Starfield Highlights a Major Problem With the AAA Game Industry

Video games -- particularly AAA video games -- have become too expensive to make. The intel from every fly on the wall in every investor's room is there is an increasing level of caution about spending hundreds of millions just to release a single video game. And you can't blame them. Many AAA game budgets mean that you can print hundreds of millions in revenue, and not even turn a profit. If you are an investor, quite frankly, there are many easier ways to make a buck. AAA games have always been expensive to make though, but when did we go from expensive, to too expensive? A decade ago, AAA games were still expensive to make, but fears of "sustainability" didn't keep every CEO up at night. Consumer expectations and demands no doubt play a role in this, but more and more games are also revealing obvious signs of resource mismanagement, evident by development teams and budgets spiraling out of control with sometimes nothing substantial to show for it.

[franwex]

It’s a question that I’ve pondered myself too. How are these developers spending this much money? Also, like the article stated, I cannot tell where it’s even going. Perfect example was used with Starfield and Spiderman 2.

They claim they have to increase prices due to development costs exploding. Okay? Well, I’m finding myself spending less and less money on games than before due to the quality actually going down. With a few recent exceptions games are getting worse.

I thought these newer consoles and game engines are easier-therefore-cheaper to make games than previous ones. What has happened? Was it over hiring after the pandemic, like other tech companies?

[MrBaskerville]

Costs quite a bit to maintain a team of 700+ employees. Which is what it takes to create something with state of the art fidelity and scope. Just imagine how many 3D artists you'd need to create the plethora of 3D objects in a AAA game. There's so much stuff and each asset takes time and effort.

That's atleast one of the things that didn't get easier. Also coding all the systems and creating all the character models with animations and everything. Animations alone is a huge thing because games are expected to be so detailed.

Back in the day a God of War type game was a 12 hour adventure with small levels, now it has to be this 40+ hours of stuff. Obviously it didn't have to be this way of AAA publishers hadn't convinced themselves that it's an arms race. Games probably didn't need to be this bloated and they probably didn't need to be cutting edge in fidelity.

[franwex]

Starfield’s animation and character models look like they are from Oblivion, a game that came out about 20 years ago. I cannot tell the difference between Spider-Man 2 and the first one at first glance. It’s been a joke in some YouTube channels.

Seven hundred people for 1 game? Make 7 games with 100 people instead. I think recent games have proven that it’s okay to have AA games, such as Hell Divers 2.

I guess I’m a bit jaded with the industry and where things are headed. Solutions seem obvious and easy, but maybe they aren’t.

[MrBaskerville]

@franwex
I'm not talking about Starfield.

And I'm not advocating for these behemoth productions. I think shorter development time and smaller teams would lead to better and more varied games. I want that, even if that means that we have to scale things down quite a bit.

Take something like The Last of Us 2. The amount of custom content is ridiculous if you break it down. It's no wonder they have huge teams of animators and modellers. And just to make things worse, each animated detail requires coding as well.

Just to add to animation work. It can take up to a week to make detailed walking animations. A lot of these tend to vary between character types. And then you need to do every other type of animation as well which is a task that scales quickly depending on how detailed the game is. And that's just a small aspect of AAA development. Each level might require several level designers who only do blockouts. Enviroment artists that setdress and lighting artists that work solely on lighting. Level needs scripting and testing. Each of these tasks takes a long ass time if the game is striving for realism.

Personally I prefer working on games where one level designer can do all aspects. But that's almost exclusively in indie and minor productions. It gets bloated fast.

[Yui_Suzumiya]

Then there's Doki Doki Literature Club which took one person to make along with a character designer and background designer and it's absolutely brilliant.

[Cacabunga]

Simply because they want you to believe it’s so expensive to develop a game that they must turn into other practices like releasing games unfinished, micro transactions and in the long run adopt the gaas model in all games..

[thorstein]

I think game budgets are falsely inflated for tax purposes.

Just look at Godzilla Minus One. It cost less that 15 million.

If they include CEO salary and bonuses on every game and the CEO takes a 20 million dollar bonus every year for the 4 years of dev time, that's 80 million the company can claim went to "making" the game.

[esherwood]

Yep and clogged with a bunch of corporate bs that has nothing to do with making good video games. Like diversity coordinators gender specialists. Like most jobs you have 20-30% of the workforce doing 80% of the work

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I honestly think this is where a large portion of the budget goes, a significant portion to the CEO, then another large portion to the "Consultancy" group they hire. The rest can be explained by too much ambition in scope for their game, or being too inefficient with their resources available, then you have whatever is left for meaningful development.

[rippermcrip]

Who is upvoting this shit? They are counting a CEOs $20 million dollars 4 times for tax purposes? You have zero comprehension of how taxes work.

[-Foxtrot]

Spiderman 2 is so weird because the budget is insane yet I don't see it when playing

Yeah it's decent, refined gameplay, graphics and the like from the first game but it's very short, there's apparently a lot cut from it thanks to the insight from the Insomniac leak and the story was just not that good compared to the first so where the hell did all that money go to.

Even fixes to suits, bugs to wrinkle out and a New Game Plus mode took months to come out

Put it this way, the New Game Plus took as long to come out as the first games very first story DLC

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I don't see it either, you have a good portion of the game already made if you reuse as much as you can for the first game, and based on the developer interviews, there was a lot of stuff they didn't implement. They also hired that one, currently infamous consultancy group, despite all this, I can't see how they spent more than twice as much money making the sequel.

[Profchaos]

There's so much more at play now compared to 20 or 30 years ago.

Yes tools have matured they are easier than ever to use we are no longer limited and more universal however gamers demand more.

Making a game like banjo Kazooie vs GTA vi and as amazing as banjo was in its day its quite dated an unacceptable for a game released today to look and run like that.

Games now have complex weather systems that take months to program by all accounts GTA vi will feature a hurricane system unlike anything we've ever seen building that takes so much work months and months.

In addition development teams are now huge and that's where a lot of the costs stem from the manpower requirement of modern games can be in the hundreds and given the length of time they spend making these games add up to so much more to produce.

Art is also a huge are where pixel art gave way to working with polygons and varying levels of detail based on camera location we are now in the realm of HD assets where any slight imperfections stand out like a sore thing vs the PS2 era where artwork could be murky and it was fine this takes time.

Tldr the scope of modern games has gone nuts gamers demand everything be phenomenal and crafting this takes a long time by far bigger studios.

We can still rely on indies to makes smaller scope reasonably priced games like RoboCop rouge city but AAA studios seem reluctant to re scope from masterpieces to just fun games

[Mulando]

In case of Spiderman license costs were also a big chunk. And then there is the marketing, that exploded over time and is mostly higher than actual development costs.

[blacktiger]

All lies and top industries owns by elite and lying to shareholders that these are the expensive and getting expensive.

[raWfodog]

I believe that it is due to this unsustainable rise in production costs that more and more companies are looking to AI tools to help ‘lower’ costs.

[northpaws]

The use of AI is all about greed, even for companies that are sustainable, they would use AI because it saves them money.

[Nooderus]

Is saving money inherently greedy behavior?

[northpaws]

@Nooderus

It is if they don't care about the employees who made them all those money in the first place. Replace them with AI just so the higher ups can get a bigger bonus.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I don't believe we'll get better or more complete games, the savings will just get pocketed by the wrong people, I wish it wouldn't, but I don't have a lot of faith in these bigger companies.

[KyRo]

I genuinely believe it's mismanagement. Why are we seeing an influx of one person or games with a team no bigger than 10 create whole games with little to no budget? Unreal Engine 5 and I'm sure many other engines have plugins that have streamlined to many things you would have had to create and code back in the day.

For instance, before the cull, there were 3000 Devs working on COD alone. I'm a COD player but let's be real, there's been no innovation since 2019s MW. What exactly are those Devs doing? Even more so when so much of the new games are using recycled content

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

I also think higher up leads may simply demand more based on the IP they are working on. This could explain why COD costs so much to develop.

[Tody_ZA]

I've stated this in many other articles, but corporate greed, mismanagement and bloat and failing to understand the target audience and misaligned sales expectations as a result are the big reasons for these failures.

You'll see it in the way devs and publishers speak, every sequel needs to be "three times the size" of its predecessor, with hundreds of employees and over-indulgence. Wasted resources on the illusion of scale and scope. Misguided notions that if your budget balloons to three times that of the previous game you'll make three times the sales.

Compare the natural progression of games like Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum to City or Witcher 2 to Witcher 3 or God of War remake to Ragnarok and countless others. How is it that From Software continues to release successful games? Why don't we hear these excuses from Larian? These were games made by developers with a vision, passion and desire to improve their game in meaningful ways.

Then look at Suicide Squad Kill the Franchise and how it bloats well beyond its expected completion date and alienates its audience and middle fingers its purchasing power by wrapping a single player game in GAAS. Look at Starfield compared to Skyrim. Why couldn't Starfield have 5-10 carefully developed worlds with well written stories and focus? Why did it need all this bloat and excess that adds nothing to the quality of the game? How can No Man's Sky succeed where Starfield fails? Look at Mass Effect Andromeda compared to Mass Effect 3. Years of development and millions in cost to produce that mediocre fodder.

The narrative they want you to believe is that game budgets of triple A games are unsustainable, but it's typical corporate rubbish where they create the problem and then charge you more and dilute the quality of their games in favour of monetisation to solve it.

[Tody_ZA]

Obviously didn't mean God of War "remake", meant 2018.

[Chocoburger]

Indeed, here's a good example, Assassin's Creed 1 had a budget of 10 million dollars. Very reasonable. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag had a budget of 100 million dollars, within the same console generation! Even though BF was released on more systems, its still such a massive leap in production costs.

So you ask why they're making their games so big, well the reason is actually because of micro-trash-actions. Even single player games are featured with in-game stores packed with cosmetics, equipment upgrades, resources upgrades, or whatever other rubbish. The reason why games are so bloated and long, artificially extending the length of the game is because they know that the longer a person plays a game (which they refer to as "player engagement"), the more likely they are to eventually head into the micro-trash-action store and purchase something.

That is their goal, so they force the developers to make massive game maps, pack it boring filler, and then intentionally slow down your progress through experience points, skill points, and high level enemies that are over powered until you waste hours of your life grinding away to finally progress.

A person on reddit made a decent post about AC: Origins encouraging people towards spending more money.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pc...

I've lost interest in these types of games, because the publisher has intentionally gone out of their way to make their game boring in order to try and make more money out of me. NOPE!

[Tody_ZA]

@Chocoburger That's exactly right, nail hit on head. But this phenomenon doesn't just apply to the gaming industry. Hollywood is just as guilty of self destructive behaviour, if you look at the massive fall of Disney in both Star Wars and Marvel.

Even their success stories are questionable. Deadpool 1 had a tiny budget of $58 million but was a massive success with a box office of $780 million. The corporate greed machine then says "more!" and the budget grows to $110 million, but what does the box office do? It doesn't suddenly double, because the audience certainly didn't double for this kind of movie. The box office is more or less the same. Is Deadpool 2 twice as good as the first? Arguably not, its just as good, or maybe a bit better. It's production values are certainly higher. I wonder what the budget of Deadpool x Wolverine will be.

Joker had a budget of $50 to $70 million, and was the greatest R rated success in history, and now its sequel has a budget of $200 million!!! Do they think the box office is going to quadruple?? Are movies unsustainable now?

My argument is that obviously we want bigger and better, but that doesn't mean an insane escalation in costs beyond what the product is reasonably expected to sell. There needs to be reasonable progression. That's the problem. Marvel took years and a number of movies to craft the success of Avengers. Compare that to what DC did from Man of Steel...

Back to games, you are exactly correct. They drown development resources and costs into building these monetisation models into the game, but you can't just tack them onto the game, you have to design reasons for them to exist and motivations for players to use them, which means bloat and excess and time wasting mechanics and in-game currencies and padding and all sorts of crap instead of a focused single player experience.

[anast]

Greed from everyone involved including game reviewers, which are the greedy little goblins that help the lords screw over the gaming landscape.

[Charlieboy333]

Stop wasting money on shit like sweet baby inc for a start.

[Einhander1972]

Yes, Microsoft is a Major Problem With the AAA Game Industry.

[franwex]

Big time yes, but it’s also fair to include Sony too. They have laid off workers and closed down studios, while also pushing GAS. There’s really no reason as to their games costing THAT much to make. My opinion i suppose.

If anything Nintendo deserves credit for being consistent. They may rely a bit much on their established franchises and formulas, but they are for the most part complete and good quality.

[anast]

Nintendo has been copy pasting for almost 60 years.

[northpaws]

Not saying Sony doesn't make mistake, but when I keep hearing when people talk about GAAS, they keep dragging in Sony as well, but what greedy GAAS have they released?

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

Nintendo is pretty much the best of the three, even Sony is struggling to impress these days, there are projects they just aren't interested in that would appeal to their audience, plus all these GAAS games they're trying to push out. I'm pretty sure Foam Stars is already on death's doorstep if it hasn't died yet, and that game clearly takes inspiration from Splatoon, which is very popular.

[RhinoGamer88]

Weren't the Unity and Unreal engines designed/marketed/created to enable AAA games to be developed faster and cheaper?!

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

I know we like to blame publishers for everything, but developers also contribute to the problem. I think current Game development can be summarised in this video:
https://youtu.be/LMVQ30c7Tc...

[Stevonidas]

It's poor management of resources combined with a lack of a cohesive vision for the final project.

BioShock reportedly cost $25 million to develop in 2007 ($38 million in 2024). Gears of War? $12 million in 2005 ($18 million in 2024). Want something more recent? Horizon: Zero Dawn came out in 2016 at a cost of around $49 million (about $74 million in 2024 money).

These are some of the most influential and critically acclaimed AAA titles of this century, and even with costs adjusted for inflation, cost FAR less than the crap we're getting today.

Source: https://www.thegamer.com/be...

[anast]

a lot of money is getting "stolen"

[Doomeduk]

I remember 343 joking about spending 500 million on halo's development this was around Craiggate thinking when it's released they could sit back feet up and watch the skins sell for £30 a pop

[P_Bomb]

I’ve often thought to myself, where does all the money go? Budgets are too high.

[carrotcakeag]

I started questioning 20 years ago if games are focusing too much on graphics tech. The answer then was not really. Today in the 2020s I'm pretty sure they've gone beyond the point of diminishing returns. It's taking way too long and costing them too much to make these AAA games and the results are almost always not worth it. The cost is largely defined by how these games look - the amount of resources it takes to furnish large worlds with a high density of environmental detail.

Overdoing the graphics is also what causes console games to run at 30 fps. Furthermore high costs are associated with lack of innovation because the risk is too great to gamble that much money on original, unproven game design ideas. Bethesda is perhaps not the best example because their whole thing is immersive worlds where graphics are important. But for the industry at large I'm saying obsession with high fidelity graphics is making them too sluggish and it's not necessary in a world where Minecraft is one of the most successful games.

[Stevonidas]

I disagree. Graphics in the past were limited by the hardware, not the artists' ability (see Watch_Dogs' infamous vertical slice).

[Skuletor]

I haven't been impressed with a graphical leap, since the jump from PS2 to PS3.

[Spenok]

I blame "consultation" companies forcing shit DEI into places it doesn't belong.

[Rols]

Keep your dev team to the people actually making the game. Cut the consultants and marketing teams. Promote the gane when its nearly finished. These companies are too bloated.

[northpaws]

I think the problem is many AAA games often missed an important point of games... which is the fun factor, they need to verify the concept is actually fun, before putting hundred of millions of dollars to an idea.

[Chilliersplash]

Great article, I certainly wouldn't want to be a developer right now.

[neomahi]

Given there's a gaming site making a big fuss about the Sony acquisition of Paramount and how that's going to affect Halo, being an Xbox IP, this rumor mill craps gotta stop. Who hires people like this? All Microsoft has to do is move the series to a different distributer. Xbox isn't limited just to Paramount and can go wherever they want just like Cobra Kai. If Sony does end up acquiring Paramount doesn't mean anything like they're implying.

Seriously, these days will all the speculation gaming just isn't as fun anymore. It's not a Console War, I don't know what it is anymore. Phil Spencers being a sore loser as well. His fuss about the Helldivers 2 exclusivity..... It's a PlayStation IP!!!!!! It makes no sense for Sony to put a PlayStation game on another console...... But all of this speculation and the like is getting really out of hand. There was a time when the media reported on facts, facts given by companies and then reported on. Sure, the rumor mill existed but not anywhere near to the level it is today...... Nintendo and Sony had an agreement for Super Mario Bros, the only reason that happened. Sony had the resources Nintendo didn't but, Sony didn't really even plaster their name anywhere, it was Nintendos IP and associated with Nintendo, just as Resident Evil films didn't mean because Capcom was being hooked up by Sony that Capcom was gonna return the favor with exclusive PlayStation exclusive Resident Evil games, it's getting rediculous

[Profchaos]

I feel like so many people have unrealistic expectations from game developers cost and project scope.

Since we entered the HD era game costs ballooned the depth and detail required to flesh out a games world drastically increased.

Releasing a game like vice city in 2002 was a landmark game but release the same game in 2006 and beyond we would ask cool where is the rest of it and why does it look so bad.

Art, underlying system like day and night cycles weather animal behaviour etc are now mandatory if they are not there it's noticed fast.

Games frequently employe Hollywood actors again big expense.

Hd art takes five times the amount of work than standard def art which was often built around system limitations.

The world's changed games are expensive and lengthy to make but it doesn't have to be like this.

If Dev studios stopped making everything a magnum opus and more smaller scoped RoboCop rouge city style games we might see a return to experimental development again

[Fonsecap]

"Consumer expectations and demands no doubt play a role in this..." When I watch a trailer for a new game I expect it to be good and fun and I demand to not have micro transactions in it, but in the last few years publishers don't care about players expectations and demands that's why AAA gaming is in this state. Triple AAA game publishers and developers just make the game how they want and fill them with bloat just insert micro transactions in it and then they pitch it to the audience with a bunch of marketing bullshit and try to convince gamers that that's the game they always wanted. Suicide squad kill the justice league, did anyone expect to be a game as a service did anyone demanded to be filled with micro transactions? I don't think so... So no they don't care about players expectations and demands.

[gold_drake]

i think the rise of costs do play a part, but its also about the director and devs and all these other people.

the 1st party games have some of the most well known directors behind them. and they wanna cash in on the fun.

also starfield also had like a team of 700 people. it stacks up.

i may not like Todd as a person, but he has a catalogue of games behind him.

miyamoto for example is worth 40 mio. dollars. do believe that he gets payed very well for evety game he makes.

[ravens52]

I don't get it. Spiderman 2 cost $315 million to make. They sold 10 million at $70. Is there no profit there? Not as much as they would want maybe, but still a profit. 10 million is the last figure we heard as well. I'm sure they've sold more.

[Chocoburger]

The problem is that companies only head in one direction, they go forward with ever increasing budgets, and never go back, or scale down. Publishers outside of Nintendo are convinced that ever improving graphics and details are required in order to get players interested in their games.

If SpiderMan 2 had a budget of $315, then SpiderMan 3 is guaranteed to be even bigger, perhaps $400 million, and the money they make back on it will be similar to part 2, which means less profit overall. Its not a good business practice.

Furthermore, another issue is that since the industry is focusing so much on big budget bloated games, we've lost nearly all variety of games from large developers. Sony used to release LocoRoco, Ape Escape, Parappa and Lammy, Patchwork Heroes. Games that weren't serious or "sad Dad experiences". Games that weren't about endlessly shooting, stabbing, or brawling, but other fun concepts outside of murder simulators.

Due to budgets, we've lost so much and gained so little in return. Its just like Hollywood films, so much spectacular CG visuals, and yet the most worthless and vapid scripts imaginable.

[InUrFoxHole]

Look I'm realistic...love me some sony and ms but this has to be the most disappointing gen. I think hellblade 2 is going to be the 1st truly next gen looking game. Followed by GTA6. I do see where these budgets are going other than being set aside for bonuses and possibly actor payments

[franwex]

I consider Final Fantasy 16 the true first current gen game. Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, sure. But to me it’s literally the first game that I can see wouldn’t be possible on the previous platforms.

[InUrFoxHole]

Haven't played it yet. Gotta check it out