What makes developing videogames so expensive?

Aside from paying the workers and licensing and stuff like that...

Yeah, I don't know anything about developing videogames so this probably sounds dumb, but I wondered about this for a while, and I thought like.... Once you have the tools, the engine and whatever else to make the game, wouldn't you just kind of craft it with the tools you have? Does all of the expense come from just developing the tools they make to create the game? I really don't know. I'm sure it's not that at all. I really don't understand anything about how this works as you can see.

Time and Resources.

The main reason my production cost and went beyond double is because of the time frames placed by the big publishers requiring 2-3x the amount of production crew to create the assets of the games within the certain date. Time+assets=cost

Well time is money I guess.

Crunching those hours, plus if they start off with a new engine they have to spend mucho $$$ on the software.

Well, it cost's them money to operate the building their working in ,

taxes from where ever they are , shipping costs cameras (for cutscene heavy games) for games like madden you need to pay nfl a fee to use thier stuff ,

it just keeps rising with every year because the cost of living goes up , and the employees gotta get paid , the third party endorsments also if applicable should be paid , (eg ford chevy) for the use of their product

thats what makes it so expensive not to mention the equipment cost if they break down

video games are not like paint shop where you copy and paste.... k2theswiss

They don't have to be. You can funnel all your resources on voice-acting, writing, marketing and still develop a game technically inferior to an indie game.

I thought like.... Once you have the tools, the engine and whatever else to make the game, wouldn't you just kind of craft it with the tools you have? Does all of the expense come from just developing the tools they make to create the game?

IcyFlamez96

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video games are not like paint shop where you copy and paste.... k2theswiss

Dragon Age 2 disagrees.

Because not only do dev teams pay for all the tech, voice actors, and whatever, but then they pay their team of 100 workers anywhere from $50,000-$100,000 a year to work on the game.

Have to pay all the people to work for so long, have to pay voice actors and people to make the music, then you have to pay an orchestra to actually play the music. There are lots of things people overlook that go into the costs

Marketing, paying the dev team and everything in between.

Blowing away money on CGI trailers, advertising, product deals (like Halo Mt. Dew and Doritos), and 5-star actor voiceovers. Meanwhile games like Witcher 2 and Sins of a solar Empire are mad eudner 10mil bucks and thrive. SWToR at $300mil and being iffy. Money =/= quality

Blowing away money on CGI trailers, advertising, product deals (like Halo Mt. Dew and Doritos), and 5-star actor voiceovers. Meanwhile games like Witcher 2 and Sins of a solar Empire are mad eudner 10mil bucks and thrive. SWToR at $300mil and being iffy. Money =/= quality

wis3boi

Do products deals cost them much money though? Both companies benefit from it. Halo gets marketing in grocery stores and 7-11s across the world, Mt. Dew and Doritos have marketing tools buying their products in droves to get extra XP. Both companies make money off the deal

I'd say production values and advertisement are the big money hogs in development.

Salaries, rent, and time.

A medium-ish development team is around 50 people. An average development time is about 3 years. Assuming each developer gets paid an average of about $40,000 a year.

50 people's salaries x $40,000 = 2 Millions dollars.

2 Million x 3 years = 6 million dollars.

Rent space for about 50 people could easily be around $300,000 per year. So that'll likely add another million.

Marketing and advertisements usually doubles costs. Or rather, most publishres devote about %50 of the total development budget to marketing and ads.

Paying employees is very, very expensive.

Salaries, rent, and time.

A medium-ish development team is around 50 people. An average development time is about 3 years. Assuming each developer gets paid an average of about $40,000 a year.

50 people's salaries x $40,000 = 2 Millions dollars.

2 Million x 3 years = 6 million dollars.

Rent space for about 50 people could easily be around $300,000 per year. So that'll likely add another million.

Marketing and advertisements usually doubles costs. Or rather, most publishres devote about %50 of the total development budget to marketing and ads.

Paying employees is very, very expensive.

XaosII

foilagebobcheeseball

foilagebobcheeseball

They have speed tree for that, well those have who have paid the license to use it :P As many have said already, it takes a ****load of time.

[QUOTE="wis3boi"]

Blowing away money on CGI trailers, advertising, product deals (like Halo Mt. Dew and Doritos), and 5-star actor voiceovers. Meanwhile games like Witcher 2 and Sins of a solar Empire are mad eudner 10mil bucks and thrive. SWToR at $300mil and being iffy. Money =/= quality

BPoole96

Do products deals cost them much money though? Both companies benefit from it. Halo gets marketing in grocery stores and 7-11s across the world, Mt. Dew and Doritos have marketing tools buying their products in droves to get extra XP. Both companies make money off the deal

What makes developing videogames so expensive?

one word: consoles

Yes, consoles makes games way too expensive to produce. For example, u have a bad hallway shooter like killzone cost like 40 million to develop, or something so linear as gow3 60 million to develop. While u have pc devs such as CDprojekt make arguably the best and most mature rpg experience in the last decade for around 15 million... a game with 16 endings that is none linear unlike GOW3, so they already hit profits by hitting 500k units sold.

While a game like Kingdoms of amalur sold over a million and still didnt hit profits.

Voice actors, time, marketing, licenses for software (which is expensive), time spent in motion capture studios (if applicable), any real world scouting, licensing for stuff, there's a lot of stuff. bobbetybob

Time and Resources.

LegatoSkyheart

What makes developing videogames so expensive?

one word: consoles

Yes, consoles makes games way too expensive to produce. For example, u have a bad hallway shooter like killzone cost like 40 million to develop, or something so linear as gow3 60 million to develop. While u have pc devs such as CDprojekt make arguably the best and most mature rpg experience in the last decade for around 15 million... a game with 16 endings that is none linear unlike GOW3, so they already hit profits by hitting 500k units sold.

While a game like Kingdoms of amalur sold over a million and still didnt hit profits.

humpmasterflex

Calculate the salaries + office costs. Most can disappear right there. But for multimillion games often you have 50% marketing costs and other crazy expenses like the legal department involved and license costs.