Game News Puuk dishes out THE TRUTH about Fallout 3

[triCritical]

Re: Couple Things...

Yikes, apparentlly that cost of living swell I hear is true. 11k per man month eh? Them's some nice salaries. Hell I'd only pay for that kind of help if the work was absolutely stellar and efficient....4k - 5k on a team of artists for example is plenty. I mean really, you look at the shit thats getting produced today and thats still way to f'in much IMHO. We have killer talent on UXO and its not hitting 11k ( this is minus programmer costs ).

Cheers

I live in OC and I pay about 2000 a month renting a 3 bedroom 1600 square foot house. The average rent for homes around here is about 2400 dollars. When I was a grad student at UC Irvine an arpartment their could cost inbetween 1500-2500 dollars depending on the fixings. That was about 2.5 years ago, and its only getting worse. My house sells for about 550,000 dollars and is nearly 30 years old. If you want anything under 300,000 dollars you need to move to the ghetto, I kid you not. My mom just sold her house in the San Pedro ghetto for 350,000 dollars. I neighberhood that I would never allow my kids to grow up in.

I am starting to hate SoCal and I have lived here my entire life. But if you salary does not go up buy at least 5% every year, its like you getting a pay decrease. Its crazy ridiculous here, but I am just bitter.

BTW, the 11k a man month I do not think means salary. I think that is how much the company charges. For instance a programmer might make 35 dollars an hour but the company will charge about 50-60 dollars for his services. Of course you can always charge less, but that is not very profitable. The company I worked for actually charged less for my services then I was getting paid. However, with more experience and my graduate degree, they can now charge a lot more for my services.

 

[EvoG]

Re: Couple Things...

BTW, the 11k a man month I do not think means salary. I think that is how much the company charges. For instance a programmer might make 35 dollars an hour but the company will charge about 50-60 dollars for his services.

Now see, I gave that thought considering that I outsource myself...but keep in mind this is development vs. asset creation, for example. I see nothing after my contract is up on anything I created. I derive my 'profit' from my hourly over my overhead. When you're making a game, you want your costs as low as possible to 'make the game', not generate profit from your development. You still have to pay for the costs of development...so its not like thats profit you can bank and be done with. If there were no royalties then I'd agree with you...being contracted to develop a game for someone and to take a cut during development. Anyway, the sooner you pay off your cost of development, the sooner you see royalties ( ideally ). So your incentive to a low cost and efficient development is to pay back what was 'borrowed' from your publisher ASAP so you can get royalties sooner and with a chance for greater profit, even if your title doesn't sell as well. The ideal is to invest as low as possible, cover overhead then to gain more profit later.

Cheers

 

[triCritical]

No your completely right. I was using the word profitable carelessly. The money over the wage of the developer normally goes to overhead and other stuff that is written into the contract. Perhaps hardware, or something. The company I am employed with was recently bought out buy an enormous corporation. However, the sale had to be done in such a way where we charged are old rates, because the new rates would be so damn high due to all the new overhead. Big corporations tend to have a lot of middle management... err overhead. :D

Although the business model that my old company used to use was something like this. For every dollar 50 cents went back to to the HQ for what ever reason ( payroll, IT, etc.. ), while 30 cents might go to the employee and the last 20 cents went to local overhead. That was the rather simplistic model, but I imagine it ever worked liked. Since I don't work on the business side of things I don't know much more then that.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Yup. Your hokey little company just can't cut it with one of the big boys Steve.

Ouch...I just don't know where I get the strength to go on. :shock:

Mr Steve is that your company game ? " Triptych studios ? "

You still have time to change it to "Kickass games entertainment " you know

 

[EvoG]

Yup. Your hokey little company just can't cut it with one of the big boys Steve.

Ouch...I just don't know where I get the strength to go on. :shock:

Mr Steve is that your company game ? " Triptych studios ? "

You still have time to change it to "Kickass games entertainment " you know

Hehe, I don't think DarkUndies will let me.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Hehe, I don't think DarkUndies will let me.

Bribe him like Troika did with other loving fans

Troika put the name of the loyal fans from the forums in headstones in a secret location.

You can do the same . Certainly in a post nuclear game you can have lots and lots of graves.

 

[Feargus Urquhart]

Console Dev Systems...

I'm not sure if this is what you were talking about, but the development hardware I was talking about for the PS2 cost $10K a piece, that's down from $20K a piece a couple of years ago. You can't buy them from anyone else, since when you buy them you are really just leasing them from Sony and they get them back instead of you getting to sell them to someone else.

On the PC side of things, we have been careful about what we've spent. We've spent about $1800 a person including the computer and monitor and legit copioes of XP and Office.

 

[EvoG]

Re: Console Dev Systems...

I'm not sure if this is what you were talking about, but the development hardware I was talking about for the PS2 cost $10K a piece, that's down from $20K a piece a couple of years ago. You can't buy them from anyone else, since when you buy them you are really just leasing them from Sony and they get them back instead of you getting to sell them to someone else.

Yup, thats right. They've floated around those costs since PSone ( 7 years ago ).


Cheers

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: Console Dev Systems...

On the PC side of things, we have been careful about what we've spent. We've spent about $1800 a person including the computer and monitor and legit copioes of XP and Office.

You can also save money on compilers, since there are some really nice IDEs out there like Dev C++, which I prefer to Visual C++.

 

[taks]

Re: Couple Things...

I mean really, you look at the shit thats getting produced today and thats still way to f'in much IMHO. We have killer talent on UXO and its not hitting 11k ( this is minus programmer costs ).

you're forgetting to add in the overhead burden. almost every employee costs 2 to 2 1/2 times as much as his salary due to 1.) benefits, including insurance and vacation 2.) umeployment insurance, federal and state 3.) operating costs such as rent and electricity. granted, in so. cal. operating costs are going to be much higher than many other places in the world. salaries and benefits are higher, but not by the same factor (i'd be able to justify about a 20% raise from colorado to move to so. cal, but operating costs/cost of living may be as much as 100% more than here).

mark

 

[taks]

Re: Unfortunate Truth

Console games make at least 10x the money that PC games do.

the #s you quoted later were only 3X, btw, and this is only total sales... profit is another story. there's also probably more than 3 times as many console games released in a year so the #s are bound to be higher. 51 million consoles in the US as i recall and each one is for games only. not nearly that many PC gamers (at least as many PCs for sure, probably more, but most are for business purposes or web surfing... not games). each console game does not necessarily make more money than a PC game, either.

So yes, console games do fund PC game development at some studios. And I do believe the PS2s, XBoxes, and Gamecubes of the world will contribute to a decline in quality PC games.

some places, yes. not everywhere. given our still mostly capitalist society, as soon as the # and quality of PC games begins to decline (arguable that has already begun), somebody will step in to take advantage of the market. it's cyclical, as with most business models. as long as there is demand, there will be supply.

If you have $10M to spend making a game, are you going to make it for the PC market, where it'll sell 50K-100K units? Or the console market, where it will do 10x that? For an answer, see Halo, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2, etc.

BG1 is up over 1.5 million units, the #s for diablo are probably ridiculous... given that there are less overall PC games released every year, it's understandable that there will be less high sales games. however, there's also less competition in the PC market than in the console market. it's a balancing act, actually. overall, a LOT more console games lose money, but that's just because there are more released into a much tighter market. from a percentage standpoint, probably as many PC games make an assload of money as console games.

I actually had considered buying a copy of Fallout: POS just to give Interplay some positive reinforcement. That was before they cancelled Fallout 3.

that's a good way to get yourself flamed around here.. purists never considered buying POS even at the worst of times.

Barring big sales, I fear the near-future contains limited "great" titles for the PC. I think indie guys like Spiderweb will have to pick up the slack.

as i stated, it's cyclical. saying the future contains limited "great" titles is really an opinion based on your narrow view of what constitutes a "great" title (everybody's view is narrow based on their own taste, that was not meant as a criticism). if you want to say that the crpg market will be limited in the near future, i can't completely argue. however, the market was pretty lame right before the fallouts and baldur's gate games were released, too... that led to a 5 year boon for crpg fans that is just now subsiding... cyclical.

mark

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Computer technology may change fast.
Society changes slowly.
1/5 rd of the people that play games want for some reason to hide it from society .
These people will not play games in consoles under any circumstances.

PC gaming will never die.

As for the consoles they suffer from this also.

The have a 5 years cycle.

When they launch they are as powerful as the most powerful PC for what they do or more.

4.5 years later the suck big time compared to the slowest pc.

The only reason that consoles seem to overtake the pc in games right now is the free money that Micro$oft throws away hoping that they can dominate the market.

When Micro$oft wises up or is defeated or even more unlikely dominates then the time of free money is over.

Those that stop all pc development now to concentrate on the consoles are fools nothing more nothing less.

 

[triCritical]

The games for my PS2 are really looking dated. I was repulsed by the graphics found in Vice City.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

You still have time to change it to "Kickass games entertainment " you know

Hehe, I don't think DarkUndies will let me.

Bribe him like Troika did with other loving fans. Troika put the name of the loyal fans from the forums in headstones in a secret location. You can do the same . Certainly in a post nuclear game you can have lots and lots of graves.

Hmmm... DarkUnderlord Studios? DarkUnderlord Entertainment?

DarkUndies Entertainment...? Steve's Undies Entertainment?

Entertainment in Steve's Undies?

Steve's Underwear Studio?

 

[Spazmo]

EvoG Farts Out Vapourware Inc.?

 

[Killzig]

sounds good to me.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Oohh... Ooh.. Going back to the console vs PC debate. How much is piracy an issue for consoles? I think that's another factor behind console games selling more. It's a damn site harder to pirate a cartridge than it is to burn a copy of a PC game. Therefore everyone who wants a particular console game has to actually buy it, as opposed to PC games where you can always borrow it from a friend, burn a copy for yourself (using whatever necessary copy-protection software you need to hack the disc) and hand it back. Piracy is a big issue for PC games.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

You're forgetting EMULATORS.

 

[Jinxed]

Oohh... Ooh.. Going back to the console vs PC debate. How much is piracy an issue for consoles? I think that's another factor behind console games selling more. It's a damn site harder to pirate a cartridge than it is to burn a copy of a PC game. Therefore everyone who wants a particular console game has to actually buy it, as opposed to PC games where you can always borrow it from a friend, burn a copy for yourself (using whatever necessary copy-protection software you need to hack the disc) and hand it back. Piracy is a big issue for PC games.

The cartriges along with the N64 are dead. The main reason why PS 1 won the console battle around its time was the fact that it was all too easy to pirate. Just let your local juarez boy install a mod chip for like 10 bucks, and get games for 2$.

The problem nowadays is that games on the PS2 are on DVD's. This means higher cost of production and at the end, it costs more than 2$. Then again, much less than 50$.
I've seen Xbox copies and PS2 copies. I have yet to see any Gamecube warez.