Triple A game budget solution

[gact]

By now I think everyone is aware to a degree that the cost of developing games has rised to ridiculous amounts, and game developers complain about it all the time and no one is doing something about it.
I want to get your opinion on a solution I thought up, I propose that big companies should start making small games paralel to the giant budget ones. Games that cost way less and avoid trying to being the next call of duty, we have seen how successful indie titles can be and those games are generally not that big, so if the triple A industry makes games similar to what the indies have been doing they would get small continious profits that can help fund the larger games.
So what do you think? is it viable?

 

[Able Seacat]

The problem is that you would have to fund the smaller games as well as the big one and there's no guarantee of a decent return for the small titles. Surely it would be more prudent to better budget the bigger game. Less on fancy graphics, advertising and any unnecessary multiplayer (see Tomb Raider). But to be fair, when it comes to these sort of things I have no idea.

 

[lacktheknack]

It's quite simple: A triple-A development team needs to drop the ball on the graphics and have barely anyone notice.

Once they can feel secure in not aspiring to be Crytek, then they can adjust their budgets to deliver a similar quality of game for less money.

They also really need to reel in their marketing budgets, but I have no idea how to do that.

 

[gargantual]

It's quite simple: A triple-A development team needs to drop the ball on the graphics and have barely anyone notice.

Once they can feel secure in not aspiring to be Crytek, then they can adjust their budgets to deliver a similar quality of game for less money.

They also really need to reel in their marketing budgets, but I have no idea how to do that.

Pretty much this. I loved Crysis's capabilities, but To me Half-life 2 and Silent Hill 3 look realistic enough. We've hit the uncanny valley years ago. People should focus on running games better, new mechanics and artstyle now that we've hit realism.

And good games sell themselves. Too much marketing is like Chris Rock said, a drug dealer trying to OVERsell coke.

If you have to engineer and OVERsell the game, it means back to the lab.

 

[Bad Jim]

While indie movies are often a lot like big budget movies only cheaper, indie games tend to be very different from AAA games. This means there is not much reason for them to do it. Hollywood keeps small studios making low budget films because it gives unknown actors, directors, scriptwriters etc a chance to show what they can do. But AAA development is not like indie development at all.

 

[TomWiley]

It's quite simple: A triple-A development team needs to drop the ball on the graphics and have barely anyone notice.

Once they can feel secure in not aspiring to be Crytek, then they can adjust their budgets to deliver a similar quality of game for less money.

They also really need to reel in their marketing budgets, but I have no idea how to do that.

Pretty much this. I loved Crysis's capabilities, but To me Half-life 2 and Silent Hill 3 look realistic enough. We've hit the uncanny valley years ago. People should focus on running games better, new mechanics and artstyle now that we've hit realism.

And good games sell themselves. Too much marketing is like Chris Rock said, a drug dealer trying to OVERsell coke.

If you have to engineer and OVERsell the game, it means back to the lab.

It's not as easy as just cutting down the graphical fidelity. That's not the issue to begin with. Level design, voice actors, rendering, rigid body dynamics, exception management and beta-testning. That's what eating up your budget. You get pretty graphics for free with modern engines. So to speak.

Which is also why stunning looking games can be developed by small teams with no budget to speak of; Amnesia, Dear Esther, No Man's Sky not to mention the array of amazing PC mods.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Pretty much this. I loved Crysis's capabilities, but To me Half-life 2 and Silent Hill 3 look realistic enough. We've hit the uncanny valley years ago.

While I think we are close to hitting that, I don't think we're quite there. The only game that I can think of that was clearly in the uncanny valley was L.A. Noire, and that was mostly due to their facial animation technology being too far ahead of the rest of their technology. Otherwise, I think the big problem isn't so much our graphical fidelity but how aesthetically unpleasing we're making so much of it.

OT:
Keep in mind, even though indie games are popular now, most of what we know about are the successes. How many companies actually fail? Furthermore, how many companies are successful enough that they can actually grow their company and/or the size of their games? Making smaller games on the side isn't going to guarantee revenue, at least not enough to actually make the investment away from the larger games worth it.

The problem with cutting costs at all, though, is that often those costs are put into something that people want. Do we cut down graphics or slow down our advancement of them? Then you run the risk of gamers complaining about how graphics technology has stagnated or how old it looks. If you hire less well-known voice actors, then you run the risk of people complaining too much about how horrible the voice acting is, and having no voice acting at all gets its own set of complaints about lack of voice overs. If you make games shorter, people complain about short length. If you limit game modes, then they complain about the price it is being sold at. If you don't hire an orchestra, then people complain about how the music isn't up to standards with other games. And then if you choose to limit advertising, then you risk a lack of exposure compared to the amount that you invested in the game itself.

Indie games can get away with most of those things because they are on smaller budgets and are often followed by those who don't care about such stuff, but AAA games are still held to many of those standards.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

While I don't really know, I'm inclined to say worse graphics, better art direction and new IP. The graphics so the cost isn't so astronomically high, the art direction so people don't notice the graphics drop as much, and new IP so the fanbases aren't expecting better graphics than the last one. Basically reduce graphical quality and do what you can to make people not notice.

That said, more affordable development isn't worth shit if they don't make a good game as well, so maybe figuring out how to do that is worth something. Additionally, don't casualise. Every second game goes for largest audience possible, the ones that do really well are either established in that market, or niche games that are adored by their fanbases for providing something series they used to like have stopped providing.

 

[lnin0]

I would like to see how truly episodic content would work. It seems like a lot of publishers/games share the same engine. Why not stop spending money to always rebuild the infrastructure and focus on content.

Treat it like television. Create pilots and a couple of episodes. These episodes might be an hour or so of a campaign or a couple multiplayer maps. We can get rid of the notion that a game must have single player and multiplayer because everything would be bite sized episodes.

Now sell these bite sized bits to customers at a fair price. If gamers could pick up a pilot for $15-20 I am sure a lot of people would try a lot more types of games. Like it, buy more. Don't like it, you aren't all that invested so give something else a try.

Publishers could monitor sales of these pilots and how many people came back for additional episodes. If a game was popular they could green light further episodes. If not, then they could cut their losses and cancel the game.

 

[mirage202]

Interesting idea but ultimately doomed to failure.

They would do it then what happens if it was a huge success? Suddenly the suits would be dropping 10 of millions and hundreds of staff into making the sequel once again chasing the white rabbit.