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[Guilty_AI]

Shareholders aren't game designers or creative directors, they have zero influence on how games are.

in a perfect world maybe

To add black bars only require a couple of lines of code, and maybe to zoom out the cameras. No need to reshoot anything to do this.

You talk as if this is simple, easy work.

Yes, Tetris or Minecraft have been super successful with humble graphics because even if visuals are the most important thing for selling a game, visuals aren't everything, so some games sell a lot because other reasons. But huge selling games with shitty visuals (specially in the AAA segment) these are exceptions, most best selling games have high end visuals.

And you think these "other reasons" aren't worth exploring further?

Yes, game development is a team effort. But designers or programmers work with placeholder art until art is ready, they (we) don't need to wait until the art is done to do their (our) job. To be productive these teams have producers, who organize and sort their tasks and consider dependencies, so they never are waiting in their desks waiting for someone else to finish their job: they always have tasks to do that don't require someone else to have their job done.

Thats assuming the team is being led well. Work under a bad producer and yes, you will be stuck waiting for others to finish their job among other headaches.

I included GTAV as a non-sensical example, because it's a very rare exception for AAA games like million seller games are inside indies (like Valheim).

The percentage of indies who sell over a million copies is tiny out of the thousands of new indies are released every year. On average indies sell a few thousand copies. While in AAA is the opposite: way less are released every year compared to indies, but most of them sell over a million copies or at least -when they tank- get close to 1M. On average AAA games sell a few million copies.

Using percentages and average is bad-faith statistcs. Fact is, there are dozens of indies selling millions, much like there are dozens of big productions also selling millions.

And well, I wouldn't call indie those supported by big publishers (which includes platform holders). Same goes with AA games made over a hundred or in some cases two hundred people (case of all the ones you mentioned with the exception of Terraria and Valheim).

The line isn't clear enough to be able to claim this. All games i mentioned had very small teams working on the game at the time of their release. ETS2 for example only had a dozen people working on it back on 2012, it grew afterwards after their success. Hollow Knight only 4 people, Risk of rain 2 only signed publishing agreements with gearbox during early access period (and also had a team of 4 people), Deep Rock Galactic around 30 people... You get the idea, they were all small teams working with limited budget and still sold millions.

 

[yurinka]

Game companies use contractors, which is cheap to pay for, compared to full time employees, which you have to pay full time benefits.

Yes, like many big industries game companies use contractors.

Problem with gaming like I said previously, is the day1, which kills most sales. If your game is broken on day1, you lose potential sales. This is the time, when most devs give up, after horrendous launch.

Obviously a great, polished product will perform better than if released broken or unpolished. It would be better to make sure they have enough time and budget to polish as much as desired, but often isn't the case so they leave some stuff for post launch patches or updates, or even for a DLC or sequel.

Frequently these are only minor, droppable things but sometimes important stuff gets cut or gets shipped on an unoptimal state. Devs obviously would have prefered to realize their full vision but time and budget is limited and each team member has a different personal vision, opinion and priorities, so in many cases they feel it would have been better to do their stuff in another way unless they are experienced professionals and know it's impossible to make everyone happy and they should do what is possible with the time and budget they got.

As for your indie, most of them are carbon copies. The ones that are successful are those who bring good gameplay.

The isn't any magic formula for being successful (in this case everyone would copy it), there are many cases where what makes a game popular is one thing or another one. But games are mostly marketed with trailers and screenshots because how a game looks it's the key factor. If it would be how its gameplay feels then they would market them primarly with demos, and demos are almost extinct.

<How much does it cost to make an indie game? You're looking at a range from about $50,000 to $750,000 to make an indie game. The lower $50k amount is the total cost for a solo developer, on average, to work for a year on a game (at least in our experience). As you add more people, the cost goes up.>

Yes, this budget is correct for development. Then you should add marketing, PR and other costs like localization or external testing, devkits or (depending where gets released and if released physical) age ratings.

Most indie games cost between 5$ to 20$. At 1k copies, that is $5k-$20k. At 10k copies, that is 50k-$200k. At 100k copies, that is that is $500k to $2m. You take out Steam cut, and you get $350k-$1.4m profit.

The 5$ game is very cheap to make, while the 20$ is little bit expensive. If 20$ is $400k budget game, they will gain $1m profit, if they sell 100k, which isn't hard to do for 20$ game quality.

If they charge more money for their games, it will not sell alot, which will make them alot of sales.

For example, if 20$ game quality decided to sell it at 30$, it won't hit 100k. While the 20$ price will sell more than 100k, since its cheap.

You have to remove from there taxes, revenue share for publishers if apply, revenue share for game engine devs (or other ones) if apply and so on. And to remember that only a tiny percent of indies sell over 50K units.

Pricing is important and very hard to keep a balance.

 

[Kenpachii]

GTAV: 155 million copies made by around 5000 people listed on their game credits while ago (probably way more did work there since there + many people worked on it but didn't appear in the credit).

There are always exceptions for everything. But the AAA games on average sell some millions of copies, while indies on average sell a few thousand copies on Steam.

U don't get what i say.

I say visuals aren't the n1 focus for PC games. The gameplay is.

U can have good visuals like godfall and nobody will play your game if its not actual good. U can have bad visuals like terraria/ they are billions / valheim and it will sell gangbusters.

Developers like square enix relaying on visuals and then bitch about its to expensive to make. well duuuuh.

Also about your GTA 5 example, how much of those copy's where sold on PC at sub 80 euro's?

all of them.

FF15 proves the market for these type of games = small on PC. Upping the price will only reduce this. We saw countless examples of this in the past. Publishers where already increasing game prices since 90's on pc and they all died and burned out in 00's because it didn't work. that's why prices lowered itself to start with because new company's found out that the cheaper the game was the better it sell which created free to play solutions.

 

[yurinka]

in a perfect world maybe

It's how it works in at least the companies I did work and the companies where I have friends working at. Which includes top AAA publishers, top mobile companies and indies.

You talk as if this is simple, easy work.

To make games is super hard, and to make very successful games even more.

And you think these "other reasons" aren't worth exploring further?

One can be having highly quality results in all their areas (like Nintendo, Rockstar or Naughty Dog), other one can be to offer high quality, polished stuff in a specific area that the particular niche the game is aiming for (combat gameplay for Platinum Games titles, story or dialogs for narrative driven games like point & click, visual novels and similar games, learning, discoveriability or progression curves in general, some good hook as something viral for marketing, the implementation of engagement/retention or monetization features for GaaS games and a long etc).

Thats assuming the team is being led well. Work under a bad producer and yes, you will be stuck waiting for others to finish their job among other headaches.

Yes, producers are human beings so some of them do a good job and some of them don't. But in AAA companies pretty frequently who doesn't do a good job ends replaced, and if in this case the artist/coder/designer is a good professonal, even if the producer sucks they will find someone else to do that knows sooner or later will be needed until they get this (this is in the case they can't do that using placeholders).

Using percentages and average is bad-faith statistcs. Fact is, there are dozens of indies selling millions, much like there are dozens of big productions also selling millions.

Yes, there are dozens of indies selling millions out of many thousands of indies being released. And dozens of big productions selling millions out of dozens of big productions being released.

The line isn't clear enough to be able to claim this. All games i mentioned had very small teams working on the game at the time of their release. ETS2 for example only had a dozen people working on it back on 2012, it grew afterwards after their success. Hollow Knight only 4 people, Risk of rain 2 only signed publishing agreements with gearbox during early access period (and also had a team of 4 people), Deep Rock Galactic around 30 people... You get the idea, they were all small teams working with limited budget and still sold millions.

I suggest you to watch mobygames.com to see how many people is listed in the game credits of each game:
-ETS2: 180 people
-Hollow Knight: 109 people
-Risk of Rain: 212 people
-Deep Rock Galactic: 215 people

These aren't small indie games, they are AA games. Even huge AAA games in their early preproduction stages are handled by maybe 4-5 people, then a small team gets added and later when they go to full preproduction/production they add a way bigger development team. And in later part of the project then more people is added from porting, localization, testing, marketing, PR, community management, customer support etc. Plus there are people from external partners like publishers, distributors, etc.

 

[kingfey]

Pricing is important and very hard to keep a balance.

Its if you want to sell your games.

Higher prices won't be the answer, because you will not sell enough copies.

You need your games to be at reasonable prices, which consumers can afford.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I suggest you to watch mobygames.com to see how many people is listed in the game credits of each game:
-ETS2: 180 people
-Hollow Knight: 109 people
-Risk of Rain: 212 people
-Deep Rock Galactic: 215 people

These aren't small indie games, they are AA games. Even huge AAA games in their early preproduction stages are handled by maybe 4-5 people, then a small team gets added and later when they go to full preproduction/production they add a way bigger development team. And in later part of the project then more people is added from porting, localization, testing, marketing, PR, community management, customer support etc. Plus there are people from external partners like publishers, distributors, etc.

Read the stuff you're posting mate. A lot of those are including thanks (some even compose half of these numbers), community managers, repeated names of people who had more than one role, outsourced secondary aspects like console ports or translations, or in the case of risk of rain 2 a crapload of people from gearbox that had no involvement in the actual making of the game.

Not to mention you're completely ignoring the context i've put out, like how scs software didn't have teams this size when they initially released ETS2.
Go research each of these games individually and you'll get the numbers i've put out.

 

[kingfey]

I suggest you to watch mobygames.com to see how many people is listed in the game credits of each game:
-ETS2: 180 people
-Hollow Knight: 109 people
-Risk of Rain: 212 people
-Deep Rock Galactic: 215 people

These aren't small indie games, they are AA games. Even huge AAA games in their early preproduction stages are handled by maybe 4-5 people, then a small team gets added and later when they go to full preproduction/production they add a way bigger development team. And in later part of the project then more people is added from porting, localization, testing, marketing, PR, community management, customer support etc. Plus there are people from external partners like publishers, distributors, etc.

What should my indie game marketing budget be? - Game If You Are

You should definitely have one!

gameifyouare.com

Marketing is included in the game's budget.

The game budget includes employees salaries, production cost, marketing, and releasing to customers. All these are calculated to the budget of the game.

Also indie developers don't get that much money. They are usually paid 30k-75k a year.

 

[yurinka]

Read the stuff you're posting mate. A lot of those are including thanks (some even compose half of these numbers), community managers, repeated names of people who had more than one role, outsourced secondary aspects like console ports or translations, or in the case of risk of rain 2 a crapload of people from gearbox that had no involvement in the actual making of the game.

Not to mention you're completely ignoring the context i've put out, like how scs software didn't have teams this size when they initially released ETS2.
Go research each of these games individually and you'll get the numbers i've put out.

I know what I'm posting: the game credits, not a fairy tale PR story.

Community managers, outsourcing companies, ports and localization are people who also work in the games and get paid for it. Many people included in thanks section often is people who only worked for small period of time in the game. And yes, publishers like Gearbox when they publish a game introduce people in the credits who almost doesn't do anything for a game but they are listed because have some responsability on it, and that publisher gets a revenue share of the game.

In most cases, the publisher (and/or investor) 100% of the revenue generated by the game until they recoup what they invested on it, and after publisher recoup they have a 70%-30% or 50%-50% revenue share split.

Regarding growing team sizes, as mentioned it happens everywhere: traditionally games start with a tiny team which during preproduction gets bigger and specially when starting full production. And then in the later part of the project some people already completed their job but other people enters to work in the game (porters, testers, sales/publishing, marketing & communication etc).

 

[Guilty_AI]

I know what I'm posting: the game credits, not a fairy tale PR story.

Community managers, outsourcing companies, ports and localization are people who also work in the games and get paid for it. Many people included in thanks section often is people who only worked for small period of time in the game. And yes, publishers like Gearbox when they publish a game introduce people in the credits who almost doesn't do anything for a game but they are listed because have some responsability on it, and that publisher gets a revenue share of the game.

In most cases, the publisher (and/or investor) 100% of the revenue generated by the game until they recoup what they invested on it, and after publisher recoup they have a 70%-30% or 50%-50% revenue share split.

Apply these same standards for AAA games and you'll get 5x 10x more people working on games with supposedly 100-200 dev teams working on them.

 

[yurinka]

Apply these same standards for AAA games and you'll get 5x 10x more people working on games with supposedly 100-200 dev teams working on them.

Yes, in AAA games the people who works in a game gets credited (in fact, many doesn't) and paid for it too.

This include the gamedev team of their lead studio, the many outsourcing dev studios who support them, external additional music/audio/voice acting/testing/PR/marketing/etc teams plus people their studios from HQ/publisher in charge of legal/finances/HR/executives/etc. some of who invested maybe only a few days -or nothing- in this specific game but did something else for the game or studio leading the project. As an example, an executive who maybe didn't do anything particular for this game maybe got the funding from investors that later is spent on this game.

People get credited for a reason.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Yes, in AAA games the people who works in a game gets credited (in fact, many doesn't) and paid for it too.

This include the gamedev team of their lead studio, the many outsourcing dev studios who support them, external additional music/audio/voice acting/testing/PR/marketing/etc teams plus people their studios from HQ/publisher in charge of legal/finances/HR/executives/etc. some of who invested maybe only a few days -or nothing- in this specific game but did something else for the game or studio leading the project. As an example, an executive who maybe didn't do anything particular for this game maybe got the funding from investors that later is spent on this game.

People get credited for a reason.

So it doesn't change the fact that these are productions involving a fraction of the people "working" on AAA or even AA games.

 

[yurinka]

So it doesn't change the fact that these are productions involving a fraction of the people "working" on AAA or even AA games.

Yes, obviously AA games made by 100-200 people are smaller productins than AAA games made by 1000-2000+ people.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Yes, obviously AA games made by 100-200 people are smaller productins than AAA games made by 1000-2000+ people.

AA games acording to your site have 700-800 people "working" on them.

Your site also says there were more people "working" on Undertale than Metro Exodus. So yeah, stop using these dumb metrics that treats someone's grandma that acted out one voice line or that discord moderator or some manager that signed that one paper as people who de facto made the game.

If you're stll gonna insist games with 100-200 people on its credits should be considered AA, know you're pratically saying theres no indie market at all considered even stuff like this, or this had that amount of people involved according to mobygames.

 

[yurinka]

AA games acording to your site have 700-800 people "working" on them.

Your site also says there were more people "working" on Undertale than Metro Exodus. So yeah, stop using these dumb metrics that treats someone's grandma that acted out one voice line or that discord moderator or some manager that signed that one paper as people who de facto made the game.

If you're stll gonna insist games with 100-200 people on its credits should be considered AA, know you're pratically saying theres no indie market at all considered even stuff like this, or this had that amount of people involved according to mobygames.

It isn't my site, and it's a website that lists the game credits.

In my opinion when a game has over around 50 workers (not counting its 'thanks' part if you want) it it's hard to me to consider it an indie (something I associate to very small teams not published by platform holders or important publishers), and consider it a AA game instead.

Regarding the line between AA and AAA, I'd say it's around 500 workers. Obviously the numbers are a rough estimate, there isn't an official line. And yes, I count here managers or executives who maybe signed a paper, testers, people from localization, publishing, voice acting, PR or community managers (not the same than a Discord mod). They are professionals who worked in the game even if their role requires a short period of time.

The Undertale vs Metro Exodus is a dumb comparision, because Undertale has a few dozen people in the developers part of the credits and 900 in the thanks section. They probably included there their backers, entire family and friends or something like that. Metro Exodus instead has 851 people in the devs side and 74 in the thanks part, it's a AAA game. Obviously to look only at the overall size of the credits isn't everything and there are exceptions, it's only to get a rough idea and then you have to give a look inside to get into detail.

As an example, Momodora: Reverie under the Moonlight credits features 11 devs (like half of them being from voice acting or localization) and 119 people in the thanks section (Patreon supporters + special thanks) or Papers, Please looking at its credits you can see it's size, other than Lucas Pope the other people is credited for making the fonts, sound effects, localization or appear as special thanks. These two are indie games, aren't AA games.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

When it comes to media, I have no idea how much contribution each person adds. Every movie, tv show and game might have a list of 100s of people.

At my work, for any product launched, typically the marketing people involved are credited, but even then I look at the group and some of those people did nothing but input the product info into required databases which probably took them half an hour.

I probably contributed more doing some back end financial analysis which our team can make or break the product even launching. But we get zero recognition.

 

[Guilty_AI]

In my opinion when a game has over around 50 people workers (not counting its 'thanks' part if you want) it it's hard to me to consider it an indie (something I associate to very small teams not published by platform holders or important publishers), and consider it a AA game instead.

Dude, using the numbers of developers in this site still makes no sense, they're bloated or reduced by a load of other factors.
According to your definitions this game:

Oneshot (206 developers according to mobygames)

Took twice as much a workforce to make than Hellblade (119 developers according to Mobygames)

Just taking the number of people listed in the credits on that site is NOT an accurate measure on the size of the actual developer team.

 

[yurinka]

Dude, using the numbers of developers in this site still makes no sense, they're bloated or reduced by a load of other factors.
According to your definitions this game:

Oneshot (206 developers according to mobygames)

Took twice as much a workforce to make than Hellblade (119 developers according to Mobygames)

Just taking the number of people listed in the credits on that site is NOT an accurate measure on the size of the actual developer team.

I suggest you to read my post again. As I said before, the numbers are only to get a rough estimate and if you want to get a more precise idea you have to go and watch the credits into detail, and there are always exceptions. If you look at Oneshot credits, most of them are testers, specially localization ones (maybe these testers also localized it to their language).

Other than that, it has 3 devs and a producer and mention 3 musicians who provided additional songs. It's an indie game. Hellblade is a AA game (or triple I as Ninja Theory prefers to call it, which is the same).

 

[Guilty_AI]

I suggest you to read my post again. As I said before, the numbers are only to get a rough estimate and if you want to get a more precise idea you have to go and watch the credits into detail, and there are always exceptions. If you look at Oneshot credits, most of them are testers, specially localization ones (maybe these testers also localized it to their language).

Why don't you read your post again?

Community managers, outsourcing companies, ports and localization are people who also work in the games and get paid for it. Many people included in thanks section often is people who only worked for small period of time in the game

And now you're saying

If you look at Oneshot credits, most of them are testers, specially localization ones (maybe these testers also localized it to their language).

Other than that, it has 3 devs and a producer and mention 3 musicians who provided additional songs. It's an indie game

So NOW you're saying those roles don't count? Try looking accuratelly at the games i've previously mentioned:

Hollow Knight 85 developers.
Out of these, 27 are translators, 18 are game testers, 11 are voice actors (the "voice acting" of the game being just bunch of incoherent grumbles).

Deep Rock Galactic 95 developers.
Out of these, more than 60 are just moderators, community translators and Discord Miners.


What is it then? Do these roles count as developers or not?

 

[yurinka]

Why don't you read your post again?
And now you're saying
So NOW you're saying those roles don't count? Try looking accuratelly at the games i've previously mentioned:
Hollow Knight 85 developers.
Out of these, 27 are translators, 18 are game testers, 11 are voice actors (the "voice acting" of the game being just bunch of incoherent grumbles).

Deep Rock Galactic 95 developers.
Out of these, more than 60 are just moderators, community translators and Discord Miners.


What is it then? Do these roles count as developers or not?

People from CM, porting, testing, PR, localization and so typically are professionals who also work in a game and don't do it for free. In this case I count them as devs who contribute to the game, even if in some specific cases (tiny indies with basically no budget) they do it for free with friends or stuff like that.

Regarding forums or Discord mods, this is one of the many tasks made by the CMs, who are part of the gamedev team (I have been working in many gamedev areas and this has been one of them). But if their community becomes too big traditionally they get -normally unpaid- volunteer mods from the community to help them. These mods are only fans who help, not part of the dev team. In a few cases like Minecraft, Roblox, Dreams or Little Big Planet where the user generated content and community is very important, some mods could be curators and count as part of the team (sometimes ending hired by the studio), but would be only in very rare and specific cases. I don't know Deep Rock Galactic but I think it isn't their case.

 

[Lokaum D+]

Square games come with Denuvo...

apparently the Jack Sparow version is already out

 

[fermcr]

apparently the Jack Sparow version is already out

Luckily for the pirates it didn't come with Denuvo... otherwise, they would have to wait a few months.

 

[Lethal01]

Luckily for the pirates it didn't come with Denuvo... otherwise, they would have to wait a few months.

Luckily Square getting all their money beforehand from epic means they don't have to give a shit about "protecting initial sales"