For what it’s worth, this isn’t like other horror games in that it’s not about jump scares or gore. In fact, as near as I can recall there is zero of either. It’s a pretty remarkable horror game/movie that doesn’t have a single jump scare.
-Tom
There is ONE (kind of) jump scare - when you take the elevator down to the ground floor of the Transit Corridor - as it arrives there’s a Hiss explodeyman in the lift as the doors open. I mean, you’re only startled for the second it takes to throw a filing cabinet at his face, but still.
It’s pretty similar to the opening scenes of The Matrix for horror content: the mix of stifling mundanity with vague uneasiness and random surrealism.
Lifted from the EGS thread, since we were talking about sales here.
Epic apparently paid roughly $10 million USD for Control exclusivity. Control’s budget was $20 to $30 million.
Thanks Tom for the review. Control was the outcome after we took a serious look at what we should do next. Great to see people enjoying the game.
I had no idea modern “triple A” games were so costly.
Seems the guys at Remedy are really smart, not only about designing their game. Even if exclusivity things can be annoying, I’m glad they cut their loss that way if it didn’t do as well as expected.
$30 million honestly isn’t that much when you do the math.
According to Glassdoor, the average game developer salary in Finland where Remedy is located is around €35-40,000/year. So let’s say $42,000/year.
Most employers will roughly double someone’s salary to account for the total cost of that employee (office space, benefits, etc.). So let’s say it costs Remedy around $80,000/year to employ someone.
Quantum Break came out in April, 2016, so let’s say Control had ~3 years of development time.
$30 million for 3 years, $10 million / year, divided by $80,000 / employee = 125 employees working on Control full time.
Rockstar spend hundreds of millions developing their games, and the same again marketing them. Probably the same for Ubisoft with their flagship titles like Assassin’s Creed.
30M is absolutely a big spend for 505 Games. Not as much for publishers like EA, Ubi, Activision, 2K, Sony or Microsoft.
As commonly accepted metric is about $10,000 per employee per month.
Really looking forward to playing this.
Corrections:
“[its] mazes of catwalks and exposed insulation”
“[I] suspect the ending will be unsatisfying”
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy was the single most underrated game of the PS2 generation.
I blame the incredibly generic title.
Did this game flop at the box office?
I like neither 3rd person shooters very much nor was I interested in Remedy’s last couple of games but I love Control.
It sadly looks like it’s rather an underdog of a title and getting relatively little attention for the quality game it is.
Clearly it bombed because it’s not a grizzled gym bro shooter with a shit story, those are still all the rage. I imagine a low key release and then getting stuck on the Epic launcher didn’t help either.
I haven’t played Control yet (waiting for a sale or Game Pass) but I can say with 100% certainty it’s better than Gears 5.
We need precise genre labelling like this in lieu of those silly “strategy” and “roguelike” name that are troublesome for everyone!
Great review Tom.
I think Scandinavians respect Finland as their stoic younger brother and they are great at many things like driving rally cars, tech, building saunas and shooting russian infantry from treetops.
I think Remedy has found their own F2P cash cow as far as I can read but it’s great to see they keep making story-driven single player games with unique combat. I think Microsoft got burned investing in Alan Wake (and maybe Quantum Break) probably due to their own meddling (product placement ads?) and releasing it the same day as Red Dead Redemption. They might need Dark Souls/From Software marketing to reach the general public because the generic title isn’t really helpful. I don’t like going into details of the game business deals but Epic allegedly spent over 10$ million upfront on the exclusivity deal https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/09/epic-seems-to-have-paid-10-5-million-for-controls-pc-exclusivity/ so at least some of that Fortnite cash mountain is going to good use.
Alan Wake (and American Nightmare) might not have had a great story but they were pretty games with satisfying shooting and great soundtracks. Plus I loved the mini “Twililight Zone” knock-off videos (Night Springs) in spite of their cheesiness. I thought Quantum Break was a little drab and soulless in comparison but if Control’s story has a supernatural/conspiracy vibe in it I should like it. My backlog is reaching critical mass…
Lengthy load times plus a lack of difficulty controls are really sapping my motivation to try some of these optional bosses more than two or three times.
I loved the story of Alan Wake. Well…the presentation anyway. Barry stole the show, and I was open mouthed at the intro where they actually reference Stephen King, followed seconds later by someone getting hit by a car on a night time rural road. The strong Twin Peaks inspirations always help.
American Nightmare…bleh. It was the direct to video sequel.