Why Do Games Cost So Much To Make? - AAA Game Budgets - Extra Credits 

There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all budget when it comes to the vast world of AAA games, but let's take a look at the most typical costs and see where game studios can cut corners--and where they absolutely can't, and why. Code of Conduct - becausegamesmatter.com/extra-credits-community-code-of-conduct

The problem is the same across all industries. The movie industry is as bloated and slowly but surely becomes less profitable. The bubble will burst. The costs need to be brought down or the gaming industry has no future. EDIT. The biggest problem is the lack of customers. There are too many games that I would love to play, but I don't have enough time. 10 years ago fewer games competed for my attention. Obviously, I stopped buying. So, I think, current model cannot sustain itself. There either will be a new big market for the Western AAA game (China?) or many companies will just stop producing so many yearly titles. And that is a good thing.

Why do I get the feeling that even if you could reduce the budget drastically you would probably still get games with transactions and loot boxes in them, Don't want to sound like a paranoid jerk (I literally do not care for most AAA releases, just not my thing) But somehow I doubt that publishers would get rid of ways of making extra money... Just a suspicion though.

It's hilarious when small studios or indie teams make games that are so much more fun to play with a small, small fraction of the AAA budget.

For as big and as long as it took to develop, Breath of the Wild only needed to sell 2 million units to make its budget back. And it was the most expensive game Nintendo has ever made.

If the game industry was as open about their budget as the movie industry we’d be seeing a different conversation.

The whole debate about the cost of game development always feels like two people completely talking past one another. On one side, you have consumers saying they are unwilling to pay, or, increasingly, cannot even afford to pay more for games. We have consumers saying they are unwilling to purchase games that contain predatory monetization schemes or that gate content behind microtransactions. Now, some of these people can be pretty toxic and hateful about how they voice those opinions (which is bad, obviously, being angry is fine, but being a jerk is not), but in the end what they're saying is "I am unwilling/unable to purchase games like these in this state at this price". In response, developers and people like the Extra Credits team say "These games can only exist at this price and in this state. That's the only way they can be profitable enough to make." The problem is, even if we take that statement at face value, it doesn't actually change anything. If a product doesn't appeal to a consumer, you can't make them change their minds by saying "this is the only way to make this product". It will still be just as unappealing to the consumer. Maybe if you're a popular company you can coast on consumer goodwill for some time, relying on the customer-base to purchase products they otherwise wouldn't because they specifically want to support you, but that sort of goodwill can only last for so long, and it is rapidly drying out even for previously extremely popular companies like Blizzard (and let's be completely honest here, when it comes to Activision/Blizzard, any customer goodwill was directed entirely at the Blizzard part of the company). Now, obviously not everyone feels this way about 'AAA' games, because they're still making a profit (and a huge profit at that, judging by the bottom line reported by 'AAA' publishers). But the amount of people who feel dissatisfied with the content, price and monetization of 'AAA' games is steadily increasing, and publishers clearly know it. But they keep trying to solve the problem by telling us there's no other way things could be. They are doubling down on unpopular decisions and practices, and trying to appease the growing dissatisfaction of the consumer base by telling us their hands are tied. And wether that is true or not, it's not a solution, it doesn't help in any way. Those who can't or won't buy these games won't change their minds unless the games themselves change into something they consider to be worth buying. TLDR: Saying games 'need' to be more expensive doesn't actually make consumers any more willing to pay more for them, and if the growing trend of consumer dissatisfaction continues, the 'AAA' industry only has two real options. Change, or collapse.

because of marketing prime example cod mw2 development cost 50 million marketing cost 150 million

I understand budgets are tight but when EA can remove microtranactions it says it needs to make money and then tell it's investors it won't be a problem someone is feeding someone a load of bull I'm gonna say it's the consumer

Andromeda is a really bad example. The issue wasn't that the graphics were bad, the issue was that the animation was actually broken. If you gave it the graphics level of ME1 and fixed the animation, it would look better. Because the graphics level wasn't the problem.

If costs can't be cut, and the only way to recoup those costs is exploitative business practices that target people with gambling addiction, then maybe it's time for the AAA space to undergo some severe contraction. The loss of competition will hurt the games that get released, but I would rather have fewer super flashy games than have dozens that try to prey on their consumer base.

Well that's why all my games these days are indie titles. AAA games just aren't what they used to be, and their investors who usually have little to do with the industry have made it worse. Let's go back to independent developers with better games and are more in touch with the individual

I don't think I've ever purchased a game because a specific voice actor was cast...

Speaking as an owner who cannot afford consuls or good PCs I literally cannot play super HD graphics on my machines. I do not want better graphics, just good games.

The main question is even with this being true and the dlc and microtransactions being deemed necessary for a game to be profitable. Why are major publishers reporting record profits to share holders and to not worry about a loss even if dlc was removed?

Maybe you should just call up Sterdust at this point and you can fight it out in the ring!

Games don’t need higher fidelity graphics to look better. Art direction plays a role that seemed to be overlooked in this video, despite there being some Zelda footage shown.

What I'm hearing from this is that the AAA gaming scene is basically unsustainable, either due to increasingly ridiculous budgets or increasing consumer contempt? I'm curious if you're gonna do a video about indie games?

all this video says to me isnt that we need to pay more for AAA games, but that AAA games are going to fail. the industry seems like its inevitably going to collapse, because AAA game standards are higher than what the average consumers budget will allow, but the average consumer won't accept less than high quality.

All the AAA Games you mentioned (with the exception of GTA V) don't have any form of Microtransactions and where pretty darn successful. So doesn't that contradict the argument of your previous video where you stated that the only options in the future are either to pay more or accept additional monetization? And sure games are expansive as Hell to make but does raising the pricetag really solve that issue? In your case you estimated that it costs around 100 mil. to publish a game. So you would need roughly 1.67 mil copies sold at a price of 60$ to break even. At 70$ that would drop to 1.4 mil copies. I'm no expert but that does not really seem significant to me but please correct me if I'm wrong here but especially if you compare that to the money that can be made by lootboxes etc. this comparison is just ridiculous! Adding 10$ or 20$ on top of any AAA Title will not bring you nearly as much money as glorified gambling. And looking at how this Industry behaves (especially the big publishers) why not have your cake and try to eat it at the same time? They see themselves as too big to fail anyways.

Mixing up standard company running costs with project costs and adding them all up into one “price to make a game” sum. Yeah, I can see this is going to be a thorough discussion...

The graphics arms race sucks so damn much. I saw one dude whining that Prey was "Too ugly looking to buy" and I'm like "...What? The hell are you smoking? It looks friggen great." I mean, I like my pretty graphics and all, but the degree to which it's being taken is getting downright preposterous. Oh, and by the by, good management can save you insane amounts of money. The studio I'm writing for has done some incredible things with a pretty low budget. And the studio does not believe in crunch time. There's been busy weeks, but never actual crunch. And there are still places where we could be more efficient.

I know that this might sound selfish but, as consumers we shouldn't care about how a game is made or how much it costs to make. We are consumers we should only care about the cost to us and the quality of the end product because that's what we deal with. If a game cost a bunch of money to make, but the quality of the game is poor, why should I or any of us as consumers should care about it. You wouldn't buy a shit car for a bunch of money just because the guy selling it payed more to make it.

The reason games cost so much is cause it isn't a bill, it's an investment. It costs 20m if you're trying to earn 40m. Before it only costed them 2m, but thats cause they weren't trying to make 40m back then. Games don't have to cost that much, same as movies not needing to hire A-list actors. They chose to do so in an attempt to make as much money as possible. If the game cost went up so unjustly in the last 10 years, why are they more profitable now than they were when it was cheaper?

The conclusion seems obvious. Companies should be more open about the quality/price tradeoff and trust the consumers to invest money into a game they believe in. If there's a game I know I'm going to be playing for months or a year, I'd be willing to pay 100 dollars for it. The problem is that the industry is constantly gambling and losing on a lot of products, meaning that they ones where they win have to win hard. That's not a sustainable business model. I do see the problems this video makes obvious, but the solution shouldn't be 'microtransactions' or 'DLC'. It should be openness to the public about why their game costs so much, trust in the consumer to pay a game for what it's worth and a very strict regime on investing in the right games from the publisher's side. If I'm paying extra for my game because another game the company made turned a loss, that's a bad deal for me. I don't pretend I have all the answers, but it does look like the companies don't trust their customers to recognize quality if they see it. That's a bad place to be in as a company.

Well, you can ask EA on how to cut cost on AAA game development. They have been spending less and less money in development through many years in a row now :)

The game's industry kind of did this to themselves. They pushed for open world and multiplayer games, which not only are expensive to make, but also hurt sales as people began to just play a couple of games over and over instead of buying more. Despite the fact that more people are playing games now than ever before, and despite the fact that the industry is making more money than ever before, the AAA industry has been selling less games per customer for years now.

Meanwhile I'm making an indie game with my friend on a budget of less than $500. I'm a college student whose parents pay my rent and food, so I guess I don't count. It's fucking hard to complete a game with little money, little free time, understaffed; years of labor and almost nothing to show for it.

This video feels like a very defensive response to people's criticisms of last week's video. I realize you're mostly just laying out information about the status of the AAA industry. However, because you don't repeatedly and explicitly come out against how this system works, these two videos both read like you're defending an industry model that, from the outside looking in, is very very obviously an unsustainable bubble that is going to burst. I hope defending it wasn't your intention; if it wasn't, then you need to be extremely clear about your position.

Graphics are SUPER over rated and AAA, knows it. They lean into that selling point because excelent graphics are less risky than excelent game play. Mass Effect wasn’t panned because of graphics, people hated it because it was a buggy mess and which resulted in bad facial animations. Game play, art style, QA... That’s why Insomniac, Nintendo, and Epic are making great games and solid profits at or below a $60 price point.

This doesn't explain why so many companies create AAA games and expect them to sell. Consumers are only willing to buy a limited number of that kind of game each year. The solution is not to raise AAA game prices, but to stop making so many of them.

I don't think I've played any AAA that I've liked, but I can name lots of $5-$20 games that I've absolutely fallen in love with.

yeah AAA game is so expensive to make. EA's Star Wars Battlefront 2 despite ship 7 million copies but still not enough to satisfied the AAA. Is this really a cost-issue? or in fact it's greed-issue.

I'll say it again: if this industry truly can't make back it's money, it cannot exist, it shouldn't exist, it doesn't deserve to exist. Blockbuster movies have these same kind of budgets, and they can make back their money FINE, just FINE. You'll never hear about Logan not selling enough tickets to be considered successful, even if it's a success in every other sense of the word. Our standard for good sales is 2 or 3 million units, great sales is 6 or 7, fantastic is 12, and astronomical is 20 and above. We shouldn't hear from EA that Battlefront 2 only, ONLY sold 7 million and that's bad. That is wonderful sales, so many will kill for it, another AAA company would have, and yet, because the cost is SO DAMN HIGH, it's not enough. We can't magicaly get 25 more million people to get interested into video game to finally make this money back. AAA has to adapt to the lower numbers inherant in video games, or get out. And you know these companies won't stop even if they get those numbers, they need all of the money or none of it.

Pricing is set by the consumer's willingness to pay, not by costs. The rare exception to this rule is total collapse of the profit margin, and even then an increase in price is usually a death knell for the company. Is there evidence of a significant decrease in studio profitability on an industry-wide basis?

Man the AAA game market is not worth it anymore. For game developers and players. I find myself playing and getting more hyped for indie stuff then AAA like every year. When a game developer makes a game they want to make, I find myself enjoying it alot more. And it seems that most AAA At this point are just trying to make their money back. In a way, digging their own graves.

I'd rather have worse graphics and or slower progression for cheaper games; and no cost in the world is worth making our children addicted to gambling mechanics

So $100, 000, 000 for a game budget sounds like a ludicrosly high sum to pay without context.But if you divide that number by 60 according to price per game then you only need to sell 1.6 million games to make your money back.Any AAA game dev worth their salt could sell that amount in their sleep, and thats not factoring in additional profits from pre-orders, microtransactions etc.Even SW Battlefront 2, which became so infamous that it was publicly branded an online casino targeted at children has made a tidy 9 million sales. While battlefront certainly must have cost more than 100 million to make it doesn't change the fact that you're portraying 100 million as a massive goal to meet when it really isn't for a AAA publisher.

Bit by bit: You mention getting a game done in two years. Because of trend-chasing, this is the standard now. It used to be 4 years. Doing a task twice as fast needs more than twice the staff, usually closer to 4 times. Which similarly multuplies equipment costs. Halving the time cuts those drastically. 2. Hiring celebrity voice actors costs way more than probably better professional Voice Actors. A voice actor does a better job with their voice than a celebrity actor, just as a celebrity actor will do a better job with their whole body, and the voice actor is cheaper. 3. Graphics race is pretty much all AAA pushed. We're well past the point where people notice anything but lighting, buying large. Aesthetic does a lot more than fidelity and is far cheaper. Andromeda failed because one area of graphics was notably worse than the rest and had amateur mistakes like the backwards gun, not because all of them were below cutting-edge. 4. Marketing doesn't need to be as huge as it is. Marketing budgets used to be far, far smaller even a few years ago. 5. If you can shave large ammounts of money through organizing, strive for that. Don't just dismiss that off of "oh we can't be perfect", get as close as you can. 6. Copycat games are a huge problem. See point 1. Basically, you talked about a lot of stuff as fact when it's meerly recent trend. People decry the age of the FPS, but we got Bioshock, Gears of War, Halo 3, and many more good games out of that, most of which still hold up. Meanwhile, all those game industry neo-standards you just said gave us... Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Destiny 2, two of the highest profile "publishers doing things to actively make player experience worse" cases in recent years. Instead of saying it's us consumers failing the companies, look instead to how the companies can better serve the current market.

Skyrim had a budget of 85 million dollars. You're saying a scappy game can cost 100 million to make. Somehow the math doesn't check out. MA: Andromeda didn't cut corners in facial animations either. It is clear they worked a lot to make those crappy animations. The reflections, facial detail, independent motion, they are all there, the thing is, they sucked at their job. You can spend money inefficiently. That's the problem with the AAA industry.

Ok, who here has ever bought a game because it had a certain voice actor? Because I know I never have. I never even know a famous person did any voice acting on that game until I actually get the game and hear their voice on it! Notable examples would be Fallout and The Sims Medieval. So you could easily cut that out and not lose anything. These are games we're talking about, not movies. It wouldn't alleviate that much strain from your budget, but it would definitely work without losing anything. As for lowering the budget in general. I'm pretty sure AAA games back in the 90s didn't cost that much to make, even when you adjust for inflation. So there's definitely room to have lower budget games out there. Games that obviously won't sell as much, but also don't need to sell as much (since games back then sold a fraction of the amount that they sell now, yet still made a profit). I feel like they did use to be a bridge between Indie and AAA games back during the PS2 era. I use to call them B Games (like B Movies). But they just sort of disappeared. Maybe it's time for them to come back.

Wages have been basically stagnant for the last 40 years... The purchasing power of Americans keeps on getting lower...heck the average American is still literally thousands of dollars poorer then they were before the great recession of 2008. For publishers like EA the developing cost has been decreasing since 2013 ... These companies are highly profitable... Activtion, EA,take two literally store billions of dollars in the Netherlands to avoid paying taxes... These companies are NOT cash or credit strapped.. Not to mention the patent and IP they own... It basically comes down to greed of upper management and maximizing profits for share holders... you guys are really mistaken if you think that if games cost 90 bucks that they would get rid of loot boxes... They have a fiduciary responsibly to maximize profits for share folders.

6:51 "Having the hottest-looking screenshots and trailers of the season practically guarantees success in that environment." It also and mostly guarantees that people with at best average computers are gonna skip on it because it's not gonna run well on their machines. Dial down graphics, dial up aesthetic.

The more I hear these arguments, the more I feel like the real problem is not the actual cost. The real problem is this kind of "Prisoner's dilemma" that game companies are in. With current tooling, a AAA studio could achieve less ambitious games (let's say, early ps3 quality) for a fraction of the money they used to cost. The problem is everybody else is going to keep making unsustainably big-budget games. If everybody agreed on a set of principles for "sustainable" game development I dare to guess that we would not be questioning the $60 price tag, we could keep most games well under $30. Sadly, that's not how things work, the prisonner always chooses to betray his partner.

Sorry, but the consumers never asked for big budget Hollywood actors to do voice over work. (Some have been great, but the majority have been pretty bland) we also don't need money spent on old school marketing techniques. Seriously, what AAA game came out that nobody knew about until they saw it in billboards or a tv ad. That's a pretty lame excuse. Espically since the cost of marketing is way cheaper nowadays and most gamers know about games through word of mouth or just by going through things like game informer or something. Hell, perpetual hype machines like E3 make everyone know about pretty much most AAA studios upcoming games months or years ahead of time. I don't know any consumers that are saying games are cheap to make and that's why they don't want to pay 60 dollars. Nor are they totally against making any sort of extra revenue. (Weve all enjoyed DLC on games we like). All this comes off as, is some sort of PR excuse for EA and the like. And sorry but, I'm not gonna feel sorry for a company that openly cares more about it's shareholders than it's consumers. I'll stick to playing things like Dust: an Elysium tale, or little nightmares, fallout, or Mario: Odyessy.

Feel like a ton of comments are missing how this is a *AAA* game. We aren't talking indie or small devs, we're talking serious hitters here. Edit: Alright. I didn't want to add an edit in the spirit of preserving my original comment, since EC liked it and I'd hate to betray that endorsement, but this needs to be said. I get it, you all are upset about predatory monetary practices. But take a step back, take a deep breath, and rewatch the video. EC isn't outright defending these practices, they are giving insight into what they personally know. They even state that games need better monetization in general. All I've seen is people saying how AAA companies are failures if they can't get profit back, and how indie games are the future. And sure, the current way AAA games are done isn't perfect. But that's why EC made this vid, to show an extremely broad idea on game costs. Not to promote predatory actions, but to present an issue and ask for a solution. They made this video because they love gaming as we all do and they also see the issues that it has. So rather than attack them for being 'coporate defenders', let's offer solutions. Because I'm sure we all want to see great games in the future, and that can't happen without working together like true gamers. Heck, I'll be one of the few to put my money where my mouth is. Personally, I think that a greater focus on digital distribution and marketing would be a great place to start.

IDK, this whole argument seems backwards to me. Why do games need production teams of 500 and $5 million game engines? Because that's what everyone else is spending and you need to keep up. It's an arms race of inflated budgets and expensive graphics engines that is leading to the risk aversion and predatory monetization that is happening just now. I work in film, and it's the same reason why movies take 3-4 months to shoot and have crews of hundreds, while television can shoot 90 minutes in a couple of weeks. It's not because it *has* to take that long, it's because they think they can afford to and feel they need to to keep up.

"We like our sweet graphics..." - Which is why Undertale runs on the CryEngine and Mario Odyssey has 100% mo-cap realistic graphics.... ::sigh::

This still boils down to the simple truth that the AAA game industry has grown to unsustainable levels. It's a bubble, and it's going to pop, especially if the industry truly believes there is no way to change course.

It may have saved a lot of misunderstanding if this had been part of last week's video, or at least alluded to better. That said, in your example here, you are muddying the waters by including startup costs with operating costs. And I have to admit, $10k/month for average compensation packages sounds awfully high (not regarding what people should earn, but what people actually do earn). I do think it is important to do at least one or two more videos to finish discussing this topic, including counterpoints and addressing the hubbub last week's video has so enthusiastically generated. You lot are seen as a voice of reason and fairness in the games industry, and many people were discouraged by your incomplete treatment of this subject last week. This week adds to the topic, but doesn't complete it.

Holy heck, where did you get your numbers from?! I know I've been out of the 'big' scene for a few years, but things couldn't have changed THAT much.... -- I have never worked on a AAA, but I have worked with a major studio before, directly and indirectly, with SEGA as a subsidiary. Disclaimer, I wasn't the CFO or even someone in charge of finances, but the budget we were handed was no where near what you guys are listing. Yeah, it wasn't AAA, but we definitely weren't getting 10k per person, even as a measure for resources per person, and office space and supplies was no where near what you're talking about. Admittedly, the three projects I worked with them on, we only had roughly 100 people, but even then....Even if we had 500 people, the prices weren't such that they'd equal that.... Maybe Prices have changed that much, maybe things have changed since I was partnered.....But honestly, it sounds like you got taken for a ride with wherever you got your numbers. Those do not sound right at all.... -- And if they are, then RIP AAAs. If the budget of a normal AAA is getting that high, we're reaching the point where the cost is finally becoming greater than selling to every single human on the planet can support. We've got some time before that, but holy heck....It means to make these games viable, people are going to need to buy two copies at a time...

Wow, I'm really surprised games continue to be made considering they don't turn a profit... Oh, they do turn a profit? Then what's the problem? In my opinion, none of the costs associated with making a game should matter if the game is already making people filthy rich. You're basically telling us why already wealthy people need more of our money.

These numbers sound unbelievable. You've hit $100m quite easily even as we have real world numbers for games that are nowhere near this figure - Horizon Zero Dawn cost $47m, the Witcher 3 cost $32m, and Detroit: Become Human recently had its budget of $36m get leaked.

Too bad triple AAA companies have been letting us down recently. This is the real problem, some of the game sucks yet they take the spotlight.

It's really ironic that you have used Witcher III as an argument for expensive AAA titles..

Why not make the graphics stylistic (like Jet Set Radio or Wind Waker or Mario) and not realistic? Would that take the cost down?

The problem I see is that the cost of developing a game is increasing much faster than inflation would dictate. If the price of making a triple A game keeps going up without a similarly expanding customer base, then alternative revenue sources are just a band-aid on a much bigger problem. The big budget games industry needs to find some kind of equilibrium, or I can't see it lasting forever.

It seems to me that the AAA scene needs some kind of a reform. O don't know how or what but I don't think it being destroyed is a net gain.

I appreciate the effort and some good points are made, but thank god for Jim Sterling.

This model is flawed. You don't need expensive voice actors, motion capture and a team of 500 hundred devs to make ultra realistic graphics to make a good game. Making games to a mainstream public (to justify the costs of production) in most cases makes the game shallow and alienates the real fans.

To be fair, in certain games you could probably cut voice acting all together, or have VERY limited voice acting. Just look at breath of the wild. Game did great and had VERY little voice acting in it.

So something occurs to me. At least some of that 60-70 dollar price tag is the game store, right? How much of that money is actually going back to the developer? How many copies does the company actually need to sell to recoup its losses? Also, including things like office equipment in the price is a little dishonest. I doubt Nintendo buys new chairs and walls for every game it makes, you know?

You say these are all fhe common practices but here's the thing: WHY are these the practices? Why do you need 200 people when there have been amazing and profitable games made with MUCH smaller studios? You also said alot of these are practices to sustain the annual releases but WHY do they need to be annual? They don't! You also claim that the main topic on andromeda was the graphical issues: that's patently false. Sure that was ONE topic but it was faaaaaar from the only issue people focused on. All of these are stupid costs, but if these costs are necessary: then why dony the triple a studios just offer all the money they keep from avoiding income tax?!

Nope, nope, nope, nope, Current Triple AAA is an unsustainable buisiness that sooner or later will go plop. If you have to throw millions of dollars at marketing a system that is clearly customer unfriendly, then you are doing it wrong. Make a good product that people want for a reasonable price, and you don't have to spend millions convincing/marketing your product to sell it.

Then don't annualize these franchises, we've been saying this for years!

You know..... im not 100% sure on this one. Like would anyone be too upset if games didnt look much diffrent from PS3 games? and dont most people care more about visual style than graphics proper?

Don't cut down on the graphics, but rather, cut down on the technology used to render the great graphics. Notice how people are able to make Skyrim, a game from 2011, into a game that looks not out of place in 2017. If studios use a very standard graphic-production process, and have a completely different team add the fancy touch ups, it will certainly cut down production costs by a ton. Also celebrity voice actors aren't recognized in games unless they are blatantly advertised for the game (such as Kojima's own Death Stranding with Norman Reedus), hell, not everyone knew that Liam Neeson was in Fallout 3. So using non-celebrity voices in games will not affect the game's overall marketing.

An industry that can not make a profit without predatory tactics should not exist

It sounds like we need more quality products and less products in general, like with PC gaming so many games come out with almost no hope of competing with the general market.

Welp, that settles it. Big games are just too expensive to make, the AAA industry is going to collapse under its own weight, and in a few years only inde games will be left. Enjoy it all while it’s still here, folks.

AAA game development really sounds like a game of chicken, where whoever blinks first goes bankrupt.

If you can't afford to exist... if you need to trick people into thinking your product is cheaper than it is, if you need to scam your customers, just to stay in business, you shouldn't be in business.

I love how for the voice actor bit you designed the character just right so that the famous Mercer hair was instantly recognizable XD

didnt you yourself say "noone buys a game for the voiceactor"? I would only know Matt Mercer, and him only from critical roll, and i wouldnt care if he was VAing or not...

The issue is stockholder dividends and expectations. It is that greed that drives the constant need for more revenue streams. Why don't you address that?

Problem of this argument is that quality of many AAA games is decreasing rapidly. If all games would be like Witcher 3, then you can argue about increasing costs. But if we talk about AAA games like SWBF2 and Destiny 2, how are you going to convince me as a customer to buy these "products" for 60 bucks or more?

This is why I don't play AAA games anymore. They always feel too designed by committee. I like my indi darlings that focus on game play

If 👏 AAA 👏 games 👏 cost 👏 so 👏 much 👏 then 👏 maybe 👏 it's 👏 time 👏 to 👏 drop 👏 the 👏 AAA 👏 system 👏 altogether 👏 Scale things down. Stop annual releases, don't pay mountains of benjamins for graphics (added bonus to that is consumers don't need outrageously costly computers either). Not all games need to be AAA-standardbreaking. Just remove one, even two of the As if needed and see how things work out.

The voice actor point seems good until you realise actual VAs do as much work as regular actors and often do much better

The big flaw with this video is that your cost estimation is using a newly created studio with a newly created franchise to estimate the cost of an already well established company releasing a game in a well established franchise. They don't need to repay for the engine they already bought and pay for the features they already developed. Hell most AAA games literally just modify the previous game, Ubisoft being the perfect exemple of that but also sports games by EA are even worse. They also don't actually need to market it that much, "No one is gonna know about your game", like really? People are not gonna know about the new Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed or FIFA? These games sell themselves, don't tell me they need those indecent marketing budgets and superstar voice actors to sell. Besides, they're already making a huge amount of money, why are we even treating this as an issue? AAA games have gotten less and less expensive to make over the years while selling more and making more profits. If anything they should be costing less because they're not getting better in any significant way.

Ay Matthew Mercer!

mAybE AAA games could be a lot cheaper if you wouldn't aim for more than +270% profit like EA. www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ea/financials?query=income-statement The point is, games are expensive to make, but that isn't the reason of exploitative monetization. If I take the upper estimation from above, the 100mill, you "only" need to sell ~1.7 million copies to turn positive. Now compare that number to the very few statistics we have from AAA sales.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice made back its budget after only 300k sales at 30 dollars a copy. They made it with a staff of 20, not 200. This video relies on a ton of really terrible assumptions and has some enormous blind spots, most particularly the enormous cost of AAA Publishers, their executives, and their shareholders. That $10k/person average is covering both the $100m/year CEO and the hundreds of temp contractors the company is paying peanuts to make the thousands of art assets needed to populate an open world game. None of this is inevitable.

I'm not entirely certain that including the general operating expenses for a game studio into the cost of creating a single game is fair. The computers you used for the last call of duty released a year prior, are more then likely sufficient to work on the next one. Same with development software licensing. It's not like you finish a game using, say Maya, and start up a new project by buying an additional copy of Maya. This isn't to say I don't understand that the cost of game production is astronomical, it is. There's just an entire section of the budget you propose that's essentially there when you start by virtue of the fact that you're already a game development studio. I mean sure, you still have to pay rent, but that's part of a different budget, so not really applicable.

Seeing as you’re going over how much games are costing to make, could you guys do a video on the possibility of another game industry crash?

No sir, I don't relish high fidelity graphics. The polish a game is given is what really sells a game for me. The interface, button mapping, camera control (where applicable), and cohesive aesthetics are what make or break a game, not the 4K

As soon as you said janitor, I thought sim-devteam. Having a dev-team sims game where the devs sleep under their desks could be hilarious and realistic.

This is probably the best episode of Extra Credits. It tells a lot about game development. I loved it!

I'm not one for paying more for games but if it was for a cause like helping the industry that gave so many of us our childhoods and getting rid of these business practices that almost all of the gaming community hates. Then so be it. It would be better if it was one transaction and then you own the game, none of this dlc bs.

I'd like you put more emphasis on the "this needs to change" part of the video, I get the feeling that you're OK with all this madness just because you like nice graphics and big games... maybe we don't need more Witcher 3s or Horizon Zero Downs until they are actually affordable? Maybe we don't need AAA games at all. The industry needs to change before it kills itself.

60 bucks for one shitty AAA title, that adds nothing new and removes a lot from what they've shown on E3, or 6-12 great Indie games that I would enjoy for several months? Tough choice!

I guess I just won't buy AAA. My average for a year is two $60 titles near launch. I can't afford more and honestly, most big releases aren't worth the price. Here's hoping for the next cinema and gaming market crash.

A Few of You. I feel like it was a LITTLE underestimation.

There are a HELL of a lot more variables to this, but this video does well on scratching the surface on the tangly mess that is the AAA industry.

Except for offices/materials etc you dont buy that for a specific game but u r going to keep using that for many many games. That goes for A LOT of the costs u list here.

I'm 33 this year and damn, that's a rough image of people my age. :O

I know that the market demands the "Bigger, better looking, Open-world" type of AAA game, but I really feel that AAA studios could cut costs significantly by not chasing those trends. Operate like an Indie studio but with a AAA budget. It's not about lowering the budget, it's about doing more with what they got. Being more efficient. Use as little of the budget as possible while making the best game possible. Down-scale. The Trends say go bigger, but those trends will lead to the industry crashing. Do not chase trends, create them. It's risky as fuck, but it's far more sustainable in the long run.

But wait! You've mentioned a lot of things like equipments and furniture, yet an established company doesn't need all this. In fact, many of monthly expenses could be covered with a revenue from the previous titles. As the result there are only salaries, licensing and marketing to take into the account.

I jumped ahead to the last video to get an updated contact email for Extra Credits (I'm actually about to watch episode 45) but while I'm here, I thought I'd praise the guys (and girls) of Extra Credits. I'm just a game player, not even a game designer (though I'd like to be, I don't have the kind of drive to realize such a fancy), but this series is both informative and entertaining in a way that I haven't seen anywhere else from anyone else. You guys ROCK. Side Note: I recently used an RU-vid - MP3 converter and an audio editor to create my new text message sound. From your early video on Piracy: "Do not tangle with the kind of people who install LINUX on their Playstations. Trust me, you are wasting your time." This one line represents everything I love about Extra Credits: sarcastic, but not aggressive. Informative, but not bland. Stereotyping, yet somehow still innovative. I've binge watched the first 44 episodes and I'm well on my way to bingeing the other 324. P.S: Sorry if I'm coming on too hard in the fanboy department. I just love this series that much.

The problem is not that games cost a lot to make. The problem is that customers can't afford more expensive games. Sales would be great at higher prices too, if people had enough money to afford it. Why can't they? Because wages in the US are stagnating since the seventies, but prices are going way up, especially education and healthcare. In the seventies the US started to phase out the New Deal and introduced "trickle down" economics, and that didn't work out well for the middle class.