What do you know about games?

[Antwan]

Hey guys, maybe someone could educate me on the process.
I was just thinking about how Skate 3 was rushed.
I'm not sure what all we missed or if it would have made a difference in sales or not.
It got me thinking about the process in general though.
How does one make a game? To be more specific, what does it cost?
Is it all about the physical case and CD? My assumption is that these developers have the equipment that creates the game for them. That it was a mental effort. If this is the case, why do game companies go bankrupt or fire teams that work for them?
Why are the majors pushing so hard to release games by a certain deadline?
Couldn't they just wait an extra year and hit the same date with the completed product?
It just seems very strange to me, like this process could be fixed easily.
That's going off of what I believe to be true anyway.
I mean once you have already purchased the equipment to create said game, what are you really losing?
I assume with larger groups like EA that they would already have that equipment.
Are you making back the money for physical copies?
If you know anything about it I would be interested to know.
It just seems dumb to me.
I have to be wrong right?

[EmmitBrown]

It costs man-hours. A game like Skate. will never have the budget (wwhich in turn means less staff, less time to complete/polish, less absolutely everything) of a game like GTA. Deadlines are for revenue. Shareholders want them to meet expectations and the quarterly guidance might have certain game releases baked in...also, putting it off a year means your total earnings for the year would be lower by whatever that game would bring if it were released on schedule..

[Seanne1986]

What Emmit said.

In two months I'll actually start studying programming, web developement and computer engineering, and after that I'm gonna apply for a 1 year course to get a degree in Developers of Embedded Systems. And once I've done that I'm gonna study Game Design. And making a game is definitely not just copy and paste and make a different UI (User Interface) it's so much more than that.

Lets take Skate and EA for example. Sure EA could hire a team, give them the Frostbite 3 game engine and hope they create a massive hit. But it's a big risk in doing that. First of all is the genre worth the money the have to put in?

Now what is costing EA money you say since they already have the equipment?

* Man hours.

* Other Equipment because shit might break or get replaced by something better.

* Groceries and chefs, cause people eat lunch right?

* Marketing cost shit loads. Imagine you want to have your 30 second commercial on the tv on 1 channel. Now let's say that cost X amount of money which is alot btw. Now imagine the marketing game developers make. For instance Rockstar and GTA V? With flyers, paintings on buildings, tv commercials in alot of countries etc etc.

* Staff for different roles. Sure you might work in an indie studio where you don't need a staff of 500, 1 guy might do 3 roles instead of just 1. i've learned through research that it's totally fine to know a little about everything. But it's so much better to specialize in 1 area than being jack of all trades. The more staff you hire that specialize in different roles the better the quality of the game (graphic, physics, design, art etc) But ofc the more people you hire, the higher the expense. (I found this site when I wanted to find out what kinda roles there are in game development so I could have it easier understanding what I wanna become. I think I wanna become a game artist btw http://creativeskillset.org/creative...ames/job_roles )

* Creating a game isn't a copy and paste process. You gotta make stuff from scratch (Most of the time anyway) and that shit takes time.

* Now I'm not 100% sure why developers/publishers have deadlines. But I assume they are there for to gain as much money as they can.
Lets take GTA 5 again for reference. They playerbase or fanbase if you will already know that Rockstar put out quality games. So Rockstar have that extra time to polish and make a game without people getting bored of waiting.
Like if I saw a trailer for a game that were just announced and looked badass but took say 7 years to make, I might gone bored of it by the time of release, hence the studio/publisher loosing money.

[replicant]

What would Skate 3 have gained with a bit more time investment?
What the time would have given it is the potential for more efficient coding (think larger environments, bigger cap elements, smoother/consistent animations, etc) and the inclusion of more features within the offline and online aspects of the game.

What does a game cost to be made?
This is completely subjective to the game being worked on. For example, GTA V took roughly 4-5 years of development, 1000+ staff members, and 250+ million dollars to create. Minecraft for example was roughly 2-3 years of development by 1 person (2 additional at various times and later a team of roughly 12) along with a budget of less than $50,000 (since nobody took salaries). Banished was in development for roughly 7 years, coded by 1 person, and cost under $5,000 not counting time spent. To create a game these days can be a very cost effective endeavor if you have the know-how and the time to spend with it. Many mobile games for example are made by roughly 20 person teams in under 6 months for under $20,00 (counting licensing kits, but not counting salaries).

Why do companies go bankrupt or fire entire dev teams?
It boils downs to time invested, budget allocation, unnecessary spending, and Gold Revenue (money made after game release). Many of the companies who go bankrupt severely overestimate the buy in of their product. We'll use GTA V for example: In industry cost per dvd/br of a game its around $12 which covers printing, distribution, licensing, etc. Now Rockstar has to sale these copies through a distributor at a reduced cost, then they are in turn sold to a retail establishment for more of a mark up (most games you buy are marked up 300%-400%). We'll say that Rockstar sells each copy to a distro for $30 ($18 profit for them per disc), the distro sells it to GameStop for $45 and GS sells it to you for $60. This means that for RS to break even on GTA V they have to sell 8.3 million physical copies. Last I knew they had sold just over 6 million physical copies out of the shipped 33 million plus this figure does not account for the Digital copies sold. From a money perspective they actually made 220 million in the first 3 months after release which is partly why they posted a 30 million loss that quarter. In the following 3 months thanks to more unit sales and in-game monetization they started to profit.

After GTA V was finished however you start to see people let go from the dev team and various associated teams. This sounds incredibly bad, but it happens with every gaming project. The people let go tend to be temp hires in coding, art, music, and other less core departments. This will fill a gap of 20%-40% of the initial work force. *IF* the parent company is looking to maximize profits even more they will sell off the associated studio or simply close it's doors. Sometimes a rival company will make an offer that can't be refused just to close down the competition. When I was working with Z-Axis Ltd we were bought out by Activision and shutdown almost immediately. This way THPS and Mat Hoffman games had no competition from the makers of Thrasher and Dave Mirra. Business as usual, but shitty business nonetheless.

The same loss of personnel can happen if for instance GTA V had totally bombed. If the 250 million investment in developing GTA V had turned into the game only selling 100k to 1 million copies... You can imagine how many people would have lost their livelihood. If you want to see a prime example of not delivering on an investment that led to a company collapse just read up on 38 Studios. It is a festering pile of waste both on the company management side and government of Rhode Island side. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning by them is still a damn good game and the MMORPG they were working on called "Copernicus" had a lot of potential.

Why are the majors pushing so hard to release games by a certain deadline?
Every company of size has a board that they answer to. These investors want to make money and if the company doesn't deliver then heads roll and money is lost. When a company comes across the "Golden Goose" game, then they want to seize upon it and milk it for all it's worth. EA with the Madden/FIFA/etc franchise, Capcom with Street Fighter, Activision with COD, etc are prime examples. As long as mindless drones will pay full retail for a slight bump in a game and at times a downgrade they will continue to fulfill your need. They could wait an extra time, but they might lose their window of opportunity to relieve you of your cash. If customers show restraint, then titles will slow down (or stop) and some companies actually have a thought that they want to make a quality title which slows the process down at times.

I mean once you have already purchased the equipment to create said game, what are you really losing?
I assume with larger groups like EA that they would already have that equipment.
Are you making back the money for physical copies?
The thing you are missing there is that they have all of the software/hardware needed for creating the title you like. Now that the initial heavy investment is out of the way they can just crank out game after game using the same formula for less investment. Using GTA V again if you think about the 250 million used to create new tools and such for creating the game... That cost is now trivial and when you make GTA VI and so on it allows for more profit which makes your heads happy with the bottom line. The issue that is presenting itself is that you are thinking from the perspective of a youthful gamer wanting to play the things he enjoys and not from the standpoint of a rich businessman who just happens to be invested into a company that produces video games. You want fun and enjoyment when you look at your monitor or tv and he finds the same thing by looking at his bank account. Rarely is a company investor, CEO, president, etc a gamer at heart because that tends to interrupt the flow of cash.

It's an annoying fucking dance between developers, producers, legal, finance, talent, and inspiration. I can count on one hand the number of people in the major industry I respect from a business & gamer standpoint.

[DaaGooN]

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs

[ILL NODERUS]

Good read Replicant, it was very interesting.

[Antwan]

Yeah I'm with ILL, eye opening read from you guys.

Marketing seems optional, but probably only needed for the first release I would think you could have like one ad somewhere going forward if you were a huge success but when I think back to those skate 2 trailers dropping, so hyped.
I knew I was in for anything moving forward, walked a couple miles to get skate 3 on release day, still have to interest the masses though.
Makes sense about needing more staff too. Obviously get more done if everyone has their zones.
Probably in part not wanting to believe anything was right about dismissing blackbox.
Still one thing I don't get though..
Why was Skate 1 taken offline? Lack of population is unrealistic to back by having a digital sale on consoles? They appear to have pushed skate 3 a couple weeks back, was on sale.
I get that skate 3 is populated, but if you have money coming in I would think it would just feed right back into keeping those servers up and if not you could just proceed to put skate 2 & 3 on sale as they already did. Something doesn't add up, likely just my perspective as Rep mentioned.

[EmmitBrown]

why would they continue to put money back into something that will not continue to earn any worthwhile revenue? the return on investment will be better elsewhere.

[Antwan]

Yeah I guess that's true. Non renewing too.
Who controls digital sales anyway is it just Sony and Microsoft or does EA get a cut for sales?
Come to think of it, does Sony even sell digital copies? I wouldn't know.
You're probably right though, even if there was funding to put the servers back up for how long really?
EA likely doesnt care that much about the skate community.
I do wonder what enough activity means. What is the required amount of players to keep a server up?
Leading me to, is it that expensive to run the server? They sure shut it down quick.

[EmmitBrown]

activity doesn't matter as long as there's a revenue stream. gta has cash cards, cod has all the dlc packs, a lot of games have season passes (whether for content or strictly for online access), etc. the servers are part of what you're paying for. skate. never had great numbers so a smaller number of dlc sales. the budget was never gonna be there for a very lengthy server life.

[Antwan]

So I've been getting pretty into basketball simulation games, lately it's been NBA 2K though.
I started thinking and noticed something. NBA LIVE hasn't been dropping yearly like other games.
Yet they came out with a next gen release, come to find EA gave them more time to get their shit together, about 2 years!
There's clearly competition for NBA Live with NBA 2K, some even say they prefer 2K.
Seemed like Skate didn't really have competition, so if they needed more time why didnt they get it like NBA live? Breathin life into dead stuff I know but it struck me as odd anyway.

[PoppySquidJr]

So I've been getting pretty into basketball simulation games, lately it's been NBA 2K though.
I started thinking and noticed something. NBA LIVE hasn't been dropping yearly like other games.
Yet they came out with a next gen release, come to find EA gave them more time to get their shit together, about 2 years!
There's clearly competition for NBA Live with NBA 2K, some even say they prefer 2K.
Seemed like Skate didn't really have competition, so if they needed more time why didnt they get it like NBA live? Breathin life into dead stuff I know but it struck me as odd anyway.

They took the time they needed on NBA Live because 2K WAS Competition, and 2K was blowing it out of the water. They wanted to compete with a hot market, and needed to take time *to* compete.

Skate on the other hand, having no competition, reads off to the industry as a lack of interest in skateboarding. EA reads that as a decline of profitability from a skating game. Bazoom.

[Antwan]

Can still use this thread I guess.

I was struck with a bit of confusion today..
Some Arcade games that I've purchased are no longer accessible?
How is this even possible??
So I found and read a few forums..
The licenses expire, games are removed, Period?
It's as if the huge corporations MS and maybe even Sony don't take responsibility.
This is a real drag..
Not just my money out of pocket but some games are digital exclusives.
To think they may be gone forever one day sucks.
Isn't this the digital age? Freakin a..
Microsoft even went as far as adding features like pinning things to your dashboard.
So that you can download again later.
This license thing however, renders this feature useless in a matter of time.
Here's what I was greeted with today;
"This game is no longer available and has been removed from your pins."
Talk about feeling jipped..