Why do games cost so much to develop?

T

Tudz

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 15, 2008
Messages
7,434
Honest question, why? I dont get it... movies ok I can see why they cost a lot, you have sets and huge amounts of support staff to pay, hiring and buying of equipment and cameras.

How does a game like Gran Turismo 5 cost $80 million? Where does the money go? PD apparently have ~110 employees, and Kaz said 150 people worked on the project. Over the course of 5 years of dev time, assuming they're getting paid $50k each (which would be a lot for sitting infront of a PC designing a game, I'd think), that's $37.5 million in wages. A million bucks would buy you enough high end computers for them to work on (workstation graphics cards, high end CPUs, etc). A couple of million would buy you volume copies of all the graphics modelling programs.

Where did the other $40 million go? Or am I underestimating some of the costs?

I just used GT5 as an example, but there a few games in the $40-100 million range.
 
Last edited:
$50k is lowish actually. Just because someone earns $50k doesn't mean they cost $50k to the company. It's a much higher figure.
 
You don't just sit down at a computer and type away at a keyboard to make a game. It also doesn't work like a factory putting together a car is down to a cost saving science because each new game is something new that hasn't been done before.

You have to pay the entire company and support staff, motion capture crew, voice artists, music composers/performers (although it's often one guy and a computer these days), etc. and you pay the wages of all these people over many many years of development hell that it takes to get a working game to market which is largely inefficient.

For a game like GT, they also have to pay liscenses and royalties up the wazoo to all the car manufacturers also also all the liscensed tracks in the game. They need to do research on all the tracks and cars to get modelling and performance and physics as well.

The computers used in development probably exist already so they are more of a long term asset and might not be in the cost equation. You are underestimating salary greatly. The average programmer probably makes $50K but there are all the big wigs, the engineers, the accountants, the PR firms, the financial analysts, the lawyers, etc. also. Your $50K is also just what the employee sees. The employer probably pays 100% more to account for benefits and insurances and pensions and taxes and everything as well.

For a game like Call of Duty Black Ops, you can see their budget was simply ridiculous. They liscensed the Rolling Stones, Eminem, and the voice actors are all hollywood stars although you wouldn't know it playing the game. The main character is actually Sam Worthington which is why I thought he sounded Australian during the game.

On every game, it's something new and not an exact production line science. Money is blown day after day trying new things that are often scrapped and restarted again (bad motion capture, a bad day of filming cars at a track, 3D modelling and assets and engines that are scrapped, etc.)
 
Last edited:
Probably advertising and licencing took up most the money. They have to get permission and pay to use designs of cars from all the major manafacturers, and need all of them, which probably adds up. Then they have to pay for adverts in every country in numerous magazines and things. Plus theres all the company upkeep that gets factored in, plus they probabaly did this all on loans, so paying back money to creditors etc.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
$50k is lowish actually. Just because someone earns $50k doesn't mean they cost $50k to the company. It's a much higher figure.
Click to expand...

We have workers in Cali, TX, and FL. Also Canada (CA).
I found out how stupidly redundent some of our "employment fees" are.

Employment taxes, workers comp, insurance, dental, retirement funds, etc. They all cover seperate things... somehow. Basically, salary x2 is how much we really pay per employee.

So yeah, it's nowhere as easy as it looks. Nor as cheap. I wonder how do small startups ever get off the ground...
 
Ah ok, I guess that makes sense. Its just I've looked at some games and wondered to myself "Seriously? This cost 80 million to make? Must have been a lot of hookers involved" lol.

Like the cars in GT5, they say it takes 6 months to make and has taken them this long to do... where as I know if I had access to a car for a few days and spend a few grand getting it 3D scanned it wouldn't take that long to turn into a 3D model, then the textures dont look good enough to be more than a few weeks work for 1 person.

Ah well. I guess licensing must be expensive, and if you hire expensive actors for voice overs.
 
jeremyshaw said:
So yeah, it's nowhere as easy as it looks. Nor as cheap. I wonder how do small startups ever get off the ground...
Click to expand...

A few people working hard can get a lot done purely through hard work ;) A team of 25 students can scratch build a race car in a year whilst still studying for their course for only $20k. Its when you try and expand and make some real money out of it that things get expensive, lol.
 
Tudz said:
Ah ok, I guess that makes sense. Its just I've looked at some games and wondered to myself "Seriously? This cost 80 million to make? Must have been a lot of hookers involved" lol.

Like the cars in GT5, they say it takes 6 months to make and has taken them this long to do... where as I know if I had access to a car for a few days and spend a few grand getting it 3D scanned it wouldn't take that long to turn into a 3D model, then the textures dont look good enough to be more than a few weeks work for 1 person.

Ah well. I guess licensing must be expensive, and if you hire expensive actors for voice overs.
Click to expand...

They also had to do physics for every car and make them feel like the real thing... You wouldn't have that done in a few days.
 
$80 mil to make but how much do they make back on all those in game adverts? Every racetrack is plastered with ads, there is barely a second of gameplay that you're not looking at an ad (because that's how tracks are IRL) and I'm sure that ad space isn't exactly cheap
 
Tudz said:
Ah ok, I guess that makes sense. Its just I've looked at some games and wondered to myself "Seriously? This cost 80 million to make? Must have been a lot of hookers involved" lol.

Like the cars in GT5, they say it takes 6 months to make and has taken them this long to do... where as I know if I had access to a car for a few days and spend a few grand getting it 3D scanned it wouldn't take that long to turn into a 3D model, then the textures dont look good enough to be more than a few weeks work for 1 person.

Ah well. I guess licensing must be expensive, and if you hire expensive actors for voice overs.
Click to expand...
The model of the car is probably the easiest part of it. You have to consider that each and every car feels different in terms of handling, acceleration, braking, all that jazz, and that there are A LOT of cars in the game. If there are two things that the GT series is renowned for, it's the incredibly huge car selection as well as being probably the most realistic driving game series on the market. It's not a simulation, but its probably a lot closer to one than any other driving game you can find these days.
 
Tudz said:
Like the cars in GT5, they say it takes 6 months to make and has taken them this long to do... where as I know if I had access to a car for a few days and spend a few grand getting it 3D scanned it wouldn't take that long to turn into a 3D model, then the textures dont look good enough to be more than a few weeks work for 1 person.
Click to expand...

You don't even need to have a physical car. you can have the manufacturer give you a 3D model of the car and then you just convert to the format you need for your game.
that is how I would go about it for the cars that have those files available.
Older cars would have to be modeled by hand from images if an actual car wasn't available.
 
I just like to keep it simple and blame the pirates, it's the pirates!!!!!
 
payroll, equipment, office space, office furniture, electric bills, water bills, gas bills, employee benefits, taxes, other government related fees/expenses, lawyer fees, company insurance, phone bills, maintenance, software costs/fees, downtime due to unexpected failures or outages the list can go on forever . Oh, and this is just to keep the lights on. I didn't even really factor in the cost to make the actual game. So then you got musicians, music licensing fees, licensing fees to car manufactures (for GT5 example) stunt drivers, track rental time/fees, bla bla bla
 
That's pretty crazy. I think they should cut back on marketing so I pay less for a game.
 
Or better yet, reallocate that money towards development and release a quality bug free game (and not cut shit out to sell as DLC) that is actually worth buying.
 
Zepher said:
You don't even need to have a physical car. you can have the manufacturer give you a 3D model of the car and then you just convert to the format you need for your game.
that is how I would go about it for the cars that have those files available.
Older cars would have to be modeled by hand from images if an actual car wasn't available.
Click to expand...

Yeah true, if they're happy to send you their CAD files. In the past our team has had sponsorship for free engine rebuilds direct from Honda and they still didn't want to send us their CAD of the engine points, we had to get them 3D scanned.

SLiGuy said:
The model of the car is probably the easiest part of it. You have to consider that each and every car feels different in terms of handling, acceleration, braking, all that jazz, and that there are A LOT of cars in the game. If there are two things that the GT series is renowned for, it's the incredibly huge car selection as well as being probably the most realistic driving game series on the market. It's not a simulation, but its probably a lot closer to one than any other driving game you can find these days.
Click to expand...


I do find it hard to believe their physics representation boils down to more than a dozen or two semi-randomly selected parameters for performance on each car ;)
 
Paying the staff is probably one of the lowest costs. When you have to consider marketing budgets for large games they can cost more than the total development cost. Intellectual property is probably next in line, if you don't own the IP rights to the thing you're making a game about then you have to pay for that as well.
 
As others said, $50k is on the low end for a developer. (You have other roles as well, writers, art direction, etc...) Your leads will make 2 to 3 times that. Add in employment costs, benefits, etc and you are can basically double the figure for a single employee. Then add the overhead of stuff like, internet access, building rental, heating/cooling the building, other facilities costs, etc...
 
And let's not forget, there are tons of games made on budgets of a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars;
it's the big AAA titles that are caught in this spiral of skyrocketing budgets which require skyrocketing sales figures which in turn require skyrocketing budgets (or at least, so publishers think).
 
Lol @ OP thinking $50k would be a lot for sitting in front of a computer designing a game. $50k is/was right around average for a first year programmer entering the field. And I'd bet there aren't many 0 year experience guys working at PD.

I love how people think programming is simple. I mean it's just sitting at a computer typing right. Jane SuburbanMom does that all day too at her secretary/typist job (not putting down secretary/typists). Little Joe does almost the same thing searching wikipedia and typing up his report for school, no?

There's way more to it than just what most people see/think. It often is one of the most mentally fatiguing tasks you can perform. Sure it seems simple when you see someone who's already done what he/she is trying to accomplish before. But set a programmer on a new task, which happens more frequently than not, and things can become extremely draining. Try coding things that don't have a reference. Often you have to derive your own algorithms, data structures, etc. for things as they either aren't widely documented or haven't been publicly exposed before.

It's fucking hard, demanding, and stressful work in almost every facet. Yeah, most of us love and strive on that, but that by no means makes $50k a lot for what we do. We are developing all the things people take for granted in this digital world, right along with all the mathematician's, hardware engineer's, etc.

Sorry. I just get frustrated when things come off as though people think our job is just as simple as the kid that watches youtube all day, or the 24/7 forum troll, because we get to stare at a computer all day.
 
Making a quality game takes a lot of time , know how and community input. Takes years to develop an engine if you make one from the ground up , even if you don't and you license one you still have to modify it to your needs and thats time consuming on its own. All the art work has to be developed and then modeled in 3D with physics.

Then there is extensive play testing for bugs and that takes a long while as well. Games are expensive because time is expensive.

Very few people are cut out to make games , its an extremely taxing type of job that keeps many who are involved away from there loved ones a majority of the time. Lots of respect to those that can handle it while attempting to strike a balance and love it because personally even though I love video games I would never make one.
 
Nightrainsrt4 said:
Lol @ OP thinking $50k would be a lot for sitting in front of a computer designing a game. $50k is/was right around average for a first year programmer entering the field. And I'd bet there aren't many 0 year experience guys working at PD.

I love how people think programming is simple. I mean it's just sitting at a computer typing right. Jane SuburbanMom does that all day too at her secretary/typist job (not putting down secretary/typists). Little Joe does almost the same thing searching wikipedia and typing up his report for school, no?

There's way more to it than just what most people see/think. It often is one of the most mentally fatiguing tasks you can perform. Sure it seems simple when you see someone who's already done what he/she is trying to accomplish before. But set a programmer on a new task, which happens more frequently than not, and things can become extremely draining. Try coding things that don't have a reference. Often you have to derive your own algorithms, data structures, etc. for things as they either aren't widely documented or haven't been publicly exposed before.

It's fucking hard, demanding, and stressful work in almost every facet. Yeah, most of us love and strive on that, but that by no means makes $50k a lot for what we do. We are developing all the things people take for granted in this digital world, right along with all the mathematician's, hardware engineer's, etc.

Sorry. I just get frustrated when things come off as though people think our job is just as simple as the kid that watches youtube all day, or the 24/7 forum troll, because we get to stare at a computer all day.
Click to expand...
Same here, I feel your pain.
 
game developers are not your typical office drone sitting at computer. The skill and dedication level required are far beyond countless jobs. Heck I'd imagine a decent amount of college educated people couldnt even make it through solid CS undergrad program without failing out. So ya, 50K is hardly alot for a game developer.
 
Nightrainsrt4 said:
Lol @ OP thinking $50k would be a lot for sitting in front of a computer designing a game. $50k is/was right around average for a first year programmer entering the field. And I'd bet there aren't many 0 year experience guys working at PD.

I love how people think programming is simple. I mean it's just sitting at a computer typing right. Jane SuburbanMom does that all day too at her secretary/typist job (not putting down secretary/typists). Little Joe does almost the same thing searching wikipedia and typing up his report for school, no?

There's way more to it than just what most people see/think. It often is one of the most mentally fatiguing tasks you can perform. Sure it seems simple when you see someone who's already done what he/she is trying to accomplish before. But set a programmer on a new task, which happens more frequently than not, and things can become extremely draining. Try coding things that don't have a reference. Often you have to derive your own algorithms, data structures, etc. for things as they either aren't widely documented or haven't been publicly exposed before.

It's fucking hard, demanding, and stressful work in almost every facet. Yeah, most of us love and strive on that, but that by no means makes $50k a lot for what we do. We are developing all the things people take for granted in this digital world, right along with all the mathematician's, hardware engineer's, etc.

Sorry. I just get frustrated when things come off as though people think our job is just as simple as the kid that watches youtube all day, or the 24/7 forum troll, because we get to stare at a computer all day.
Click to expand...
+1. im a developer myself and just today had to create my own shit today.
 
Nightrainsrt4 said:
Lol @ OP thinking $50k would be a lot for sitting in front of a computer designing a game. $50k is/was right around average for a first year programmer entering the field. And I'd bet there aren't many 0 year experience guys working at PD.

I love how people think programming is simple. I mean it's just sitting at a computer typing right. Jane SuburbanMom does that all day too at her secretary/typist job (not putting down secretary/typists). Little Joe does almost the same thing searching wikipedia and typing up his report for school, no?

There's way more to it than just what most people see/think. It often is one of the most mentally fatiguing tasks you can perform. Sure it seems simple when you see someone who's already done what he/she is trying to accomplish before. But set a programmer on a new task, which happens more frequently than not, and things can become extremely draining. Try coding things that don't have a reference. Often you have to derive your own algorithms, data structures, etc. for things as they either aren't widely documented or haven't been publicly exposed before.

It's fucking hard, demanding, and stressful work in almost every facet. Yeah, most of us love and strive on that, but that by no means makes $50k a lot for what we do. We are developing all the things people take for granted in this digital world, right along with all the mathematician's, hardware engineer's, etc.

Sorry. I just get frustrated when things come off as though people think our job is just as simple as the kid that watches youtube all day, or the 24/7 forum troll, because we get to stare at a computer all day.
Click to expand...

This. It ain't easy and it ain't simple, therefore it ain't cheap.

-Cool-
 
Nightrainsrt4 said:
Lol @ OP thinking $50k would be a lot for sitting in front of a computer designing a game. $50k is/was right around average for a first year programmer entering the field. And I'd bet there aren't many 0 year experience guys working at PD.

I love how people think programming is simple. I mean it's just sitting at a computer typing right. Jane SuburbanMom does that all day too at her secretary/typist job (not putting down secretary/typists). Little Joe does almost the same thing searching wikipedia and typing up his report for school, no?

There's way more to it than just what most people see/think. It often is one of the most mentally fatiguing tasks you can perform. Sure it seems simple when you see someone who's already done what he/she is trying to accomplish before. But set a programmer on a new task, which happens more frequently than not, and things can become extremely draining. Try coding things that don't have a reference. Often you have to derive your own algorithms, data structures, etc. for things as they either aren't widely documented or haven't been publicly exposed before.

It's fucking hard, demanding, and stressful work in almost every facet. Yeah, most of us love and strive on that, but that by no means makes $50k a lot for what we do. We are developing all the things people take for granted in this digital world, right along with all the mathematician's, hardware engineer's, etc.

Sorry. I just get frustrated when things come off as though people think our job is just as simple as the kid that watches youtube all day, or the 24/7 forum troll, because we get to stare at a computer all day.
Click to expand...

Yeah, jobs are hard, cool story bro :p

No offense, I'm sure you work hard and your job is demanding, but that describes most jobs. I underestimated the pay of game developers, my apologies if that offended you. Go tell that to the teachers who earn $40-50k for their work and the engineers who earn not much more than a games programmer doing a stressful job that they'll get put in jail for if they screw up and people die.

If you love what you do and get paid a decent dime for it, be happy :p
 
Ohhhkay. So this thread is more of a rant against devs and publishers than anything?
 
Tudz said:
Yeah, jobs are hard, cool story bro :p

No offense, I'm sure you work hard and your job is demanding, but that describes most jobs. I underestimated the pay of game developers, my apologies if that offended you. Go tell that to the teachers who earn $40-50k for their work and the engineers who earn not much more than a games programmer doing a stressful job that they'll get put in jail for if they screw up and people die.

If you love what you do and get paid a decent dime for it, be happy :p
Click to expand...

Making videogames isn't all fun and games.

There was a story not too long ago about a guy who quit EA and blogged about how insane the deadlines were. It was in general not a fun job at all. Work is work.
 
I think games are way overpriced these days... I think a brand new game should cost $20, 30 tops. I think somewhere along the line greedy CEO's are getting rich..
 
Video game programming is probably the most complicated form of software development. It's not really anymore difficult than the others. Just really complicated... (Carmack saying that Aerospace is simpler than video games here haha ) there aren't many people that can understand every part of a major engine used today. Most people just have their specialty inside of that engine/game. And getting all those different components to come together and process a massive 3D world in 16 milliseconds and draw 4 million pixels to the screen. A lot of that is thanks to the massive improvements in hardware, but it's still amazing... because this hardware is really stupid... they all have pretty basic instruction sets that can do some basic math. Somehow you do enough math in the right order you can get 3D objects on a 2D display... And enough of that code and content you can produce 3D worlds and games out of it.

I'm amazed games even run at all. After learning everything that game engines are built off and writing similar code... it's really ridiculous how far we've come and how fast it's happened. I really admire guys like Carmack who really pushed it with his engines... I doubt most people could even write Wolfenstein 3D from scratch without any other real references to go off of (Even today... without using DirectX or OpenGL). And he did it in like 6 months... Doom was also done in a similar time-frame I believe.

I don't think I'd be happy programming anything else though, nothing seems like it would be as challenging or rewarding. So yea, it costs a lot to produce these big titles. I think a lot of it goes to the people providing the content, voice-acting, stories, models, levels etc. Those take a lot of time and people to produce... That's the biggest difference between what Indie studios can produce and what AAA studios produce. Is just the sheer amount of content and size of the worlds they can create. An Indie studio can build an engine within a year or two that looks as good as any of these other games, but they don't have the people or funds to produce the content.

Rabble rabble... support the devs :D ... although I'm not one of them yet I hope to be in a few years when I'm done with school.
 
Tudz said:
Yeah, jobs are hard, cool story bro :p

No offense, I'm sure you work hard and your job is demanding, but that describes most jobs. I underestimated the pay of game developers, my apologies if that offended you. Go tell that to the teachers who earn $40-50k for their work and the engineers who earn not much more than a games programmer doing a stressful job that they'll get put in jail for if they screw up and people die.

If you love what you do and get paid a decent dime for it, be happy :p
Click to expand...

My issue was less about the money and more the implication of software engineers just chilling in front of a computer. It's not as if you get to see/playtest the game every few moments, if at all. Programming wise, you spend most of your time staring at just plain files, filled with complicated mathematical equations/algorithms, methods, etc.

There's always a job harder, more demanding, etc. than the next. The difference is I'm not the one making the assumptions that their jobs must be pretty simple, and thus they are overpaid for what they do, even though I have no clue what it entails.
 
Blazestorm said:
Video game programming is probably the most complicated form of software development. It's not really anymore difficult than the others. Just really complicated... (Carmack saying that Aerospace is simpler than video games here haha ) there aren't many people that can understand every part of a major engine used today. Most people just have their specialty inside of that engine/game. And getting all those different components to come together and process a massive 3D world in 16 milliseconds and draw 4 million pixels to the screen. A lot of that is thanks to the massive improvements in hardware, but it's still amazing... because this hardware is really stupid... they all have pretty basic instruction sets that can do some basic math. Somehow you do enough math in the right order you can get 3D objects on a 2D display... And enough of that code and content you can produce 3D worlds and games out of it.

I'm amazed games even run at all. After learning everything that game engines are built off and writing similar code... it's really ridiculous how far we've come and how fast it's happened. I really admire guys like Carmack who really pushed it with his engines... I doubt most people could even write Wolfenstein 3D from scratch without any other real references to go off of (Even today... without using DirectX or OpenGL). And he did it in like 6 months... Doom was also done in a similar time-frame I believe.

I don't think I'd be happy programming anything else though, nothing seems like it would be as challenging or rewarding. So yea, it costs a lot to produce these big titles. I think a lot of it goes to the people providing the content, voice-acting, stories, models, levels etc. Those take a lot of time and people to produce... That's the biggest difference between what Indie studios can produce and what AAA studios produce. Is just the sheer amount of content and size of the worlds they can create. An Indie studio can build an engine within a year or two that looks as good as any of these other games, but they don't have the people or funds to produce the content.

Rabble rabble... support the devs :D ... although I'm not one of them yet I hope to be in a few years when I'm done with school.
Click to expand...

amen...I am a programmer by day, have been for about 5 years. I've looked at source code for games and it boggles my mind to no end that they can get it to work...I could never become that good at code, never.
 
What I want to know is why despite such huge advances in tech A.I is still pretty bad; yet games made many years ago have better A.I.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top