Topic: I have a question for someone familiar with the business end of games

My question relates to budgeta and profits. Movirs typically tell us how much it cos ts to create tgeir ptoduct. Im not sure if games do this?

My reasoning for the question is I was thinking about a game like Zelda, that's notoriously for taking 4 to 6 years to complete (home console iterations, atleast)+. That is a LONG to pay people to create a single product.

My guess is (and it is completely a guess) that someone like Eiji Aonuma has to be very well payed. I'm guessing lower six figurea, maybe? Assuming his salart is, say, 150k, then it cost 600k-900k solely fot Eiji Aonuma's pay. If you eant to be conservative, cut it in half.

How many workers are on a game the size f Zelda's, nowadays? 30-50? Up to 100?

What I'm getting oft is that adventure/RPG games look to be very expensive. And whilr a 60 dollar game brings in more profit than a 15 dollar movie, the tatget audience for movies is much higher than gamers. It's gotta be way higher than 4 to 1! My guess is potential movie goers to potential game buyers is probably more like 20 or 30 to 1.

ok, it's late, I'm tired, and this is way longer than i wanted it to be and probavly way longer than anyone cared yo tead about it, lol

Tl;dr: what are the financials between large games like zelda and rpg's? Aret hey loss leaders or potentially very profitable if they become million sellers+?

Sorry for the typosn i cannot adapt to an onscreen keyboard on my phone for the life of me!

Well, they add VC games and smaller games now and then. They get money from things they've already made, or release smaller things in between, then they use that while their other projects are being made. Indies are paying them to publish on the eShop...

All that contributes to projects, then they hope the big projects do well. That's just how I figure it. Just think when Nintendo was primarily a toy and card company, they used the money they made from toys, prior, to make video games, then they made money from that to make another console, and so on.

Are big, 50-100 employee projects such as an RPG profitable?

I'm honestly clueless. As far as I know, they could lose money but just keep interest in the company for other games, or they could be the sole profitable title in a company with lots of little smaller ones that keep interest in the company for the big game.

Obviously every game is different, but I'm just curious as to the business end of the large scale projects.

Dragon Crown cost 100,000$ to make. (And the money was at least doubled day 1 I think it was something like four times).

@unrandomsam
I think you meant Dragon Crown cost 1 million dollars to make/(100 million yen)
That was vanillaware's most expensive game, but yeah.... they made their money back quickly, thank goodness.

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/2018001/dragons_crown_is_most_ex...

A Zelda game is very expensive to produce and while it is not a "loss leader" it certainly doesn't make as much money as a Mario Kart. But it is a flagship product that has to live up to high expectations so a lower return on investment is accepted.

You are right, what I don't understand is how nobody has decided that they are just going to make a decent number of games of that sort of size instead of one massive one with a very high risk of failure.

@LetsGoRetro

That's an interesting question. I have no experience with working at major companies but I have seen different methods.
The 50 to 100 companies, I think would have a partner that takes on the cost to create the game if the company doesn't have the money themselves
to make a rpg of that scope, it also keeps them from going bankrupt (Nintendo funding Bayonetta 2).

I'm throwing out games that range from Skyrim( Bethesda) to smaller but well crafted games such as Torchlight that have about 35 people working on it. Usually if the game is successful or mildly successful, you might see dlc or add ons to increase the shelf life of the product. The same engine that was created would be used again, improved upon, and the art assets switched out to reduce cost for similar rpg mechanics. That's why we see a lot of sequels to games on the same platform aka Final Fantasy 10/ 10-X. It cuts costs, then those massive games are ported to multiple platforms and milked to help fund future games.

If the game struggles badly then the company has to come up with various games to supplement the people that are currently working there, or since the larger game companies are becoming like the movie industry basically cut everybody since the next project isn't large enough to fund everybody. Making massive rpgs is risky business, companies look for people that are good at multiple things more than just one thing, that reduces man power and cuts down on expenses.
If large companies have a portfolio of games that continue to sell they can obviously reduce the risk when creating more ambition games such as rpgs.
The key to success of most rpgs is knowing your audience and demographic, other companies do look at the success of other companies and the platform they are or not on, when making their decision... sales talk.

Don't know if this is remotely helpful, I'm sure I'm missing something.

@unrandomsam
I think companies have become too big and they see rpgs as a massive undertaking. The talent level of the companies dictate what kind of games come out of those companies. Unfortunately jrpgs and the standard for western rpgs seems to increase the budget, and have been up and down, so looking at those risk major companies don't bother., they seem to be hooked on maximizing profit at the shortest amount of time. RPGS take the longest and might give the same if not less the profit as other genres. Technology for next gen games cost way too much and can pretty much bankrupt people, and unfortunately games usually go over budget, thus being delayed or pushed back.

Most importantly the decisions may not be from the people that work their, but the people that run the show, investors basically anything that takes time and money will be hard pressed to convince funding for that why we see all of these kickstarters popping up.

The reason is that its hard to make games on a large scope, but seeing games like child of light do well made by ubisoft, we may see more rpgs created just not at a massive scope size.

@unrandomsam
I think there are middle size companies that do that, they just may not get the visibility they deserve, maybe because of lack of advertisement, or the company gets bought out by a larger company and gets disbanded later when its not producing. Honestly middle size companies are becoming hard to find, most companies that stay around seem to be the small/ the indie or the large. You do have companies such as ( Double Fine Studios) Getting the quality of Dragon Crown would be an undertaking and take forever to make for middle size game companies, but they would benefit the most if successful. For larger companies it could basically be a drop in the bucket but they seem to not be as motivated unless were talking about companies such as EA that owns companies such as Bioware and other smaller companies to make new ips........ lol....... new ips thats funny.

None of us are really part of the industry, so you'd have to ask someone who is, and I don't think a company like Nintendo would really answer your question. I would guess that 40 people are working on the actual game, then another 5 or so are working on the artwork for packaging, then another 40 or so people are working on the testing and debugging. Nintendo is always minimal as far as resources and team sizes are, I think, so I would picture a big team, but a bit smaller than that as their work force.

When all is said and done, I'd say they pay somewhere between $45-50 million. They don't make tremendous amounts of money from it, like they do with Mario games, but it's really important to have somewhat a technical showcase, as Zelda games usually are. I'm sure it makes enough money to pay for itself, and then some, while undoubtedly improving a console's image.

Every game budget is different. Nintendo has their own way of developing games. Every company has a different way to develop their games. It is basically impossible to figure out a games budget without the company saying what it was.

In USA development is normally like this: Most of development time is done with a small team, during the middle of a project is when you will have the biggest team. near the beginning you need a small team that can lay the ground work and get a basic game running. Then you grow the team for the middle to expand and finalize. At the end of the project you take most of your team and move them to another game. A small group stays on board to fix any random bugs that pop-up and small optimizations. So when a game is made by a team of 250, that isn't 250 from beginning to end, that is at its largest there were 250 developers (which may or may not count QA or Publisher employees)

I hope this helped you understand how some of the process of game development

Actually it's probably more than $200,000 for Anouma. So if take his salary $1,200,000, then add 50 more for an average of $90,000, that's close to another 27 million, so it's less than 30 million. If the game sells a million copies at 60 dollars that's 60 million, more than a double of the salary. Take the fees along the way, and you probably at least break even at a million, and make a cool profit at 2 million, not even taking into account that Anouma and the other employees are working on a lot of other projects along the way, helping here and there, so it doesn't sound too difficult to turn a profit on it.

All Nintendo employees are paid with sacks of rice. The higher ranked once get sacks of fragrant Jasmin rice though.

This is a good thread. I hope someone among us is involved in this industry and can shine some light on this.

Depends on the company. I always heard that Nintendo tends to use smaller teams than a lot of other AAA developers, so Zelda games probably take quite a few less developers to make than the likes of the Elder Scrolls or Halo or whatever. There's also a certain regional aspect to it, with larger teams of staff seemingly being involved in the Western games industry than the Japanese one.

As for whether they're profitable or loss leaders or whatever... I don't know. Probably profitable if the games keep being made, since non profitable series very quickly get abandoned (especially in this day and age).

According to the books I've read about Nintendo, it seems like Nintendo of Japan employees aren't that well paid. But they get employment for life.

I wouldn't say not well paid but compared to western equivalents they do earn less. The job culture is totally different though as you are essentially joining a family, you work longer hours and get less pay but all your needs are met and your likely to stay with said company a long time. Employment in a western company is an average of 2 years and you as a person are valued alot less. SCEJ and Nintendo in have a ridiculous amount of original veteran staff.

For example in the west its popular to criticise your job and complain alot, in Japan if your employees are complaining the first thing you do is appease them. This is because when people look at your company they see it as a whole and if people are complaining your company is doing something wrong. Its kind of hard to explain but I spent 2 years working in Japan and to this day i have never felt more valued and taken care of in any other job.

OP its worth noting that Japan, EU & US are very different when it comes to profitability. 100k lifetime sales can bring massive profits in Japan but in the west even for an indie that's considered tame. Nintendo console games profitability is normally after 250k units, handheld is much less (obviously varies). Not sure if you have a Neogaf account but you will get alot more legitimate answers there and some of them will suprise you.