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12 years and $700M later, they're on Alpha 3.23. When this game started accepting donations, it was 2012. Mass Effect 3 was released in March of that year. M

12 years and $700M later, they're on Alpha 3.23. When this game started accepting donations, it was 2012. Mass Effect 3 was released in March of that year. Mass Effect 2 was released just two years previous, in 2010, and the first game in the series was released in late 2007. Less than four and a half years from start to finish. I know that development cycles have been growing quite a lot longer, but this is ridiculous... Aside, does $700M make this the most expensive (or, rather, well-funded) video game of all time?

aeturnum 2y ago
I think most estimates place the budget of GTA 6 at well north of $1000M. That said, based on public data, it's #2 on wikipedia[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...
- eterm 2y ago
  That entry for "Monopoly Go!" is unintentionally hilarious because of the incomplete information: "Marketing: $500m; Total: $500m" Yeah, that sounds about right.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    > By March 2024, the game generated $2 billion in revenue just 10 months after launch and three months after hitting $1 billion. This is absolutely wild.
    - runnr_az 2y ago
      That's... surprising. But it kinda goes to the whole "the stuff that people really care about on social media is really only part of the picture" thing.
- eximius 2y ago
  Yes, but a _significant_ portion of those are marketing. If you look only at development costs, nothing comes close to Star Citizen.
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    Wouldn't you argue that Star Citizen is mostly marketing?
    - piva00 2y ago
      Not paid (and expensive) marketing, like billboards, TV ads, whole campaigns across many media, etc.
    - eximius 2y ago
      They're spending their money on development, just really irresponsibly.
jcranmer 2y ago
In two years' time, this game will have taken longer to develop than Duke Nukem Forever.
causi 2y ago
I wrote it off when a bunch of Freelancer fans were like "hey, is this going to have third-person ship combat and manual flying through asteroids?" and Roberts said "Yeah!" and then after he got their money he was like "Never mind, that will cost me money from the sim addicts, so we're not doing that."
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Yeah, I was basically hoping for Freelancer 2. Galaxy on Fire and then Everspace 2 mostly scratched that itch, but I still think Freelancer did some things better.
  - causi 2y ago
    It's the cruising and exploration. Flying across giant ice clouds that span half a solar system in Tau-37, hopping among the asteroids of Omega-11 as you hide from the deadly radiation, and all the rest.
PurpleRamen 2y ago
That is a very pointless comparison. Mass Effect is a plot-driven theme-park, while Star Citizen is a World-Simulation. Not quite the same type of software. Minecraft or Microsoft Flight Simulator are probably the better comparison. > Aside, does $700M make this the most expensive (or, rather, well-funded) video game of all time? World of Warcraft and similar long-running service-games could be in the same range, but it's again a different type, and it's usually not known how much money went into their development.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  Nah, think about it. You're looking at about two years between games. Those games are huge, with ~40 hours of content each, easy. And each game in the series utilized different systems, art assets, and mechanics. Testing/QC alone must have been pretty arduous! And they did all of that to AAA standards, across multiple platforms. Say what you will about Bioware botching the ending, they didn't leave their customers hanging. They worked quick. I guess that when customers pay for finished products, that incentivizes a studio to finish the job; when customers pay for pre-release trinkets, and pay dearly, a studio may suffer from a perverse incentive problem. As for Minecraft, version 0.0.1 Alpha was released in May 2009, and Minecraft 1.0.0 was released in Nov 2011. Not much more than two years. And imagine how small their budget and team must have been compared to Star Citizen's $700M warchest.
  - silentsanctuary 2y ago
    > Those games are huge, with ~40 hours of content each, easy. This isn't really the way to measure the work required to build a product. A series of books that takes 80 hours to read doesn't cost twice to make as much as Mass Effect. Complexity and uncertainty is a huge factor. Mass Effect was a game principally composed of components that everyone involved has built many times before, and where most of the difficult problems are already solved. It's a complex project by some standards, but it pales in comparison to even what is already playable in Star Citizen. A single feature of "being a person who walks into a ship, sits in a pilot seat, flies up into space, lands on a space station, gets out of ship and into the station, without clumsy transition screens in which you just magically become the ship" is a promise that many games (including EvE, Elite Dangerous) have promised and spent money trying to build for many years, and eventually given up on. Only Star Citizen has actually managed to deliver on this. It's certainly the case that Star Citizen has lots of very annoying bugs, and doesn't have nearly the number of game loops it wants to have, even after this level of spend. However, it's also very intuitive to me that if someone is solving a novel engineering problem that the other leading experts have attempted to solve and failed at great expense, that this project that actually has managed to get further than anyone else is probably not going to be able to be cheap.

aeturnum 2y ago

I think most estimates place the budget of GTA 6 at well north of $1000M. That said, based on public data, it's #2 on wikipedia[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...

eterm 2y ago
That entry for "Monopoly Go!" is unintentionally hilarious because of the incomplete information: "Marketing: $500m; Total: $500m" Yeah, that sounds about right.
- Aunche 2y ago
  > By March 2024, the game generated $2 billion in revenue just 10 months after launch and three months after hitting $1 billion. This is absolutely wild.
  - runnr_az 2y ago
    That's... surprising. But it kinda goes to the whole "the stuff that people really care about on social media is really only part of the picture" thing.
eximius 2y ago
Yes, but a _significant_ portion of those are marketing. If you look only at development costs, nothing comes close to Star Citizen.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  Wouldn't you argue that Star Citizen is mostly marketing?
  - piva00 2y ago
    Not paid (and expensive) marketing, like billboards, TV ads, whole campaigns across many media, etc.
  - eximius 2y ago
    They're spending their money on development, just really irresponsibly.

jcranmer 2y ago

In two years' time, this game will have taken longer to develop than Duke Nukem Forever.

causi 2y ago

I wrote it off when a bunch of Freelancer fans were like "hey, is this going to have third-person ship combat and manual flying through asteroids?" and Roberts said "Yeah!" and then after he got their money he was like "Never mind, that will cost me money from the sim addicts, so we're not doing that."

AlexandrB 2y ago
Yeah, I was basically hoping for Freelancer 2. Galaxy on Fire and then Everspace 2 mostly scratched that itch, but I still think Freelancer did some things better.
- causi 2y ago
  It's the cruising and exploration. Flying across giant ice clouds that span half a solar system in Tau-37, hopping among the asteroids of Omega-11 as you hide from the deadly radiation, and all the rest.

PurpleRamen 2y ago

That is a very pointless comparison. Mass Effect is a plot-driven theme-park, while Star Citizen is a World-Simulation. Not quite the same type of software. Minecraft or Microsoft Flight Simulator are probably the better comparison. > Aside, does $700M make this the most expensive (or, rather, well-funded) video game of all time? World of Warcraft and similar long-running service-games could be in the same range, but it's again a different type, and it's usually not known how much money went into their development.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Nah, think about it. You're looking at about two years between games. Those games are huge, with ~40 hours of content each, easy. And each game in the series utilized different systems, art assets, and mechanics. Testing/QC alone must have been pretty arduous! And they did all of that to AAA standards, across multiple platforms. Say what you will about Bioware botching the ending, they didn't leave their customers hanging. They worked quick. I guess that when customers pay for finished products, that incentivizes a studio to finish the job; when customers pay for pre-release trinkets, and pay dearly, a studio may suffer from a perverse incentive problem. As for Minecraft, version 0.0.1 Alpha was released in May 2009, and Minecraft 1.0.0 was released in Nov 2011. Not much more than two years. And imagine how small their budget and team must have been compared to Star Citizen's $700M warchest.
- silentsanctuary 2y ago
  > Those games are huge, with ~40 hours of content each, easy. This isn't really the way to measure the work required to build a product. A series of books that takes 80 hours to read doesn't cost twice to make as much as Mass Effect. Complexity and uncertainty is a huge factor. Mass Effect was a game principally composed of components that everyone involved has built many times before, and where most of the difficult problems are already solved. It's a complex project by some standards, but it pales in comparison to even what is already playable in Star Citizen. A single feature of "being a person who walks into a ship, sits in a pilot seat, flies up into space, lands on a space station, gets out of ship and into the station, without clumsy transition screens in which you just magically become the ship" is a promise that many games (including EvE, Elite Dangerous) have promised and spent money trying to build for many years, and eventually given up on. Only Star Citizen has actually managed to deliver on this. It's certainly the case that Star Citizen has lots of very annoying bugs, and doesn't have nearly the number of game loops it wants to have, even after this level of spend. However, it's also very intuitive to me that if someone is solving a novel engineering problem that the other leading experts have attempted to solve and failed at great expense, that this project that actually has managed to get further than anyone else is probably not going to be able to be cheap.