Film Theory: Is SAO the MOST EXPENSIVE GAME EVER? (Sword Art Online) 

SAO speedrunning would be the most dangerous occupation ever devised.

SAO is that one game where a slow internet or a PC can cost your life

I wonder if Mat ever thinks about that time he said “loli” in a 4 year old Film Theory

6:25 matpat got his priorities straight

imagine lagging out in SAO and dying

Sword Art Online, the game that crams thousands of players in one place and doesn't lag.

This aged well.

6:38 had me dead

Imagine making the most expensive game in the world just to die to a pig.

SAO: takes place in 2022 Metaverse: launched in 2022 Moral of the story: don’t buy into the metaverse, folks. You’ll face the same tragic deaths with way worse graphics

Did no one else realize MatPat read the infamous chapter 16.5 for this video

I believe when Kawahara wrote the first SAO as a short story in 2001, he though the technology by 2022 would be far more advanced. For example, the beds at the hospital were so advanced that they could stimulate muscle movement to prevent muscle atrophy.

It may be the most expensive game ever, but it's to die for.

Who’s here in 2020 and is waiting 2 years away for this game

6:38 Mat cooked here ngl😭

"We're doing the math now and nothing, not even that loli on the other page is sexer than math, okay?" -MatPat

Akihiko Kayaba killed a lot of people - but he never used micro transactions. I think he was only crazy - not evil.

have you payed it? yes what did it cost? EVERYTHING

my favorite matpat moment of ALL TIME 6:27

I’d be willing to pay way more than just $60 for a game like that

SAO will be release in 2022 "Whatever it takes"

6:37 gamer moment

I know this video is rather old, but I'd just like to write a bit about this TLDR: Assets can't really be measured as Amount of assets * Complexity = Price. 5:55 About the assets, characters, etc. From what I remember. Non Player Characters (NPC) are not premade. They are made by the central system running the game, called Cardinal. Which means that a lot of that art budget was probably used on creating a "generator" of sorts for all characters. This would also cover the infamous "Mirror" in episode 1. With a Character generator that Cardinal can understand, there will mostly be a set of assets like buildings, weapons, tools, etc. Assets such as trees and grass would likely need to be constantly removed and added due to player interaction, as in the part where Yui comes in, you can see a woodcrafter out chopping wood. So these assets will be perishable. There could be a large amount of assets that the system picks from, but considering how advanced everything else is, I doubt it's just an assetpack. Instead, it could be that Cardinal "knows" how these things should look after "training", and can generate decently unique assets on the fly to fill certain criteria. This would also make certain areas easier to work with. Just set a forest zone and Cardinal handles the rest. The only problem with this is how would Cardinal know how these things should feel. And I guess it's just going to be based on brainwaves recorded from actually doing stuff like touching grass (something I should probably have done today). If you handle the data properly, you could theoretically create the sensations required to make touching and smelling possible as well. And for it to be generated per asset. In the series, somewhere after the Alfheim arc. There are mentions that Cardinal uses stories and religions such as Northern mythology to generate quests and NPCs of all kinds to fit that. Which would mean that not only is it possible to generate NPCs, but they don't have to be humanoid. I do believe Aincrad already had cities and buildings set up before the release, but most assets are likely generated on the fly by Cardinal to fit the forever changing environment that is Sword Art Online.

I can’t believe Matt referred to Asuna as a Loli

This was the biggest crossover ever. Game theory x Film theory

Shows: $1.700.000 MatPat says: $1.700.000.000 Confusion 100

I just found love with the series this last few months, and now I'm finding out game theory had an episode on Sao❤

Fun fact, the "Nerve Gear" is half completed. (They already have the "kills if you die setting" figured out, so now they just have the hard part.)

6:37 2021 Matt should have told 2018 Matt what was going to happen.

No matter how dangerous I would voluntarily sign up for a SAO

SAO: costs $485 million Star Citizen: Finally, a worthy opponent!

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It's weird that SAO wasn't procedurally generated, given that Kayaba did in fact create a suite of tools called the Seed which can indeed procedurally generate realistic worlds (which is used much later in the show)

If SAO actually comes out: Players' will probably wake up in the real world and jump out of the window thinking that they are still in the game

It wasn't said that for characters in anime, graphics are hyper realistic so it would add to cost and size

6:33 We're "doing" the math, alright?

Dude this is so sick. I still believe that someone, someday will create NerveGear xD Nice work

When you realize that humanity, according to SAO, is only one year away from being able to travel to Sword Art Online: “Time to practice my sword skills”

I thought there was a lot of heavy lifting from the cardinal system in creating NPCs, stories, dungeons, quests, etc. In the game. In theory, each of the 100+ maps would need only a small sampling of human made world building each for the impressively capable and pretty much sentient AI known as the cardinal system to extrapolate on top of it. (That being said, it would still be an unattainable goal to make money off of with the other costs. The creator of the series clearly did not understand video game development.)

i love this. the ONLY THING he didn't do research on was the loli joke. lmao

SAO development team: "did you do it?" Kayaba: "Yes" SAO development team: "what did it cost?" Kayaba: "the player's life"

Imagine how many Kiritos you would see in the game instead of some random weeb names

6:30 this is it, the best Game Theory scene ever!

It's 2024, and we still don't have fulldive technology!

Bro if thats real then i have to wait only for 1 year for Sword Art Online.

*"SAO Release has been delayed due to Corona Virus or Covid 19"*

What about power outages, or the internet goes down, or your pet cat messes with the cord an accidentally unplugs you... Sad ways to go...

I feel like every time movie writers make scripts that take place in the future, they always over estimate how fast technology progresses. In Back To The Future 2, they thought in 2015 that we’ll have flying cars, even though we still don’t really have many self driving cars yet. In SAO, they thought in 2022 we’ll have technology that is able to fully replicate reality. It’s now 2022, and virtual reality headsets still suffer from things like the screen door effect (which is when the headset’s resolution is low enough that you can see each of the pixels, like if you were to go up close to a screen door, hence the name) or thumbstick drift on the Valve Index or the downfall of the metaverse that no one totally ever saw coming because facebook is the most beloved company that definitely is not intrusive on its users data. Come to think of it, it facebook is collecting so much data, how are they not noticing that people hate the metaverse lol?

One of the best line I ever heard “math is sexier than anything”

So if i put my head in the microwave... I will be teleported to SAO ???

the spike in views at 6:26 is kinda sus ngl

6:36 Vine BOOM

HEADSET ON, LINK START!! Little does he know, he's never coming back

WE'RE DOING THE MATHS NOW, AND NOTHING NOT EVEN THE LOLI ON THE OTHER PAGE IS SEXIER THAN MATHS

Seeing Mother's Basement in a film theory video is surreal and- wow.

Matpat: impossible you say sounds like a challenge Me: oooh no you never challenge matpat to calculations

“How expensive is SAO?” “Pfft, I dunno” “Seems legit”

Imagine living on your own and you didn't pay the internet bill while being trapped in SAO.

In comic con I did my first ever vr experience

I thought SAO came out in 2022 but then I realised that it’s pretty much been a decade. Watching it in 2022 is a different vibe when you realize that the story starts in 2022.

Expectation : Sao and Ready player one Reality : Vrchat

I never thought I’d live to hear mat pat say “loli”

It’s 2022 and we’re just now getting information about full dive gear technology progressing.

SAO: 2022 will have full sensory virtual reality head gears. Me in 2023: where are they?

Matpat: We need to start NOW! Covid 19: I'm gonna ruin this man's whole career!

Tbh, 475 million? The game would still go out with an huge amount of profit

6:36 what

Still waiting for the virtual fry your brain update to my vr

Dang I'm really exited for Elon Musk to create the nerve gear.

Actually, I think there is some kind of procedural generation in SAO. Heartcliff gave Kirito the seed, which were used to make others vrmmos. But obviously they had to code the seed in the first place. Said so, as we saw in Alicization, AIs... like, actual AIs, are a thing in that world, so isn't that weird to think that the sao was an ai that coded itself into a playable game, guided by the developers. This hypotheses makes the whole thing a little more credible I guess. And btw, they don't need to simulate the smells, sensations and stuff. They just need to stimulate the brain. If the game convinces your brain that you are drinking an orange juice, you gonna taste it. If the game convinces you brain that you are touching something, you'll feel it. It's actually a very well documented reaction, that I tottaly forgot the name rn beco's it's 3am and my brain isn't working.

6:35 what did he actually fucking mean by this

There should be a game theory on hollow realization (got it on sale yesterday on PS4 lol) and it's crazy after season 1 apparently, so many tramuatized people want to go back to the devs' next supposedly innocent game

Sao: **fries people’s brains** Government: I’ll allow that Kirito: wins Government : wait that’s illegal

Imagine having a medical condition or disability and being excited to be free in the game of SAO, just to have Akahiko snap his fingers and you have your old body back and tell you to survive or you die irl

here we are 4 years later waiting for the nervegear to release in May lol, but in all seriousness it would be very expensive to make a game like SAO considering all the time and research to put into full dive tech. hopefully one day we can all fulfill the dream of being a swordsman and fully immersed. I really love SAO so much, i had to see this video as well.

6:38 UM EXCUSE ME???????

most of the players would've committed suicide because of the loot boxes

"In the year 2022..." Oh... so in 2 years? Gotta keep my money safe to buy a nervegear...

I'm gonna wait to buy that one, no matter how nice the pre-order package looks. (also it's 2022, yay)

You ever thought of making a more updated version of this video because we have way more info now?

When you realize that it is currently the year (according to SAO) that we could actually play the game. Getting nervous waiting for it.

Stupid sexy math...

hey guys from the future and I just wanna say that we've got like decades ahead of us before we can get results like in SAO

btw it will probably need serveral sectors of wearhouses around the globe to keep the server( which by the way the whole game has only one server who the f does that) running. the player's setup will have to be able to calculate literally everything happening in the sao because thats how current online games work(which is why we don't get super realistic graphics and DARN PHYSIC BASED WATER in mmos)

So can we assume this will NOT be the standard $60 game price?

You missed a few zeros pat

2:18 and now that Thing for some REASON acktually EXISTS now

You know we doomed when just some guy without a mustache's profile pic is not just some guy without a mustache.

“I get to enter VR for the first time...” “Dò yu kno dah whay” “ click click click”

you forgot something in SAO there were "unique skills" which are randomly generated abilities that skilled players sometimes get and each one is different like how one guy can dual wield swords and another guy can duel wield axes... I can't even imagine how much it costs to create a system that automatically checks every players skill list for skills that currently exist and generates a random "unique skill" based on what doesn't exist and selects someone that is considered a "skilled player" who doesn't already have a "unique skill"

This would be a beautiful game to play (without the dying part lol)

I love that since this video they've made a headset that actually kills you (as an art piece) AND Valve is working on the nerve gear and Elon is working on Neuralink

There's only one thing you overlooked MatPat, as you find out in the light novels Kayaba got funding from both medical and military facilities and the possible profits gained from the software he created be it for military training, revolutionising work enviroments, the ability to give coma patients an enviroment to walk around and talk in or so much more would've easily accounted for these costs and much, much, more

MatPat: 1.7 BILLION dollars. MatPat:*shows 1.7 million dollars*

When you release that a game like sao does not exist in 2023 : wow humanity did nothing to make this disappointing

Everyone IT IS 2022 SO MAKE AS MANY SAO REFERENCES AS YOU CAN BOYS!

While watching, I keep forgetting this isn't Game Theory

6:32 lol the page even says “don’t look over here” 😂

I didn’t know why this game theory was appearing when I searched film theory anime until I found out what SAO was

Man it's really funny watching this after a video Project Aincrad and how they've almost created the full first floor in VR dang technology evolved