Only Three Of Ten Games Recover Costs, EIF Chairman Claims

[Anton P. Nym]

I don't understand what is making games cost so damn much, of course it isn't just one thing that is making games expensive to develop but seriously, they have to do something about development costs, we aren't going to be loyal and supportive for long if it means we can't eat our next meal.

Art is a biggie. You need a lot more art to make a level if you're displaying it at 1080p as opposed to 480p (or VGA)... the extra detail work takes more time, or more artists, and that means more payroll. Trees don't grow themselves (Well, not yet... though there's some promise with procedurally-generated foliage middleware. Yeah, there's real money to be made in imaginary trees.) and every object in the game has to be modelled and skinned. Animation comes under this category too... it takes a ton more work to do 3D animations than it used to in the era of sprites.

More sophisticated engines need more coding, too. Add in coding for network play.

Test ain't cheap either, and the more complicated the engine the more you have to test it to find weird stuff.

I think art is the biggest single cause for steeper costs these days, though.

-- Steve