[Gothos]

BAD, on 20 May 2013 - 09:49 PM, said:

Gothos, on 20 May 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

BG2 solo? pureclass wizard

How do you do the traps? Just cast that spell all livelong day? And I was trying to roleplay it as Grizzly Adams. ;]

summons!

[Aptorian]

New cinematic Batman trailer.

http://www.youtube.c...d&v=zWorwYmCuX4

I really don't know what to expect from this game. Will it just be another lackluster cash grab like Gears of War: Judgement and God of War: Ascension or will they manage to capture the same magic as Rocksteady did with the first two.

[MTS]

Well whatever you make of it, that is one damn cool trailer. I'm hopeful, though I imagine it will play like AC: Brotherhood to Arkham City's AC2.

[Morgoth]

BAD, on 20 May 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

Replaying Baldurs Gate 2 atm. Trying to do it solo for the first time ever with some dual class Bounty Hunter/Cleric guy. Was the closest I could get to a Grizzly Adams type character (wanted to set traps and be able to summon bears for the lolz). Wanted some Ranger/Druid type but couldn't get traps or couldn't dual class them. Just got to the Underdark part after doing the Sahaugin city. I imagine do the Beholder dungeon is gonna be pretty hard when I get there. Completed it twice last year including Throne of Bhaal with a good party (led by my Halfling warrior Pixie Lott ;p) and an "Evil" party (led by Shania Pain). Hardest part was that damn Ravager boss in your pocket Plane. Died so many times there.

.. wait.. BAD?

[BAD]

Gothos, on 21 May 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

BAD, on 20 May 2013 - 09:49 PM, said:

Gothos, on 20 May 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

BG2 solo? pureclass wizard

How do you do the traps? Just cast that spell all livelong day? And I was trying to roleplay it as Grizzly Adams. ;]

summons!

lol nice, though I rather not waste spells and have to sleep all the time to get summon spells back. I guess there aren't to many instagib traps so once you get resistances up high enough and enough HP you just have to remember where they are. Actually is there anyway to protect against Maze? As mages who cast Maze on you are frikken annoying when solo as it's death. Only increase magical resistance or is there an item that can protect against it also?

Morgoth, on 21 May 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

.. wait.. BAD?

o/ Old timer.

[Morgoth]

BAD, on 21 May 2013 - 11:47 AM, said:

Gothos, on 21 May 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

BAD, on 20 May 2013 - 09:49 PM, said:

Gothos, on 20 May 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

BG2 solo? pureclass wizard

How do you do the traps? Just cast that spell all livelong day? And I was trying to roleplay it as Grizzly Adams. ;]

summons!

lol nice, though I rather not waste spells and have to sleep all the time to get summon spells back. I guess there aren't to many instagib traps so once you get resistances up high enough and enough HP you just have to remember where they are. Actually is there anyway to protect against Maze? As mages who cast Maze on you are frikken annoying when solo as it's death. Only increase magical resistance or is there an item that can protect against it also?

Morgoth, on 21 May 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

.. wait.. BAD?

o/ Old timer.

! How are you doign these days? Are you still dancing through life as the postman of Leeds, or have you ascended to your rightful place as a feared property tychoon?

[Gothos]

BAD, on 21 May 2013 - 11:47 AM, said:

lol nice, though I rather not waste spells and have to sleep all the time to get summon spells back. I guess there aren't to many instagib traps so once you get resistances up high enough and enough HP you just have to remember where they are. Actually is there anyway to protect against Maze? As mages who cast Maze on you are frikken annoying when solo as it's death. Only increase magical resistance or is there an item that can protect against it also?

protection from magic school should work. 3rd or so level spell that makes Kangaxx a pushover

[tiam]

Aptorius, on 21 May 2013 - 05:54 AM, said:

New cinematic Batman trailer.

http://www.youtube.c...d&v=zWorwYmCuX4

I really don't know what to expect from this game. Will it just be another lackluster cash grab like Gears of War: Judgement and God of War: Ascension or will they manage to capture the same magic as Rocksteady did with the first two.

Is the guy who does the voice of deathstroke the colonel from the Metal Gear games?

Has anyone given the ARMA 2 Day Z mod a good go. I have no chance playing it on a laptop but ive been watching vidoes all day and it looks fantastic

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Sleeping dogs is so freaking excellent. I haven't played gta 4 for a long time, but based off of my memory of it sleeping dogs is much better. Bonus is I got it free with ps+. If you are craving some open world gangster shit and need something to hold you over until gta v check it out.

[Illuyankas]

[Aptorian]

Raymond Luxury Yacht, on 28 May 2013 - 01:15 AM, said:

Sleeping dogs is so freaking excellent. I haven't played gta 4 for a long time, but based off of my memory of it sleeping dogs is much better. Bonus is I got it free with ps+. If you are craving some open world gangster shit and need something to hold you over until gta v check it out.

Yeah I really liked it as well. It's the combination of a city in a different culture, mixed with a different approach to the cops and robbers sandbox and some plain fun game mechanics.

I was happy to hear yesterday that Tomb Raider, Hitman and Sleeping Dogs all did well enough (okay enough) that they will be getting a sequel. Next generation Hong Kong could be quite fascinating.

[Morgoth]

Aptorius, on 28 May 2013 - 06:54 AM, said:

Raymond Luxury Yacht, on 28 May 2013 - 01:15 AM, said:

Sleeping dogs is so freaking excellent. I haven't played gta 4 for a long time, but based off of my memory of it sleeping dogs is much better. Bonus is I got it free with ps+. If you are craving some open world gangster shit and need something to hold you over until gta v check it out.

Yeah I really liked it as well. It's the combination of a city in a different culture, mixed with a different approach to the cops and robbers sandbox and some plain fun game mechanics.

I was happy to hear yesterday that Tomb Raider, Hitman and Sleeping Dogs all did well enough (okay enough) that they will be getting a sequel. Next generation Hong Kong could be quite fascinating.

When a game selling 3.5 milling copies within the first month does okay enough, something is seriously wrong with the gaming industry.

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 28 May 2013 - 07:04 AM

[Aptorian]

Yes and no. You have to factor in the quality of the product as well. Just like you can't make an Avengers movie with out spending a metric fuck ton of cash on CGI and props, you can't make a gigantic open world game/intense action focused game with extreme attention to detail, voice acting, mo cap, etc. with out breaking the bank. If you expect every game to look like a billion dollars then you have to spend a hundred million dollars to get there at least. And then you need to start marketing the shit out of it.

I am not going to complain that a company that can afford to go big chooses to do so.

How ever it does become a problem when their own expectations are overinflated, or they don't support the release well enough. It's a problem that they are spending so much money that they could litterally go bankrupt if they have two flops in a row.

That said, I don't remember the sales numbers for Hitman but Tomb Raider and Sleeping dogs did not sell anything close to 3.5 million copies the first month. Sleeping Dogs only sold around a million upon its release as far as I recall. But it also fell into a bad window. This was the same period where Darksiders 2 was released and similarly did not sell anything near what was expected.

[Morgoth]

Aptorius, on 28 May 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

Yes and no. You have to factor in the quality of the product as well. Just like you can't make an Avengers movie with out spending a metric fuck ton of cash on CGI and props, you can't make a gigantic open world game/intense action focused game with extreme attention to detail, voice acting, mo cap, etc. with out breaking the bank. If you expect every game to look like a billion dollars then you have to spend a hundred million dollars to get there at least. And then you need to start marketing the shit out of it.

I am not going to complain that a company that can afford to go big chooses to do so.

How ever it does become a problem when their own expectations are overinflated, or they don't support the release well enough. It's a problem that they are spending so much money that they could litterally go bankrupt if they have two flops in a row.

That said, I don't remember the sales numbers for Hitman but Tomb Raider and Sleeping dogs did not sell anything close to 3.5 million copies the first month. Sleeping Dogs only sold around a million upon its release as far as I recall. But it also fell into a bad window. This was the same period where Darksiders 2 was released and similarly did not sell anything near what was expected.

From Wikipedia

Quote

The game had sold more than 1 million copies in less than forty-eight hours of its release.[9] In the United Kingdom, Tomb Raider debuted at number one on the charts, becoming the biggest UK title launch in 2013 so far, surpassing the sales of Aliens: Colonial Marines. Tomb Raider set a new record for the franchise, more than doubling the debut sales of Tomb Raider: Legend. Furthermore, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Tomb Raider set new week one records as the fastest-selling individual formats of any Tomb Raider title so far, a record which was previously held by Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.[85] Tomb Raider also topped the charts in France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States.[86][87][88][89][90] In the United States, Tomb Raider was the second best-selling title of March, excluding digital download sales, only behind BioShock Infinite.[91] In Japan, Tomb Raider debuted at number four with 35.250 units sold.[92] On 26 March 2013, Square Enix announced that the game has currently sold 3.4 million copies worldwide at retail, but has failed to reach predicted sales targets.[10] However, on 29 March 2013, Crystal Dynamics defended Tomb Raider's sales, stating the reboot had the "most successful launch" of any game this year in addition to setting a new record for highest sales in the franchise's history.[93]

The game was released on march 5th.

[Aptorian]

Well shit. I'd heard that the sales were lackluster. I didn't know that meant that it had only sold 3-4 million copies. But again, Tomb Raider must have had a mammoth marketing budget. The expected profits of its sales probably had to cover not just its own launch but also various other projects development.

[Tapper]

It excluded digital sales. I'd say digital sales are probably quite a large part of the sales for the PC platform.

[Morgoth]

Aptorius, on 28 May 2013 - 09:08 AM, said:

Well shit. I'd heard that the sales were lackluster. I didn't know that meant that it had only sold 3-4 million copies. But again, Tomb Raider must have had a mammoth marketing budget. The expected profits of its sales probably had to cover not just its own launch but also various other projects development.

Which shows how far away from reality the company operates.

Mass Effect 3 sales for the first month

Quote

During March 2012, Mass Effect 3 sold over 1.5 million copies.[150] According to EA's Q4 results, Mass Effect 3 has grossed over $200 million.[151]

Bioshock Infinite

Quote

In its first week of release, BioShock Infinite was the best-selling game on Steam's digital Top 10 PC Charts.[215] In the United States, BioShock Infinite was the top-selling console game for March 2013, with more than 878,000 units sold; these figures do not include digital sales such as through Steam.[216] During the first week of sales in the United Kingdom, BioShock Infinite debuted as the number one selling PC game, and the best-selling game on all available formats, topping the UK PC Retail Sales and the UK All Formats video games charts.[215][217][218] In the game's opening week in the UK, its Xbox 360 version ranked #1, PlayStation 3 version ranked #2, and the PC version ranked #9 in the UK Individual Formats video games charts, due to 64 percent of its sales being on the Xbox 360, 31 percent on the PlayStation 3, and 5 percent on PC.[218] As of April 2, 2013, it is currently the second biggest launch of 2013 in the UK after Tomb Raider, and is the biggest UK game launch in the BioShock franchise's history with approximately 9000 more sales than BioShock 2.[217][218][219] During the game's second week in the UK, despite a 75 percent drop in sales, BioShock Infinite maintained its lead in the UK All Formats charts.[220] In its third week, Infinite became the first 2013 game to top the UK charts for three weeks in a row.[221] Take Two reported that the game has shipped 3.7 million copies to retail by their May 2013 financial report.[222]

Sadly most companies do not release official sales figures, but at least the above shoudl give an indication as to how retarded it is to consider 3.5 million sales in the first month to be anything other than excellent. If the game cost so much to make they cannot make sufficient profits on those sort of sales then they deserve to go bankrupt.

[Aptorian]

Lets remember that there is a difference between shipped and sold. And that retail is probably marking down half the copies they recieve unless it is some kind of monster hit like Call of Duty, FIFA or Skyrim. Something like 80-90% of a games expected revenue is made in the first week of a games launch, slowly winding down over the next months untill it becomes next to nothing.

There's been made plenty of breakdowns of the cost of developing a videogames in the last few years but just as a thought experiement lets say that you sell 3 million copies at 60 dollars a game. That's 180.000.000 dollars. That's a hell of a lot money, right? No, not really.

Lets say you are working on a really big game like Assassins Creed 3 which reportedly had over a hundred people working on it. Game developers, depending upon what they do, usually start out somewhere around 70-80.000 a year, senior developers make well over a 100.000, specialists working on things like the engine or people brought in for sound design, animation, etc. could be paid much, much more than that in some cases, but lets just say that everyone is getting paid a 100.000. And there's 100 people getting paid 100.000. That's 10 million a year. A low, low estimate of 30.000.000 for a long dev cycle. Then there is the cost of leasing the building you're in. The computers. Furniture. Secrataries. Management. Tech. Q&A. You have to set aside money for healthcare and insurance. You need pay for travel expenses. You need to pay for business travel and meetings here there and everywhere. There's delays. Before you know it you've spent a hundred million dollars and that's when you begin marketing the game, which, much like Hollywood is probably half the games budget.

And then there's all the costs of running the Publishers own offices. And the new start ups and projects that get funded but never get published, etc.

There's a reason why its catastrophic for a games development to take more than 2 to 3 years.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 28 May 2013 - 11:01 AM

[Silencer]

Aptorius, on 28 May 2013 - 10:59 AM, said:

Lets remember that there is a difference between shipped and sold. And that retail is probably marking down half the copies they recieve unless it is some kind of monster hit like Call of Duty, FIFA or Skyrim. Something like 80-90% of a games expected revenue is made in the first week of a games launch, slowly winding down over the next months untill it becomes next to nothing.

There's been made plenty of breakdowns of the cost of developing a videogames in the last few years but just as a thought experiement lets say that you sell 3 million copies at 60 dollars a game. That's 180.000.000 dollars. That's a hell of a lot money, right? No, not really.

Lets say you are working on a really big game like Assassins Creed 3 which reportedly had over a hundred people working on it. Game developers, depending upon what they do, usually start out somewhere around 70-80.000 a year, senior developers make well over a 100.000, specialists working on things like the engine or people brought in for sound design, animation, etc. could be paid much, much more than that in some cases, but lets just say that everyone is getting paid a 100.000. And there's 100 people getting paid 100.000. That's 10 million a year. A low, low estimate of 30.000.000 for a long dev cycle. Then there is the cost of leasing the building you're in. The computers. Furniture. Secrataries. Management. Tech. Q&A. You have to set aside money for healthcare and insurance. You need pay for travel expenses. You need to pay for business travel and meetings here there and everywhere. There's delays. Before you know it you've spent a hundred million dollars and that's when you begin marketing the game, which, much like Hollywood is probably half the games budget.

And then there's all the costs of running the Publishers own offices. And the new start ups and projects that get funded but never get published, etc.

There's a reason why its catastrophic for a games development to take more than 2 to 3 years.

But Apt...75% or more of those developers don't work on a title for three years. They work on it for 1.5-2 at most, and even that isn't the full team. Meanwhile, they've been working on finishing another game that released 1.5 years before that. Not to mention, most of the engine programmers and such, in case you haven't noticed, are not exactly dev'ing a new engine all the time; most of them are at different companies who you lease the engine off of, or if they are in-house dual-role as developers or senior developers, and so aren't actually getting paid much more than regular folk (for the record, engine licensing is not more than 100-500,000, depending on the engine/size of the dev team/other sponsorships). Plus, good coders develop a code base to do common things with - so it's not like you're building from the ground up every iteration, or even for a new IP. The basics are still the basics, usually.

OK, so that's that; and on the flip side, sure, they're not taking anywhere near 100% of that $60 (though, by the by, that $60 US is $120NZD from NZ customers, and Aussies are up too - and well above exchange rate-equivalent prices...should be at most $90NZD), but they're also selling a truckload of undisclosed digital copies. A truckload. For which there are considerably less middle-man costs, and no DVD/case production costs, AT ALL.

The game developers may not see much of that in "profit" - just in wages and costs covered - but the publishers are getting a FUCKTON of profit from those 3.5 million copies. It's almost as bad as Hollywood. And just like Hollywood, the price of developing a AAA+ game has skyrocketed to ludicrous proportions for no real reason - the people involved are all overpaid, frankly, as with most things IT. And that's sort of where Morgoth is coming from, I think - if you can't make costs + solid profit over 3.5 million (physical) copies in one month of sales, your development costs are too high. And that means something has got to give. Honestly, it should be the publisher's profits first, then the generally overzealous paypackets and licensing fees and whatnot. It's an issue plaguing a lot of sectors right now - people getting paid way more than what their job is worth, and then STILL being driven to "increase profits" - large corporations are pisssed off if, one financial year, they only make 300 million profit when the year before they made 310+ million - and so try and find ways to regain that profit - they made 300 million fucking profit, what more do they need!?!?

Anyway; YES, game development is expensive, and YES 3.5 million copies sold does not equate to "swimming in money" but...Morgoth has a point. The industry IS overinflated on itself, it DOES have excessive costs (self-inflicted) for development, and it needs to fix that, somehow. And they DID still make a truckload of profits from those 3.5 million or so copies sold, not to mention the digital sales. They just don't think it's a lot... :S

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Silencer, on 28 May 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

Aptorius, on 28 May 2013 - 10:59 AM, said:

Stuff

And things

You've overestimated the amounts a little Apt.
For reference:
"An average development budget for a multiplatform game is US$18-28M, with high-profile games often exceeding more than $40M."
So yes, over $40M happens a bit, but this is looking at 1-3 years on average for a title. So just shy of 30M is fairly decent.
Also:
(from an industry survey in USD)
Art and Animation - $75,780 (up from $71,354)
Audio - $83,182 (up from $68,088)
Business - $102,160 (down from $106,452)
Game Design - $73,386 (up from $70,223)
Production - $85,687 (down from $88,544)
Programming - $92,962 (up from $85,733)
Quality Assurance - $47,910 (down from $49,009)
And that's average salary, not median, which means it's probably inflated for what the average worker gets. I love how the business side gets the most, and they have the least special skills

"All but the smallest developer companies work on several titles at once"
This here is the key to your equation's flaw. As Silencer said, 75% of them don't work for the whole development cycle of the game. For instance, the art team is often first off to bat, they get a lot of the concept art for major and general stuff as well as overall art style for the game down. Then once they're done, they actually have little to nothing to do for a fair while. Until all the base engine stuff is done and things are up to scratch enough for the animators to get to work, then the art team has stuff to do again.

This part of it has also led to something I would be very surprised if it didn't happen with some "AAA" publishers. Double dipping for stating the dev costs of games. If the artists spent time over 3 years working on two projects, swapping between them in the downtimes, I'm thinking they'd count the total salary of those artists to both projects. Why? Because being able to say you spent excessive amounts of money and dev time on a game is publicly looked at as a GOOD thing, the more the better.
It's also similar to tactics Hollywood producers use.
Producers get to decide on who to use for things like physical copies of their movies to send to cinema's and for DVD and other physical media and that sort of thing. They will sometimes convince creators of stuff for the movie (directors, writers, musicians, etc) to take a percentage of the movie's profit as pay (this is how some royalties deals work as well).
The problem comes in when these production companies own other companies that can do the physical media (or some other integral part the producer gets to pick), then they pick their own child company and via the child company charge themselves a truly stupidly large amount of money for that thing. Thus they can technically say the movie made a loss (and pay those creators little, or even in some cases nothing) while as a whole making a shit ton of money. There have been several cases of production companies being taken to court over this (and often the producers win).
As an example, while Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix movie grossed $938.2 million, Warner Bros. net profit showed it as still being $167 million IN THE RED! That's right, according to Warner Bros. that movie cost $1.1 billion.
It's such a common tactic there is even a term and wikipedia page for it. It's called Hollywood accounting, and I don't doubt at least some major games publishers use it.