Brain/talent drain in game devs, how to stop it?

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

and most importantly are largely tied to a brand for sales.

EA recently lost the fifa brand and saw no change tho.

This isn't just games like Madden though, BG3 earned over 600 million to a 100 million budget, a little game like Lethal Company made almost entirely by a single 21 year old earned 50-75 million, and kenshi netted 38 million after everything.

Unicorn games, 1-2 a year at best.

Your argument is "everyone should just make one of the best selling games ever made and then we can pay people a lot!"?

The market size is so big that you don't even need to be some AAA gacha game to make an absurd amount of money.

A tiny minority of that is from direct game sales, FYI. The massive majority is from microtransactions.
https://gamedevreports.substack.com/p/v ... ate-of-the

2023 was a record year for Steam. Games worth $9 billion were sold (excluding microtransactions).

I never understood how people have a general understanding of basic economics for business but some reason they don’t put that same logic in the games industry. It’s a weird pattern that I noticed and it actually kinda concerning.

[Magick]

managed by modern gamedevs.

This is probably a big factor.
Just like the software industry with all the "agile" micromanaging ********, the focus on a quality product has likely been completely lost, especially at the big studios.
I can imagine devs in the 80s - 2000s having real passion and simply wanting to make a good game. Now they're likely having to code what some asswipe beancounter or ideological ****** wants, and micromanaged to the extreme where everything will be focused around time / money.

[Orvas Dren]

I could probably name 100 games in the last couple of years that made an absurd amount of money without being on this list. They are not unicorns, like kenshi for example, just because they don't make 600 million. 30 million for a team of a handful of people is still an insane amount and is easier than ever now to obtain. Even if the 9 billion is true (that is steam alone though) that is still a big pot that will only continue to grow.

I'm not sure you know how money works. I guess that makes sense if you grew up in Soviet Yugoslavia.
You can't pay a dev team out of the $30 million your game might make until after you have that money. You could give them equity, which is how it used to work and is now a broken system, or you could accept capital from an investor who will expect you to show how inclusive your game is, if you can even find any investors anymore. Either way, you won't even attract talent when there isn't talent to attract.

oh my God you are a massive ******

[Orvas Dren]

I could probably name 100 games in the last couple of years that made an absurd amount of money without being on this list. They are not unicorns, like kenshi for example, just because they don't make 600 million. 30 million for a team of a handful of people is still an insane amount and is easier than ever now to obtain. Even if the 9 billion is true (that is steam alone though) that is still a big pot that will only continue to grow.

I'm not sure you know how money works. I guess that makes sense if you grew up in Soviet Yugoslavia.
You can't pay a dev team out of the $30 million your game might make until after you have that money. You could give them equity, which is how it used to work and is now a broken system, or you could accept capital from an investor who will expect you to show how inclusive your game is, if you can even find any investors anymore. Either way, you won't even attract talent when there isn't talent to attract.

For those of you who don't know 30 million is more than enough to keep a small team together in the same place, and these are games with often shoestring budgets. The initial capital required is not 30 ******* million lol. The barrier to entry in gaming is lower than ever, learning gamedev and making games is more accessible than ever, and a competitive rate right now is actually lower than it was a couple years ago thanks to how tech is doing.

It is absurd to think that the gaming market size is to small to sustain plenty of decent gamedevs. Even if x y and z gacha games have a majority share, the market is still absurdly massive and growing. Just because you are a blackpilled ****** who would rather whine all day doesn't mean that there is nothing that can be done or being done. If you honestly think things are so screwed just go ahead and ack and save everyone the trouble.

[J1M]

I could probably name 100 games in the last couple of years that made an absurd amount of money without being on this list. They are not unicorns, like kenshi for example, just because they don't make 600 million. 30 million for a team of a handful of people is still an insane amount and is easier than ever now to obtain. Even if the 9 billion is true (that is steam alone though) that is still a big pot that will only continue to grow.

I'm not sure you know how money works. I guess that makes sense if you grew up in Soviet Yugoslavia.
You can't pay a dev team out of the $30 million your game might make until after you have that money. You could give them equity, which is how it used to work and is now a broken system, or you could accept capital from an investor who will expect you to show how inclusive your game is, if you can even find any investors anymore. Either way, you won't even attract talent when there isn't talent to attract.

For those of you who don't know 30 million is more than enough to keep a small team together in the same place, and these are games with often shoestring budgets. The initial capital required is not 30 ******* million lol. The barrier to entry in gaming is lower than ever, learning gamedev and making games is more accessible than ever, and a competitive rate right now is actually lower than it was a couple years ago thanks to how tech is doing.

It is absurd to think that the gaming market size is to small to sustain plenty of decent gamedevs. Even if x y and z gacha games have a majority share, the market is still absurdly massive and growing. Just because you are a blackpilled ****** who would rather whine all day doesn't mean that there is nothing that can be done or being done. If you honestly think things are so screwed just go ahead and ack and save everyone the trouble.

Low barrier to entry = less capable people can clear the barrier.

[Stack of Turtles]

Just because you are a blackpilled ****** who would rather whine all day doesn't mean that there is nothing that can be done or being done. If you honestly think things are so screwed just go ahead and ack and save everyone the trouble.

You seem to have completely the wrong impression. I just think game devs don't deserve enough money to feed themselves.

[Xenich]

Yeah if you're an impulsive discordnigger or british social climber. Turns out people are more likely to stick around if they aren't treated like ****. Hence why most of the good games of the 2000's had at least 2 entries developed by largely the same dev teams keeping standards consistent.

A shocking revelation to the discordnigger crowd im sure who only care about milking patreon paypigs until they get ousted for the scammers they are and why crowdfunding sites have a bad reputation.
Don't really need to get into the corporate slave driving mentality and nepotistic class warfare ******** that seems to have dedicated themselves to destroying their host cultures over the 2010's. That basically engineered the discordnigger plague of short sighted fools who genuinely believe things can't ever get better and only care about stamping out creativity with militant moderator abuse and being greedy.

Counterpoint: games of the 2000s had development cycles of 2 years or less. Enough time for more than one title to be largely completed in the ~3 year window.

Most of the decent games had around 2-3 years of development per entry and they had some kind of a plan for making something fun. Shipping a complete game was the #1 priority instead of the cliquish ban happy ******** that is prevalent today. There's definitely been a significant cultural shift for the worse since then and we can't go back/things will never be the same.

Creativity seems to be demonized and seen as a threat these days and most studios are filled with ban happy cliques more than happy to sit on their *** doing nothing but driving out talent with the backing of management until the company goes under or they get promoted and **** off to LARP at GDC about being "veterans" who do nothing but make pretty photorealistic concept art at best.

Pretty much what has happened in most industries to be honest. Many corps are filled with people at the middle and top who got there because they played game of thrones rather than actually doing anything of value. Then, at the top all they do is promote their individual interests be it political or personal and damned what it does to the business.

What is sad though is the investors get screwed because the companies lie and manipulate to hide their incompetence.

[Nooneatall]

Just because you are a blackpilled ****** who would rather whine all day doesn't mean that there is nothing that can be done or being done. If you honestly think things are so screwed just go ahead and ack and save everyone the trouble.

You seem to have completely the wrong impression. I just think game devs don't deserve enough money to feed themselves.

Game devs are ******** trend chasers. How many deck building roguelikes are there? How many cozy farming sims? Coomer gacha games? Devs suck and should be forced to stop diluting the market with slop. Maybe after 10 years we can open it back up and get something of quality again

[Stack of Turtles]

The idea that you can pay more to attract better talent is the stuff only a Harvard Business School grad would say when he wants to increase his cut.

We need to pay less.

We need a system like they have in Japan where, if you're involved with a professionally published game that flops, they make you jump off a building.
Then only psychotics without fear of death will make games, like in the old days.

[rusty_shackleford]

Game developers are overpaid and underworked.

"nooo just pay them more then they'll make good games!"
They used to get paid less and work more hours and made better games.

[Stack of Turtles]

The problem here is that the 90s culture of psychotics without fear of death has been totally parasitized by people who believe they are psychotics without fear of death because they came preloaded with Corporate Drone Artificial Personality #108 which is programmed to imitate psychosis without fear of death wherever such imitation has no impact on corporate goals. It's the universal problem of Gresham's Law.

If you want to fix video games, you must return to a time when video games are synonymous with Custer's Revenge.

That is, you must return to a time when telling a woman you make video games causes her to reach for the mace, instinctively, with no idea why she has even done so.

You must return to a time when having a video game dev studio on his resume gives a ****** fatal gender dysphoria because everyone knows a real woman would never go near anything like that.

In other words, you must return to a culture where video game development is completely unable to support autistic status gaming.

Video games, as a whole, must viscerally disgust NYT columnists and gossip rag journochicks. It's the only way.

[Silvanus]

Most games do not produce an "absurd amount of money". A small portion of games(read: mobile garbage, gacha games, etc.,) are making the overwhelming majority.
Something like 80% of EA's revenue comes from 'live services' AKA their sportsball game lootboxes(gacha for westerners)

that is still a market size of $250 billion with the average AAA title netting budgets of how much on average?

AAA titles seem to have quite thin profit margins. It took months for Spiderman 2 to be profitable, Horizon Forbidden West seemingly wasn't profitable, etc.,
All it takes is one misstep and your entire studio goes poof.

I've been wondering about how this scales. There are a number of AAA titles out there with a budget ten times the size of something like KC:D, but are they ten times the game of KC:D? Obviously not. What are the biggest money-pits for studios? At what point does being graphically cutting edge waste resources that would be better allocated into gameplay and narrative?

[Finarfin]

Why contain it?

Let it spill over into the schools and churches. Let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them.

[rusty_shackleford]

What are the biggest money-pits for studios?

women

[Shillitron]

What are the biggest money-pits for studios?

women

"women"

[rusty_shackleford]

What are the biggest money-pits for studios?

women

"women"

women enable the "women"
also, simps

[Shillitron]

women

"women"

women enable the "women"
also, simps

simps enabled women.

[rusty_shackleford]

"women"

women enable the "women"
also, simps

simps enabled women.

Yes.
We need to eliminate the simps, the women, and the ""women""

[Shillitron]

women enable the "women"
also, simps

simps enabled women.

Yes.
We need to eliminate the simps, the women, and the ""women""

Root cause of problem is Simps. Remove weak men - the rest auto corrects?

[rusty_shackleford]

simps enabled women.

Yes.
We need to eliminate the simps, the women, and the ""women""

Root cause of problem is Simps. Remove weak men - the rest auto corrects?

Putting up a fence after the fox is in the hen house doesn't solve the fox being in your hen house.

[Shillitron]

Yes.
We need to eliminate the simps, the women, and the ""women""

Root cause of problem is Simps. Remove weak men - the rest auto corrects?

Putting up a fence after the fox is in the hen house doesn't solve the fox being in your hen house.

Without any Chickens to sustain it - it'll starve to death.

[Tweed]

Bedroom devs should embrace AI and get to work.

[rusty_shackleford]

Root cause of problem is Simps. Remove weak men - the rest auto corrects?

Putting up a fence after the fox is in the hen house doesn't solve the fox being in your hen house.

Without any Chickens to sustain it - it'll starve to death.

Then who is going to lay my eggs, shillitron?
I need eggs.

[Kowe]

that is still a market size of $250 billion with the average AAA title netting budgets of how much on average?

AAA titles seem to have quite thin profit margins. It took months for Spiderman 2 to be profitable, Horizon Forbidden West seemingly wasn't profitable, etc.,
All it takes is one misstep and your entire studio goes poof.

I've been wondering about how this scales. There are a number of AAA titles out there with a budget ten times the size of something like KC:D, but are they ten times the game of KC:D? Obviously not. What are the biggest money-pits for studios? At what point does being graphically cutting edge waste resources that would be better allocated into gameplay and narrative?

Marketing is a big money-pit in some cases. Here is a good site with costs listed. Couldn't find anything more detailed yet if the information is even accessible anywhere.

[Marcus]

Marketing is a big money-pit in some cases. Here is a good site with costs listed. Couldn't find anything more detailed yet if the information is even accessible anywhere.

What in God's name is Genshin Impact and why did it take 600 million dollars to make lmao?!?

(someone please tell me it's just another money laundering operation)

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What in God's name is Genshin Impact and why did it take 600 million dollars to make lmao?!?

(someone please tell me it's just another money laundering operation)

During the 2000s/2010s, many JRPG studios did not survive/could not overcome the transition to 3D HD, so they transitioned to making cheap games on handheld or began making mobile games. Out of this arose the gacha game genre, cheap mobile games were the chief business model is to sell the fantasy of a relationship with an appealing waifu/husbando to lonely young people who have lots of disposable income. Or to slowly ramp up the grind required to progress through the game, incentivizing gamers to spend money to get more powerful characters to continue pushing. Ie, Granblue Fantasy, Fate/Grand Order, Blue Archive, Azure Lane, etc.

Genshin Impact was made by the Chinese and was a higher production value 3D game (rather than a relatively cheaper 2D phone game with sprites). The 3D and higher production values made it more attractive to Western gamers who were conditioned by the media to reject 2D games. Also, it was open world similar to the then recently popular Breath of the Wild game, which further jived with Western sensibilities. (Another 3D gacha game, Sakura Revolution, launched around the same time, but wasn't open world and did not take off like Genshin did and wound up being a bomb and was shuttered). Genshin also launched during the games industry bubble that was the pandemic during late 2020. Lastly, Genshin's publisher, Mihoyo, splurged hundreds of millions of dollars on a massive marketing push. People play games that they know exist, after all. And then Mihoyo has continued to splurge lots and lots of money on advertising with the huge pushes for the Inazuma and Sumeru expansions, and just recently unveiled the Natlan expansion.

Also, the game has a decent soundtrack which caused Westerners to take notice given how **** Western AAA music is and that is how a lot of people found out about Genshin. Same with a lot of people getting into FF14 because of the music.

[Marcus]

Hey @Val the Moofia Boss, thank you for this very informative, very autistic reply! Appreciate it a lot!

Basically, the high production costs of the game are mainly due to the high production value and a high marketing budget. HOWEVER! This still does not explain 600 MILLION DOLLARES in costs. Not even remotely.

Either the company behind the game provided all involved developers with free premium hookers and coke of the finest grade or a lot of money was being laundered with this project.

The 3D and higher production values made it more attractive to Western gamers who were conditioned by the media to reject 2D games.

*[citation needed]*

[Val the Moofia Boss]

HOWEVER! This still does not explain 600 MILLION DOLLARES in costs. Not even remotely.

It was $300 million for the development of the game from 2017 to the end of 2023, the base game (Mondstadt + Liyue regions) and the Inazuma and Sumeru expansions. The other 300 million was the marketing.

Genshin Impact had an initial development budget of around $100 million USD as well as around $200 million USD annually for development of updates, expansions, and patches. This makes Genshin Impact one of the most expensive games ever developed. (link)

*[citation needed]*

I don't have magazine pages saved to repost right now, but as far back as the PS1's and PS2's release, the gaming magazines were slamming SNES and any 2D games being made after that, and the lack of high fidelity photorealism was one of gaming journalist's chief jabs at Japanese games during the late 2000s and 2010s. And you were hearing youtube channels like the Angry Videogame Nerd and so on parroting this opinion as well.

[Marcus]

HOWEVER! This still does not explain 600 MILLION DOLLARES in costs. Not even remotely.

It was $300 million for the development of the game from 2017 to the end of 2023, the base game (Mondstadt + Liyue regions) and the Inazuma and Sumeru expansions. The other 300 million was the marketing.

And these figures make sense to you? Have there been any games recently that cost anywhere near that much money to produce/market?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

And these figures make sense to you?

Given the development costs of MMOs like WoW and FF14 (had 400+ devs last I checked) and how Genshin operates somewhat similarly being an ongoing high fantasy game with new content being released, it doesn't seem that farfetched. 300 million over 6 years, so on average about 50 million per year, though obviously it was probably lower when development began in 2017 with 100 people and then ramped up after the base game's success in 2020, and by 2021 they had 700 people working on the game. It's an international release with localization and voice acting and distribution in multiple languages and territories, probably hired lawyers or consulting firms in multiple different countries to understand the local laws. There are probably some other unforeseen costs.