Company News Obsidian Almost Got To Make Baldur's Gate 3

[RK47]

Lots of budget for DLC guys...

 

[Brother None]

Don't forget NEXT GEN mass marketing with Doritos and Mountain Dew.

I wish. Marketing budget comes *on top of that*. I was a bit surprised at seeing how many Codexers do not seem to realize how expensive games are. $20-$25 million is the standard AAA development budget, and it ramps up all the way to $100 million for the likes of GTA IV. The PR budget on top of that is at least $10 million unless the publisher is shovelwaring it, but in many cases the marketing budget is actually equal to or greater than the development budget, especially for modern FPSs like the Call of Duties.

 

[tuluse]

Fear In The Orks Eye™

I feel like we should have an emoticon for this.

 

[Jaesun]

Fear In The Orks Eye™

I feel like we should have an emoticon for this.

With BioWare basically gone and making nothing but shit who cares. It will just be a meme for those of us that remember. Kind of like Enslaving Nations With Necromancy™.

 

[Moribund]

Don't forget NEXT GEN mass marketing with Doritos and Mountain Dew.

I wish. Marketing budget comes *on top of that*. I was a bit surprised at seeing how many Codexers do not seem to realize how expensive games are. $20-$25 million is the standard AAA development budget, and it ramps up all the way to $100 million for the likes of GTA IV. The PR budget on top of that is at least $10 million unless the publisher is shovelwaring it, but in many cases the marketing budget is actually equal to or greater than the development budget, especially for modern FPSs like the Call of Duties.

We all know what supposed AAA game costs, but not all games need to be AAA games. The issue is he demanded AAA treatment and it fell through. Also, if it were truly AAA we know what kind of game it would be. It's obvious that's what he wants to make, or rather he is a greedy delusional idiot who thinks he can make games like that and become a billionaire even though that budget is probably more than the budget of every game he's actually secured funding for put together. If it wasn't then they'd have the breathing room to do their own IP without begging for spare change on KS.

 

[Moribund]

Fear In The Orks Eye™

I feel like we should have an emoticon for this.

With BioWare basically gone and making nothing but shit who cares. It will just be a meme for those of us that remember. Kind of like Enslaving Nations With Necromancy™.

That's Bethesda not bioware you useless fucking twit.

 

[Jaesun]

Oh look it's our resident fucktard.

 

[Brother None]

that budget is probably more than the budget of every game he's actually secured funding for put together.

I'm not sure what kind of budget we're looking at with some of Obsidian's titles because slam dunk sequels are generally cheaper to make, so I would think the likes of NWN 2, KotOR II and New Vegas didn't operate on full budgets, quite possibly half the budget of a normal AAA. Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III and South Park: Stick of Truth probably cost a lot more. Alpha Protocol was in development a total of five years, and in full-scale development for quite long. I don't really doubt it cost $20 million to make. But I don't know that for a fact. If you really think all of these games were made for less than $20-$25 million total than wow, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Given this was the official DS3 GamePlay Trailer:



... if Dungeon Siege III cost $20 Million than Obsidian really don't know how to spend money.

Correction: They clearly have a problem spending too much money.

Meanwhile, again, Project Eternity is only costing $4M and it will be AWESOME.

Alpha Protocol was in development a total of five years, and in full-scale development for quite long. I don't really doubt it cost $20 million to make.

We also know that Obsidian were incompetent and completely mismanaged it.

 

[Brother None]

... if Dungeon Siege III cost $20 Million than Obsidian really don't know how to spend money.

I have no idea how much DSIII cost, just that it likely cost a lot more than the slamdunk sequels. $20 million would seem a little high (my mention of $20 million was only in reference to AP). But again, don't underestimate how expensive games are to make.

We also know that Obsidian were incompetent and completely mismanaged it.

Absolutely. But someone has to pay for mismanagement. Those five years are all still in the budget, even if one design was completely shitcanned. And while certainly not the standard, projects having to be re-invented a ways into development and other mismanagement problems do occur and do count towards the budget all over the industry, so they up what you could consider the "average" for gaming budgets.

 

[tuluse]

DS3 probably didn't need to cost $20 million, but someone needed to pay for Obsidian to learn how to track bugs

 

[Lancehead]

$20 m to get them to ditch pen and paper.

 

[Kz3r0]

Actually I remember an Obsidian member, Feargus(?), saying that when they told how much DS3 cost to other industry guys they couldn't believe how cheap it was.

 

[Moribund]

Yeah let's put it like this. Take a look at some real AAA game and then compare that to what obsidian has done. Let's get serious now, ME is not 25 million budget either, you are only playing these retardo "RPGs" if you possibly think that is AAA. Do you really think this compares to ArmA or Crysis or even Unreal I mean my god man, really. Every art asset is shit, and they slap a lame particle system on it to cover it up, it's as halfassed as it gets, below that and even xbawks quality control would step in and end the embarassment.

I'm sure AP had the biggest budget, but at the same time the time start to finish doesn't mean anything for budget. Most the cash is going to art assets and video assets, they didn't kill their budget with dorks reworking dialogs for 4 years, they just don't have that many writers and designers.

If you look at all their games together it can't have a budget comparable to ONE real AAA game. It just doesn't, and even oedipus can see that.

That is, the actual output is not worth 25 million when compared to a good studio making a big budget game. No one could possibly mistake AP for AAA game more like D list game. I don't mean because it was kind of crap, I mean you can just see it just like when you compare 2001 FX to Star Wars FX you know 2001 was a lot lower budget (I hope to god for their sakes).

If the studio says they want a 12 million dollar game that's what you do. Or 4 million. You just have less whizbang to it. You can hire a programmer and several artists for their entire lives for "only" 4 million.

That he demanded 25 million shows what HE wanted to make, which in itself is unforgiveable. That he wouldn't even settle for less shows he is just retarded and delusional. Obsidian has all the right ingredients to make good games but they are always somewhere between awful and slightly off. I'm guessing that the cluelessness of fearless leader is to blame.

 

[Brother None]

Let's get serious now, ME is not 25 million budget either

"Modern" BioWare games like ME average out at a development budget of around $30 million dollars. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Most the cash is going to art assets and video assets

Most cash goes to wages. For all people involved.

If you look at all their games together it can't have a budget comparable to ONE real AAA game.

You are seriously insisting their entire library was created for less than 25 million? Interesting.

That he demanded 25 million shows what HE wanted to make, which in itself is unforgiveable. That he wouldn't even settle for less shows he is just retarded and delusional.

Or alternatively, that he's a producer who has been in this industry two decades while you don't even know the very basic facts about how much a videogame costs to make.

 

[Kz3r0]

Well, RPGs usually don't use the most expensive graphics and physics engines on the market, those alone should be around two millions in licensing fees.

 

[Brother None]

Well, RPGs usually don't use the most expensive graphics and physics engines on the market, those alone should be around two millions in licensing fees.

The budget balance in RPGs is different from shooters. The reason shooters look and sound much better is because their budget allocation focuses primarily on those, whereas AI, writing, scripting, reactivity, programming all balloon in cost for RPGs as compared to modern shooters. Don't just look at a game's graphics and try to extrapolate cost from there, that'll give you the wrong idea. A linear cRPG can be made much cheaper than an open-world one, too. I don't know the exact budget of Oblivion or Skyrim but they're more expensive than BioWare's Mass Effect titles, even though those are graphically probably superior games. Bethesda is too private about it for me to even guesstimate budgets, though.

The cost balance of RPGs is *different*, but it's not necessarily *less*. Less than the absolute giants of industry like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto? Well yeah, obviously, but not less than shooters per se.

 

[Moribund]

Ok, so the money doesn't go to art assets it goes to salaries. For voice actors. Who don't work for the company making the game at all. That go with their videos. See where I'm going here? What you said is exactly what I said but you then said I was wrong. Also, on oblivion virtually every single piece of art was outsourced, so who doesn't know what they were talking about again? 100 man years of work, 10% of which was done by Bethesda itself.

THE POINT here that you didn't look at at all is that you can reduce this by huge amounts, by simply cutting out some videos and fully voiced dialog or using non celebrity actors.

The second point is, if the budgets are the same they are squandering huge amounts of cash. I don't need to say that bioware is one of the companies that provides least bang for the buck, especially now they are an EA zombie and therefore can't really be compared to Obsidian too well.

But to make a point let's just compare bioware to CoD, shall we. I know they have a higher budget but while the budget is probably 4x as much the apparent budget is about 50 times as much. Joshua Gomez started his acting career doing vioce work for CoD. He's great at it! Mark Meers and Yvonne Strahovski are pretty well shit voice actors and they probably take in millions of dollars. For voice acting, which goes very quickly. In some failed project I can't remember the name of the VA was about 60% of their 5o million dollar budget!

Now seriously, all this crap can be cut, suffering the VA is my biggest complaint for bioware games today. Or simply get a random guy and pay him 1000 dollars an hour to VA ME hero and he'd probably do a better job of it and still cost less than what they are wasting.

Coming back to Obsidian, we can look at the credits and see who did what. Are there 40 writers? There were 40 writers on halo 2. They also had lots of designers that just designed one encounter, that was their whole job. Do obsidian even have 40 employees? 40 writers and designers @ average of 100k a year (hahaha) and what do we get? 4 million dollars! I don't have a box handy but someone can help out and tell me how many people they list. Jobs like sound etc. won't be full time positions, just guys who did one thing and got a lump fee.

But again the point was you can still make the game for whatever budget. Surely 10 guys working 4 years can make a game, it just won't have as many famous voice actors or fancy art.

And the second point is, if they do have these sorts of budgets they are horribly wasteful. Comparing them to ME is not saying much, it's obvious already they are horribly wasteful compared to any real AAA dev. I am certain there's more VA, more everything, and looking 10 times better, in any CoD game than the entire ME series regardless of the money they wasted on it.

And as DU says PE is gonna be awesome though, so one of these is all out of whack.

 

[Moribund]

All right, I checked moby games. 30 artists for dungeon siege 3. 2 writers! 2 level designers! Also 8-10 guys with titles like assistant executive producer, I'll just guess they don't actually do anything, that seems to be how these work.

So that's where these salaries go, for art. If they had half the budget they could make due with just 10 artists.

 

[Infinitron]

ITT Moribund reveals his expert knowledge of Call of Duty voice acting

 

[Zakhad]

Ok, so... (incoherent screed)

Reading your posts in this thread has made me actually dumber. My brain hurts. I think I've lost a language.

ITT Moribund reveals his expert knowledge of Call of Duty voice acting

ITT Moribund goes bravely to war against the facts, armed only with opinion.

 

[Kz3r0]

Well, making a very rough estimate we can consider that Obsidian spends 1M$ month, their word, and usually runs three projects at time, so one of their projects cost 300K$ per month, I know I know, not all the games have the same budget, said that, roughly an Obsidian project on average takes 3,6M$ per year, considering that Project Eternity would require a lesser budget than the usual it's quite possible that they could really pull it off with 4M$, obviously if one year and half will be enough to complete the game.

 

[Roguey]

Actually I remember an Obsidian member, Feargus(?), saying that when they told how much DS3 cost to other industry guys they couldn't believe how cheap it was.

Anthony Davis said that here. He also said that the budget was so low that Square Enix likely made money from it even with its 820k sales. Its low budget status is definitely apparent when it comes to the cinematic dialogues and lack of good multiplayer (things Chapman said he would prioritize if they had more money, along with the camera).

I don't know the exact budget of Oblivion or Skyrim but they're more expensive than BioWare's Mass Effect titles, even though those are graphically probably superior games. Bethesda is too private about it for me to even guesstimate budgets, though.

I don't know where this site is pulling its numbers from but it claims Skyirm's total budget was $85 million which seems accurate-ish. I doubt they spent the full GTA4 $100 million.

 

[Brother None]

Efficiency is a highly valued skill. Feargus has a pretty good reputation in the industry because of his skill at slam dunk sequels, and those are just printing money in effect. Considering the financial success of New Vegas, I assume his reputation's only risen, but making Dungeon Siege 3 cheaply even though it's not a slam dunk is another gold star sticker.

I don't know where this site is pulling its numbers from but it claims Skyirm's total budget was $85 million which seems accurate-ish. I doubt they spent the full GTA4 $100 million.

I was gonna go "that's higher than I would've thought", but it's development ánd marketing. Then yeah. I mean, don't know that site and they probably pulled the number out of their ass coz none of this stuff is public from Bethesda, but it sounds fairly realistic for development and marketing both.

$100 million is GTA IV's reported production budget, excluding marketing. Same for Red Dead Redemption by popular estimate. Those type of AAAs are in another universe, though.

 

[Harold]

So who's alt is Moribund anyway?