Slashdot Mirror
Cost of Game Development is 'Crazy' Says EA
GamesIndustry.biz has the word from Alan Tascan, general manager of EA's Montreal studio, who has gone on record saying that development costs are 'crazy' in this next-gen world. From the article: "When asked whether he'd agree that it's larger companies like EA which are driving bigger game budgets, Tascan replied, 'I think a lot of [other companies] are spending even more money. It's people who want that, it's not EA per se ... I said to some of the guys here, "The gamer is not buying lines of code; you have to promise him enough entertainment for him to put his hand in his pocket and buy the game." It's a lot of money, so you need to give him a show, and we're just here to deliver the show.'"
"It's people who want that, it's not EA per say..."
Umm, it's "per se".
I realize this is how different flavours of languages propagate over the ages, but I'm all in favor of keeping English as unified as possible.
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
"The graphics and gameplay show only extremely minor improvements year on year"
Graphics are easy to see without playing. However, I don't see how you can deduce the gameplay characteristics of a game series you've never played. As a semi-regular Madden buyer, I'll address the issue anyways. Those improvements are incremental but if you look at how long it ususally takes to develop a sequel to a game (2-3 years) and what Madden has done in that amount of time, the changes are typically quite drastic. That would explain where the money went. I still maintain that I'd rather play Madden 07 than Madden 06 with 07's roster and that's been true every year except for IMHO some exceptionally poor showings from 2001 to 2003 (in Madden years).
- Unrealistic schedules: A marketing dweeb decides when a game should be released without taking into consideration the developer's experience level, console manufacturing requirements, and whether enough QA will be available to adequately test the title. As a lead QA tester, I routinely add two months to the schedule and my time estimates are usually 90% correct.
- Bonus Structure: The producer's bonus is tied to the unrealistic schedule and a lot of decisions are made to compromises the game so the producer can get his bonus. As a lead QA tester, I was routinely accused of denying a producer his "hard earned" bonus.
- Unrestrained QA Overtime: If a game is not properly scheduled and managed, a tremendous amount of QA overtime will go into trying to save the game and, almost always, is shipped regardless of the final quality. As a lead QA tester, I worked 28 days straight on my last project because the schedule was cut by one-third and I was not notified until half-way through the project.
I'm not holding my breath that the video game industry will one day figure out that there's a saner method for developing a video game that doesn't blow the schedule and the budget like a bad lunch at Taco Bell.Bah... it doesn't have to be that expensive. I've plugged them before here and I'll plug them again because I think that the company is amazing: Stardock. They're a tiny, independent developer/publisher about 30 minutes from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Their most notable game is Galactic Civilizations 2, which includes 3D modeling, professional music score and sound effects, an insane amount of detail, excellent replayability, challenging AI, and very balanced gameplay. When I think "independent game developer", lame little Flash-based games are what come to mind. However GalCiv2 *fully* competes with anything EA has ever put out. Stardock also has a very "pro-customer" stance on copy protection too.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Check out http://finance.google.com/finance?q=ERTS and look at EA's financials. This is the real scandal here. They brought in about $3 Billion, yes, Billion with a B, dollars in 2006. $3,000,000,000. That is a cool pile of cash. And then they spent just under half of that to make their product. Thats a lot of dough!