensive than ever, not to mention the cost of components. Pretty much everyone switched to ssd's to further limit lag (loot lag in WoW was a database issue for example) and they wear out considerably faster and are more expensive to replace than a hdd.
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!
This is exactly my point. The article was not about costs, but in fact about the need to upgrade to better technology. That is a constant that never stops. IT Infrastructure is not cheap. Bandwidth at the level data centers require is also not the same as home and small business internet access. These data centers don't use the local phone and cable companies to get online..at least not in the same sense anyway. And we don't know what kind of access these data centers have to the backbone (Probably FIOS). We don't have any clue as to what their annual operating expenses are.