Do you think game development costs will eventually go back down again?

Andrew_ · 2017-11-02T10:46:26

Posting this in the lounge instead of the business forum because this is about more than just business. It's also about speculation of what future technology might be like. Here's something I've been thinking about lately. A lot of people are concerned about the exploding costs of AAA game development. Modern games like Destiny and GTA V cost over $100 million to create, and future generations of games may become even more expensive because of things like increased resolutions and polygon counts. But what if this trend of rising costs is only temporary? Do you think advancements in technology and improved tools could eventually bring game development costs back down again? Now I don't have much experience with software development beyond writing a few simple programs, but I thought I'd throw some ideas out here anyway to see what the gamedev community thinks. Here are some ways I can imagine this trend of rising costs reversing: Advancements in procedural generation. As more research is put in and better algorithms are discovered, procedurally generated content becomes increasingly diverse, and the cost of content creation goes down, until eventually, we're be able to make billions of procedurally generated worlds that actually are unique and not just variations of each other like in No Man's Sky and other existing proc-gen games. From the Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon, our planet is full of awesome, unique, interesting, and beautiful places to explore, and it wasn't made by hand, so who says we won't eventually achieve a comparable level of diversity with procedural generation? Better engines and libraries. Over time, engines and libraries become able to do more stuff that companies currently have to do manually, and make the remaining tasks faster, cheaper, and easier. Artificial superintelligence. This sounds farfetched, but if Ray Kurzweil's predictions of an ASI are correct, gamedev costs would be reduced to almost nothing, assuming the AI doesn't kill us all first. Not only would an ASI be capable of creating entire games for us, but those games would put even the world's greatest human-created games to shame. So, what do you think, could future gamedev technology bring the massive costs of AAA game development back down to a more acceptable level, or at the very least, lower the costs of what constitutes a AAA game by 2017 standards?

GDNet Lounge Community

Started by Andrew_ October 29, 2017 11:20 PM

11 comments, last by SillyCow 6 years, 5 months ago

DividedByZero

1,261

November 02, 2017 09:22 AM

On 30/10/2017 at 11:31 AM, Scouting Ninja said:

A small home team could make a full GTA 1 clone for much less than it first cost to make.

A small home team did make GTA 1 (David Jones & Mike Dailly). All without the comfort of the game engines of today.

SillyCow

1,534

November 02, 2017 10:46 AM

Here's a thought: The cost of the game is not dependent on what what is the bare minimum needed to make it. The cost is determined based on the question: "How much money can this game make?"

If the games market keeps growing, then the games budgets will keep growing.

Let's presume that the best xMass FPS release will make 500M$ on playstation.

If I knew you were making a good game for 10M$ which "win" that market, would I not spend 110$M for a slightly better game? Would it not be worthwhile to spend another 50M$ on marketting, etc...?

That brings me to the conclusion that AAA game budgets will always be a factor of: How much money can I make vs. What is the risk?

Indie games will always follow their own rules though.

Just as a metaphor:

Have film budgets gone down because digital cameras/prodcution are cheaper? No: James Cameron has started designing his own super expensive cameras (millions of $$$ each). Why take up this ridiculous endeavour? Because each of his films can make a billion dollars.

You can see the same happening in YouTube. Even though video production started out cheap, once people started making a little money ($100k), the production budgets went up. I would guess that successful you tubers have the same production budget as a cheap "local news" tv show.

You can see the same happening in the mobile app store. You will not see a lot of "flappy bird"s hitting #1. But because the market is still smaller (revenue wise), you will not see alot of AAA budgets either.

So I think that new technology brings the possibility of cheaper products, but a bigger market will *necessarily* mean a bigger development budget.

My Oculus Rift Game: RaiderV

My Android VR games: Time-Rider& Dozer Driver

My browser game: Vitrage - A game of stained glass

My android games : E nemies of the Crown & Killer Bees