89 réponses à ce sujet

[upsettingshorts]

Disclaimer:  My post is conjecture.

Navasha wrote...

I would think that just adding additional content, player choices, and options would add sufficient value on a dollar per dollar basis since you wouldn't necessarily need to expand the games infrastructure and engine.

Take Skyrim...  Skyrim was $60 bucks.   How much more would have been willing to pay if all of Tamriel would have been included?   No additional engine mechanics, tools, etc would have had to been developed, but just doubled or tripled the budget for level design, content creators?    

In real terms, this is more man hours.  Basically to do this they would have to hire more people.  Short of hiring more people, they could delay release and have people work longer, which means a bigger gap between expected profits.  

Furthermore, the additional complexity you're requesting specifically would likely have an exponentially demanding effect on QA, who now have to account for rapidly mounting variables.

In any case, they already do something like you suggest:  DLC.  It's more content for more money, and doesn't have the same issues as the above, because as people finish their vanilla jobs they can move over to working on DLC, and that content can be more easily integrated into the vanilla game at or after release.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 03 décembre 2012 - 04:52 .

[hoorayforicecream]

xsdob wrote...

So what are some of the more difficult or expensive dialogue and animation scenes to make? I'm really curious now to know what kind of scenes are the real budget eaters and which ones aren't that bad.

Also, thank you guys for answering this thread so clearly. XD

I didn't really want to comment on the other stuff, but this is something I know and understand. The expense of a scene to create depends on many factors, such as:

- Does it require any unique/special animations? (e.g. any love scene)
- Does it require visibly interacting with (i.e. touching) other characters or objects? (e.g. Isabela drinking a shot of whiskey)
- Does it require special camera angles? (e.g. Isabela's introductory fight)
- Does it require special camera movement or effects? (e.g. panning, zooming, changing depth of field)
- Does it require the characters to be in specific locations? (e.g. Isabela at the bar)
- Are there a lot of characters involved? (e.g. Asking about Anders in the Lowtown shop in act 1)

Basically, the more the characters have to do in a scene, the more expensive it is. The cinematic designers and gameplay programmers need to place, pose, time and play animations on every character in the scene, and things like touching require a lot of time spent making sure the animations and characters are all lining up properly. The more generic something is (e.g. talking heads), the cheaper it tends to be.

So here's an example of an inexpensive scene. Notice that none of the characters really move, and both Sophia and Hawke use the same idle animation of sort of shaking their arms. Sophia reuses the pointing animation, and they look at each other which kicks in automatically, and there are really only 3 static camera angles - Sophia, Sophia Profile, and Hawke.

Here's an example of an incredibly expensive scene. The camera pans, there are many camera angles used for different shots, both Isabela and the guy lean on the bar, Isabela has to lift both a bottle and a cup, Lucky touches the cup in Isabela's hand, Isabela's posture is unique (leaning over while talking to someone on her right), an enemy grabs Isabela from behind and she headbutts him, etc. etc. It would not surprise me at all if this particular scene took weeks, if not months, to construct properly, whereas the first probably took the better part of a day or so at most.

Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 03 décembre 2012 - 05:18 .

[Navasha]

EntropicAngel wrote...


What was your opinion of Kingdoms of Amalur? As far as i know, that's a game with a very large world. Did you pay full price and appreciate it? Size isn't a replacement for substance. In the words of Joker, "Size isn't everything; you need firepower too."

Yes, I did buy Amalur for full price and actually enjoy the game.    I actually haven't even come close to finishing the game because they left out a simple option to change the FOV.   Playing it for too long in one sitting starts to give me a headache.    It is a game though that I do go back to periodically and work toward finishing when there is a lull between other game releases.   I just wish I could play it longer in one sitting.   An example where if they would have just developed a simple configuration to allow for wider FOV, would have made the game a better value.

Just saying, I can't be the only one out there who would be willing to pay more money for better or larger games.   In some cases, I would pay substantially more.   However, maybe you are right.    It is the risk of one of those larger games failing to achieve results that is the true blockade to that particular sales model.  

[Fast Jimmy]

Take cars for instance. The range of cost on a new car is anywhere from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why are games designed to lie within such a narrow range of retail prices?

I don't think that's a valid comaprison, at all. A much better one would be books. Books, which all tend to be within a very narrow price range.

I'm sorry, why is this a better example? Other than the fact that it fits into your argument more neatly, of course.

Is it because they are both fiction? Because TV shows and DVD sales range in price quite largely. You can pay nothing for TV and get the basic channels, you can pay more and see all basic cable channels, you can pay even more and see individualized premium channels sub as HBO and then you can pay $30-$60 to own a season of one TV show, for you to own and watch whenever.

Besides, books are NOWHERE near a uniform price. Paperback books vs. hardcover can see a 100-300% markup. Digital copies of books can be as reduced in cost in a similar scale. Text books are insanely more expensive than your average summer romance novel.

So let's see some logic why books should be priced like video games, or how books are standardized in pricing, or how any of that has to do with why a video game could not be charged more for than $60.

[Herr Uhl]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Take cars for instance. The range of cost on a new car is anywhere from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why are games designed to lie within such a narrow range of retail prices?

I don't think that's a valid comaprison, at all. A much better one would be books. Books, which all tend to be within a very narrow price range.

I'm sorry, why is this a better example? Other than the fact that it fits into your argument more neatly, of course.

Is it because they are both fiction? Because TV shows and DVD sales range in price quite largely. You can pay nothing for TV and get the basic channels, you can pay more and see all basic cable channels, you can pay even more and see individualized premium channels sub as HBO and then you can pay $30-$60 to own a season of one TV show, for you to own and watch whenever.

Besides, books are NOWHERE near a uniform price. Paperback books vs. hardcover can see a 100-300% markup. Digital copies of books can be as reduced in cost in a similar scale. Text books are insanely more expensive than your average summer romance novel.

So let's see some logic why books should be priced like video games, or how books are standardized in pricing, or how any of that has to do with why a video game could not be charged more for than $60.

Books are slightly closer, considering they're something that a lot less people need books and it is much less of a status symbol.

Games aren't a uniform price either, it is just a specific variant of games that is $60 (ie. PS3/360). There are even free games.

[LinksOcarina]

Pricing is what you make of the current market standards.

$60.00 games is the price set that makes AAA budgeted titles cost-effective at a bare minimum, and DLC is how most losses can be recouped if done correctly.

I said this before, but taking Mass Effect 3 as an example, from what we know the game is a success because it was able to recoup its losses through both DLC and main game sales, and this is after the $60.00 price tag is divided between publisher fees, overhead fees, and licensing fees and duplication of hard copy disks.

In regards to the model of word budgets, it does make sense from a financial standpoint, since voice work can get expensive and it takes up a LOT of room on discs, especially with branching pathways.

As a side question, is this partially why BioWare has a stable of actors that tend to pop up in all of their games every now and then? I presume its cost-effective to hire them onto multiple projects at a time to save money in your VO budget, while at the same time building a rapport with the actors and actresses to the point where we can recognize them in a role like its a movie almost.

It does seem like this is a major connection to me, especially considering how tight the word budgets can get. I know a lot of moments in Dragon Age II that feel like short conversations when compared to what I thought would be said. Now I know why.

Thank you for the insight, please give us more this is actually quite interesting.

[LinksOcarina]

EntropicAngel wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I'm sorry, why is this a better example? Other than the fact that it fits into your argument more neatly, of course.

Is it because they are both fiction? Because TV shows and DVD sales range in price quite largely. You can pay nothing for TV and get the basic channels, you can pay more and see all basic cable channels, you can pay even more and see individualized premium channels sub as HBO and then you can pay $30-$60 to own a season of one TV show, for you to own and watch whenever.

Besides, books are NOWHERE near a uniform price. Paperback books vs. hardcover can see a 100-300% markup. Digital copies of books can be as reduced in cost in a similar scale. Text books are insanely more expensive than your average summer romance novel.

So let's see some logic why books should be priced like video games, or how books are standardized in pricing, or how any of that has to do with why a video game could not be charged more for than $60.

Because there's a whole whole lot more going on with car prices than simply "more options."

You can buy a new Hyundai Genesis (maxed out, I believe) for less than 50,000 dollars. You can buy a BMW of equivalent size and trim for about 60,000 dollars. An equivalent Lexus is, say, 55,000. Audi, say around 45,000.

That's an incredible difference in price, for vehicles in the same class, for vehicles designed for the same group of people. Why? It's NOT because BMW has some fantastic thing that Audi or Hyundai does not: it's because you're paying for a name. This would be like EA adding $10 to a game's price, simply because they're EA, and the same for Ubisoft, Activision, etc.

That does not happen.

It is not a valid comparison.

As for books, I was mostly referring to hardbacks, because a book generally comes out first in hardback, and the paperback comes out later simply to maintain public interest.

Comparing the prices of three or four hardcover books from Barnes and Noble's Best Books of 2012 (here), the prices are all around thirty bucks, with almost every single one being 25, 26, 27 dollars.

No form of media or consumerism is comparable to the other because  they have separate economies that dictate pricing. Its why all of these are false analogies. 

Modifié par LinksOcarina, 03 décembre 2012 - 06:37 .

[LinksOcarina]

EntropicAngel wrote...

LinksOcarina wrote...

No form of media or consumerism is comparable to the other because  they have separate economies that dictate pricing. Its why all of these are false analogies. 

You have a point--but to make any progress we have to be able to...overcome, overlook, ignore if you will small differences if we want to draw conclusions.

In genetics we do a whole lot with the Hardy-Weinberg equation, which assumes about five different things that never happen. That hasn't stopped biologists from using it as a model.

If we want a model, we have to make sacrifices.

Except because this is a microeconomics question, the differences are far from small.

If you want a more appropriate comparison, animation might be more appropriate since it follows a process of hiring actors, doing ADR and has word budgets just as much as an animation budget, to get stuff done. 

Or, even better, look at budgets from ten, twenty years ago in the gaming world and see how they can compare. I guarentee the budget on say Kotor was less than Mass Effect 3, but the question is the differentiation of resources through the budget; what percentage was put into the VO and writing, what went into development, royalties, advertising, etc. 

Its a multi-layered problem that has a model, we just don't see it because were not working at BioWare. We sacrifice our knowledge of those aspects to speculate to our hearts content. Hell, I guarentee a lot of people on these forums didn't even know a word budget existed until today. That helps in piecing the puzzle together. 

Modifié par LinksOcarina, 03 décembre 2012 - 06:46 .

[Beerfish]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Jade8aby88 wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

After BG2...

In other words, EA?

"In other words," BG2.

Apparently, it suffered from some serious content bloat. *

But oh what a game.  We need moar bloat!

[Navasha]

I guess my viewpoint probably stems from assumptions on the percentage of the cost of 'pre-production' type stuff.

Hypothetically, say a game has a $10 million production budget. How much of that is licensing engines, concept art, soundtracks, building the tools and tweaking the engine to the games design needs, ie.. all the stuff that makes the "idea" of the game. This part of the budget would be fairly static regardless of how much content is in the game. Then how much of that budget is content related stuff like level designers, voice actors, etc that would increase as the game gets larger.

If the 'static' part of the budget is say 50% and the content part of the budget is 50%, then it would seem to me that doubling the content portion of the budget would be cost beneficial if they could then charge double the price at retail. Yes, that assumes you would sell roughly the same amount of copies as the cheaper price, but if the game was significantly improved, I believe it would.

However, if the 'static' portion of the budget is low like 10%, then I can see where making a larger game becomes cost prohibitive as sales shrink due to higher price.

[Fast Jimmy]

While a good concept, there rarely is anything that is static.

For instance, shipping costs could be viewed as static. But if you added more content which required additional discs, shipping materials or required network bandwidth if you make extra content available free for download, all of these once static costs are now very fluid, by virtue of the fact of adding more content alone.

The real point of this concept is that a lower tech (by today's standards at least) game, with little to no voice work or animation, could have volumes more content, while today, with higher production costs, that volume is reduced. A quality-over-quantity situation.

[AmstradHero]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
I have a tangential question to this topic - I know the DA team uses computer generated voices to get down pacing and conversation length before the action voice actor comes in and records the line. I'm curious to the level of sophistication of Bioware's computer generated voice tools.

Just curious if we are insanely far away from having a game (even a low budget, indie-dev Kickstarter game, not even a AAA title) that is entirely computer generated voice actors.

Obviously you've never fired up the DAO toolset. It uses the default system voice generator to generate unrecorded lines of dialogue - complete with standard pronunciation errors that it is liable to make. Given it's just for pacing, I doubt they invested any serious time or effort into improving that for DA2/DA3.

We are still a very, very long way away from having a game with entirely computer generated voice. Getting variance in the timbre of the voice(s) and trying to get proper inflection and emotion into lines and have them sound even halfway believable is still very much in the realm of fiction.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 03 décembre 2012 - 07:55 .

[upsettingshorts]

While we're on a brief AmstradHero tangent, I always read his name as "AmistadHero" and for a second I think that means he's John Quincy Adams or something.

[Allan Schumacher]

LOL it wasn't until you pointed it out that I see his name isn't "AmistadHero" >.>

[Estelindis]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Apparently, it suffered from some serious content bloat. *

Thank you very much for posting that link. I had never read it and it gives a great insight into games development!

[Fast Jimmy]

AmstradHero wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...
I have a tangential question to this topic - I know the DA team uses computer generated voices to get down pacing and conversation length before the action voice actor comes in and records the line. I'm curious to the level of sophistication of Bioware's computer generated voice tools.

Just curious if we are insanely far away from having a game (even a low budget, indie-dev Kickstarter game, not even a AAA title) that is entirely computer generated voice actors.

Obviously you've never fired up the DAO toolset. It uses the default system voice generator to generate unrecorded lines of dialogue - complete with standard pronunciation errors that it is liable to make. Given it's just for pacing, I doubt they invested any serious time or effort into improving that for DA2/DA3.

We are still a very, very long way away from having a game with entirely computer generated voice. Getting variance in the timbre of the voice(s) and trying to get proper inflection and emotion into lines and have them sound even halfway believable is still very much in the realm of fiction.

im suddenly having a mad scientist vision of using a piano keyboard to select timbre and pacing of the words, where you could select higher and lower pitches and determine the pacing of the words. 

[Naughty Bear]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Are you asking what the likelihood would be of EA/BioWare doing a kickstarter if we felt we needed additional funding to match our vision for DA3?

While I am never keen on talking in absolutes, I would bet large sums of money on it not happening.

Doesn't EA love money? People giving away free money on the internet is a good thing. Especially if it helps towards creating something gamers will enjoy.

[Ianamus]

The talk about how conversations with a lot of cinematography and such are expensive is interesting, but to me it begs the question of why, if it is more expensive, Dragon Age 2 had so much more of it.

It's not that I don't enjoy the cinematography and more lively conversations, but if it means cutting dialogue elsewhere I'm not sure adding so much of it in is a good idea. I would gladly trade one or two very complicated scenes for a long conversations reminiscent of the party camp conversations in Dragon Age Origins. They didn't have any action or movement for the most part, the camera was usually fixed on the characters faces, but the dialogue was so in-depth and the conversations so engaging that I didn't mind.

In my opinion having more dialogue can be just as effective as cinematography in making conversation scenes engaging. Despite the more frequent movements and actions in conversations with companions in Dragon Age 2 they often felt too short and too infrequent. I wouldn't mind more of the "still" shots of the characters faces if it meant more lines.

Modifié par EJ107, 04 décembre 2012 - 12:42 .

[Maria Caliban]

EJ107 wrote...

The talk about how conversations with a lot of cinematography and such are expensive is interesting, but to me it begs the question of why, if it is more expensive, Dragon Age 2 had so much more of it.

Because BioWare is a cinematic company. Almost every BioWare game has had more cinematics than the previous one.

[Ianamus]

Maria Caliban wrote...

EJ107 wrote...

The talk about how conversations with a lot of cinematography and such are expensive is interesting, but to me it begs the question of why, if it is more expensive, Dragon Age 2 had so much more of it.

Because BioWare is a cinematic company. Almost every BioWare game has had more cinematics than the previous one.

I understand that and I like the cinematics, but It also seems to be steadily reducing the overall ammount of dialogue in each game and I'm honestly not sure whether this is improving the games overall. It certainly makes the individual scenes better, but it might be reaching the stage where there is too much quality and not enough quantity. 

When it comes to things like character development multiple scenes are much more effective no matter how good the cinematics are, because it takes time to grow attatched to characters, not one or two flashy scenes. 

I don't know, I did like the more dynamic scenes Dragon Age 2 offered. But there were several conversations I felt would have benefitted a lot more from additional lines than the additional cinematics. 

Modifié par EJ107, 04 décembre 2012 - 01:21 .