Jimothy Sterling said:Which all goes back to the wanton waste that feeds into overspending. Meanwhile, the makes of Unreal, and CryEngine, and Source are doing quite well making and also licensing their engines, so they can make money rather than just cost it.Arnoxthe1 said:But most engines aren't made to be reused. Here's a brilliant example. Halo 4 was built off of the Reach engine. While they got it to play nice for the most part, they couldn't get Theater for campaign or Spartan Ops to work right so they had to cut it because the engine wasn't meant to be modified so. And that's not exactly a small feature to cut.Jimothy Sterling said:Left 4 Dead is nowhere near the level of Battlefield 3. It does not matter.
You're asking me to understand things I already understand, which is patronizing, and clearly off-base considering you're assuming I've said games are cheap to make when I have not. People go where the games are best, not where they look best. Another case -- PS2, last in its class in the tech department, best in show when it comes to success.
Besides which, we're supposedly arguing about the cost of making a game people perceive to be good. Modding a source engine is not as expensive as building a new one. You're saying I don't understand that a game must spend extra money to hang with the big dogs, then telling me Valve games can hang with the big dogs because they can use their engine that doesn't need extra money to be rebuilt. Telling me you need to spend a ton of money to be in the same ballpark as a successful game, then telling me Source Engine can be tweaked to look good, does not compute.
What YOU're not considering is that engines can be reused for many things, and can last a long time, so unless you decide to build every new IP on a new engine, the costs just aren't gonna stay the same.
Can Publishers make adaptable engines? Certainly. Do they? Most of the time, no. I don't really know why though. Most likely because it's cheaper. If a publisher has a good old engine they can use, more power to them but not all publishers have this luxury.
Yes, engines can be reused but as I stated in the above point, it can cause a lot of headaches if it's not meant to be modified. Further, making a new engine, even if you do have a good modifiable engine, is inevitable sometime.
It gets to the point where I'm gonna have limited to zero sympathy for a company that makes disposable, expensive engines.
Side note about the argument Jim;
MovieBob did an Overthinker episode a while ago about while things are getting more expensive in the video game industry. He noted like you that it's part of it greed in the industry, and the consumer eating it up then asking for more. However, most of what he talked about was the part of it I don't hear about most often.
The blame of the game designers. The artists. The episode is called "Starving Artist". http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2013/05/episode-84-starving-artists.html
Basically what he talks about is how the artists sometimes in the games industry want the newest(and most expensive) tools to make there games. For some reasonable reasons, and some kind of selfish ones.
Also, one question about this whole "we can't afford to make games that just end after one" thing.
For the sake of argument, lets say what Ubisoft is saying is true for at least them. That they just can't afford to make a game that just ends the story.(I agree with you that they more than likely can, but don't want to, but again for the sake of the argument lets go with this hypothetical).
Anyway, if they can't afford to do that, I have to ask; Can they then afford to make only games that can be turned into franchise?
I don't just mean can they take the risk over and over again and put lots of money into new IPs hoping to make them into franchises, but even if they do make very cool games can they support themselves with that system if they can't afford to make a game on a budget? For example; say they have five game franchises, but only 2 are selling really well(and seeing as some say selling 5 million copies is a failure my guess would be having 2 out of 5 selling well would be optimistic).
They would have some of their franchises doing well, but the others suffering and costing them A LOT of money. Video games are expensive to make, and buy. It's not reasonable to expect all of their fans to be able to buy every one of there games, or even want to.
I really liked Assassin's Creed, but I didn't buy every game, and I'm not likely to be buying their yearly installments. To much of a good thing makes you get a bit sick of it eventually. Especially if you don't get enough time away from it to miss it.
Thank God For you, Jim.
Sorry about the long post.