Support NeoGAF

[Shut0wen]

So ive just finished control, probably my goty this year, huge fan of remedy, id go as far as saying there one of the best devs in the last 20 odd years that are still makings gems, when i first started the game its instantly noticeable that it never had the same budget as alan wake and quantum break but when you first start fighting the hiss and progress into the game and get more powers the game just gets better and better, was even more amazed when the game costed 30 million and puts a majority of triple A games to shame another game that feels like that is nier automata, both put games like bf2042 and marvels avengers to shame

 

[Aion002]

Profits.

Battlefield and Call of Duty makes a shit ton of money even when they're terrible.

The Avengers game wanted a piece of that by selling costumes and stuff too... Everybody wants to sell cosmetics these days, they're a gold mine.

So while Control and Nier Automata are cheaper to make and better games, BF2042 will generate way more money.


Also, you're comparing online multiplayer live service games with single player games...

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Nintendo is the king of ROI, but they can do it not only because they make quality games, but also because their IP is incredibly strong. Everyone else has to spend money to make money.

A big exception is the occasional PC indie hit like Valheim. But you can't really plan making a hit.

 

[Captain Toad]

So ive just finished control, probably my goty this year

Control came out in 2019.

 

[Shut0wen]

Control came out in 2019.

Yeah but the next gen update came out this year, massive improvement from the 2019 version

 

[Shut0wen]

Profits.

Battlefield and Call of Duty makes a shit ton of money even when they're terrible.

The Avengers game wanted a piece of that by selling costumes and stuff too... Everybody wants to sell cosmetics these days, they're a gold mine.

So while Control and Nier Automata are cheaper to make and better games, BF2042 will generate way more money.


Also, you're comparing online multiplayer live service games with single player games...

They were just examples but theres way more triple A games in the last 5 years that haven't made massive profits, nier and control for examples made almost 3x the dev costs while yeah bf and cod generate money im pretty sure bf5 was near enough a failure and sold poorly, point im making is that the money that gets pumped into cod, bf abd even cyberpunk really isnt needed to be a good game

 

[Guilty_AI]

Plenty already do, namely independent devs or certain publishers. But you shouldn't expect to sell millions of copies in a weeks without a good marketing budget alongside top (aka expensive) visuals.

 

[remember_spinal]

Concrrete genie says hello

 

[Captain Toad]

Yeah but the next gen update came out this year, massive improvement from the 2019 version

Then Ghost of Tsushima is my GOTY.

 

[Shut0wen]

Plenty already do, namely independent devs or certain publishers. But you shouldn't expect to sell millions of copies in a weeks without a good marketing budget alongside top (aka expensive) visuals.

This is true i was more talking about games with far less budget that look quite decent abd play decently, outlast the survival game is another example, probs didnt even cost more then 20 million but was enough to make 3 successful games out of it, until dawn devs are also doing the same with there new series

 

[Amornalx]

Yeah but the next gen update came out this year, massive improvement from the 2019 version

and yet, it's still a 2019 game.

 

[brian0057]

I just played Silent Hill 3 for the first time. The fact that a game this good was made by only 40 people is insane to me.
Is it really that hard to have staff of that size and make superb games? Especially with the current tools available. Modern day development tools are light-years ahead of what Team Silent had to deal with back in the day.

I honestly find it baffling that modern studios and developers seldom engage in lower budgets and staff.
The slow death of the middle market, AA games, is a major detriment to the industry.

 

[Dust-by-Monday]

Wow control is a pile of ass. I couldn't get myself to like it no matter how hard I tried. The graphics look great, but the environments are the same, the same, the same.... just boring visually. The story didn't grab me and I found myself just constantly bombarded with enemies and it felt very forced to slow game progression.

I like having powers like Infamous, but these powers just weren't that satisfying to use.

 

[cireza]

It is actually happening in the independent scene or with some publishers. Developers are often talented, have smaller budgets, and make great games.

 

[justiceiro]

Yeah that's what talented people want: to work on the riskier less profitable portion of the market.

 

[Rest]

Control came out in 2019.

But he played it this year.

 

[Shut0wen]

Yeah that's what talented people want: to work on the riskier less profitable portion of the market.

But is it risky? If control sold a million units then its still profitable, personally i think we need devs to stray away from triple A and let them make new ips with double A game instead, shit like dark souls and nier and loads more wouldnt make the money they have unless they didnt, even osidian has went down that path and now they have found success after being shagted by bethesda

 

[Shut0wen]

It is actually happening in the independent scene or with some publishers. Developers are often talented, have smaller budgets, and make great games.

Yeah i was more into double A games that we rare see today, sure theres alot of shit ones i wont lie but lately we have seen osidian jump into that space, fromsoftware took off with dark souls 1 and 2, remedy has now decided to it as well and hopefully afew more do it as well especially with devolver now jumping on the scene hopefully we can get better low budget games

 

[cireza]

Yeah i was more into double A games that we rare see today, sure theres alot of shit ones i wont lie but lately we have seen osidian jump into that space, fromsoftware took off with dark souls 1 and 2, remedy has now decided to it as well and hopefully afew more do it as well especially with devolver now jumping on the scene hopefully we can get better low budget games

Maybe play A Plague Tale. Looks like it fits what you are looking for.

 

[Shut0wen]

Wow control is a pile of ass. I couldn't get myself to like it no matter how hard I tried. The graphics look great, but the environments are the same, the same, the same.... just boring visually. The story didn't grab me and I found myself just constantly bombarded with enemies and it felt very forced to slow game progression.

I like having powers like Infamous, but these powers just weren't that satisfying to use.

Thats cool i get it that it aint for everybody, not everybody likes stranger things but theres no denying that it has alot of quality to it for being on such a low budget

 

[Shut0wen]

Maybe play A Plague Tale. Looks like it fits what you are looking for.

Ill give it a download today, heard nothing bit great things about it

 

[Lone Wolf]

But he played it this year.

I played Final Fantasy 6 this year so its my Game of the year.

 

[Shut0wen]

I played Final Fantasy 6 this year so its my Game of the year.

Why not? I never brought it in 2019 due to commitments, couldnt even tell you what games came out this year i just played control for the first time last week goty for me

 

[Lone Wolf]

Why not? I never brought it in 2019 due to commitments, couldnt even tell you what games came out this year i just played control for the first time last week goty for me

I’m just being a wise ass. I’m happy you enjoyed the game. It was my wife’s favorite game of 2019.

 

[Captain Toad]

But he played it this year.

That's not how GOTY works.

 

[Scotty W]

But he played it this year.

http://m.quickmeme.com/img/3f/3fbb391807614147b0d67a1d0a98b412c01305fdaea0962f742441d688597134.jpg

 

[ParaSeoul]

Nintendo is the king of ROI, but they can do it not only because they make quality games, but also because their IP is incredibly strong. Everyone else has to spend money to make money.

Yeah I can't think of any other fan base as loyal as Nintendo fans

 

[jakinov]

So ive just finished control, probably my goty this year, huge fan of remedy, id go as far as saying there one of the best devs in the last 20 odd years that are still makings gems, when i first started the game its instantly noticeable that it never had the same budget as alan wake and quantum break but when you first start fighting the hiss and progress into the game and get more powers the game just gets better and better, was even more amazed when the game costed 30 million and puts a majority of triple A games to shame another game that feels like that is nier automata, both put games like bf2042 and marvels avengers to shame

I’ve watched Remedy talk about this. And the costs are low because their engine was built so that they can pump out games like this quickly. The company seems very focused on third person story driven games and so they built an engine that lets them do that over and over again. They already spent all the money making the engine with Quantum Break that they don’t count it as part of the budget for Control.

the games you mentioned are building a lot more things from scratch. Frostbite is becoming more general purpose and battlefield adds a shit ton more complexity than going from quantum break to control. Avengers didn’t get to build off of tomb raiders work.

also control putting other games to shame is your opinion. Which is fine but even with the low budget the game had pretty mediocre sales.and most of their sales came from the game being on sale (something Remedy brags about in their presentations).

 

[Fbh]

While I enjoy the technical showpiece AAA games, I definitely like idea of devs going for lower budgets which allow them to make more unique or risky games.
I think it often comes down to a lot of talented devs being tied to big publishers, and these days a lot of big publishers don't want to make smaller games that make "some" money, they want big games that make all of the money.

 

[Shut0wen]

I’ve watched Remedy talk about this. And the costs are low because their engine was built so that they can pump out games like this quickly. The company seems very focused on third person story driven games and so they built an engine that lets them do that over and over again. They already spent all the money making the engine with Quantum Break that they don’t count it as part of the budget for Control.

the games you mentioned are building a lot more things from scratch. Frostbite is becoming more general purpose and battlefield adds a shit ton more complexity than going from quantum break to control. Avengers didn’t get to build off of tomb raiders work.

also control putting other games to shame is your opinion. Which is fine but even with the low budget the game had pretty mediocre sales.and most of their sales came from the game being on sale (something Remedy brags about in their presentations).

You realise frostbyte engine was used for first person shooters? It was never made for anything else until EA decided to put it into need for speed and ever since then its been used for almost all of there games, im aware that some assets from quantum break made it into control but again why doesnt DICE do the same? At this point dice are incapable of making a game from scratch at this point

 

[jakinov]

You realise frostbyte engine was used for first person shooters? It was never made for anything else until EA decided to put it into need for speed and ever since then its been used for almost all of there games, im aware that some assets from quantum break made it into control but again why doesnt DICE do the same? At this point dice are incapable of making a game from scratch at this point

Frostbite has since been reworked to be general purpose. Which saves money for the company overall. But Battlefield games are more ambitious after every game than whatever Remedy has been doing. Not that Remedy isnt doing anything creative (or good) but battlefield games keep upping what you can do in the game for multiplayer or single i player in terms of scope and complexity (good or bad). Increasing the players, weather, weapons, mechanics, destruction, modes whatever in a more open sandbox deals with multiple concurrent user interactions whereas Remedy is building third person shooters with characters, weapons and levels swapped out + some game specific mechanic. If battlefield was just making new single player FPS (multiplayer adds a whole lot more complexitiy and testing i.e. more money) every few years then yes they can probably make games with smaller budgets. But if they are going to make games at the scale and continue to do new things, thenit will cost alot of money.

 

[Rat Rage]

Because, usually, their higher-ups/managers/CEO's are greedy assholes that both don't know much about videogames, let alone care about their actual quality one bit, but only their marketability. These people have hired other soulless people to convince them that it's not worth making a videogame, unless you invest hundreds of millions on visual realism and cinematic presentation, in other words blindly follow industry trends like mindless goons.

 

[Ellery]

At this point it feels like most of the talented ones are at Top level Sony studios like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica, but the developers don't really have a say in the budget of a game.

However there are so many talented developers in the indie space. Much more passionate folk working on smaller games compared to the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Activision which have basically scared away all the people that genuinely love games.

 

[Raonak]

Because AAA developers usually like making AAA games.

 

[Saucy Papi]

I just played Silent Hill 3 for the first time. The fact that a game this good was made by only 40 people is insane to me.
Is it really that hard to have staff of that size and make superb games? Especially with the current tools available. Modern day development tools are light-years ahead of what Team Silent had to deal with back in the day.

I honestly find baffling that modern studios and developers seldom engage in lower budgets and staff.
The slow death of the middle market, AA games, is a major detriment to the industry.

Absolutely. The average gamer expects more now so you have to add more triangles, improve lighting (which means you need more engineers who are very well versed in mathematics), and so on so it's absolutely more difficult to produce games that have that kind of impact today without increasing your budget.

Wow control is a pile of ass. I couldn't get myself to like it no matter how hard I tried. The graphics look great, but the environments are the same, the same, the same.... just boring visually. The story didn't grab me and I found myself just constantly bombarded with enemies and it felt very forced to slow game progression.

I like having powers like Infamous, but these powers just weren't that satisfying to use.

I couldn't agree more. I'm sure the "strong female lead" mentality that was enveloping the industry at the time played into the GOTY awards. I played it for a few hours and dropped it without a second thought.

 

[CeeJay]

That's not how GOTY works.

Say I played a load of games this year yet none of them released this year, does that mean I am not allowed a personal GOTY? Or do I just have to pick one that did come out this year even though I never played it because of some arbitrary rule?

 

[Captain Toad]

Say I played a load of games this year yet none of them released this year, does that mean I am not allowed a personal GOTY? Or do I just have to pick one that did come out this year even though I never played it because of some arbitrary rule?

You can say, "Chrono Trigger is my favorite game I played this year".

It would be incorrect to say, "IMO, Chrono Trigger is 2021's GOTY".

So, yes, if you didn't play any games that released in 2021, you don't really get a voice in the best game released this year - which is what Game of the Year means.

 

[funkygunther]

That's how you end up with stuff like Dangerous Driving and Biomutant. When talented devs get the correct amount of money you get stuff like Blur and Psychonauts 2.

 

[Danjin44]

Because majority of AAA developers rely heavily on “graphics” in order sell the game to you.

 

[Bogeyman]

I'm guessing a lot is down to marketing. As far as I know, easily 50 percent, if not more, if an AAA game's budget goes into that.
And having some left over for those neat looking visuals we all like to gaze on YouTube or news sites probably helps too.

I could imagine if you're not part of that big boys club, funding enough marketing to get attention in a market that is flooded by a gazillion steam releases a week quickly becomes very challenging.

 

[Rest]

That's not how GOTY works.

Yes it is. If I never played The Legend of Zelda before, and I play it this year, and it's the best game I play this year, it's my game of the year. We're not talking about an awards show. We're discussing people playing games.

 

[Rest]

I played Final Fantasy 6 this year so its my Game of the year.

Cool.

 

[M1chl]

Control came out in 2019.

Control is Goty every year, until Control: The Double.

 

[CeeJay]

You can say, "Chrono Trigger is my favorite game I played this year".

It would be incorrect to say, "IMO, Chrono Trigger is 2021's GOTY".

So, yes, if you didn't play any games that released in 2021, you don't really get a voice in the best game released this year - which is what Game of the Year means.

Notice how i used the word "personal" directly before "GOTY"?

I was responding to a post about someone who said that Control was their GOTY and others pilling in saying that they weren't allowed to do that. If someone played and enjoyed a single game more than any other during the course of a year then that is by definition "their" game of the year regardless of when it came out. You could go even further and it be a game that you have played for years but still played and enjoyed more this year than anything else. I understand why the media's various GOTY awards are for games that came out between some arbitrary dates but that doesn't mean that those rules need to apply to my own personal choices. Another way to look at it... Time magazine have their person of the year award. For someone to be eligible they can have been a person the previous year (and many before that). It's also possible for the same person to win it in two or more different years. Really, for correctness the award for GOTY should be titled "New Game of The Year" and have a separate GOTY award that any game is eligible for... But that wouldn't satisfy the laws of consumerism and need to sell sell sell anything shiny and new and make things over a year old look redundant, inadequate and antique.

 

[Ozzie666]

Not everyone, besides Sega maybe, has a library of pure nostalgia they can cash in on. Nintendo's ROI, is only possible through such a loyal fan base, some might say brain washed even.

But seriously, on the flip side, they usually put game play and polish, above all else. Their games connect with people in so many ways beyond nostalgia. I look around and not many studios could pull it off. There is also a big difference between what profits mean for different companies. They always want more, so they chase trends and whatever is hot. Meanwhile you have games like Streets of Rage 4, that probably exceeded expectations for such a small studio.

Last point, Nintendo offers an alternative that isn't common on Microsoft and Playstation. All these companies would kill for a Mindcraft or Roblox, but they lack the will to take the required risks and patience to grow those ideas. Then again there is probably a fair chunk of profits on the Switch for EA, if they bothered to try. So who the hell knows. All I know is graphics aren't everything.

 

[The artful mincer]

We as Consumers surely demand these things?

We're buying next gen consoles at an unprecedented pace, get angry when they release Cross-gen games, the best selling games nearly always have the most content or at the very least can be played for hours on end.

There are some exceptions but there is undoubtedly huge demand for these type of game's.

I'm not accusing anyone I have bought a lot of these very expensive games but gamer's are clearly part of the cycle.

Do you have a source for Control being cheaper than Remedy's previous games please?

 

[Nezzeroth]

Console players have been trained to think a game is as good as its graphic quality.

That's why lower budget games do well on PC and Switch but not on consoles.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Go big or go home attitudes I guess. These studios are bankrolling so much now days while also giving staff benefits. That spread across a few hundred people for a good few years it adds up. Office costs going up. Kit upgrades. Costs on maintaining secure IT staff (CDPR may have dropped the balls on that)

Licences costs on all kinds of software being used to make the assets. It's safe to say that the art & audio departments are using more than just the Adobe CC apps.

Legal teams when it comes to corp law aren't cheap either.

Most of the cash flows up. But living costs also plays a big role here.

 

[Shmunter]

Loved the game too, blitzed all the way right through even the expansions included in the PS5 version. The dualsense was a real treat in this, everything felt connected and crunchy.

 

[yurinka]

So ive just finished control, probably my goty this year, huge fan of remedy, id go as far as saying there one of the best devs in the last 20 odd years that are still makings gems, when i first started the game its instantly noticeable that it never had the same budget as alan wake and quantum break but when you first start fighting the hiss and progress into the game and get more powers the game just gets better and better, was even more amazed when the game costed 30 million and puts a majority of triple A games to shame another game that feels like that is nier automata, both put games like bf2042 and marvels avengers to shame

Every generation the developments of the AAA become bigger because the visuals get more detailed so they need more work to be done. In addition to this, the best selling AAA games are huge, so AAA companies continue focuing on huge games, even if some of them like Sony also makes smaller games.