Full post: Exact budgets of video-game productions can be tough to corroborate (more transparency from publishers would be nice!) but the numbers I’ve heard floating around AAA game dev these days are $300 million or more — sometimes much more! — which I think helps explain the current state of the industry
To address some frequently asked questions:
- These are US and Canada productions. If you’re wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
- These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)
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Can’t take risks when you put in that much money
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Oh I don’t say that it’s a good reason, it’s just why they do it. Shareholder value must go up. Trying something new risks that numbers go down, can’t do that.
Personally I don’t care for “triple A” games anymore. The last one I bought at full price shortly after release was 2019 for Jedi Knight, and that was a huge exception because the last before that one was 2010 for Mass Effect 2. All my other games in my way to big library are indies or games I bought on sale for less than 20 bucks and only because I’m interested in. I have blocked big publishers like EA or Ubisoft on Steam since a few years because of their attitude, enshittifiaction and mostly because their games are the same over and over again.
Edit: oh and because lot’s of their games don’t run (well) on linux anyway.
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It’s because creative direction in these comapnies sucks. It’s usually a big, bureaucratized souless machine where your connections mean more than your actual skill.
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Couldn’t be me. I only pay full price for games when it’s exceptional games like arc raiders or quality indie games with fair pricing.
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With a small touch of design-by-committee on top