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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.'"
There are always going to be two kinds of developers:
The developers who are creative and try to build new, interesting games every time in the interest of having fun and helping others have fun.
And the developers who are in an 'arms race' to make the most flashy eye candy possible in the name of capturing market share.
Gosh, wonder where EA fits in? I have a lot of respect for the way Shiny produced a decade of great games. As did Microprose. Blizzard is arguably doing the same thing now. Nintendo has spent a decade being a developer of quality.
EA, well, they're a good distributor. Sometimes........... erm. No. Never mind. Their games have gotten better implemented recently, but I've never played a groundbreaking EA game. So yeah, since they're just racing the competition to build the best game within the lines given to them, it's going to be expensive. And I have zero pity on them for high dev costs; that's the segment of the market they are going after...
My little site.
Statements like these give me hope for the success of Nintendo. From what I've heard, it is far easier and cheaper to code for the Wii (and similarly the DS/GBA) than for the "true" next-gen systems. Perhaps while the large companies are making the blockbuster big-budget games, Nintendo will attract the more indy, affordable games. Then when people get more accustomed to the PS3 and 360, (perhaps) costs will come down enough to make it more reasonable.
Or maybe Xbox Live and the equivalent for the PS3 will just get an explosion of smaller games, and there will be just a small number of blockbusters coming out on the system proper.
What are we talking about? $10m, $50m, $100m, $150m?
According to Mark Rein Gears of War had a $10m pricetag.
And what would be even more interesting was a breakdown of the costs. For example, is it less expensive to use original music or licensed music.
The average blockbuster (meaning one that is intended to sell lots of tickets vs a niche market) movie budget is $100-$200 million. Game development cost are in the $10-$20 million dollar range. Game profits sometimes dwarf movie profits. Though I don't think game developers are going to be spending $200 million anytime soon (except for DNF) they will continue to make a profit regardless. The real interesting thing that is going to happen soon will be a break from the idea that every game has to be a blockbuster. More and more game studios are understanding a niche hit can be just as profitable as a blockbuster. Expect to see more small budget games even ones developed for the next gen consoles.
I really don't understand where the money goes for the annual sports game like FIFA ## & Madden ## (although I've not actually played Madden). The graphics and gameplay show only extremely minor improvements year on year, yet they claim development costs of many millions.
So where does the money actually go?
If EA is worried about the cost of game development, then maybe they should start focusing on producing quality games. They are repeatedly getting slammed in reviews with drivel like NBA Live 2007. If they didn't push out another iteration of every franchise each year, development could focus on building a truly blockbuster title, rather than a few updates with each release.
Ubisoft has thrown their weight behind the Wii, and embraced the much cheaper development costs there. They aren't ignoring the PS3 and 360, but those Wii titles will help cushion their bottom line a bit. EA doesn't seem to have paid as much attention to the Wii when it comes to unique IP.
Is there the equivalent of "clip-art" for game studios? If I'm buying a racing game, I don't need to know that the makers personally did the buildings or the trees. Buildings are buildings, trees are trees. In film, there's a lot of specialization that exists: for example, you can buy pre-rendered explosions to put in your movie. A better example might be companies that specialize in making CGI oceans and water. A lot of movies with CGI oceans rely on them to deliver that look.
Could game companies do something like this? Every game is going to have proprietary assets like the protagonist, specific types of giant robots, monsters, vampires, what have you. But does some of this info get shared even between sub-studios? How many times is AI code re-written? (That may be a bad example, as AI code may or may not be part of the engine). Can we just use the same Enzo Ferrari model in each racing game? Do we really need 7 different companies perfecting how the car looks?
I don't think this will lead to homogeny in games. If anything, it will free up designers to be more creative and think about the important things in the game (gameplay, control, fun) as opposed to how accurate Scenery Team 3's rendition of this waterfall is.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I have to wonder how much EA's reputation for overworking their employees has to do with this. I'm not Brooks or anything, but I get the sense that the productivity of a developer increases more quickly than the pay that said developer will expect. With a bad reputation like that, they probably have a harder time securing as many really skilled employees, since good workers can more easily get a better job somewhere else. In short, they end up paying more money for less work by using more freshouts and fewer gurus.
I've dabbled in game development a little, but I could never take the plunge and do it full time. Something about being able to go home and see my family every night and being able to go to sleep without so much eye strain that I have a migraine.
:)
:)
But I do have a theory about the games industry...
Let's forget about all the hype of next generation blah blah blah. Look at the differences between game generations. Between SNES and PSX, between PSX and PS2/Xbox, etc. The graphical jump has been undeniably great. Now we're getting closer and closer to reall life. And it's taking longer and longer to make games more realistic. But here's the catch: in 5-10 years, that will probably go the other direction, making it easier ot make really good looking games. Think about the advances in 3D Modeling in the last 10 years. I worked with Max and Maya when they were both in infancy and I'm blown away at hte ease of some of the things that you can do now. How long is it goig to be before it just CAN'T look any better that what you have? I can't see any reason why within 5 years you won't be able to tell the difference between the real world and a game.
My theory is that in no more then 10 years, making something look like real life will be easy enough that it won't take a team of people with art degrees to do it. That's what the industry demands, and that's what's driving the technology. Soon you should be able to pick from a library of cars and buildings and people that can interact and get destroyed in a realistic fasion and will be pluggable into any environment. People will start whole businesses providing content like this and it will bring costs down for everyone for once LOL
Anyway, maybe it's the ramblings of a madman, but maybe there's a little hint of the future there.
I'm gonna go back to coding my own Final Fantasy VI clone now
-Jason
I worked for several years on mods for Neverwinter Nights, getting my games on some magazine DVDs, winning awards, and so on. The graphics were not the best aspect, even when released, but it was fun to play and it made for an interesting hobby.
For the last couple years, I've been planning a campaign for the sequel. Neverwinter Nights 2 has far better graphics and tremendous flexibility when it comes to designing areas. Such advances have a cost, however. File sizes are much larger, area creation can take ten times as long, and creating custom models is much more complicated.
Don't get me wrong - I love the new features and style. Improved graphics can make for a better gaming experience and a greater emotional impact for players. As with all things, though, there are trade-offs. I suspect we'll see more divisions between the "fun, simple, and cheap" games like Bejeweled versus the big budget games like Gears of War. There will be audiences for both.
This article has absolutely nothing to do with the Wii. Madden for the wii is still madden and people are obsessed over it graphically just as much as the other consoles and it wasn't like it was cheaper to produce the wii version than the other versions.
The simple truth of the matter is developers need to make games. That is all. Some people like wii games, some people don't. The wii is a new product in nintendos linup and i'm sure it will do good but it isn't the be all end all that people preach around here.
I like my graphics, i don't mind some cutscenes as games are sometimes stories that need some telling as well. You can preach the wii all you want, but the wii is a console, not a game.
The real problem with the media market in general (not just games) is public companies having to increase there bottom line as if we are just a product consumer. Most gamers don't play games because we need to, but because we want to and if EA doesn't make games we want to play it won't matter which console they prefer to support, how much money they dump into or whos name they get on it.. It will still suck.
EA is like the motor giants of detroit, they had some good linups but thought Americans would buy crap just because of name alone. Forget quality, forget character, forget slick design, feedback and personality. Its about profit. It costs money to make money and if you don't like that, then leave. Maybe EA needs some new management, someone who understands what a gamer feels when he/she is in the passion of the moment.
I like the small shops because they do one thing and do it well. Epic turns out one hit after another because they stick to what they're good at and they sell the technology to others so they can build what they're good at as well.
The problem with EA is they're a company who believes that buying up markets creates demand and that is where they will fail. You don't own me EA and thus i don't own anything from you.
Introversion just released it's third hit in a row (Defcon) and their games are better than most of the high-budget ones I've tried.
aoeu
If I built a computer at that price I'd put at least 512MB RAM in it. PS3 only has 256MB. It's pretty worthless as a desktop computer. It will be a long time before much has been ported to cell, so it's pretty worthless as anything but a Blu-Ray player or a game console. No more than 5% of the population of the US will give a fuck about Blu-Ray before 2010 so that's pretty fucking irrelevant. And the PS3 will offer only aesthetic improvements over, say, the Xbox 360.
Or in other, simpler words, it's a crap general purpose computer, so you can't use that as an argument. 256MB isn't enough to run your automated ass-scratcher, let alone anything real.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For heaven's sake, I never said they were mutually exclusive. I said that the effort poured into graphics is producing diminishing returns. (Half-Life 1 being an excellent example of why I'm right.)
1. I would wager, the use of licensed code probably contributes to better games, overall, than the practice of writing the engine in house. Unless you need that next-generation engine that nobody else can offer, it's probably cheaper to license the engine from somebody else. The dev time saved alone is probably worth the cost, and time not spent developing the engine can be put to better use solving other conundrums.
2. Daikatana died less because of how long it took, and more because, by the time it finally was released, it did nothing that other games hadn't already done better. The problem was not the farcically long development time, but that the development time hadn't produced a good enough game to warrant the time spent, let alone the ludicrous hype.
3. There's almost never enough time. Unless you have a guaranteed seller on your hands (instead of just the latest iteration in the race for totally immersive graphics), you simply can't take as long as you like. Games have competitors, and the audience is fickle beside.
Canthros
I wouldn't, for sure. I just wish that XBox and Playstation games didn't focus on online multiplayer over splitscreen multiplayer. An expanded multiplayer world is the most important aspect of buying a game for me, and I hate Halo. God, those games are so freaking slow, not to mention that the multiplayer world isn't nearly as customizable as some older FPS games I remember (*cough* Goldeneye/Perfect Dark). Even PD-Zero isn't as robust as the original. I want challenges. Coop play. And every aspect of multiplayer battles to be customizable from bot strength, numbers, team size, weapons, maps, game style. And I want it to not freak out when the "random weapons" happens to set smoke bombs as the starting weapon, and bots set them off all over the map. Ooops. So if that means backing off of graphics? Do it. Oh well. Guess I'll stick with my 4 games that actually provide customizable playability and multiplayer challenges. Also? Hey Nintendo - please give me a "traditional characters" game with multiplayer, and I don't mean MarioKart, Party, or anything like that.
Your complaints about beating a dead horse aside (I'm adressing both Brkello and DeadChobi), My initial comment was a response to EA complaints about how they only pull in 45% profit after development and marketing instead of 65% (actual numbers may vary). It was my way of saying "Too bad EA; prices are jacked up all over the place, and the last place I want to hear from about it is a megacorporation who's bottom line business practices and profit before peole attitude jacked up all the prices in the first place!" You guys chose to view that as yet another console bitch session, and responded with the standard ilk. IOW, you were modded offtopic for missing the topic. I hope that clarifies things for both of you.
Oh yeah, and the $699 was a typo.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Another example is C&C generals. Command and Conquer was one of the oldest and best RTS games out there. Red Alert was crazy intelligent and well rounded. Then you got generals. That buggy piece of shit, with the crappiest (still years after release) netcode and a myrad of design changes and bugs. They totally broke the whole c&c franchise by developing a whole new story for the universe. That game should not even be called c&c. Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia entry:
I mean how fucking apathetic do you have to be to not even bother fixing MAJOR exploits in the game?
EA is simply the worst about not fixing bugs. It seems as if they have a memory of 1 year. If a game is passed one year release, its time to either a) tack on an expansion b) make a sequel or c) bargain bin it and stop all development.
Like I am having trouble believing that you are not some sort of shill for EA. They ruined so many good games. UO is another one, where they decided just realeasing new art every year or so and charging an extra $59.99 for it was a valid way to "improve" the game. Simcity too. The graphics on simcity 4000 are SO BUGGY, that I had to hunt around and try multiple point realeases of nvidia video drivers before I wouldnt get crazy random graphics corruption happening in that game. They had some good ideas with the whole multiple cities on a continent theme, but If I cant see it because of graphics bugs then wtf good is it?? This is also on multiple machines with both ATI and NVIDIA cards. You can get it running if you find the exact magic combination of drivers and details/resolutions but come on! EA is a huge company! Maybe thats why they make such shit now, too much beurocracy, not enough risk taking.
I just remembered one last thing I absolutely hate about ea's business practices. Every time I logged into BF2, I would get an ad for some other stupid EA game or bf2 pay for mod. Showing ads to me in a game that I have PURCHASED is crossing the line.
Now thats 4 games, and I didnt actually play the games you mentioned. Seems like alot of people (usually on consoles so what do they know?) forgive them for various UI bugs that I would consider unacceptable in a gold game. I don't play sports games but I have heard them roundly condemed by everyone who does. Fuck EA. They took their slogan too literally and "challenged" good gameplay, exsisting franchises and good quality code. From what I have read about the practices at that company re developers, I am not surprised in the slightest that they produce the most buggy unplayable games I have ever tried to play.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I understand your point, but don't discount the difficulty of writing the games of yesteryear. With those early systems (Atari 2600), you had to output your graphics by twiddling bits during each raster scan line, no mode19h bitmapped memory, no DirectX buffers, and definitely no glBegin(); glAddTriangle() type calls. No function calls at all, just pushing bytes with assembly (if you're lucky) around. And do it in 1K or less of memory.
Games of today are much more complex, but the 'Invention of invention' was made decades ago, so we expect a lot more out of the industry today. Barnes & Noble or Amazon have shelves of books explaining how to write 2D/3D/board games, which is a huge benefit over the 'old days'. Pre-1990 you almost had to grow up in Silicon Valley so your dad could show you why you use "poke 3e, ff" to clear the screen on your Apple II. Now you can buy books showing you how to build your logic loop, collision detection, etc. And that's for the 'hardcore' coders who want to know the mechanics. Everyone else can just download/buy a game engine and make function calls.
I recently developed a web-based version of the board game Risk. Let's tally up the final costs:
Programming zero
Project management zero
Graphic artist zero
Advertising zero
Publishing 500.00 (this is how much is cost to rent the web server)
Total 500.00
You can play it here: www.denizengames.com
And yes the above does mean that my time for this project was free.
It goes on things like:
bounding boxes (the way the characters hit each other and what parts actually collide) - in the first EA NFL game, the players were one big bounding box - 6 sides, collisions even if you were hitting thin air, whereas now they are FAR more complicated
AI - This is a massive money pit at the moment, especially in sports games, where each player MUST interact with their team in a way that THE REAL PLAYER would (otherwise there are complaints - and no, I'm not joking), never mind the replayability of these games by the teams using different strategies
Physics - although you may not think it, you put a LOT of importance on physics, such as if a car starts sinking into the ground, or how a ball bounces on the ground. That can cost MILLIONS to develop.
other games - for every 3 games that are produced, only one comes out to retail, even if they were part of a series (such as dungeon keeper 3)
Market Research - a lot of money goes into making sure the game is what the market want, and although we sigh at ANOTHER NHL game, it sells BIG
cross continent development - although this technically should be in the market research area, I think it deserves an area on its own. This is the development of a game to suit different cultures, where there are many different stereotypes and links for different objects (i.e. certain flowers mean death in some cultures), and as once happened to Ford in Greece, if you call a car a turd, its not going to sell very well
Grass roots Development - helping people like me get INTO the industry and learn about the software, such as sponsorships through Uni and giving us access to software (which can cost thousands)
Marketing - this can account for a lot of money (in some cases around a third of a games total cost)
Initial testing - this stops REALLY stupid bugs existing in games (unlike in certain OS')
Patching - although this comes a looooong way after the game comes out, there needs to be money for the later patching and development of a game (World Of Warcraft costs $3mill each YEAR to develop further- and that's just the main game without the add on packs!)
so, if you think the games developments company's only think about the graphics, think again!
Thanks, Badspyro