Game Development Cost

[-HP-]

Hit the link to see how much some of the AAA games cost.

http://www.diggingtheweb.com/wiki/DevelopmentCost

Damn, those are some high numbers alright... I've read somewhere that in 2007, for the first time, the games industry had more profit than the Cinema industry!

Glad to see were getting bigger and bigger.

[Buddy]

These costs are not comparable to movie costs yet (excluding GTA), but profit is.

[Hourences]

Killzone 2 is a lot more than 20 mil, they started on it well before 2007..

I think most games blow through way too much money. Do you REALLY need 50 mil to make a game? GOW is a nice example, super succesfull game made with just 10 mil.

IMO studios waste a lot of money on random and unneccy stuff.

[e-freak]

Half-Life 2 was about 40 million $ as well - Hourences - GOW did cost 10m$ without UE3 licensing/own engine development. Games like GTA4 which develop a full city and/or a complete new engine as Half-Life 2 with Source won't get cheaper (at least if you want to keep the same quality).

The big problem about comparing Game Development Costs against Movie Costs is that there are a lot more specific technical costs bound to Game Development. No movie team licenses UE3, Source or iD Tech, neither do they have to invent the camera again and again. As buddy pointed out I'd compare the profit/win of games and movies but there's little info about how much profit games make up atm. It'd be nice though to have such stats with details on online distribution and monthly fees etc. and split that down to how much one (individual and company) gains in the process of creating games.

[PogoP]

What the hell do they spend so much money on?

[Quakis]

Paychecks; Employee's don't come cheap.

[e-freak]

Easy calculation:

6 years development

avg 150 devs of all kind with avg income of 2500$ per month

2500 * 150 * 12 * 6 = 27 Million $. Add some freelancing, outsourcing, licensing, hardware, power-costs, water-costs etc. and you are pretty much at 40 Million $

[-HP-]

2500$? Damn... I wish I'd earn half of that! :roll:

[Hourences]

Six years is way more than the average dev cycle takes. Six years also means to me that the studio behind the project had problems developing the product, as for 99 percent of all games there is no need at all to spend 6 years on it.

Try three for a big game.

And we earn more than 2500 on avg.

[-HP-]

And we earn more than 2500 on avg.

This is where I start complaining about living in Portugal!

[e-freak]

Six years was Half-Life 2 (which was about 40m$) as an example.

a little off topic but tailing on the income-question:

What do people at the age of 40+ do in the game industry? atm everyone here is 20 to 30 years old (at least most of us) - but how are job perspectives with 40, 50 or even 60 within the industry (or are we all going to be unemployed at that age?) - I can't figure out everyone writing books and become consultants, lobbyists and major-publishers :S

[-HP-]

the industry of games is still young, who knows what will hapen in 20/30 years time, but I surely wanna stay in this biz.

[Hourences]

HL2 is not your standard game. Also was it really neccy for the game to take 6 years? If they would have handled development differently, wouldn't they have been able to make the exact same game in half the time? Hence my whole point, what the heck do they need this much money for?

How do other industries handle 40-50 year olds? I dont think the games industry will handle that all too differently from the other industries.

[zaphod]

Most all of the games I play were developed with a considerably smaller budget. I would wager that 75% of all the money they spend on those type of games go to developing bits I really don't care about.

[Nysuatro]

What about the distributioncosts ? And the advertisement. or isnt that included in the develoments costs ?