4 ms·

It's incentives. A studio nowadays is either outright owned by the publisher or is signed up for development with little or zero equity. In this situation the o

It's incentives. A studio nowadays is either outright owned by the publisher or is signed up for development with little or zero equity. In this situation the only source of income for a studio is the milestone payments or salary paid by the publisher so the longer development goes on, the more it gets paid and the more is the cost. If American studios could find publishing contracts leaving them more than 50% of equity like they used to in 1990s-early 2000s they would be making games much cheaper. Even though you might get cheaper developers elsewhere, few have skills and spend most of the time on learning how to make games through trial and error, running costs up. I remember how expensive Killzone appeared to the American game developers: the Dutch studio, apparently had hundreds of staff and tens of millions cost in early 2000s, when a better selling American game had been usually developed by a couple of dozens staff for under 10mil.

lowbloodsugar 2y ago
In the early 2000s? Couple dozen staff? Making games that rival Killzone for revenue? Shadow Fall was the first PS4 game to hit the million sales mark, for example. Killzone 2 hit a million after a few months.
- pandaman 2y ago
  Shadow Fall was a PS4 game. Killzone was on PS2, and has not made any significant sales (and a million in sales on PS1/PS2 was par for the course, Crash sold multiple millions and had <50 dev team, for example).
  - lowbloodsugar 2y ago
    Right, so crash sold multiple millions and cost under $10m you’re saying? Was the question about Killzone being expensive or was it that they had a large team so it was assumed to be expensive (because US devs got paid more)?
    - pandaman 2y ago
      Yes, Killzone, a PS2 game. Not PS3 game Killzone 2 or PS4 game Killzone: Shadow Fall. We don't have benchmarks for the studio model from PS3 on as by the time PS3 came out the studio model was dead and AAA development was done by publisher-owned studios with few independents signed up on shitty contracts. >Was the question about Killzone being expensive or was it that they had a large team so it was assumed to be expensive (because US devs got paid more)? The rumored budget for Killzone (not 2, not Shadow Fall, the plain old PS2 game) was ~40M dollars. Guerrilla had over 200 people at the time it shipped and the development time was well over a AAA game normally took in that generation. Just looking in credits you can see 18 engineers, something that nobody has seen until PS3 generation. It might have been that they have already staffed up for the KZ2 and PS3 development but nevertheless American developers were shocked by the waste of the resources on the game that barely sold.
      - lowbloodsugar 2y ago
        Sold a million by end of the year. Look where they are now. You saw “too big and too expensive”. History sees five sequels and then Horizon Zero Dawn franchise.
        pandaman 2y ago
        "Sold a million" might be something cool in music, where you get a "platinum" for selling a million of CDs but a PS2 full price game was $50, of which ~$10 went to Sony for license and $10 went to various expenses from shipping to shelf space. So "sold a million" means, at the very best, $30M in the bank. When you spent $40M to get the game out it's not a very good number to have in the bank (it's a nice chunk of change if you spent $2-10M like other AAA devs at that time). And it's unlikely Killzone ever sold a million at full price to begin with. Sequels and Horizon or whatever else you like are irrelevant to the financials. Sony game business does not seem to be doing well now but how is it related to the financial performance of an European studio from 20 years ago? (Even though I can see how acquisition of Guerrilla eventually led to the current sad state of affairs, the Guerrilla's boss had been in charge of Sony's first party development during the period of Sony's decline).

lowbloodsugar 2y ago

In the early 2000s? Couple dozen staff? Making games that rival Killzone for revenue? Shadow Fall was the first PS4 game to hit the million sales mark, for example. Killzone 2 hit a million after a few months.

pandaman 2y ago
Shadow Fall was a PS4 game. Killzone was on PS2, and has not made any significant sales (and a million in sales on PS1/PS2 was par for the course, Crash sold multiple millions and had <50 dev team, for example).
- lowbloodsugar 2y ago
  Right, so crash sold multiple millions and cost under $10m you’re saying? Was the question about Killzone being expensive or was it that they had a large team so it was assumed to be expensive (because US devs got paid more)?
  - pandaman 2y ago
    Yes, Killzone, a PS2 game. Not PS3 game Killzone 2 or PS4 game Killzone: Shadow Fall. We don't have benchmarks for the studio model from PS3 on as by the time PS3 came out the studio model was dead and AAA development was done by publisher-owned studios with few independents signed up on shitty contracts. >Was the question about Killzone being expensive or was it that they had a large team so it was assumed to be expensive (because US devs got paid more)? The rumored budget for Killzone (not 2, not Shadow Fall, the plain old PS2 game) was ~40M dollars. Guerrilla had over 200 people at the time it shipped and the development time was well over a AAA game normally took in that generation. Just looking in credits you can see 18 engineers, something that nobody has seen until PS3 generation. It might have been that they have already staffed up for the KZ2 and PS3 development but nevertheless American developers were shocked by the waste of the resources on the game that barely sold.
    - lowbloodsugar 2y ago
      Sold a million by end of the year. Look where they are now. You saw “too big and too expensive”. History sees five sequels and then Horizon Zero Dawn franchise.
      - pandaman 2y ago
        "Sold a million" might be something cool in music, where you get a "platinum" for selling a million of CDs but a PS2 full price game was $50, of which ~$10 went to Sony for license and $10 went to various expenses from shipping to shelf space. So "sold a million" means, at the very best, $30M in the bank. When you spent $40M to get the game out it's not a very good number to have in the bank (it's a nice chunk of change if you spent $2-10M like other AAA devs at that time). And it's unlikely Killzone ever sold a million at full price to begin with. Sequels and Horizon or whatever else you like are irrelevant to the financials. Sony game business does not seem to be doing well now but how is it related to the financial performance of an European studio from 20 years ago? (Even though I can see how acquisition of Guerrilla eventually led to the current sad state of affairs, the Guerrilla's boss had been in charge of Sony's first party development during the period of Sony's decline).