"Payday Developer Starbreeze Says Single-Player Games Don’t Necessarily Pay Salaries"

Kevan_f · April 2017

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/04/22/starbreeze-says-single-player-games-dont-pay-bills/#agurg1YHXvbIusKt.99

well, I'm not so sure.
I prefer a good sp/coop without unsustainable server costs,mthen pay for a dlc and enjoy it...instead of silly grind and p2w boosters to keep me online forcedly.
your ideas, monsieurs

alkarionlog · April 2017

sure crappy games don't pay salaries

Omali · April 2017

Translation: We don't have the capability to produce a highly profitable single player game and the people who did are no longer with the company. The fact that they point to Brothers' replayability over the fact that it's an incredibly niche title out of the gate for its low sales tells me that they have no idea what they're talking about. They're still publishing single player games, so there's that. Leave it to the people who know what they're doing.

rojoArcueid · April 2017

Of course, if you grab Payday and make it single player it wont pay any bills.

Make a good game and prove yourselves wrong.

That's how highly they think of their own talent... can't make a profitable single player game. It's easier to make a cheap online game and milk people with microtransactions (after lying about them anyway) and no real content.

CrazKanuk · April 2017

Nyctelios said:

Say that to Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy or Binding of Isaac devs.

I think you're missing the point. I think what is implied here is that it's not viable to make high-end single player games. It's great that games like Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy, etc. have a place in games today, but would you be satisfied if that's all there was to play? Would you be happy with 8-bit graphics for the rest of your life? Probably not. The reality of game development today is that graphics are FUCKING expensive!

The break even point on AAA games is in the millions of copies. I remember that the Tomb Raider reboot was a "failure" at 3+ million copies sold. That's retarded!

Indie's have a definite advantage over AAA publishers in this regard. They can churn out titles that cost $100k to make and actually profit from high sales of low $$$ games. So I think it's a good time for indie devs. For AAA devs, meh, maybe not so much.

Alverant · April 2017

You don't need photo-realistic graphics to make a good game. For years AAA games have been pushing graphics above all else. It's time they quit beating that horse and go on to other things.

rojoArcueid · April 2017

Alverant said:

You don't need photo-realistic graphics to make a good game. For years AAA games have been pushing graphics above all else. It's time they quit beating that horse and go on to other things.

Yeah, they expect their games to have longevity and be profitable when they rather waste their time and resources on high graphics and microtransactions instead of making good amounts of real content to keep the actual game moving forward, not just the characters.

cheyane · April 2017

Exactly look at how great a game Darkest Dungeon is and it is basically a side scroller. I was so surprised at the depth and intricacies for a game like that. Very good example of quality over graphics and the voice acting helped and I love how my occulist heals with his hands up in the air. Yes I have had the whole party die too very hard game and interesting. The quirks and characters changes make for an challenging game.

CrazKanuk · April 2017

cheyane said:

Exactly look at how great a game Darkest Dungeon is and it is basically a side scroller. I was so surprised at the depth and intricacies for a game like that. Very good example of quality over graphics and the voice acting helped and I love how my occulist heals with his hands up in the air. Yes I have had the whole party die too very hard game and interesting. The quirks and characters changes make for an challenging game.

This is an interesting point. Now, don't get me wrong, I love crowdfunded games and Darkest Dungeon has some interesting ideas. I mean the gameplay variety is fun (at first) and the art style is interesting and, probably, relatively inexpensive. However, what I find funny is that we'll criticize some titles for simply creating games with recycled enemies that are "bullet sponges", we give Darkest Dungeon a pass on this? As you progress, enemies become recycled and are scaled on stats over anything else. So the variety is actually an illusion. Same goes for Super Meat Boy. Sure!! You could probably spend hundreds of hours trying to get all the achievements, but why? In the end, they're games which are fun for a few hours and then become horribly repetitive, frustrating, and unfulfilling. That being said, we're now a culture who doesn't finish games anyway, right? So maybe we're looking for games which give us a few hours of entertainment, only to be tossed onto the pile of games we haven't finished.

1.7% of people have completed Darkest Dungeon on steam. Same for Super Meat Boy, about 1.6%. Compare that to the 20% or so of people who completed Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, or almost 30% of people who completed Fallout 4. I think it's very telling.

I can't really make any conclusions on any of that, but I think that it lends itself to the idea that maybe these indie games are just the pet rocks of our generation. Everyone has to have them, but nobody actually plays them.

maskedweasel · April 2017

I mean.. consoles routinely sell single player games that not only pay salaries but they sell hardware. Anyone that says that single player games aren't paying salaries aren't making games worth playing.

VengeSunsoar · April 2017

I wonder if Skyrim made any money.

Distopia · April 2017

CrazKanuk said:

I think you're missing the point. I think what is implied here is that it's not viable to make high-end single player games. It's great that games like Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy, etc. have a place in games today, but would you be satisfied if that's all there was to play? Would you be happy with 8-bit graphics for the rest of your life? Probably not. The reality of game development today is that graphics are FUCKING expensive!

The break even point on AAA games is in the millions of copies. I remember that the Tomb Raider reboot was a "failure" at 3+ million copies sold. That's retarded!

Indie's have a definite advantage over AAA publishers in this regard. They can churn out titles that cost $100k to make and actually profit from high sales of low $$$ games. So I think it's a good time for indie devs. For AAA devs, meh, maybe not so much.

Yeah the real point here is ongoing salary, even the devs of those titles mentioned are going to need to do something else to make an ongoing salary. UNless you're employed at a dev studio like Rockstar on team GTA or similarly high profile franchised product like TES ... The reality is most teams are largely let go after completing a AAA SP title. It's not ongoing work you can settle into for a lot of devs. You need an ongoing service for that like a highly active online component that sees regular DLC sales.

CrazKanuk · April 2017

Nyctelios said:

CrazKanuk said:

Nyctelios said:

Say that to Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy or Binding of Isaac devs.

I think you're missing the point. I think what is implied here is that it's not viable to make high-end single player games. It's great that games like Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy, etc. have a place in games today, but would you be satisfied if that's all there was to play? Would you be happy with 8-bit graphics for the rest of your life? Probably not. The reality of game development today is that graphics are FUCKING expensive!

The break even point on AAA games is in the millions of copies. I remember that the Tomb Raider reboot was a "failure" at 3+ million copies sold. That's retarded!

Indie's have a definite advantage over AAA publishers in this regard. They can churn out titles that cost $100k to make and actually profit from high sales of low $$$ games. So I think it's a good time for indie devs. For AAA devs, meh, maybe not so much.

Say that to CD Projekt Red

W3 sold like 10 million copies or something. Once you're done paying Sony, packagers, distributors, you get back like $15 per sale (excluding digital sales, especially from the steam clone they own). Their investment was around 80 million all-in. So, yes, that appears to be very lucrative, but this is all up-front money. It's very risky. You can't bank on creating the game of the year every single time you make a game. For instance, the Witcher series only sold 10 million copies TOTAL before W3. Had W3 been inline with what they saw for sales in the past, for previous games, then we would be talking about investing $80 for a $75 return. So you'd then be relying on DLC in order to make up the difference.

Digital delivery has reduced costs somewhat, but even that is like 30% (although CDPR owns GOG so it's like paying themselves with their own money). That being said, the digital delivery at least cuts out people like wholesalers who get the game at a discounted rate in the first place, which cuts down the margins.

So, yes, if you sell 10 million copies of your game then you're probably going to be doing fine. However, I think that's an anomaly. It doesn't prove your point.

laserit · April 2017

Distopia said:

CrazKanuk said:

I think you're missing the point. I think what is implied here is that it's not viable to make high-end single player games. It's great that games like Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy, etc. have a place in games today, but would you be satisfied if that's all there was to play? Would you be happy with 8-bit graphics for the rest of your life? Probably not. The reality of game development today is that graphics are FUCKING expensive!

The break even point on AAA games is in the millions of copies. I remember that the Tomb Raider reboot was a "failure" at 3+ million copies sold. That's retarded!

Indie's have a definite advantage over AAA publishers in this regard. They can churn out titles that cost $100k to make and actually profit from high sales of low $$$ games. So I think it's a good time for indie devs. For AAA devs, meh, maybe not so much.

Yeah the real point here is ongoing salary, even the devs of those titles mentioned are going to need to do something else to make an ongoing salary. UNless you're employed at a dev studio like Rockstar on team GTA or similarly high profile franchised product like TES ... The reality is most teams are largely let go after completing a AAA SP title. It's not ongoing work you can settle into for a lot of devs. You need an ongoing service for that like a highly active online component that sees regular DLC sales.

Just like a movie vs TV series sort of thing.

It's just like so many other things, including construction etc. etc.

When it's done, you move on to the next project. No more projects... no more job.

laserit · April 2017

Torval said:

DMKano said:

CrazKanuk said:

Nyctelios said:

Say that to Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy or Binding of Isaac devs.

I think you're missing the point. I think what is implied here is that it's not viable to make high-end single player games. It's great that games like Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy, etc. have a place in games today, but would you be satisfied if that's all there was to play? Would you be happy with 8-bit graphics for the rest of your life? Probably not. The reality of game development today is that graphics are FUCKING expensive!

The break even point on AAA games is in the millions of copies. I remember that the Tomb Raider reboot was a "failure" at 3+ million copies sold. That's retarded!

Indie's have a definite advantage over AAA publishers in this regard. They can churn out titles that cost $100k to make and actually profit from high sales of low $$$ games. So I think it's a good time for indie devs. For AAA devs, meh, maybe not so much.

Good points, just want to add why many AAA are not profitable at millions of sold copies is the marketing cost that can exceed the entire development cost several times

So for example Call of Duty Modern Warfare cost $50 million to develop, and $200 million to market.

Total cost $250 million and it payed off as they made over a billion in sales

Final fantasy 7 - $45mil dev cost, 100mil marketing

etc..

Overwatch is rumored at around 50mil dev and 100mil marketing cost for example

So marketing campaign is usually the most expensive part of AAA games

CoD Modern Warfare cost $50M to develop. It didn't cost $200M to market. They chose to spend that much on marketing. Huge huge difference. The industry needs to figure out the problem they've made for themselves. No sympathy here. Sometimes stupid just has to pay the consequence. I say this as someone who has their own industry (medical) idiocy it has to pay for. Sometimes you can't move on until you acknowledge there is a problem and start to deal with it or accept that you're going to keep paying for it.

Marketing costs are bloody ridiculous. The internet has been able to bring in an affordable alternative, but costs quickly rising with that format as well.

I hate thinking about how much money comes out of my pocket to pay for the marketing in the products I buy.

Wizardry · April 2017

I would say it is mostly luck,like maybe 90+% luck.

Farmville was NEVER even a bad game,it was pure garbage,yet made millions.
It does bother me to see a developer that does put in some quality effort and does not get rewarded,then some mickey mouse effort makes tons of money.
Obviously luck can be further improved via marketing and the platform you deliver the games on and the media outlet you use.
I don't condone giving a game ANY push that does not deserve it,hence Farmville never deserved any notoriety.

gervaise1 · April 2017

Basically: spend more money on the extra stuff needed to turn a single player into a (equivalent quality) multi-player,

Result: people have to hangout on the developers servers.

Think of the servers as a "store" - result potential purchasing (monetization) opportunities.

CrazKanuk · April 2017

laserit said:

Torval said:

DMKano said:

CrazKanuk said:

Nyctelios said:

Say that to Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy or Binding of Isaac devs.

I think you're missing the point. I think what is implied here is that it's not viable to make high-end single player games. It's great that games like Shovel Knight, Undertale, Super Meat Boy, etc. have a place in games today, but would you be satisfied if that's all there was to play? Would you be happy with 8-bit graphics for the rest of your life? Probably not. The reality of game development today is that graphics are FUCKING expensive!

The break even point on AAA games is in the millions of copies. I remember that the Tomb Raider reboot was a "failure" at 3+ million copies sold. That's retarded!

Indie's have a definite advantage over AAA publishers in this regard. They can churn out titles that cost $100k to make and actually profit from high sales of low $$$ games. So I think it's a good time for indie devs. For AAA devs, meh, maybe not so much.

Good points, just want to add why many AAA are not profitable at millions of sold copies is the marketing cost that can exceed the entire development cost several times

So for example Call of Duty Modern Warfare cost $50 million to develop, and $200 million to market.

Total cost $250 million and it payed off as they made over a billion in sales

Final fantasy 7 - $45mil dev cost, 100mil marketing

etc..

Overwatch is rumored at around 50mil dev and 100mil marketing cost for example

So marketing campaign is usually the most expensive part of AAA games

CoD Modern Warfare cost $50M to develop. It didn't cost $200M to market. They chose to spend that much on marketing. Huge huge difference. The industry needs to figure out the problem they've made for themselves. No sympathy here. Sometimes stupid just has to pay the consequence. I say this as someone who has their own industry (medical) idiocy it has to pay for. Sometimes you can't move on until you acknowledge there is a problem and start to deal with it or accept that you're going to keep paying for it.

Marketing costs are bloody ridiculous. The internet has been able to bring in an affordable alternative, but costs quickly rising with that format as well.

I hate thinking about how much money comes out of my pocket to pay for the marketing in the products I buy.

Remember when the Internet was going to "level the playing field"? Ahhhhhhh, 90's, I miss you!

Kevan_f · April 2017

I can admit that mmo inevitably have high costs for server management and continuous patching to renew the meta...
but nor mmo nor sp nor coop absolutely require unbearable costs.
games like minecraft or terraria or starbound show that a game is more than marketing and graphics.

most devs and sh simply go for the easy, streamlined way. but don t forget it's just one of the choices..not the only

ZionBane · April 2017

The main problem with an Amazing Single Player game, is that,. often, it's a pity to play such a great game alone..

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