What most of the developer arguments around this fail to mention is that it costs a lot to make AAA games, but the entry point to making an indie game is much lower than it used to be, and many of those are better ‘games’ than the expensive to produce stuff.
And the reason AAA games cost that much is that big studios locked themselves into a scope creep driven industry wide death spiral. Most of the extra cost does nothing to improve the game.
Sometimes the big trees need to burn so the forest can thrive.
Scope creep is one thing. Absurd dead lines cost alot too. Marketing cries for a release date so they can put it in their pr articles.
Indie games just slap early access on it and go by its done when its done. Plus continouous features etc years after initial release. The success formula Blizzard once had.
Turns out putting more stressed devs onto a project, more micromanaging bosses does not increase development speed.
CEOs aren’t interested in making and selling things that people actually want. They’re just parasites trying to pump and dump the stock. Every decision makes sense when you see it as just trying to impress investors.
Much of the money spent goes into marketing, not even development.
Now Indies don’t even come close to that with their marketing spending. To be fair the overall majority of Indies disappears into obscurity and never makes it to the top.
Nobody is forcing them to spend a shitzillion dollars and ten years on this stuff, we were doing year long development times on far lower budgets back in the late 2000s and there’s some real gold in there.
And no one is arguing that one shouldn’t buy Indie games and that there aren’t incredibly fun and well made indie games.
But people also like to pretend that every big studio just makes expensive shite. There are also a lot of huge scale games that are still made with the same amount of passion, at least on dev side. Warhorse Studio, the ones behind the Kingdom Come series are a very passionate studio that make extensive games that are years in development. It’s absolutely fair for them to want adequate payment.
Even Rockstar Games, who are criticised a lot for the scope of their games, usually does deliver games that were crafted with an incredible love for detail and storytelling. There are a lot of very valid reasons to criticise them but let’s not pretend they underdeliver.
I’d rather have big games be more expensive than smaller. I also want smaller games to thrive. And I also like that there are devs trying to fit in the AA area in between. Those are not mutually exclusive.
And if a big game is shite or overpriced or simply something I don’t like, I won’t buy it. Or on sale, a year later.
Also how gaming is so massive now that numbers we consider pathetic and failures used to be what the blockbusters sold. The issue, as always, is mismanagement…like this shit new standard of half the budget being purely for marketing (or even worse splitting 80%+ of the budget across marketing and celebrity actors), or exclusively attempting to copy already saturated markets like BR/extraction/generic live service time sinks and pointless giant open worlds.
What most of the developer arguments around this fail to mention is that it costs a lot to make AAA games, but the entry point to making an indie game is much lower than it used to be, and many of those are better ‘games’ than the expensive to produce stuff.
And the reason AAA games cost that much is that big studios locked themselves into a scope creep driven industry wide death spiral. Most of the extra cost does nothing to improve the game.
Sometimes the big trees need to burn so the forest can thrive.
Scope creep is one thing. Absurd dead lines cost alot too. Marketing cries for a release date so they can put it in their pr articles.
Indie games just slap early access on it and go by its done when its done. Plus continouous features etc years after initial release. The success formula Blizzard once had.
Turns out putting more stressed devs onto a project, more micromanaging bosses does not increase development speed.
CEOs aren’t interested in making and selling things that people actually want. They’re just parasites trying to pump and dump the stock. Every decision makes sense when you see it as just trying to impress investors.
It’s like nobody is reading The Mythical Man-Month anymore…
Absurd dead lines are partially a result of scope creep. Games that are well planned and focused don’t need 10 years to make right.
Or thirteen…
Well you only need to rush it, and suddenly the third rewrite (under insane pressure ofc) might bring you to 10 years…
Much of the money spent goes into marketing, not even development.
Now Indies don’t even come close to that with their marketing spending. To be fair the overall majority of Indies disappears into obscurity and never makes it to the top.
Nobody is forcing them to spend a shitzillion dollars and ten years on this stuff, we were doing year long development times on far lower budgets back in the late 2000s and there’s some real gold in there.
That market segment is not the triple A segment though.
And no one is arguing that one shouldn’t buy Indie games and that there aren’t incredibly fun and well made indie games.
But people also like to pretend that every big studio just makes expensive shite. There are also a lot of huge scale games that are still made with the same amount of passion, at least on dev side. Warhorse Studio, the ones behind the Kingdom Come series are a very passionate studio that make extensive games that are years in development. It’s absolutely fair for them to want adequate payment.
Even Rockstar Games, who are criticised a lot for the scope of their games, usually does deliver games that were crafted with an incredible love for detail and storytelling. There are a lot of very valid reasons to criticise them but let’s not pretend they underdeliver.
I’d rather have big games be more expensive than smaller. I also want smaller games to thrive. And I also like that there are devs trying to fit in the AA area in between. Those are not mutually exclusive.
And if a big game is shite or overpriced or simply something I don’t like, I won’t buy it. Or on sale, a year later.
Also how gaming is so massive now that numbers we consider pathetic and failures used to be what the blockbusters sold. The issue, as always, is mismanagement…like this shit new standard of half the budget being purely for marketing (or even worse splitting 80%+ of the budget across marketing and celebrity actors), or exclusively attempting to copy already saturated markets like BR/extraction/generic live service time sinks and pointless giant open worlds.
I.e. higher prices are justified in cost, but not product quality.