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Anyone who spends tens of millions of dollars to make a video game...
goneglockin
Member UncommonPosts: 706
...is retarded.
Why do video games suck? They cost too much to make and they've become as bland and predictable as the next Hollywood movie, the next Nickleback sounding pop-rock band. These aren't things that allow for creativity or innovation, these are multigazillion dollar projects, precious investments that are genetically engineered in underground nazi facilities to be the ultimate blonde haired, blue eyed entertainment events of superhuman perfection.
Entertaintment authorities of all breeds know how to achieve mass appeal with generic content while maintaining a certain level of mediocrity to get by. It sounds complicated but it really isn't. Everyone reuses the same concepts or ideals behind stories throughout time- but you can plainly see the mastery of mediocrity at large in the recent re-make-marathon brought to you by Hollywood. I long for the days where they just made poorly written sequels- but you see- they're evolving. Every entertainment industry is evolving it's ability to produce this kind of shit to a finite science.
It's not gonna stop until it melts down. These idiots are spending in excess of 50 million dollars to make a video game when relatively few can hope to sell more than a million copies. Why can't they put sensible people working in the entertainment industries? Why is everyone working in that industry an eccentric asshole who doesn't understand the value of money, discipline and good business practices?
Maybe because deep down somewhere they still believe they're an "artist" and not some delusional hack? "I'm an artist." would be the only excuse for such stupidity- it wouldn't justify it; but at least then i'd understand...
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
Comments
So did your phone start ringing the instant you hit "post message" with offers from all the multi-million dollar corporations ready to completely rework their business plan according to your wisdom?
I'll have to call you back... I'm on the phone with NCSoft right now. They want me to take over their Austin division and clean up after Tabula Rasa...
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
I do agree pretty much, but as to 'why',
$50 x 1m = development cost. Any sub after that is % profit, you kind of answered it in your question.
-----
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LOL
Hmm, why would they spend 50 million dollars to make an MMORPG? Let's do the math.
Lets say the game isn't a big success, and only manages to get 200,000 re-occurring subs (a fairly obtainable number I think many would agree).
That works out to roughly 36 million a year in gross income, so it takes less than 2 years to recover the initial investment, everything afterwards is mostly profit.
Of course, people are promised sub numbers of much more than that, let's say 500,000K, which is 90 million in the first year alone.
Remember, Blizzard managed to draw in 4.5 million subs (not counting the Asia model atm), so to any investor 500K seems very achievable. (it is, if someone would just make a decent game)
The potential money to be made is staggering so of course people are going to chase it.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Blizzard spent about 50 million... now they're making like 100 million a month
I'll have to call you back... I'm on the phone with NCSoft right now. They want me to take over their Austin division and clean up after Tabula Rasa...
You mean their going to use you as a broom...best Idea yet.
I forget where I read it, but I was under the impression that Blizzard spenta total of 80 mil on wow, and nother 40 mil on marketing. No idea how accurate any information like this is, particularly round here. but either way, its a crap load of cash.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
The question should be, why do they need to spend 50 million dollars to make a video game.
They spent more than that making Tabula Rasa and those people are in a world of hurt right now.
Phase 1: Steal Underpants.
Phase 2:
Phase 3: Profit.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
I'll have to call you back... I'm on the phone with NCSoft right now. They want me to take over their Austin division and clean up after Tabula Rasa...
You mean their going to use you as a broom...best Idea yet.
I forget where I read it, but I was under the impression that Blizzard spenta total of 80 mil on wow, and nother 40 mil on marketing. No idea how accurate any information like this is, particularly round here. but either way, its a crap load of cash.
Assuming that it is true, Blizzard is making back their investment in LESS THAN 2 months. Let me know where I can sign up for such good investments.
er, wtf do you care, its not your cash lol.
Besides, it costs more now to make games because it takes longer, and more skilled personnel, who expect to be paid for their time. games aren't 16 colors anymore, and teh code is a lot LOT more involved. Seriously man, what are you on about? I dunno how many games I've played that suck, and it feels like a very cheap pile of crap,. However, dumping tons of capital into a game doesn't mean it will rock. But some of the best games in recent years are big budget games. WoW, Oblivion, Halo 3, etc etc.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
Your rant seemed to jump from detest of corporate entertainment offerings to confusion as to why developers can't seem to come up with a proper business model. You've got some good points in your post, but they are not well presented.
The size of the MMORPG market is somewhat finite and every game can't be like Blizzard's bastard creation unless all these games release in turns each having their way with the same gamers over and over again, like pimps passing prositutes around until everyone has made a buck.
They're only spending tens of millions of dollars because other people are spending tens of millions of dollars. It's just like parity issues with sports. There's no real need to spend that much money and everyone is suffering for it.
You're seeing fewer releases, fewer people in the business, and more people going out of business because- surprise- their bazillion dollar baby did not unseat world of warcraft.
It's madness!
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
That's because I'm just here to amuse myself, and cheaply.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
is your money where your mouth is?
do you play an indy game right now?
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Money is irrelevant.
1% of our population work on foodstock.
A few % in housing.
A few % in security
A good % in schools/hospital.
But then what is left to do? Peoples want to do something with their time. Making video games is not as important as growing food for the peoples, but...it is still a decent thing to do. They don't polute anymore than someone who would be staying home...so it is definitely cool in my book.
Sound more like your ranting at capitalism than at actually what they do. Not everyone can be rocket scientists, that's why they do videogames, to entertain peoples. This is a noble thing. (even if I wish they would learn and stop making dimwit stuff like raiding-enforcement, but that would be another topic in itself).
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I have to agree. Does the OP play any indy games? And while we are at it, does he listen to any music that is at all popular and does he see any popular movies? Becasue those can take some coin to make!
Regardless of how much is being spent to make these games, I think that it is important to realize that "They are employing people". I'll say it again. They are spending "x" amount of millions of dollars that give people jobs. Preferably jobs that they actually like.
How many of us can say they work a job we like?
So the money that is being spent is giving people 401k's, insurance, dental plans, flex spending plans, and essentially allow these people to then go and take care of their own lives and then put it back into the economy.
I'm sorry but any industry that generates and maintains jobs is pretty good (as long as it is legal, yadda yadda yadda).
Also please let us not forget that the formula is not a clear sell x amount of boxes, replace what you paid for developement and the rest is "profit".
There are taxes, more research and development, insurance, legal fees, and a whole host of other costs that it takes to run a business.
Now, if youi want to argue about the quality of games that are being made, well, that is another thing. Though again, how many indy games are coming out that are being played? What about the recently released vampire game? How many have rushed out to play that?" Especially as many were decrying the graphics as being years out of date?
The problems seems to be that there are people who have no clue about the business world who want games of exceptional quality with cutting edge graphics and they want them developed in a short amount of time with no changes in delivery AND they want to pay only for the box and not a lot for the box at that!
Which then of course makes me question as to whether or not they actually have jobs and financial responsibilites?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It takes money to make money. That is pretty simple to understand.
No. I don't play any MMORPGs right now. Today I started playing Fallout again for the umpteenth time and for the past several months I've been playing Hereoes of MIght and Magic 3: Complete. I just rotate my games like a disc jockey at an "oldies" station.
I don't know if 9/11 had anything to do with it- but it seems like the entertainment industry went to shit right after that. Reality television sure as shit took off after that and we all know what quality material those shows consist of.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
No. I don't play any MMORPGs right now. Today I started playing Fallout again for the umpteenth time and for the past several months I've been playing Hereoes of MIght and Magic 3: Complete. I just rotate my games like a disc jockey at an "oldies" station.
I don't know if 9/11 had anything to do with it- but it seems like the entertainment industry went to shit right after that. Reality television sure as shit took off after that and we all know what quality material those shows consist of.
As opposed to other quality programming like "let's make a deal" and "The Price is Right" and "My mother the car"?
There has always been schlock entertainment. You are correct in that 9/11 had affected many businesses and many projects were cancelled after that (we were just talking about that today).
But entertainment as always followed the need of the people. If you believe that there is more "mindless" entertainment then it very well might be that the average person requires something like this in order to cope. Look at what was being created in WWII and see if that is correct. I think it is.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Sovrath it is so simple. Big money projects do not necessarily create more jobs because they first limit the amount of companies that can participate in that kind of a market. Can't spend 50 million dollars? Well you might as well not make an MMO! Do you get me?
They also carry increased risk. Tabula Rasa was one of these 50mil babies and it isn't doing so well. Do you know what the company is doing to the division where that game came from? They're downsizing. Say bye bye jobs.
So why are they spending so much money? To try and remain competitive with whoever started tossing that kind of cash around first- and then it escalated, and escalated to the point of absurdity. The same thing is going on in sports with the salaries of athletes.
If you can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars putting a team together because all the players want exorbitant amounts of money, well then you're going to get shitty players and you're team is going to suck. You can't compete unless you've got matching money.
There's no real production reason why so many of these games have to cost such ridiculous sums of money to develop. And if it somehow does not get under control things are only going to get worse.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
www.massively.com/2008/02/18/tabula-rasa-news-not-what-it-seems/
EQ2 fan sites
First of all, Blizzard made over a billion dollars last year. The rest of VU made a combined 300 million (ish).
People say MMO's are dead, but they are only dead in the short term. Every company after WoW is trying to copy it because it was so successful. Starting in 2010 (maybe sooner), MMO's will be back to being non-WoW clones again.
MMO's are clearly making way more money than other games...and this will only grow because MMO's are gaining in popularity. If people were smart, they would make a good MMO.
Like someone said before, it takes money to make money. Spending 60 million on an MMO isn't arbitrary, it really costs that much money. The size and scale alone dictate a massive development team. (All of these people need to get paid.) It's not just MMO's that are more expensive, either. Halo 3 cost 30 million I believe. Games in general are getting more expensive because they are getting far more complex.
______________________
Give a man some fun and you entertain him for a day. Teach a man to make fun and you entertain him for a lifetime.
Actually $50M is not a big deal in the entertainment industry.
Spiderman 3 costs >$200M to make and it is "only" a movie lasting less than 3 hours. Ditto for any big budget summer movie.
Since WOW, Halo3 and big video game franchise pull in numbers similar to big movies (Halo3 makes more money on its FIRST DAY than the first weekend of spiderman 3), I don't see why they should not invest in something like 1/4 of a big budget movie into a game.
My thoughts on the subject:
1. To the person bashing the movie industry:
- Think of the movies that actually come out and what their goal is. Hollywood knows it can make a movie with a few stars in contemporary atmosphere and pull in like 40-50m while only costing 20-40m. Hollywood gambles on movies with huge special effects like transformers, golden compass, final fantasy, etc. The rest are fillers that are designed to be the same old re-hashed crap with a few stars to rake in the cash. A good example is "Chuck and Larry" totally stupid movie but the cost probably wasn't more than 30 million and it would 100% guaranteed to make more money than the cost.
2. To NCsoft's 50 million dollar baby. After playing Lineage 2 and seeing the craptastic effort they did with maintaining that game I vowed to never purchase or try another NCsoft product again. How the hell do you let bots overrun a game??????????????????? The bots were directly hampering game play to a point where real players couldn't even play. Thney did nothing about it, they deserve to lose money. I am happy to hear that they are downsizing in Austin. They are a shitty company.
3. If you knew how much pharmaecutical companies invest in a drug. They can invest over a billion dollars in a drug and have it fail FDA trials. Then again they can hit a homerun like "Lipitor" which brings in a net of 12 billion dollars a year.
It's an investment, it is essentially gambling. The problem I have with most of the MMO genre is that they make games with the goal in mind to make money. THe investors make them release them game early while it is a piece of crap and you get games that are absolutely terrible to a point where you knew they knew they had a pile of crap but released it anyway. It is why I like blizzard they will delay games just to make sure they get it right. I also like CCP. But NCsoft, SOE, Turbine = terrible companies.
Hey Sovrath that's going on, long time no see.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
AAA+ games nowadays takes teams of 200+ people working for a COUPLE years or so on it.
FICTIONAL CALCULATIONS
I guess if you enslave 200 people and make them work for you without salary or food for 2 years then you can make an MMO at a cost of only $328,500 (for the vitamin water to keep them alive).
EXPENSES:
Cost of vitamin water: $0.75 PER BOTTLE
0.75 x 200 (people) x 3 (per day) x 365 days = $164,250.00 PER YEAR
Let's say you licensed a middleware like Unreal engine 2.5 for $400,000 per project.
Let's say you don't have to pay rent (everyone works inside a cave) = $0.00
Let's say Bill Gates decides to donate several computers and rendering stations to you = $0.00
Let's say you don't pay electricity bills or utilities (no water / energy) instead you have a hamster powered generator that runs all the computers and rendering station (inside your workplace ..err.. cave) = $0.00
You still have a cost of production of $ 728,500.00 to pay to make your MMO or if you don't pay for middleware engine you still got a cost of $164,250.00 per year to keep your 200 slaves alive.
Let's not even go into manufacturing (stamping out the CDs) and marketing.