Is AAA development costs no longer worth it?
Reminder:>Frazzini’s lack of experience in video games showed during project review sessions, a standard industry ritual when the boss plays early prototypes and offers feedback. His comments were of the focus-group variety, recalls a former Amazon developer: “Why is it this color?” and “Seems fun. When will it be ready?” On a different occasion, says another developer, the team cringed as Frazzini struggled to differentiate between hyper-polished conceptual footage and live gameplay, a sign he didn’t understand the technology.>Some meetings got sidetracked when Frazzini, armed with the latest VentureBeat article about whatever game was making the most money that month, demanded they chase a new trend, four developers say. The team wound up designing lesser versions of popular games, a desperate strategy laid out in a recent Wired article. Riot Games Inc.’s League of Legends inspired an Amazon project called Nova that was canned in 2017. Epic Games Inc.’s Fortnite led to another Amazon game, Intensity, canceled in 2019. Activision Blizzard Inc.’s Overwatch begot Amazon’s Crucible, which would suffer a similar fate.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit
>>724447143>Guy who doesn't know shit about games ends up running company that doesn't know shit about video gamesShocking!!
>>724447143What a retard.
New Worlds was AAA? What else have they developed?
More like they hired retards to run the gaming division.But AAA in general is probably dying, costs are getting insane.
>>724446576once the video game industry is cleansed of the woke mind virus thanks to based Trump competent devs can be hired again to replace all the defective DEI hires inflating the costs of AAA video games
>>724447143Why does it seem that most companies are run by the most incompetent unfit people imaginable?
>>724448002because companies are jew slush funds, anon
>>724446576What gave you that clue?
>>724446576
>>724446576They never were. The AAA model is nonfunctional.
>>724446576AAA development costs got out of hand because they run those studios like they do all other large bloated corporations. With a bunch of useless managers. Too much managerial oversight limits creativity and bloats timelines because workers give outrageous estimates due to not wanting to miss their deadlines. Also many workers are there just to get a paycheck. They don't have passion for gamedev.If they kept the studios to 10-50 skilled workers the budgets they would need would be a fraction, dev time wouldn't be significantly affected and the games would be better. We're seeing this from the growing amount of indie studios that organize themselves in sort of AA-tier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVQ30c7TcA
We should go back to smaller scope games with tighter teams.
>>724448002Gaming in particular attracts venture capitalist types who want high risks and high rewards. Businessmen who value steady growth and long term profits got much better venues to invest their money and time to than video games.
>>724451603>Gaming in particular attracts venture capitalist types who want high risks and high rewardsWhat does this mean after the SKG movement? Live service is on its way out.
>>724446576>Tariffs are destroying their profits>"uhmmm akhtually we're firing because we're just going all in on the AI, so pls keep investing saars"kek
>>724451809It probably just means much less money on video games as venture capitalists check out. And it is a good thing for everyone else except triple A companies with inflated budgets.
>>724446576tendie games are AAA and seem to be making big bucks releasing on just one consolemaybe hiring 50,000 contractors per game isn't such a good idea
>>724446576Cut 90% of the marketing and HR budget and games will suddenly be extremely cheap.
>>724446576Sure it is, it's just jeff bezos who fucking sucks.
>>724452107Nintendo has 40 years worth of cult indoctrination behind it.
The entire economy is fake and gay
>>724451438that gives investors the ick, sry anon your fired.we need BIG ideas with BOLD strategies to woo us
>>724446576The biggest issue is California game development costs. You have games that should realisitcally cost less than $50m that are costing $300m+. Spiderman 2 for example cost $300m to make, while Spiderman 1 cost only $80m. The games were extremely similar, it's just SM2 had SLIGHTLY better graphics and more flashy cinematics and cutscenes along with better webswining mechanics. Meanwhile you have something like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 which only cost $40m to make in Europe, but if it was in Cali would have easily cost $150m+. I think the American gaming industry is going to be destroyed within the next decade, with more gaming branches being opened in less expensive parts of the world.
>>724452390Maybe, but my paycheck is very much real.
you have to grow slowly to grow properly. watch who you hire, have peopl with passion and talent who check everyone, those who make textures models, everythingwhen you get that kind of success, many people will be bought for a nice check by another company. so its rare and when it happens if often goes to shit due to being bought before it can grow to mega AAA.By example blizzrad after their OK success with warcraft 3 starcraft diablo, did the bçiggets project AAA tier (WoW) and onyl survived the first iteration of the game before being bought by big money and made to rush dogshit for tshort term profits at the burning crusade expansionyoud need people who actually dotn care so much for the huge check and really want to make video games, which is unlikely. now they could make even more money if they were patient. like Gaben and Steam, I m sure he receive dmany offers that were hard to resist but he held.You CAN grow AAA and make amazing titles and have amazing devs. But its unlikely to last very long.
>>724452281Oh yeah its because of the cult and not because they make gameplay focused fun games and lead the industry with amazing ideas every generation, must be the cult thing.
Amazon make games?Apart from that new 007 one I never knew they developed anything
>>724452563Marvel just announced plans to move thousands of jobs from US to Europe recently. It generally feels like that a lot of Americans don't even realize how ridiculously inflated the cost of their labor is, granted it is because the costs of living in American cities is also inflated and businesses seem to rather die than move into flyover states.
>>724446576I think Amazon and Spotify are fucking terrible, dogshit companies. They're absolutely fucking worthless. Today, being the biggest company in the world doesn't mean producing the highest quality products.It just means holding majority of the market hostage.That's the kind of lame as fuck dystopia we live in today. We should unironically justify killing billionaires on the basis of how fucking cringe they are.No joke. Competition breeds innovation.Neither Amazon or Spotify have competition. They're fucking stupid useless shitty companies who don't have to sweat to survive.When an animal is obese nature claims its life.The same should apply to a corporation. If you think that's wrong give me an argument against it that doesn't use bad faith logic and blames the consumer for the sloth of a company.
>>724452901They were also developing a LotR game that got cancelled. Which is likely for the better considering what Amazon's Rings of Power was.
>>724452807Yes bro, Pokemon sells 20+ million copies every release because the quality of the games is just that good.
>>724452962So they only burned money on cancelled games?The gen 6 LoTR were amazing
>>724453052Gamefreak isn't Nintendo.Also those games focus is on the creatures and trainers, 90% of the games budget goes there, no wonder the gameplay and world is just the bare minimum to be playable. All the games since the first gen has been like that.
>>724452649>you have to grow slowly to grow properlyLINE MUST GO UPRIGHTNOW!!!
>>724452962>Which is likely for the better considering what Amazon's Rings of Power was.It was gonna be an MMO based on the Third Age, like the trilogy, because they at least recognized that no one would care about a Rings of Power-focused game.
>>724446576People make games, not corporations. No matter how much money amazon throws at their game studio, their army of talentless diversity niggers will not suddenly become skilled. They're just overpaid niggers and dykes.
>>724452950>If you think that's wrong give me an argument against itum... killing bad :)
>>724453198Not according to health insurance companies, faggot.
>>724446576>make shitty ugly gay nigger games that no one wants>WOW I GUESS NO ONE WANTS GAMES ANYMORE
>>724453352>gay nigger gamesCan you name the games you are describing?
>>724453352You WILL buy progressive games or you will have no games at all, chud!
>>724452563Salaries here in Europe are shit in general. Average Software Devs here only get between 30,000-50,000 Euro. My brother has 6 years exp as a Software dev now and he only gets 40,000 Euro. If that was America he would be getting paid much more.
>>724446576every single time a company does a round of layoffs they have to justify it with some corpospeak bullshit like>we are replacing them with ((( AI )))>we are pivoting to a leaner approach>the market just isn't there anymoreand with games it's always turbo bullshit. like just make good games nigga it's not that hard furries do it on their own all the time.>>724452950>We should unironically justify killing billionaires on the basis of how fucking cringe they are.lmfao Elon would get double murdered
>>724453478Yep. When I graduated from Uni I was getting paid £27k a year as a software developer, not too far off minimum wage.
>>724453423yes
>>724453490Elon is literally trying to bring cheap labor for his company in the form of endless hordes of Indians.He's literally one of the worst offenders, but all billionaires do this nasty class warfare type of shit.They flood the country with browns and ruin the life of everyone beneath them just for profit.If that doesn't justify execution nothing does.
>>724453562>yesGo on, then.
>Amazon cuts 14,000 jobs due to overhiring during the pandemic >they plan to cut 16,000 more>has nothing to do with the costs of game development Do /v/ niggers actually read or are they really this fucking stupid?
>>724453608Well, it also has to do with their games department having made 1 game in the span of the 10 years it has existed, and even that 1 game fell off a cliff nearly instantly. So of course if Amazon as a whole was going to cut jobs, that's the first place they'd look.
>>724446576What'll happen to Lost Ark?
>>724453695>Well, it also has to do with their games department having made 1 game in the span of the 10 years it has existedSo /v/ niggers don't read and the result is that they are fucking stupid. Have you ever actually looked up amazon games studio or are you just talking out of your ass like every nigger on /v/?
>>724454276Shut the fuck up, libshit
>>724454273isnt it developed overseas
>>724454276>Have you ever actually looked up amazon games studioYes, I have loosely followed them since their beginning. I even was there for Crucible when it went into beta, then released, then got "un-released" and went back into beta again, before getting cancelled. I also followed them a lot when they announced that they would be making a new MMO and followed the entire development of New World.Now having said that, do you actually have any arguments or are you just sperging out?
>>724454273>>724454356Nothing happens to Lost Ark. Amazon is still gonna continue to be a publisher and support system for other games. This entire thing is just about them developing their own first-party AAA games.
>>724448002Because in gaming specifically it's people who don't know about the media type but want returns on it in unrealistic ways for the media type. Simple example is how Microsoft's CEO wants a 30% return on Xbox when even Nintendo is only at like 24% returns and Acticision is at like 26% before the acquisition. They want to chase trends not understanding that games are not movies and trends are dead by the time you release, want to chase long-term profits with live service not understanding people only have so much time and succeeding in that venture is extremely rare, and want to have short-term profits which is why they primarily only fund AAA projects that they know will sell millions.
>>724452901Wasn't that MMO Throne and Liberty an Amazon game? I played that one for about a week but never went back after that
>>724454630Why would you release multiple MMOs? At that point you're just competing with yourself.
>>724448002It's literally because of dei or knowing people in the field, ie, networking. Merit alone gets you nowhere these days
>>724454630>>724454739They just published it. They didn't make it.
>>724454630No, that's a gook game under NCsoft they publish.New World is their shitmmo.
>>724454534>not understanding people only have so much timemaybe they should just give people more time then. problem solved!
>>724448002Trust fund nepo babies rule the world
>AAA>low effort asian mmos you steal the license for and claim credit of
>>724446576well they'd have to actually make games. the only notable release was New World and somehow that piece of shit cost 500 million dollars
>>724447436AAA is a term that relates to budget and team size. Yes, New World was AAA.>>724447143The game was originally supposed to be all about free-for-all PvP, in which you could lose your gear/inventory on death. The first beta had higher-level players going to the starting beach a camping new characters just to troll them, which was completely foreseeable by anyone who's an actual mmo gamer and has a brain. They original project leads had no idea what they were doing. Every free-for-all, PvP-centric mmo ends up the same way, with a small handful of perpetually online players forcing everyone else to quit.
>>724447143I got to try Crucible as part of a team of contractors hired to manage community and test the game. It wasn't a bad game at all, it was polished, played well, ran well, it had depth and was fun.However when I was hired the game was about to be released (open beta or early access I don't remember) and I hadn't even heard about it once. I knew it was going to be dead before I even tried it solely on the basis that absolutely zero advertisement or even announcement was made about the game.It's crazy to me that a huge company is willing to spend a crazy amount of money (100+ millions) making a AAA game and spend literally zero dollars on advertisement to the point even hardcore gamers don't know your game exists. Peak retardation.
>>724446576I'm beginning to think that boomers should just be ejected from all tech companies, they haven't got a clue how anything works and are basically just geriatric targets of venture capital scams. Gen X is also getting to that same demented level.
>>724448002erm actually capitalism is inherently meritocratic
>>724452563Why would the collapse of the American vidya industry would be bad? Those people fucking hate normal people and inject their deranged politics while being incompetent at making games altogether.You do not even have to move it outside US, just anywhere but commiefornia.
>pay retarded jeet to make a shit product>prompt an AI to make a shit productChoice is clear, AI is cheaper than jeets (and doesn't stink up office)
>>724452107>tendie games are AAANot really, most of them are more along the lines of AA as far as budget and dev teams go.They have exceptions like Zelda, Smash and maybe mainline Mario, but that's about it.
>>724453608>Trump cuts the flow of Hb1 visas>Poos are not allowed to work in the US anymore>For no reason whatsoever it just so happens that all software companies in the west coast are now understaffed and underperforming, desperately clinging to half baked AI solutionsHuh, funny all of that.
>>724458251Are you Indian? Jeets are 70 IQ retards addicted to cow shit and rape they don't have talent or intelligence
>>724448002Because the chief task of a CEO is not to do good work for the company, but to maximize shareholder value. Those two things are not necessarily congruent.
>Towards AIThey shouldn't bother. Bedrock is a piece of shit too.
>>724446576AAA videogames can be massive failures and there really isn't as much Hollywood accounting to be done about it. Amazon failing new world made them realize it isn't just a free money printer, but requires actually work and execution to be successful. There's a reason Microsoft is also gutting their gaming industry. Sony is an entertainment industry at it's heart however and playstation remains a profitable venture for them because they understood this. Microsoft, and now Amazon wanted to use gaming to push their own brand and stock prices, and focused on the wrong direction. It's why you see Microsoft do gamepass which is much less risk now.
>>724446576Budgets for video games (in the US) have ballooned to ridiculous amounts. Recent Gamefreak datamine suggests that Japan's AAA vidya budgets are somewhere in the $50M ballpark, while Remedy's Alan Wake 2 was 50 million euros; Obviously Japan and Finland have much lower salaries than the US but there's no way $315M games like Spider-Man 2 are sustainable in the long run. One game bombs and you're out of business. I get that a game like Spider-Man 2 is a sure sell but how the fuck did a game from no-name studio like Immortals of Aveum have a budget of $125M?
>>724458251The jeets that worked at these places worked remotely in India not actually at the west coast studios you retard lmfao Furthermore now they can just straight up buy US citizenship with trumps gold card.
>>724458478Game Dev is just moving out of the US because it's too expensive.
>>724458478The same trend has been happening with Hollywood. The industry keeps increasing movie budgets more and more, cutting corners more and more, and rebooting IPs more and more in order to sustain an unsustainable business model.
>>724458367>>724458531Mmm...is that so? hum, very well.Oh I almost forgot.One last thing, may I see your hands?
>>724446576I seriously expect any companies going all in on AI to be dead within a decade, people will just get absolutely sick of this shit soon
>Lumberyard engine is a huge mess>shut down Gamesparks less than a year after purchase >Luna is a flop
>>724456443>Every free-for-all, PvP-centric mmo ends up the same way, with a small handful of perpetually online players forcing everyone else to quit.EVE works because everyone has the tools to make pvp consensual between the scanners on your ships, the ability to make waypoints(warp points? It's been a while), local channels, private channels for scouting and the map interactivity to see where conflict is happening. All you need is patience and foresight. None of these other games give you the tools to get away or not get caught in the first place if you're just paying attention a little bit.
>>724459730>t. didn't play eve
>>724460925I was in an AT with my boys in Red fed and those B-rep jerks. We got hotdropped by PL once on one of our joint roams. You don't have to fight in EVE. You have instas from NPC stations, scouts to check the way, d-scanner to look at gates, the map to check for bubbles with pods killed in last hour, locals to tell you someone is in the system with you and intel channels to pass intel. The hard part of fights in eve is getting the other guys to accept a fight you'll win.
>>724458251They were performing before? Dumbass.
