AAA Single Player Games are too expensive to make says Developer of Quantum Break

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Going to try and compress everything to a few points to make both of our lives easier.

Damn, I'd hate to see a long form reply then lol. Back to actually reading it .

[mr moose]

Well, I have a solution.  Forget trying to optimise everything for 130FPS @ 4K.   and forget trying leave the plot open for DLC.  We don't need to see individual strands of hair blowing in the wind like it's real.  We don't need the game engine to be any flashier, nor do we need 15 different ways to load out a character (if I wanted reality in my games I'd just go join the fucking army or start playing the stock market).  We don't even need an open world or a stupid large map. We want a story line and something that requires a little skill.   Think of half life or farcry or return to castle wolfenstein.    

[LAwLz]

33 minutes ago, Derangel said:

So to break it down in vague terms: As game technology advances and gets more complicated it takes more time and better trained people to do anything. This means it costs more money as you need to employ more people and pay them more because they're more skilled. More skill= better pay as they can demand more. On top of that the better the graphics the more effort is needed to design things.

All of those things are by choice. They don't have to constantly use new and more advanced technologies. The old ones don't disappear when a new one comes out, right? And no, not all new technologies that comes out are more complicated than the previous one.

Writing game engines was more complicated than using premade ones. And before you say game engines can do more these days, please bear in mind that modern game engines base a lot of things on the old ones. The old ones were built from the ground up with very little previous works to build on.

 

 

33 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Roller Coaster Tycoon also doesn't call for that kind of team. RCT isn't Mass Effect. Something the scope of ME really isn't as feasible with a small team. Another example would be GTAV. Something of that scope simply is never going to happen with a small team. They could "chose" to make smaller games, but they sure as hell wouldn't be pulling in several hundred million dollars per year with a smaller game, nor would it have become one of the best selling games of all time.

That is exactly what I have been saying all this time.

The developer in the OP is basically whining that making massive games has become too expensive. So why not make games that are smaller in scope?

 

Development costs haven't gone up. If anything they have gone down.

What has gone up is the size of games, the time spent on modelling things to look pretty, marketing, and things like that. All of those are choices the developer makes and they could scale back on any of them if they so desire.

 

"Bawww it has become too expensive to create a game that sells for hundreds of millions a year!"

No, it's that the revenue game companies expect has gone up.

 

Like I said before, not every game has to be the next GTA 5, or World of Warcraft.

If that's the goal developers want to have then fine, but don't whine when it costs a lot of money because it is very much possible to do things cheaper and smaller.

 

 

To me, hearing someone say that games have become too expensive to make is like hearing someone plan to build a castle with 100 rooms, and then complain that building houses costs too much these days. So build something smaller? Oh, but if you build something smaller than it won't be as grand and impressive! Surely we can't remove one of the 8 bathrooms in the house. All of those are totally needed because people these days demand 8 bathrooms and not 7.

[leadeater]

31 minutes ago, Derangel said:

 Tomb Raider 2013 is what I'd consider the best, recent, example of what your arguing, development bloat. There is no reason that game should have cost over $100m to make. SquareEnix was stupid to put that kind of money into that game. AAA-level budget, sure, but maybe 2/3rds of what they spent.

You know Square Enix is famous for spending up huge on everything right? I'm not surprised at all, however Square Enix the game development company did not make the game, they do own Crystal Dynamics though and helped fund it hence the stupid amount of money.

[CreativeTHC]

Nor an expert in games,  but probably if you could not spend that much in graphics and focus more in game play you would save tons of money even gain a lot more than spent. 

[Jito463]

On 1/16/2018 at 2:09 AM, Jade said:

Maybe, just maybe, if companies were to put out good, worthwhile AAA story-based games, then it'd be worth it.

Dagnabbit, you'll accept whatever carp they put before you, and you'll like it!

On 1/16/2018 at 2:42 AM, RorzNZ said:

More like: Single Player Games mean less microtransactions

Unless you're Ubisoft making Shadow of War.

On 1/16/2018 at 2:31 PM, Technicolors said:

i'd rather see another Alan Wake. or convince Rockstar to make another Max Payne 

Eh, after MP 3, I'm rather burned out on MP.  The third one had far too many "cinematic" moments that took control of the game away.  The first two games had some moments like that, but not nearly as bad (and they blended in a lot better).  The first level literally had me sitting back to watch the action play out after opening every. single. door.

 

*sigh*

 

I expect a single-player game to actually let me play it, not watch it play itself.  I know, it's a novel concept.

[AlTech]

4 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Dagnabbit, you'll accept whatever carp they put before you, and you'll like it!

Unless you're Ubisoft making Shadow of War.

Ubisoft doesn't own IP to make those games. You're talking about Warner Brothers Entertainment...

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

Ubisoft doesn't own IP to make those games. You're talking about Warner Brothers Entertainment...

Same difference.  

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Jito463 said:

Same difference.  

Actually, typically Ubisoft has been a lot better than Warner Brothers.