8 ms·

Star Citizen is a topic I sink a bit of time into every year or so, because I find the whole phenomenon incredibly curious and somewhat unique to our times. Do

• wayoutthere 5y ago
  Ehhh that list of game dev costs seems really suspect; Star Citizen is only notable because they released dev costs when everyone else holds them tight to the chest. Personnel counts have ballooned in the era of motion capture and full voice acting; you’re often doing a whole lot more movie things like mocap, script writing, juggling a bunch of actors, etc. in a game than for a movie. AAA video games over the last 10 years typically have as much if not more budget than tentpole movies (and corresponding revenue draw).
  • napkin 5y ago
    Yeah, interesting point! However, even if you just adjusted all the other dev costs in that list by a factor of two or three - Star Citizen would still easily remain in the top five. My point was mainly- Compare CIG's efforts to other studios that have spent hundreds, or even just tens of millions!
  • pmoriarty 5y ago
    "Personnel counts have ballooned in the era of motion capture and full voice acting; you’re often doing a whole lot more movie things like mocap, script writing, juggling a bunch of actors, etc. in a game than for a movie." Are voice acting costs that huge? It's not like video games have to shell out millions to get name-brand actors to star in their cut scenes. It's usually unknowns or has-beens who stoop to doing video game work. How expensive can that be?
    • ComputerGuru 5y ago
      Cheap enough that you can get them on fivr
      • wayoutthere 5y ago
        Not the good ones. There are definitely top-tier voice actors out there who command good salaries. The ones on fivr are for like, recording audio books or radio commercials.
    • jrimbault 5y ago
      From what I know, talent is usually cheap enough relative to the total cost of a game, it's the whole pipeline around integrating voice acting and motion capture into a game that's really expensive. In this[1] episode of that podcast they talk a bit about the costs around that. If you decide to do voice acting and motion capture you also have to adapt the whole game and writing around that decision, which balloons costs a lot since you've decided you want _that kind of game_. [1]: https://youtu.be/cTejdjnf-jI https://youtu.be/cTejdjnf-jI with Mike Bithel dev of "Thomas was Alone", Troy Baker celebrity video game voice actor, Austin Wintory composer (Journey), Alanah Pearce writer
  • halflings 5y ago
    Most of these games are made by publicly traded companies, which have to release information such as dev/marketing costs to their shareholders.
    • darkwizard42 5y ago
      Yes, but never at the level of detail that is being discussed here. You won't see the costs for the latest WoW expansion broken out in the R&D line items in Activision-Blizzard's financial statements.
• ascar 5y ago
  > They've spent more time & money than any other game development studio for a single project The Wikipedia page states: "Most game budgets are not disclosed, so this list is not indicative of industry trends." I would expect ongoing major MMOs to easily exceed that number. For example WoW, but probably even games like EVE online.
  • andai 5y ago
    From Wikipedia: "[World of Warcraft] has grossed $9.23 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing video games of all time, along with Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Street Fighter II."
    • mlyle 5y ago
      Yes, that's revenue. Parent's post neither claims WoW is a failure nor that WoW has taken in/made lots of money-- just that they've probably spent a lot of money and no one knows how much.
  • philipov 5y ago
    I don't think MMOs should be counted as a single project. Each expansion should be counted separately, at the very least. Star Citizen hasn't even released the base game, and the fact that they haven't segmented off any of their feature creep into future expansions is itself a story of project mismanagement. Part of a successful project is knowing how to divide it into multiple sequential projects.
  • lelandfe 5y ago
    Original development cost for WoW was $63M.[0] That’s enough to land it a spot towards the bottom of that Wikipedia list. 4 years of post-launch support ran up costs of $200M.[1] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060619205201/http://www.digitalbattle.com/2006/06/15/world-of-warcraft-cost-63-million/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060619205201/http://www.digita... [1] https://www.wired.com/2008/09/total-operating https://www.wired.com/2008/09/total-operating
  • chipotle_coyote 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• reincarnate0x14 5y ago
  Wow, that's been ten years already. If that 339M USD figure is accurate, they could have partnered with a few companies to launch a real space ship. Shades of the never-ending train of hype and mostly lies that was Battlecruiser 3000 two decades earlier. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD ) There is a clearly a giant wad of latent demand-money sitting around waiting for someone to deliver on the concept, would be interesting if some studio with more traditional funding makes a go of it.
  • cptnapalm 5y ago
    Going from "we're going to make a game about space ships" to "we're going to launch a real space ship" would be a feature creep deserving of a monument.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• snarkerson 5y ago
  Still cheaper and better than Battlefield 2042.
• Qerty 5y ago
  You make a good point for the opposite. Cyberpunk is not that far away and it launched probably 2 years too early
• acomjean 5y ago
  That "Sunk Cost Galaxy" series is quite good. I didn't know much about this before. It really feels like cashing in on nostalgia, put something barely playable together and keep cashing in. The fact that a lot of the development was outsourced.....
• jhanschoo 5y ago
  Heh, I'm most surprised that their marketing spend is so low