Budgets and the Video Game Industry

[Violent By Design]

What makes something a medium sized game? I would argue that a lot of indie games are "medium" sized.

We are thinking of games like Catherine or Katamary Damacy. Nothing you can do in your kitchen, but certainly not expensive games to make.

I feel like those are games that a lot of small studios could (and do) make.

[oxymoron]

What makes something a medium sized game? I would argue that a lot of indie games are "medium" sized.

We are thinking of games like Catherine or Katamary Damacy. Nothing you can do in your kitchen, but certainly not expensive games to make.

You have to step in the big studios shoes more a moment. If you were going start a project why would you aim to make a BBB or "medium" game? You'd want to use all the resources you have to make the best game possible as well as make a lot of money.

[BoringSupreez]

What makes something a medium sized game? I would argue that a lot of indie games are "medium" sized.

We are thinking of games like Catherine or Katamary Damacy. Nothing you can do in your kitchen, but certainly not expensive games to make.

Aren't there plenty of those coming out though? Including ones with backing from major studios/etc? Main catch being that most of them are digital releases.

Or portable titles. There's still not as many mid-sized games coming out as there used to be last gen, especially from the larger companies. The big companies want big games that set sales records while the smaller companies can't afford to make anything more intricate than an indie game, which leaves midsized games out in the cold except on platforms where AAA isn't reasonably achievable.

[AppleQueso]

I think that's a good point about bigger indie studios putting out stuff that's on par with lower-mid budget games in the past. I mean we had stuff like Alien Hominid on consoles last gen after all.

I think that's where you're gonna see the upper-mid budget stuff come back from, independent studios simply growing larger and taking on more ambitious projects.

[ZeroAX]

What makes something a medium sized game? I would argue that a lot of indie games are "medium" sized.

We are thinking of games like Catherine or Katamary Damacy. Nothing you can do in your kitchen, but certainly not expensive games to make.

You have to step in the big studios shoes more a moment. If you were going start a project why would you aim to make a BBB or "medium" game? You'd want to use all the resources you have to make the best game possible as well as make a lot of money.

Well doing that would be like all film studios only making blockbusters. How many can be profitable in a year? Wouldn't people get tired of them? And then the company would be in trouble. Instead of making 10 blockbusters a year, they widen their portofolio by making 3 blockbusters, 5 romantic comedies, 4 drama films, ect. ect.

It's what people say about eggs and baskets

[Erik_Twice]

You have to step in the big studios shoes more a moment. If you were going start a project why would you aim to make a BBB or "medium" game? You'd want to use all the resources you have to make the best game possible as well as make a lot of money.

There are many, many reasons to diversify your portfolio.

- Medium-sized don't carry as much risk. If you spend two hundred millions making a game and it bombs, the entire company goes bankrupt.

- Medium-sized games have very good ROI ratios. In bussiness it's not a matter of making a lot of money, it's a matter of making proportionately more money than you put in!

- You can't sell too many blockbusters. First, the market doesn't allow it. Second, no company has enough liquidity to make many of them at once.

- Smaller games allow experimentation. If you only make blockbusters, you have to play it safe, which means you won't find new talents or have breakout hits. You can only do more of the same and that doesn't build a brand or create new markets.

- There's a lot of money outside of the blockbuster market. You can make a lot of money making fighters, platformers, or graphical adventures but those genres are niche and unfit for a blockbuster approach.

- It allows for prestige games. Right now this doesn't matter as much as it does in movies because game criticism is pretty awful but sooner or later we will see our own kind of Oscar-bait.

[Violent By Design]

I am a bit confused by these statements though. How are Mario Galaxy and 3D Zeldas not considered block buster games? Because they do not have impressive voice acting and movie like scripts?

[Erik_Twice]

I am a bit confused by these statements though. How are Mario Galaxy and 3D Zeldas not considered block buster games?

They have a modest budget, they don'y rely on extensive marketing campaigns and have a long-tail instead of being one-hit affair.

Note that we are talking about blockbusters or "AAA Games" as a genre, not simply as a shorthand for "games that make a lot of money".

Examples of video game blockbusters:
Call of Duty, Halo, Bioshock, Ryse, Tomb Raider (2013), Grand Theft Auto, Doom 3, Kane & Lynch, Need for Speed, Batman Arkham Asylum, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, God of War, Mass Effect.

Etc, etc.

[Violent By Design]

I am a bit confused by these statements though. How are Mario Galaxy and 3D Zeldas not considered block buster games?

They have a modest budget, they don'y rely on extensive marketing campaigns and have a long-tail instead of being one-hit affair.

I would disagree with that. Mario and Zelda have large marketing campaigns.

I can't speak for 3D Mario, though I am sure it is very high (at least 64 was), but Zelda certainly does not have a modest budget by any means.

Note that we are talking about blockbusters or "AAA Games" as a genre, not simply as a shorthand for "games that make a lot of money".

You'd have to define the characteristics of what the games have in common for them to be a genre, no?

Examples of video game blockbusters:
Call of Duty, Halo, Bioshock, Ryse, Tomb Raider (2013), Grand Theft Auto, Doom 3, Kane & Lynch, Need for Speed, Batman Arkham Asylum, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, God of War, Mass Effect.

Etc, etc.

Aside from them those games being mature in content, I don't really see what binds them together, much less makes them Triple A titles. I'm surprised to see Kane & Lynch on there as well.

[oxymoron]

Aside from them those games being mature in content, I don't really see what binds them together, much less makes them Triple A titles. I'm surprised to see Kane & Lynch on there as well.

Medium
Katamari Forever:
- Small Budget
- Most likely one or 2 teams
working on project
- Little money spent on Ad's
- Goal is to make good money
and keep the lights on

Blockbuster
Call of Duty MW3:
- Huge Budget
- 5+ teams (with high salaries may I mention)
- $100 million spent on an Ad campaign
- Goal is to set records and make billions

Starting to see the difference?