Game Development Giant

The designer's explanation continues.

"The current game market is all about product value. Only the top ten that do well can make money. Other games will either be flat or lose money to death. So why is everyone still making AAA? Because the top ten Mingba has basically made money from the entire market, and the profits are distributed to every game. The profits are much greater than ten years ago, so everyone is working hard to improve the quality and squeeze into the top ten. This is a virtuous circle."

Then, the designer was afraid that the audience would not understand what he meant by small team pre-production and large team production, so he explained further.

"To make a game, it is developed by a small team at the beginning. This scale is usually limited to 50 people. These people just have to figure out what the game is, how to play, how to make it, and a series of other issues. This stage is very painful. , but also very fulfilling.”

"After it is proven that the game can be realized, production will be fully launched. Only at this time will we recruit people, determine the scale, etc. based on the cost budget. Generally speaking, to make a AAA game, production requires at least 150 people. These It takes nearly two years to complete the prototype of the game, and of course overtime is essential.”

Then, the questioner continued to ask, how much is the human cost?

The designer thought for a while, probably doing mental arithmetic. After finishing the calculation, he continued to smile and said: "We can calculate the four arithmetic operations at the elementary school level. The first is pre-production. There are only fifty members in this pre-production project. For elite or senior designers, their average salary is about $80,000, and their years of experience are 1.5 years. If you multiply this, you will know that they only need at least $6 million."

"Then, after pre-production pre-development, if the project is suitable, then proceed to the development of large projects."

"A large project will cost much more than the previous pre-research and development, because the number of people will be at least three times more. Of course, this time in the large team, it is impossible to include all senior designers, because To form such a large team, you need to recruit a lot of workers, many of whom are inexperienced. Don’t think that studios like Ubisoft or EA will have so many people. They only recruit a large number of workers when the team is being formed. of."

"That brings the average salary down to seventy-five thousand, the number of people is one hundred and fifty, which is the minimum number of people, and the time is one and a half years. Multiply those numbers. That's about $16.8 million. "

"In other words, labor alone will account for more than half of the 50 million R\u0026D funds."

"Besides, I still calculate based on the lowest number of people."

"If you just calculate wages like this, it's already 22.8 million. According to the company's operation calculation, the real cost is wages multiplied by 2, so a total of 45.7 million is needed. I can't guarantee this number. Absolutely correct. But it’s still true, after all, I have been in the industry for many years.”

Then, after the questioner hears the designer’s answer. Once again, the problem returns to its original point.

He asked: "So according to your calculation, is fifty million US dollars really enough to produce a 3A-level masterpiece?"

The designer from Warner Montreal thought for a while and then shook his head: "Actually, it's not enough. There's still a big chunk that hasn't been taken into account, which is marketing expenses. There are actually a lot of details involved. If you're not in the industry, you may not really understand. .”

The audience all expressed their willingness to hear the details.

"Let's put it this way, the reason why GTA's cost is high is because of the game market expenses. But the problem is that generally the market expenses are included in the cost of distribution and are not included in the development cost accounting. Moreover, the price of a 3A-level masterpiece It’s sixty dollars. Do you really think that all sixty dollars can be obtained by developers? Then you are too naive. On the platform, publishers need to share it. According to my experience over the years, in the end, this Of the sixty US dollars, what can go into the developer’s pocket is probably twenty US dollars of the sixty US dollars selling price.”

"If this studio or developer is owned by a publisher, then it may get a little more share, but it won't be much. It can be about five dollars more, which is twenty-five dollars. Don't underestimate this five dollars. US dollars, you have to remember that selling three million copies is the sales volume of "Bad Boys", and these five US dollars are a total gross profit of US$15 million."

"This is why so many manufacturers now prefer selling games on Steam, and why they like to release PC games, is because every time they sell a game on PC, they earn as much as The money is at least twice as much as on the console.”

"One final note."

"As a publisher, you need a certain market fee every year. This fee will be paid to this game this year and to that game next year. I have never seen a publisher that does not release games all year round, so this fee is always there and cannot be escaped, so It is very reasonable not to include it in the development costs." This is what Jester remembers about the interview about game development costs.

It had a great influence on him at that time.

It was after reading this article that he had a very intuitive understanding of game distribution, development and sales.

Jester was also thinking like many people before. GTA5 sold 50 million copies, and a copy cost 60 dollars. Isn't it so scary that the gross profit is 3 billion US dollars? In fact, R-Star's gross profit is only a little more than one-third of this number, just one billion US dollars. Of course, this is also a lot.

When Jester walked into the conference room, the conference room was already full of people.

The entire team now has more than 90 people, and there are about 40 people who are qualified to participate in this meeting. This is why Jester plans to maintain this scale within a year and conduct pre-development of the game.

The information about the 'Era' project is in the documents Jester issued before. Therefore, after Jester announced the start of the meeting, he did not say any nonsense and went directly to the main topic. The so-called main topic is European and American. The first part of the game development, brainstorming, Jester wanted to hear other people's thoughts on the game.

Only by brainstorming can sparks of wisdom come out.

Don’t think that game development and design is just a matter of design or planning. In fact, all members of the entire development team can play a vital role in the quality of a game.

For example, in the development of Blizzard's "Diablo" series, such examples are common.

At that time, the development team of "Diablo 2" was composed of three parts. It was not the common grouping of game development teams such as the programming team, art team, and planning team, but the programming team and the character design team (including everything that moved. ), background design team (including everything that cannot be moved), each team has about a dozen people. The reason why there is no planning team is that Blizzard at the time believed that all personnel were the planners of this game. Everyone can participate in the content development and construction of this game.

This is very similar to Jester’s philosophy.

To be precise, this is a concept that Jester learned from Blizzard.

Of course, these three groups are just the main development teams for the "Diablo 2" project. In fact, because "Diablo" is still a Battle.net game, coupled with the crazy CG in it, so , there are two other teams affiliated with Blizzard headquarters for auxiliary development, one is called blizzard-irvine, their main job is to assist in the development of network code and support.

There was also the Blizzard Movie Department, which later became an independent department. At that time, it was still part of Blizzard-Irvine, and its main job was to produce cutscenes and also assist in the creation of storylines.

All graphics and movie animations in "Diablo 2" were created and rendered using 3D Studio Max, while textures and 2D interfaces were mainly produced using Photoshop. The programming languages ​​used by programmers are mainly c and c++, and visual studio and sourcesafe are used as version control tools.

Blizzard North was in charge of this project at the time. A few years later, Blizzard North threatened to resign because it opposed Vivendi's acquisition, and Blizzard North was completely disbanded and ceased to exist.

There is one thing worth saying.

Many people say that without Blizzard North, the blood of the Diablo series would not be pure.

In fact, the predecessor of Blizzard North was called Vulture Studio. At the beginning, it was just a small studio. They contacted Blizzard because they thought Blizzard would ask them to OEM a game. In this way, their technology was acquired Blizzard headquarters recognized it, so it was directly acquired by Blizzard and renamed Blizzard North.

At that time, Blizzard North's first project was established after its establishment. To be precise, it was during the discussion between this project and Blizzard headquarters that they were acquired. This project was "Diablo".

It is precisely because of this willingness that many people feel that it is Blizzard North that has the blood of "Darkness", not Blizzard itself.

Therefore, many people think that if Beibei is disbanded, the "Darkness" series will become unorthodox.

But in fact, what is the "Dark" series that Northern Storm, that is, the "Dark" series originally proposed by Vulture Studio, look like? It may surprise you to say that they actually want to make this game a turn-based RPG! (To be continued...)