500 million spent on something that people will play for few hours or days and then forget about.
Today India has become first country to successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars at the very first attempt. And they did this for 74 million dollars. 74 million spent on something that would help us as species compared to 500 million spent on a video game... that contributes absolutely nothing.
Just a thought i had while having my morning coffee.
If India spent $74m getting something into space, then that whole amount would have been paid for by the west as the monetary donations India receives each year is more than that. And why can the West afford it? Because it has a healthy economy of demand and supply where people are in jobs to make, amongst other things, video games, that other people who are in jobs can afford to buy.
The world turns because of everything that happens - you can't suggest that the money could be put to better use because if that sort of money wasn't being made on xyz, then there wouldn't be enough to give to India each year.
For info, India received £1.6b in foreign aid in 2012. USA received zero. USA is playing it's part.
500 million spent on something that people will play for few hours or days and then forget about.
Today India has become first country to successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars at the very first attempt. And they did this for 74 million dollars. 74 million spent on something that would help us as species compared to 500 million spent on a video game... that contributes absolutely nothing.
Just a thought i had while having my morning coffee.
If India spent $74m getting something into space, then that whole amount would have been paid for by the west as the monetary donations India receives each year is more than that. And why can the West afford it? Because it has a healthy economy of demand and supply where people are in jobs to make, amongst other things, video games, that other people who are in jobs can afford to buy.
The world turns because of everything that happens - you can't suggest that the money could be put to better use because if that sort of money wasn't being made on xyz, then there wouldn't be enough to give to India each year.
For info, India received £1.6b in foreign aid in 2012. USA received zero. USA is playing it's part.
Britain gives a large amount of aid to India. Why India when there appear to be so many other countries more in need of that aid? To help forge trade relations; it is not an altruistic act.
500 million spent on something that people will play for few hours or days and then forget about.
Today India has become first country to successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars at the very first attempt. And they did this for 74 million dollars. 74 million spent on something that would help us as species compared to 500 million spent on a video game... that contributes absolutely nothing.
Just a thought i had while having my morning coffee.
Not sure why this topic is specific to destiny, but anyways..
Yes, production budgets for most forms of entertainment have gotten extremely bloated. We can thank us consumers for that. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing.
There's a few different ways to look at this. On the one hand, it is a lot to spend on a luxury. On the other, living in a world without such luxuries would be fairly dull.
As a creative professional myself, while I acknowledge how absurd it is; It's nice to be able to actually create things for a living. Rather than working at a Walmart.
Originally posted by Cod_Eye The $500 mil has been taken out of context, a lot of that money was spent on advertising, India needs to sort its own affairs out before spending money on space exploration, Its people need sanitation and water delivery points.
I think you also fell victim to the western media bias where they only show you the most backward and outskirt areas of India to give a picture that whole nation is suffering from sanitation and water delivery problems.
In America 1 out of 5 children live in poverty and yet no one tells US to sort out its affairs first.
Anyways, lets not get political. That is not what this topic is about.
There's an enormous difference between the relative poverty of wealthy nations (defined as household income less than half of the median, to ensure that it will always be there no matter how wealthy everyone gets) and the absolute poverty of poorer nations. Most Americans living in "poverty" today have a lifestyle that very wealthy a century ago. That's not true of areas that have real poverty in absolute terms.
500 million spent on something that people will play for few hours or days and then forget about.
Today India has become first country to successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars at the very first attempt. And they did this for 74 million dollars. 74 million spent on something that would help us as species compared to 500 million spent on a video game... that contributes absolutely nothing.
Just a thought i had while having my morning coffee.
Not sure why this topic is specific to destiny, but anyways..
Yes, production budgets for most forms of entertainment have gotten extremely bloated. We can thank us consumers for that. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing.
There's a few different ways to look at this. On the one hand, it is a lot to spend on a luxury. On the other, living in a world without such luxuries would be fairly dull.
As a creative professional myself, while I acknowledge how absurd it is; It's nice to be able to actually create things for a living. Rather than working at a Walmart.
For me its gone too far. In my opinion the proliferation of the internet and the rise of smart phones and these relentless trivial applications people use or narcissistic sites they visit (FB) only serve to stifle creativity and reduce people's overall happiness.
Personally I would enjoy a world where these luxuries were a little rarer, but alas like many people I am now addicted to them.
Originally posted by Cod_Eye The $500 mil has been taken out of context, a lot of that money was spent on advertising, India needs to sort its own affairs out before spending money on space exploration, Its people need sanitation and water delivery points.
saying that in the context of the 500mil$ is a fucking joke dude...
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
500 million spent on something that people will play for few hours or days and then forget about.
Today India has become first country to successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars at the very first attempt. And they did this for 74 million dollars. 74 million spent on something that would help us as species compared to 500 million spent on a video game... that contributes absolutely nothing.
Just a thought i had while having my morning coffee.
Ahh, so unless money is spent on things that YOU consider contribute to whatever you think it contributes to it is money badly spent? I GET YOUR LOGIC AND WILL APPLY IT BELOW.
Why do people spent so much on a Starbucks coffee when they can WRITE AN ENTIRE NOVEL FOR FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!
See what I did there? They have nothing in common, but the price difference is huge! Just like space exploration and gaming have nothing in common but the price difference is huge in this case.
Don't compare media and gaming to space exploration, and get off your high horse telling others how money is well or badly spent.
I'm really, really enjoying the game. As are a TON of other people. And the 500 million is spent on the franchise and its future, not the one game.
I look at it as 500 million invested in jobs and products. That money then get passed around the various communities from individuals/business receiving that money.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I look at it as 500 million invested in jobs and products. That money then get passed around the various communities from individuals/business receiving that money.
BAM! That's how it should be looked at. Just like OP stated with Indias satellite launch. That's great your country did it with a $75 million budget. Which in turn created jobs and allowed those indiviuals to spend that money earned back into the community. $1 billion to $1,000. it all creates work and that's the main thing.
500 mil for 15 years of work and 3 games is quite a lot but not as much as 500 mil for one game.
Cheers,
BadOrb.
Yeah that 500 million for 3 games is insane for what you got with just the first game. Alot of rich devs with boats i guess. I'm in the wrong business.
Bungie developed everything in-house. According to Wikipedia, Bungie currently has got ~500 employees. Taking gamasutras salary report, the lowest average salary is 54,833 dollars/year for a QA Tester. Salaries for other work fields range between 70k and 90k. So let's assume, Bungie has to pay 60,000 dollars per employee. That makes 30,000,000 dollars a year.
The first known reference to Destiny was shown in 2009 HALO 3. Let's assume full development started in 2010. That makes 120,000,000 in salaries. Add operational costs (rent, electricity, etc.). Add working material purchasing costs (Servers, Computers, Software from Word to 3D development programs, etc.). I guess thats enough to reach $200,000,000.- and we have not yet included costs for external services such as registering a trademark, localization, production of discs or hiring an orchestra to produce a high end soundtrack.
Now that we have a good guesstimate of the production costs, double the amount. That's roundabout what it takes to deliver a global marketing campaign and there you have your 500 Million dollars.
A budget of 500 million dollars is a hefty price, but that seems to be the price if you want to produce a world wide distributed triple A crossplatform title. In my opinion such budgets are not ridiculous. We no longer live in the late 1990s. Video games are no longer produced by small teams of in the basement programming computer nerds. This is an industry and it is a hell of a huge one.
Bungie developed everything in-house. According to Wikipedia, Bungie currently has got ~500 employees. Taking gamasutras salary report, the lowest average salary is 54,833 dollars/year for a QA Tester. Salaries for other work fields range between 70k and 90k. So let's assume, Bungie has to pay 60,000 dollars per employee. That makes 30,000,000 dollars a year.
The first known reference to Destiny was shown in 2009 HALO 3. Let's assume full development started in 2010. That makes 120,000,000 in salaries. Add operational costs (rent, electricity, etc.). Add working material purchasing costs (Servers, Computers, Software from Word to 3D development programs, etc.). I guess thats enough to reach $200,000,000.- and we have not yet included costs for external services such as registering a trademark, localization, production of discs or hiring an orchestra to produce a high end soundtrack.
Now that we have a good guesstimate of the production costs, double the amount. That's roundabout what it takes to deliver a global marketing campaign and there you have your 500 Million dollars.
A budget of 500 million dollars is a hefty price, but that seems to be the price if you want to produce a world wide distributed triple A crossplatform title. In my opinion such budgets are not ridiculous. We no longer live in the late 1990s. Video games are no longer produced by small teams of in the basement programming computer nerds. This is an industry and it is a hell of a huge one.
Indeed.
Usually easier to use $100k a year (or $10k a month) per employee. There are taxes and so forth and each employee will need some tools - PC, licences etc. However full development won't have started until Bungie inked the deal with Activision - less than 2.5 years ago (impressive). Prior to that a much smaller team will have put together schedules, budget plans, resource plans, concept stuff and a lot of contract / legal stuff. You can roll this initial effort into the resource ramp up once full development kicked off - you don't ramp up to 500 employees on day 1.
Put it all together and you get maybe $140M. Could be higher of course.
That is the cost to Bungie though - probably includes the 2 DLCs as well.
How much the game cost Activision? To develop: absolutely nothing! What they end up paying Bungie however .... who knows: $200 - $300M? Depends on the contract of course but - as long as the game sells - Bungie will be looking to make a profit. The amount will depend in part on sales (and review scores according to one post I read).
On top of this flexible cost there is, as you say, there is marketing - the "$500M" comment to shareholders bought lots of "free" publicity. And then server costs (rented?) and some customer support. Not a sub game however so probably just an extension of their usual CS. (Sony are clearly involved in the marketing - possibly a partnership of some sort).
As you say games are expensive.
Factor in that they only get say 50% of box sales (less on retail, more on line) and we should applaud Activision for taking the risk. And hope they recoup their investment - otherwise they won't develop another "something".
And fortunately with $500M sales to retail, $325M through sales at the 5 day mark though it is looking good for them getting to the "billion dollar" franchise mark they have talked about.
Originally posted by Cod_Eye The $500 mil has been taken out of context, a lot of that money was spent on advertising, India needs to sort its own affairs out before spending money on space exploration, Its people need sanitation and water delivery points.
I think you also fell victim to the western media bias where they only show you the most backward and outskirt areas of India to give a picture that whole nation is suffering from sanitation and water delivery problems.
In America 1 out of 5 children live in poverty and yet no one tells US to sort out its affairs first.
Anyways, lets not get political. That is not what this topic is about.
You can't start a politically affected debate, and then say the topic is not about politics...
Comments
So you plan to spend $10,000 on vacations in the year. You take a weekend break that costs $400.
Exrra: would you spend $10,000 on a weekend break.
But I didn't that was a budget.
Extra: $10,000 on 2 days .
But
Extra: hugely expensive holiday
Oh forget it
If India spent $74m getting something into space, then that whole amount would have been paid for by the west as the monetary donations India receives each year is more than that. And why can the West afford it? Because it has a healthy economy of demand and supply where people are in jobs to make, amongst other things, video games, that other people who are in jobs can afford to buy.
The world turns because of everything that happens - you can't suggest that the money could be put to better use because if that sort of money wasn't being made on xyz, then there wouldn't be enough to give to India each year.
For info, India received £1.6b in foreign aid in 2012. USA received zero. USA is playing it's part.
Britain gives a large amount of aid to India. Why India when there appear to be so many other countries more in need of that aid? To help forge trade relations; it is not an altruistic act.
Not sure why this topic is specific to destiny, but anyways..
Yes, production budgets for most forms of entertainment have gotten extremely bloated. We can thank us consumers for that. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing.
There's a few different ways to look at this. On the one hand, it is a lot to spend on a luxury. On the other, living in a world without such luxuries would be fairly dull.
As a creative professional myself, while I acknowledge how absurd it is; It's nice to be able to actually create things for a living. Rather than working at a Walmart.
There's an enormous difference between the relative poverty of wealthy nations (defined as household income less than half of the median, to ensure that it will always be there no matter how wealthy everyone gets) and the absolute poverty of poorer nations. Most Americans living in "poverty" today have a lifestyle that very wealthy a century ago. That's not true of areas that have real poverty in absolute terms.
For me its gone too far. In my opinion the proliferation of the internet and the rise of smart phones and these relentless trivial applications people use or narcissistic sites they visit (FB) only serve to stifle creativity and reduce people's overall happiness.
Personally I would enjoy a world where these luxuries were a little rarer, but alas like many people I am now addicted to them.
saying that in the context of the 500mil$ is a fucking joke dude...
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
How many $ will be spend for weapons in the US? If you can put that in sience or social projekts, you will gain more.
But this will not bring the money, so every company focus on making money not what is good for mankind.
Money makes the world go round
Ahh, so unless money is spent on things that YOU consider contribute to whatever you think it contributes to it is money badly spent? I GET YOUR LOGIC AND WILL APPLY IT BELOW.
Why do people spent so much on a Starbucks coffee when they can WRITE AN ENTIRE NOVEL FOR FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!
See what I did there? They have nothing in common, but the price difference is huge! Just like space exploration and gaming have nothing in common but the price difference is huge in this case.
Don't compare media and gaming to space exploration, and get off your high horse telling others how money is well or badly spent.
I'm really, really enjoying the game. As are a TON of other people. And the 500 million is spent on the franchise and its future, not the one game.
I look at it as 500 million invested in jobs and products. That money then get passed around the various communities from individuals/business receiving that money.
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
BAM! That's how it should be looked at. Just like OP stated with Indias satellite launch. That's great your country did it with a $75 million budget. Which in turn created jobs and allowed those indiviuals to spend that money earned back into the community. $1 billion to $1,000. it all creates work and that's the main thing.
Yeah that 500 million for 3 games is insane for what you got with just the first game. Alot of rich devs with boats i guess. I'm in the wrong business.
Bungie developed everything in-house. According to Wikipedia, Bungie currently has got ~500 employees. Taking gamasutras salary report, the lowest average salary is 54,833 dollars/year for a QA Tester. Salaries for other work fields range between 70k and 90k. So let's assume, Bungie has to pay 60,000 dollars per employee. That makes 30,000,000 dollars a year.
The first known reference to Destiny was shown in 2009 HALO 3. Let's assume full development started in 2010. That makes 120,000,000 in salaries. Add operational costs (rent, electricity, etc.). Add working material purchasing costs (Servers, Computers, Software from Word to 3D development programs, etc.). I guess thats enough to reach $200,000,000.- and we have not yet included costs for external services such as registering a trademark, localization, production of discs or hiring an orchestra to produce a high end soundtrack.
Now that we have a good guesstimate of the production costs, double the amount. That's roundabout what it takes to deliver a global marketing campaign and there you have your 500 Million dollars.
A budget of 500 million dollars is a hefty price, but that seems to be the price if you want to produce a world wide distributed triple A crossplatform title. In my opinion such budgets are not ridiculous. We no longer live in the late 1990s. Video games are no longer produced by small teams of in the basement programming computer nerds. This is an industry and it is a hell of a huge one.
Indeed.
Usually easier to use $100k a year (or $10k a month) per employee. There are taxes and so forth and each employee will need some tools - PC, licences etc. However full development won't have started until Bungie inked the deal with Activision - less than 2.5 years ago (impressive). Prior to that a much smaller team will have put together schedules, budget plans, resource plans, concept stuff and a lot of contract / legal stuff. You can roll this initial effort into the resource ramp up once full development kicked off - you don't ramp up to 500 employees on day 1.
Put it all together and you get maybe $140M. Could be higher of course.
That is the cost to Bungie though - probably includes the 2 DLCs as well.
How much the game cost Activision? To develop: absolutely nothing! What they end up paying Bungie however .... who knows: $200 - $300M? Depends on the contract of course but - as long as the game sells - Bungie will be looking to make a profit. The amount will depend in part on sales (and review scores according to one post I read).
On top of this flexible cost there is, as you say, there is marketing - the "$500M" comment to shareholders bought lots of "free" publicity. And then server costs (rented?) and some customer support. Not a sub game however so probably just an extension of their usual CS. (Sony are clearly involved in the marketing - possibly a partnership of some sort).
As you say games are expensive.
Factor in that they only get say 50% of box sales (less on retail, more on line) and we should applaud Activision for taking the risk. And hope they recoup their investment - otherwise they won't develop another "something".
And fortunately with $500M sales to retail, $325M through sales at the 5 day mark though it is looking good for them getting to the "billion dollar" franchise mark they have talked about.
First comes a problem, then imagination, then inspiration then hard work and then solution!
You can't start a politically affected debate, and then say the topic is not about politics...