The game industry has matured over the years. The top end revenue is expotentially more than what it used to be. That creates differentiation in the industry. There are still games (e.g., indies) developed by one-man teams for thousands of dollars. There’s just also now a top end that is much higher. That’s not that different than the film industry. So I don’t think “across the board” more expensive is necessarily true.
Cormac
5837
I stopped reading about half way through, when he kept harping on about how much more expensive multiplayer online games are as opposed to the cost offline / single player games. All I kept thinking is - THEN MAKE MORE SINGLE PLAYER GAMES!
Though apparently these aren’t interesting to the industry anymore (see the Visceral / Star Wars game discussions).
That’s kind of Koster’s thing, he has been talking for years about how single player games are dinosaurs and will meet the same fate. I created my Qt3 account over ten years argue just to argue the point with him! Though I think time has proven him right.
KevinC
5839
Raph Koster has never been interested in single player games, his interest lies in virtual communities and social dynamics in games. Telling him to make single player games is like telling me to go be an accountant. Accounting is a fine profession, but it’s not one that I’m interested in pursuing.
Single player games aren’t cheap either, though. A quick Google search says The Witcher 3 cost $81 million, and they’re based in Poland, aren’t they? I imagine costs are probably lower there than the US or UK.
kedaha
5840
$81m including sales and marketing costs, so pure development is likely to be substantially lower given TW3 seemed to be well marketed.
Still, TW3 is one of the largest games I have played in recent memory so I’m not sure how relevant it is to the general cost of games development.
You snipped the previous sentence, which provides the context of the post: AAA games. So… yeah you’re right :-)
LMN8R
5843
It’s not really a simple distinction that “multiplayer games cost more to make than single-player games”. It’s also that multiplayer games have much more potential for explosive revenue than single-player games, since they’re designed to keep people engaged for far longer, with many more potential sources of revenue.
It’s not guaranteed of course, there’s a ton of risk involved around whether people will actually care about and play and pay for stuff in your multiplayer game. But if you hit the right mixture of quality and luck, you can see massive exponential increases in revenue for a successful multiplayer game compared to a successful single-player game.
dsmart
5844
Meanwhile, over on eBay (it’s real), there are Star Citizen packages going for $12K
Brooski
5845
Why does one have $35 of shipping added? Are they delivering an actual spaceship?
dsmart
5846
No clue. But it probably comes with a ship model or something like that.
What if Star Citizen ships are the new Bitcoins?
Shit, I better get in on the ground floor…
Maybe you pay $35 to be a subscriber for who’s selling…? ;)
Maybe. And it’s hard to imagine which one will crash harder.
You gotta print all those jpegs out, and paper weight can really add up.
mok
5851
That is interesting - is it a new branch for gold sellers? Are is it all fake? Does not seem to be the disenfranchised Star Citizens…Very hard to tell how legit these are. I see one threatens fraudsters with an RSI account ban - that smells really fishy.
One more similarity between Star Citizen and Bitcoin.
mok
5854
Heh, this just passed my desk:
dsmart
5855
$18K whale. Read the thread.
