At this point, huge games like this need to spend more money on marketing than actually developing the game. It sounds crazy, but the price to make AAA games is extremely high and there's huge pushback against raising the price. They've tried doing stuff like season passes, day one DLC, and deluxe editions just to try and hide the fact that they really need to be selling the game at a higher price than $60. The only other option to turn a profit is to sell the game to as many people as possible, which means marketing gets progressively larger and larger.
There's only three options to deal with top of the line games getting more expensive to make:
- Don't make games top of the line, settle for lower graphical, audio, and mechanical fidelity to keep your budget down. You can pick easier to make art styles to mask this.
- Charge higher prices for the games. If it costs three times to make the game as it did 10 years ago, it would make sense for the game to cost $180 retail, right? That's about when the last standard price increase happened from $50 to $60. Alternatively, find more ways to make money off of the same game, such as special editions, DLC, and Loot Crates. Fremium games fall into the same category.
- Get more people to buy your games. If it costs three times as much to make the game, all you need is for three times as many people to buy the game to make it as profitable. That means lots of marketing.
Well that's all fine and dandy ... when you're an "independent" developer with less than a hundred employees.
We've seen games come out with the same graphically fidelity as a AAA game that's been in development for years. Yes we've been told cost of games are more than $60, that's just an excuse. The reason i think so is because have the budget is majority: marketing; and if the publisher paying for the game to be developed then they have to set standards and have a template. Game engines, graphics fidelity, scripting, model for everything in the game space, i'm not saying its easy (its fucking hard as shit) but we don't need 4k HDDR high definition with crisp audio and multiplayer aspect on dedicated servers for PvP, PvE and Narrative World spaces in a single player game that belongs in a Offline gaming franchise. Those are gimmicks, to add more bang for your buck - so to speak. You add more space into an open world like say ESO: Skyrim, it just a bunch of empty space with lots of lush but without substance. If i take a soda can and drink from it, and its empty, then i'm left with is an empty can with no liquid gold. Back then on N64, 400mb was considered a HUGE deal but the problem was that the memory drive had to contain both the game and the audio so the developer got creative and used mixes of audio to mimic different tones and atmosphere or a rehash of some level with a different color and map layout, but it still was a huge deal to make an entire complete game with just 400mb (i'm guessing the size, obviously). With all the gimmicks we have in today's market, they don't get too interested in filling up the world spaces they create and opted in for a huge graphically pleasing setting and awe inspiring audio instead of gameplay that used to be revolutionary and deeply thought provoking.
I think this inflation of features and bells & whistles theme is primarily because publisher are forcing these outrageously bad demands that are impossible to fulfill in an allotted time set for the developers. Is it Bioware's fault their games sucked after signing with EA? No, they were rushed and the intended game they had made was scraped and retrofitted with more crap that nobody asked for or was expecting. EA publishing pushed for time to be called and they shipped the games out before their time - forever being bad. We use EA as an example (not just because they truely are a shitty company) but it's a commonplace practice amongst publishers that don't cater to gamers, but their shareholders who make these demands for bigger shares and the company inst going to give them their cut of the profits so they have to have a scapegoat to take the fall. Game didn't sell very well? Blame the developers, its easy and they know they'll get away with it because they're not held to the same standards as developers. If the developers don't work on the publisher's standards they get shutdown if owned by them or they simply wont get contracts or future jobs and the companies go bankrupt. Rest In Peace: Westwood Studios.
I can accept downgrading graphics for more detailed and better controlling schemes for the game, i can accept cosmetic microtransactions to offset other expenses, i can accept glitches and bugs in a minute detail. But hamfisting features into an unfinished game and making bad ports of a game they were not intended on being in with it grilled to the bones with transactions for purchasing: save slots, leveling exp, special one-hit guns, shortcuts to better gear, paying for DLC that were meant to be in the game in the first place. If they need to raise the price of the game, so be it but that would mean losing a low income audience that can't get them. If they lower the price too low, then they will be eating into their profits to just barely break even on the overhead costs of the entire production. So that's where the community is currently at right now on whether $60 is considered fair or not (to those who don't know).
But where some developers and publishers fail, CD Projekt Red and Bethesda Softworks have their hand on the pulse of the community and understand what the people want and are able to satisfy those craving in the right way. They make games that either cater to one audience or the other, but not both. There's too much mutli-tasking and overall technical support that some companies do not have or cannot provide because they must move on the the next project of their next game or they will have to delay that game just so they can fix the recently released one. To us, we're the consumers that is blissfully unaware of how the metaphorical sausage is made. The less we know whats going on behind closed doors, the less we have to protest and fight against and if we do find out (and we always do) it will either blow up in their faces or we see it as shade (shady business). To the developers, we're the gripping step-child that demands attentions and if we pitch a fit, they freakout and are intimidated by them. During development with Anthem from Bioware: they said they were afraid of us if the game wasn't to our liking. Gabe Newell said he stopped making Half Life after the blowback during Mass Effect 3's controversial endings to the trilogy for fear that our expectations were too high.
In truth, developers are afraid of us and the publishers > gamers are afraid of developers making bad decisions and hate publishers > publishers are afraid of their shareholders and boycotting gamers but just don't give a fuck about anyone's business except heir own. That's what i see at E3 Expos, this year's was appalling because nobody had anything substantial to showoff and no gameplay except Bethesda and maybe PS4? I dunno about PS4 because i'm strictly PC and Xbox. Which, bravo to the Cyberpunk 2077 team for that brilliant display during the Xbox Press Conference!
