Costs of creating content

[Help]

Just wondering, anyone about with industry experience? how much would it cost to put out some content like the last DLC pack from warhammer 3? I was just thinking back to when the Shivering isles for Oblivion was released back in the day.

for the amount of content you got, which was massive for an expansion you paid what 30 dollars or so? Yes the shadows of change is cheaper but the actual amount of content you get is staggering.

[dingbat]

As someone who’s been playing forever and has a solid background in finance, I’m amazed game prices held stable as long as they did, and fully appreciate how companies need different monetization strategies.

One thing to keep in mind is that if the data is not recent, it’s no good - costs shot up significantly over the last few years, so a budget from 2015 is useless to compare to.

[Breeding Medicine]

1 high poly model usually costs about 1000$ from a freelancer
1 animation usually costs about 120$ from a freelancer
voice over would be somewhat 120$ as well per unit
whats left is art I cannot comment on price of that

calculate the cost of DLC yourself all I can say if even though the cost would end up next to 60 grand it will only mean CA needs to sell 2400 copies to cover the expenses which considering popularity of warhammer is kinda joke of a number

so I'd say its safe to say the latest DLC was a success and at least earned them money.

[drizzlynewt]

Originally posted by dingbat:

As someone who’s been playing forever and has a solid background in finance, I’m amazed game prices held stable as long as they did, and fully appreciate how companies need different monetization strategies.

One thing to keep in mind is that if the data is not recent, it’s no good - costs shot up significantly over the last few years, so a budget from 2015 is useless to compare to.

Costs would kinda depend on what you're making though. Total War: Warhammer 3 is basically just an iteration on games they already made and DLC therein is simply adding new units and stuff which isn't going to be anywhere near as time intensive as, say, making Alan Wake 2 where you've got much more stuff to do with level design, lighting, characters, voice acting, scripting, umpteen other things... But they were able to release that for £30 cheaper than TWW3 and only twice as much as the half arsed DLC.

All of which is to say that maybe the costs in the industry in general have increased to such a degree that the stability of prices is surprising but in the specific case of Total War: Warhammer 3? Nope.

[ArchAnge1LT]

Should also take into consideration that steam takes 30% cut.

[drizzlynewt]

Originally posted by ArchAnge1LT:

Should also take into consideration that steam takes 30% cut.

Steam's cut isn't a production cost, it's a distribution cost. It's also remained consistent throughout so wouldn't account for any increased costs anyway.

[MrSoul]

Originally posted by Breeding Medicine:

1 high poly model usually costs about 1000$ from a freelancer
1 animation usually costs about 120$ from a freelancer
voice over would be somewhat 120$ as well per unit
whats left is art I cannot comment on price of that

calculate the cost of DLC yourself all I can say if even though the cost would end up next to 60 grand it will only mean CA needs to sell 2400 copies to cover the expenses which considering popularity of warhammer is kinda joke of a number

so I'd say its safe to say the latest DLC was a success and at least earned them money.

This is same reason why Elite Dangerous has not been shuttered by Frontier yet.

Game has couple thousand players at most and is a mp game, so imagine flop town right? Nah, nice little stream of revenue for them with the ship skins over time, according to their last financials, which they were down overall on but only cos bought some studio last year.

Another one I won’t speak of is an obvious competitor of elite but in that case devs are genius, cos put in like zero effort and core set whales have kept not only game but their studio afloat for years now.

[jcbunch4]

Well, if I remember right there was word that the dlc team is around 20 people and a quick google search show the average game dev wage in the U.S. is $50+ an hour. So it cost $40,000+ a week to keep 20 professional game devs on the payroll and working 40 hours a week. If they need 3 moths to get it done then wage cost are going to be around $480,000+. That doesn't factor in other cost like voice actors, equipment cost, office space, utilities, taxes, insurance, or any other business expenses not related to wages. So probably around a million dollars would be my best guess.

[Breeding Medicine]

Originally posted by jcbunch4:

Well, if I remember right there was word that the dlc team is around 20 people and a quick google search show the average game dev wage in the U.S. is $50+ an hour. So it cost $40,000+ a week to keep 20 professional game devs on the payroll and working 40 hours a week. If they need 3 moths to get it done then wage cost are going to be around $480,000+. That doesn't factor in other cost like voice actors, equipment cost, office space, utilities, taxes, insurance, or any other business expenses not related to wages. So probably around a million dollars would be my best guess.

half of the people working on dlcs are frelancers which get paid once gig is finished they are not usually chair-locked guys

if you wish to know where I bring up these numbers just check out tww related content on "artstation", for example put a name chaos dwarfs in search and look for a total war related content and who made it.

[Help]

Some really insightful stuff being discussed here.
Sadly I’m not too great with the financial stuff so everything here is a good read.

So I guess with factoring in inflation and how the industry has evolved it’s not just a case of corporate greed? Well I mean. They still have to make a profit but I’d assume overheads are a lot more challenging now alongside more competitive labour markets?

Honestly with shadows of change I am sitting on the fence, I’m one of the people who couldn’t justify the cost, I compare it to older products and see the cost/value comparison being way too different, like with the shivering isles I mentioned before.

My second thought is maybe with Hyenas bombing maybe TW3’s dlc sales are used to help compensate that loss cash from that project?

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Merque:

Originally posted by dingbat:

As someone who’s been playing forever and has a solid background in finance, I’m amazed game prices held stable as long as they did, and fully appreciate how companies need different monetization strategies.

Exactly this. Sometimes I wonder if people here have no other hobbies at all - considering how incredibly cheap gaming is compared to... well any other hobby I can think of.

Which is why those with a bit more perspective are complaining about the value/content rather than the price.

It's fair to raise prices. It's even fair to raise a bit more than necessary because game pricing tends to get locked in for multiple years. But fair is debatable. All that matters is whether people perceive an appropriate value.

[Nosferatu]

Originally posted by ANGRY BRITISH GUY:

Just wondering, anyone about with industry experience? how much would it cost to put out some content like the last DLC pack from warhammer 3? I was just thinking back to when the Shivering isles for Oblivion was released back in the day.

for the amount of content you got, which was massive for an expansion you paid what 30 dollars or so? Yes the shadows of change is cheaper but the actual amount of content you get is staggering.

very complex question especially for this game to say it will be only assumptions. its also warhammer license. we also dont know what they could reuse to save time but they surely learned much from warhammer 1 til now.

so its impossible to say without inner circle knowledge . it could be 75k or even a million dollars. game developement is very expensive thats a fact at least if you want some quality to it. so many people are involved its insane.

artists, animators, voice actors, writers, programmers, then you got the license i dont know how much creative freedom they get.

so all in all i can say its not cheap at all. also making games 2006 is much different beast then today. ;)

they simply raised the prices because other stuff from sega/CA is doing like crap and warhammer is a good zugpferd(draft horse for money) as we call it here.

its mainly due to the hyena game tho. they went in risked a lot and completely failed the task. the problem is lets say a genre is very popular today but wht is in 5 years? in which you make the game? you dont know thats the risk in such things and they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up completely and now other properties of them need to make it back. it sucks but its simple capitalism, still better than the other option.

but leaving negative reviews on the game, gamers will only shoot themselves in the foot. as many new player will see the bad reviews and will not buy it before even reading into the game. which will kill the game support. as i said in capitalism, if its to expensive then dont buy it or wait for sales. its that simple but if you think leaving bad review on the game and dlcs while having hundreds if not thousands of hours in said game is just well stupid. and will only make it worse unless you want total war games to completely vanish in future because there is a reason no other devs attempted such games.

the code must be an absolute pain in the ass to work with and the fact the game is stable when thousands of units clash with magic on top and ranged and what not is very impressive if you know anything about developement.

but yes the engine is overdue to get full low level api support and all new features like DLSS/Framgen and proper Dx12 or vulkan or whatever support. DLSS and framgen in this game would be very good. And with TAA in its almost done....but maybe the next titles at least i hope so.

but that alone would cost many many many millions to let it happen and will surely not happen without problems.

[Isaac]

Originally posted by Nosferatu:

but leaving negative reviews on the game, gamers will only shoot themselves in the foot. as many new player will see the bad reviews and will not buy it before even reading into the game. which will kill the game support. as i said in capitalism, if its to expensive then dont buy it or wait for sales. its that simple but if you think leaving bad review on the game and dlcs while having hundreds if not thousands of hours in said game is just well stupid. and will only make it worse unless you want total war games to completely vanish in future because there is a reason no other devs attempted such games.

Wrong. People have every right to give a game a negative Review if they thing it is bad. If this leads to the end of that game, then the devs/leadership should've made the game better. Oh no, a bad game doesn't get support anymore......
I know people allways yell bandwagon and hatetrain and stuff like that, but there is allways a reason people give a negative Review.

[Alejandro]

Originally posted by Isaac:

Originally posted by Nosferatu:

but leaving negative reviews on the game, gamers will only shoot themselves in the foot. as many new player will see the bad reviews and will not buy it before even reading into the game. which will kill the game support. as i said in capitalism, if its to expensive then dont buy it or wait for sales. its that simple but if you think leaving bad review on the game and dlcs while having hundreds if not thousands of hours in said game is just well stupid. and will only make it worse unless you want total war games to completely vanish in future because there is a reason no other devs attempted such games.

Wrong. People have every right to give a game a negative Review if they thing it is bad. If this leads to the end of that game, then the devs/leadership should've made the game better. Oh no, a bad game doesn't get support anymore......
I know people allways yell bandwagon and hatetrain and stuff like that, but there is allways a reason people give a negative Review.

The game isn't that bad, kids think they should own the company so they prefer the game to die so that nobody can play it in the future.

[Prisoner 76561197992841073]

Originally posted by jcbunch4:

Well, if I remember right there was word that the dlc team is around 20 people and a quick google search show the average game dev wage in the U.S. is $50+ an hour. So it cost $40,000+ a week to keep 20 professional game devs on the payroll and working 40 hours a week. If they need 3 moths to get it done then wage cost are going to be around $480,000+. That doesn't factor in other cost like voice actors, equipment cost, office space, utilities, taxes, insurance, or any other business expenses not related to wages. So probably around a million dollars would be my best guess.

theyre british they dont get paid anything like $50 an hour

[Kinja]

Originally posted by Alejandro:

The game isn't that bad, kids think they should own the company so they prefer the game to die so that nobody can play it in the future.

Well good thing you don't get to decide what kind of review other people can post. It's OK that you think the game isn't bad enough to warrant a negative review, that's something called an opinion, you're free to share it just like everyone else is free to share theirs, you don't get to impose it on others.

I'd say that when CA announces bugs being fixed multiple times and the bug is still there just slightly different plus a whole slew of new bugs got introduced with the fix the game has earned my negative review. Same for all the bugs still here since TWW2. If they ever get their ♥♥♥♥ together and properly fix the product I put hundreds of dollars into I'll be happy to change my review.

Also I still don't get why people keep trying to find excuses for the price hike when it clearly has little to do with the economy and everything to do with the massive hole CA has put in their own finances. I don't know where that 20 number came from but from some of CAs partnered youtubers (not that clown volound) the number was 10 developers, which is probably why the content is so meager despite the price increase.