I agree with @MeachtheMonster

[MeachTheMonster]

I'm not one that claims to know all the financial backgrounds of video gaming, but where do you get off figuring that these aspects of all things are a part of the major expenses in it?

Specifically from the insomniac leaks they said the spent 50 million on spider-man cinematics alone.

Just imagine, it cost LOTS of money to make a pixar movie. Some AAA games have like 2 or 3 pixar movies worth of cutscenes

The fiacso of Bayonetta voice actress last year and other scenarios around then shone the light on the pay rate of voice actors in gaming, which shows that they can't be accurate to your claims of why AAA gaming is bloated budget wise. Outside of like...GTA, what games really even be having voice actors famous enough that could dare command some absurd amount of money for what they do? Nolan North, Ray Chase, Yuri Lowenthal, Troy Baker, Chloe Bailey nor even Chris Judges are anywhere beyond video game famous and they're about the most prominent workers in the industry. I just googled the average pay of gaming voice actors and that shyt isn't even 40k annually across the US. Only in Cali is it even above 50k. Most of them work dozens of games/animations at a time to net those ranges or slightly higher, as none of them are voicing any one game for the entirety of the year. They're paid to do work on a project typically near the ending stages of a game, for a few weeks at a time, so obviously for fractions of that annual total. The average coli joker could fund these nikkas for a game.

There are a few top voice actors that bring in lots of money. You don’t think Chris Judge is making a bunch of money??

but also with games there’s just so much more dialog than movies. For the big games they even have the actors record their lines in a whole bunch of different scenarios to fit gameplay. That ads up to lots of money being spent on voice acting.

You may have half a point about the proverbial AAA gaming space bubble bursting, something that pretty much everyone has had some insight on anyways. However, your fingers of blame are rote in subterfuge, more often than not, as usual. We all know you think all "good gaming" consists of only the sounds of your button mashing or else it's deemed "too cinematic" and that anything that's not that is somehow, someway, some woe to the video game industry at a whole. So you throw in a bunch of non-factors as to what the cause is such as the above. Meanwhile, you also have stated yourself of overvaluing games to be never ending Starfield durations in order to be valued like that. So...your gaming values and ones that share the same sentiments are a bigger part of the problem at hand here as well in these ever expanding expectations, yet wanting games to be cheaper in tandem as well. Cats can claim all that shyt about indies all they want, but they closing shops up quick as well and they certainly aren't driving the industry in revenue like that neither, so that can't be the end all, be all solution either.

I named starfield as one of the bloated bubble games earlier in this thread. It’s probably one of the worst.

Most of the games i spent a lot of time with this year were the smaller games other than starfield.

But my own habits have zero to do with reality. AAA gaming is unsustainable right now. I’d gladly take 3 “outer worlds” instead of one “starfield”

We shall see how the industry rights itself.

 

[CEO of Morgan Industries]

Companies can scope downward if they want. Studio heads could do that if they wanted to, but they don't. Studio heads would rather spend 500M to make 2B than spend 20M to make 50M. One of those things makes a splash and gets Variety and Hollywood Reporter to write fawning things about you. The other is fine, but no one is writing articles about it the way they wrote about the profitability of the MCU or whatever.

Same is true for video games. There's no reason that Sony leadership couldn't have saved or expanded Japan studio, bought Clap Hanz to make small-scope arcade sports games for them into infinity, bought Housemarque and gave them a strict small budget to keep making arcade-style games rather than bigger games with cutscenes in them, and all that. But it doesn't project the image of big blockbuster experiences that Sony wants.

I will give it to Microsoft that they have acquired developers that are comfortable making mid-range games like Ninja Theory, Double Fine, and Obsidian, and their best stuff has been that AA-level stuff over the past few years. But note that it gets them dunked on. People have jokes for them about that Hellblade sequel being their big game next year, and part of that is the perception that they can't publish a decent AAA game to save their lives (which is true) and the further perception that AAA games are what "really matter" (which I personally disagree with).

Nintendo is in the healthiest position in the business. I would kill to see their budgetary numbers/sales/revenue numbers for their games because this is partially speculation, but they have games that clearly are AA that sell well, along with their higher budget stuff like 3D Zelda. Hell, they even have Splatoon. Jim Ryan would have sold his family to develop one service game as popular as Splatoon in the past eight years or whatever.

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

Specifically from the insomniac leaks they said the spent 50 million on spider-man cinematics alone.

Just imagine, it cost LOTS of money to make a pixar movie. Some AAA games have like 2 or 3 pixar movies worth of cutscenes

I didn't contest the cinematics themselves.

There are a few top voice actors that bring in lots of money. You don’t think Chris Judge is making a bunch of money??

but also with games there’s just so much more dialog than movies. For the big games they even have the actors record their lines in a whole bunch of different scenarios to fit gameplay. That ads up to lots of money being spent on voice acting.

Chris Judge might, since he was an on-screen actor first. That said, he wasn't ever that big either. He may make more than average, as do probably all the ones I listed. They still aren't commanding millions tho. Especially for the limited amount of time they work. I'm aware of (some of) them them also doing motion capture in their voice acting, which I'm sure ups the costs. That said, they're still only pulling in weeks worth of work at a time on even the most major of AAA projects and a lot of them aren't doubling in mo-cop in most of their servicing. I doubt any of them collectively make more than the actual dev teams in total (or the average salaried dev in a year either; at least not on their same corresponding respective game) working on the games day in and out for 3-4+ years. Rightfully so anyways.

I named starfield as one of the bloated bubble games earlier in this thread. It’s probably one of the worst.

Most of the games i spent a lot of time with this year were the smaller games other than starfield.

But my own habits have zero to do with reality. AAA gaming is unsustainable right now. I’d gladly take 3 “outer worlds” instead of one “starfield”

We shall see how the industry rights itself.

Let the masses tell that tho.

The problem and solution of said problem in all this needs a top-to-bottom readjustment in expectations, investment, purchasing, etc., that goes from every level of game development and to the consumer.

 

[The Mad Titan]

Is that what you think evil Sony did to your beloved Sega?

What does Sony bank rolling the PlayStation have to do with Sega?

 

[MeachTheMonster]

The problem and solution of said problem in all this needs a top-to-bottom readjustment in expectations, investment, purchasing, etc., that goes from every level of game development and to the consumer.

Agreed.

It goes from top to bottom. Even with reviewers it seems games CANT get really high scores unless they meet these bloated production value standards.

I had the most fun with games like Lies of P, Coc00n, Armored Core, this year. But those games will NEVER get the attention of some of the top games cause they don’t fit into what the video games writers and critics wanna talk about.

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

Agreed.

It goes from top to bottom. Even with reviewers it seems games CANT get really high scores unless they meet these bloated production value standards.

I had the most fun with games like Lies of P, Coc00n, Armored Core, this year. But those games will NEVER get the attention of some of the top games cause they don’t fit into what the video games writers and critics wanna talk about.

Lies of P and Armored Core got their just worths of attention. As did Hi-fi Rush and Sea of Stars, the latter some even hated the attention it got, ironically enough. That said, for them to get attention to a scale of a GTA/COD level game, wouldn't be realistic.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Lies of P and Armored Core got their just worths of attention. As did Hi-fi Rush and Sea of Stars, the latter some even hated the attention it got, ironically enough. That said, for them to get attention to a scale of a GTA/COD level game, wouldn't be realistic.

Only nintendo games get to be low-mid budget and get nominated for GOTY and released for 60-70 without scrutiny

 

[The Mad Titan]

Only nintendo games get to be low-mid budget and get nominated for GOTY and released for 60-70 without scrutiny

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Lies of P and Armored Core got their just worths of attention. As did Hi-fi Rush and Sea of Stars, the latter some even hated the attention it got, ironically enough. That said, for them to get attention to a scale of a GTA/COD level game, wouldn't be realistic.

Naw, not really. Those games are capped at about 85 metacritic, and only get about 75 reviewers to touch them.

Spider-man 2 has 150 reviews.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

and have people that don’t play them brag about them

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Only nintendo games get to be low-mid budget and get nominated for GOTY and released for 60-70 without scrutiny

Crazy

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Naw, not really. Those games are capped at about 85 metacritic, and only get about 75 reviewers to touch them.

Spider-man 2 has 150 reviews.

Thats up to the publishers

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Thats up to the publishers

It cost money to “publish”