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u/Samkwi 1d ago
Lmao they wish the budget was 50m average triple A budgets are like 100m+ and that doesn't include marketing costs!
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u/sputwiler 1d ago
Every number in this meme (including solo) is off by a factor of 10. The point stands tho.
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u/miriculous 1d ago
It depends on your definition of "AAA" at this point. Online multiplayer forever games will of course swallow more than 100m over their lifetime, but there are not that many of them. Huge prestige projects like Star Citizen, Cyberpunk, RDR2 and Spiderman 2 will cost much more than 100m. But I think most of the "not indie" $60 games out there did cost less than 50m.
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u/CorvidCuriosity 1d ago
At this point with how we are creeping from $60 to $70 (and sometimes to $80), I don't think I'd consider a $60 game to be AAA nowadays. That feels like AA.
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u/ViRROOO 1d ago
Well, less than 1 in 400 Indie Games are good, so..
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u/SiliconGlitches 23h ago
perhaps it's more like "look at what we need to mimic a fraction of their power"
Hollow Knight, an indie titan, sold ~15 million copies across 7 years. A middling Call of Duty game sells ~40 million copies in its first year. You can't let it be about the numbers, you need to be indie for the heart of it and creative reasons.
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u/RogerDCuck 1d ago
I would love to see a AAA studio taking on an indie type project
Pretty sure they'll kill it with their resources but it's easier to make money with regular old reskinned slop.
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u/ElijahQuoro 1d ago
Already happened: Dave The Diver
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u/BrentRTaylor 1d ago
Yep. And Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. It sold very well, relative to its cost to develop and publish. It also reviewed astonishingly well. Ubisoft apparently was unhappy with the sales numbers.
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u/AnodyneGrey 1d ago
The sad truth is that in the same time it took to make it, they could’ve probably just flipped some assets to put together another AC or Far Cry, sell it for $80 and make more money out of it
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u/BrentRTaylor 20h ago
For the same amount of time? Sure. For the same budget? No. PoPtLC had a fairly small budget and a small team.
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u/RealisLit 1d ago
Already happened, ubisoft did like 2 indie like projects when they still using their ubiart engine, valiant hearts and child of light
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u/Roy197 Godot Junior 1d ago
We have a saying in Greece that says "Where roosters crow a lot, dawn is late." Meaning the more people you have doing the exact same job the slower it gets!
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u/sputwiler 1d ago
Ah yeah we had to study "the mythical man-month" in school which has a similar premise. IIRC takeaways were
- (bad) project management thinks 9 women can make a baby in 1 month
- adding more people to a late project makes it later
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u/SeatShot2763 1d ago
A lot of Nintendo games have more of an indie feel imo, largely because they don't prioritize realistic graphics or a "cinematic" approach, and their games really do just have smaller budgets and teams than so many other AAA dev teams. Not as small as indie teams of course.
Nintendo is also awful in many ways, but this is a part they've often been doing pretty well at across the years.
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u/SuperRiceBoi 18h ago
Telling Intelligent Systems they had 1 Fire Emblem game left that must sell well or get cut and the Switch got Nintendo out of a growing hole.
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u/sputwiler 1d ago
I've been trying to convince the higher-ups at my company to do this, but there's so many layers between me and anyone that can greenlight anything. Such is AAA.
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u/TicklishBubbles 1d ago
I think most indie devs make games they would enjoy playing themselves while AAA studios try to make games that just make money. Compare new harvest moon games to stardew vally for example..
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u/4k-Gaming 17h ago
no thats so real, indie devs dont try to appeal to stockholders or companies they just try to make their game fun for themselves and add the most beautiful and stupid shit just to add it and make an absolute masterpiece
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u/NeoCiber 1d ago
Successful indie games get good scores but I don't think they bring as much money as AAA games which is what publishers want.
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u/Younlu 1d ago
Indie like DeadCells or Hollow Knight will be made by AAA companies with the same investment as AAA games, it will probably be the best era of gaming
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u/big-fireball 1d ago
Ok I’ll bite. What would adding more devs and money to either of those games add to them to make them better?
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u/Younlu 1d ago
many things, but the main and most visible is polish and content. Hollow Knight, for example, had a dream scope with basically double what the game was, this could be achieved
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u/4k-Gaming 17h ago
i know indies are more likely to fail but i just want to get my story out there and have somewhat of a fanbase, that's all I care about. the money is awesome too tho
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u/BasicDesignAdvice 1d ago
Ironic that this is on a page for an engine which has not had a breakout success.
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u/mario610 1d ago
Isn't that survivorship bias, you don't see or hear about the hundreds of other failed indie titles, you only see the really good ones usually (not saying AAA games are superior in anyway, just thought it was something to keep in mind)