So, I guess this is the new reality of game development. Recent
reports by the UK CMA (the agency that deals with whether or not
mergers should be allowed) recently noted that triple-A games can cost
upwards of one billion dollars (with included marketing). Yay?

It's a ridiculous amount, of course; not only that so much money and
resources should be poured into what's a completely disposable luxury
product, but that it should cost so much to begin with. Nobody's
getting value for money from these overpriced behemoth games; not the
developers (who are crunched and forced to make mass-market garbage),
nor the publishers (who risk way too much money for games that have
such a high probability of flopping, or just breaking even), and
certainly not the gamers, who are saddled with increasingly excessive
MTX as the publishers struggle to make their money back.

And you have to wonder, WHERE is all this money really going? Does
"Call of Duty CCCLXIV: More Call, More Duty" really look and play so
much better than "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" released in 2007? That
game is estimated to have cost $60 million USD (with another $100
million USD for marketing); even adjusting for inflation, do the newer
Call of Duty titles really feel like they're offering three times as
much content? And now let's compare that to "Grand Theft Auto V"; its
total budget was $250 million USD. How can the latest "Call of Duty"
(or generally, _any_ modern shooter) justify their cost? Do Activision
programmers do their programming on solid-gold keyboards or something?

It doesn't have to be this way. The total budget for "Black Myth:
Wukong" was $70 million. "Control" was $30 million. There aren't any
official figures on "Space Marine 2", but the few estimates I saw put
its total budget at < $100 million. These are all still incredible
amounts, but a far cry from the wastefulness of the triple-A studios.

The big studios cry at us that they just HAVE to put all these
lootboxes and MTX and other nonsense into their games because
development costs have skyrocketed so much. Arguably, they're right:
its unlikely that the publishers could make their money back if they
depended entirely on retail sales as their sole source of revenue. But
maybe a better solution would be to cut back on the fucking costs
instead?

It's not just that MTX/etc. are fucking over games. It's that it's an
unsustainable business. In order to get Fortnite money, you need
players to spend incredible lengths of time with your game. Nobody's
going to spend $500 on cosmetics and DLC on a game they'll only spend
30 hours on. But there's only so many hours in a day; you can only
have so many mega-live-service Fortnite-style games out there. If you
reaching for that gold ring with your next game, the odds are
incredibly high that you will miss... and if you spend $1 billion
developing and advertising that game, that miss (and the subsequent
fall) is going to be very painful.

It makes a $30 million flop look almost cozy in comparison.

Aim lower, triple-A publishers. It's more certain and -while not as
flashy- will probably net you more cash in the long run.

Is Dr. Evil making games now? :P That newsgroup post's title reminded me
of Evil Genius game demo I played back then:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Genius_%28video_game%29 ;)

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

> So, I guess this is the new reality of game development. Recent
> reports by the UK CMA (the agency that deals with whether or not
> mergers should be allowed) recently noted that triple-A games can cost
> upwards of one billion dollars (with included marketing). Yay?

> It's a ridiculous amount, of course; not only that so much money and
> resources should be poured into what's a completely disposable luxury
> product, but that it should cost so much to begin with. Nobody's
> getting value for money from these overpriced behemoth games; not the
> developers (who are crunched and forced to make mass-market garbage),
> nor the publishers (who risk way too much money for games that have
> such a high probability of flopping, or just breaking even), and
> certainly not the gamers, who are saddled with increasingly excessive
> MTX as the publishers struggle to make their money back.

> And you have to wonder, WHERE is all this money really going? Does
> "Call of Duty CCCLXIV: More Call, More Duty" really look and play so
> much better than "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" released in 2007? That
> game is estimated to have cost $60 million USD (with another $100
> million USD for marketing); even adjusting for inflation, do the newer
> Call of Duty titles really feel like they're offering three times as
> much content? And now let's compare that to "Grand Theft Auto V"; its
> total budget was $250 million USD. How can the latest "Call of Duty"
> (or generally, _any_ modern shooter) justify their cost? Do Activision
> programmers do their programming on solid-gold keyboards or something?

> It doesn't have to be this way. The total budget for "Black Myth:
> Wukong" was $70 million. "Control" was $30 million. There aren't any
> official figures on "Space Marine 2", but the few estimates I saw put
> its total budget at < $100 million. These are all still incredible
> amounts, but a far cry from the wastefulness of the triple-A studios.

> The big studios cry at us that they just HAVE to put all these
> lootboxes and MTX and other nonsense into their games because
> development costs have skyrocketed so much. Arguably, they're right:
> its unlikely that the publishers could make their money back if they
> depended entirely on retail sales as their sole source of revenue. But
> maybe a better solution would be to cut back on the fucking costs
> instead?

> It's not just that MTX/etc. are fucking over games. It's that it's an
> unsustainable business. In order to get Fortnite money, you need
> players to spend incredible lengths of time with your game. Nobody's
> going to spend $500 on cosmetics and DLC on a game they'll only spend
> 30 hours on. But there's only so many hours in a day; you can only
> have so many mega-live-service Fortnite-style games out there. If you
> reaching for that gold ring with your next game, the odds are
> incredibly high that you will miss... and if you spend $1 billion
> developing and advertising that game, that miss (and the subsequent
> fall) is going to be very painful.

> It makes a $30 million flop look almost cozy in comparison.

> Aim lower, triple-A publishers. It's more certain and -while not as
> flashy- will probably net you more cash in the long run.
--
"And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." --Romans 5:5. Slammy January. MLK, Jr. & Inauguration Day eve. :/
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/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

On 19/01/2025 18:28, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> Aim lower, triple-A publishers. It's more certain and -while not as
> flashy- will probably net you more cash in the long run.

I came around to this view quite sometime ago although I do understand
the allure of this game makes billions each and ever year so all we have
to do is follow the same formula and we'll be quids in.

It reminds me of when Armoured Warfare was developed as a World of Tanks
killer. The development started out as being its own game but they then
got rid of the developers and went down the route of make WoT with
modern tanks and 'fix' things that player's commonly bitched about on
the WoT forums. That didn't turn out quite to plan. Listening to people
who thought removing artillery and introducing a skill based matchmaker
wasn't quite the good idea they thought it was.

On Sun, 19 Jan 2025 23:35:26 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

>Is Dr. Evil making games now? :P That newsgroup post's title reminded me
>of Evil Genius game demo I played back then:

I absolutely deny that I had my pinky held up to the corner of my
mouth as I was typing that.

This is NOT me!!!!! *
https://makeagif.com/gif/austin-powers-100-billion-dollars-zivzwF

* It might be Activisions CEO, though. ;-)

On 1/20/2025 9:15 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Jan 2025 23:35:26 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>
>> Is Dr. Evil making games now? :P That newsgroup post's title reminded me
>> of Evil Genius game demo I played back then:
>
> I absolutely deny that I had my pinky held up to the corner of my
> mouth as I was typing that.
>
> This is NOT me!!!!! *
> https://makeagif.com/gif/austin-powers-100-billion-dollars-zivzwF
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> * It might be Activisions CEO, though. ;-)
>
>
Well, I was going to say Elon Musk but the gif only says 1 billion
dollars which is too small for Elon to put any effort into it.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 20/01/2025 21:15, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 1/20/2025 9:15 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Jan 2025 23:35:26 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>>
>>> Is Dr. Evil making games now? :P That newsgroup post's title reminded me
>>> of Evil Genius game demo I played back then:
>>
>> I absolutely deny that I had my pinky held up to the corner of my
>> mouth as I was typing that.
>>
>> This is NOT me!!!!! *
>> https://makeagif.com/gif/austin-powers-100-billion-dollars-zivzwF
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> * It might be Activisions CEO, though. ;-)
>>
>>
> Well, I was going to say Elon Musk but the gif only says 1 billion
> dollars which is too small for Elon to put any effort into it.
>

One billion you say, so about the same as he spent on paying people to
make him an uber gamer?

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Jan 2025 23:35:26 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

> >Is Dr. Evil making games now? :P That newsgroup post's title reminded me
> >of Evil Genius game demo I played back then:

> I absolutely deny that I had my pinky held up to the corner of my
> mouth as I was typing that.

> This is NOT me!!!!! *
> https://makeagif.com/gif/austin-powers-100-billion-dollars-zivzwF

Sure buddy.

> * It might be Activisions CEO, though. ;-)

Dr. Evil is Activision's CEO. ;)
--
"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die." --Romans 5:6-7. I have a dream that the future is going to be worse on Earf. :(
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/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:09:57 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>On 20/01/2025 21:15, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

>> Well, I was going to say Elon Musk but the gif only says 1 billion
>> dollars which is too small for Elon to put any effort into it.

>One billion you say, so about the same as he spent on paying people to
>make him an uber gamer?

<chuckle>

That whole story* is just so sad and cringey, but then the same can be
said for the person it is about. Musk is just so desperate for
attention and validation. I'd almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't
so otherwise loathsome and willing to use his enormous advantages to
the detriment of others.

The thing is, if he had just said, "hey, I'm a gamer; I'm pretty good"
he'd have been fine.** Apparently he had some (not a lot, but probably
better than average) skill at Quake, and I'm willing to believe he is
the same in a number of other games. But its his insistence that he's
always the best, always right is what keeps getting him into trouble.

Hubris, Musk. Look it up.

* For those of you who don't know what this is all about: Elon Musk,
CEO of Telsa and Twitter, has claimed to be one of the top players in
Quake, Diablo IV, and Path of Exile, even going so far as to
live-stream him playing the latter to prove his 1337 skillz. However,
the evidence backing up his claims is extremely sketchy, and the
live-stream made it obvious he has very little idea what he is doing,
and there are lot of indications the high-level character he used on
the stream was the result of his paying somebody for it rather than
earning it through his own efforts, including the fact that his
so-called top ranking in Diablo IV was self-reported and used a
short-lived glitch to speed-run a single dungeon, and that his Path of
Exile character was seen farming phat loot in China some days prior to
his live-stream. Oh, and Dennis Thresh Fong is on record saying Musk
wasn't a very good player at Quake either.

** I mean, I'd still wonder what he was doing spending so much time
playing video games when he has three companies to run, and so many
elections to subvert, but I guess all that ketamine he (allegedly)
takes gives him that extra energy to keep going on through the night
;-)

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:09:57 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

> >On 20/01/2025 21:15, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

> >> Well, I was going to say Elon Musk but the gif only says 1 billion
> >> dollars which is too small for Elon to put any effort into it.

> >One billion you say, so about the same as he spent on paying people to
> >make him an uber gamer?

> <chuckle>

> That whole story* is just so sad and cringey, but then the same can be
> said for the person it is about. Musk is just so desperate for
> attention and validation. I'd almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't
> so otherwise loathsome and willing to use his enormous advantages to
> the detriment of others.

> The thing is, if he had just said, "hey, I'm a gamer; I'm pretty good"
> he'd have been fine.** Apparently he had some (not a lot, but probably
> better than average) skill at Quake, and I'm willing to believe he is
> the same in a number of other games. But its his insistence that he's
> always the best, always right is what keeps getting him into trouble.

> Hubris, Musk. Look it up.

> * For those of you who don't know what this is all about: Elon Musk,
> CEO of Telsa and Twitter, has claimed to be one of the top players in
> Quake, Diablo IV, and Path of Exile, even going so far as to
> live-stream him playing the latter to prove his 1337 skillz. However,
> the evidence backing up his claims is extremely sketchy, and the
> live-stream made it obvious he has very little idea what he is doing,
> and there are lot of indications the high-level character he used on
> the stream was the result of his paying somebody for it rather than
> earning it through his own efforts, including the fact that his
> so-called top ranking in Diablo IV was self-reported and used a
> short-lived glitch to speed-run a single dungeon, and that his Path of
> Exile character was seen farming phat loot in China some days prior to
> his live-stream. Oh, and Dennis Thresh Fong is on record saying Musk
> wasn't a very good player at Quake either.

> ** I mean, I'd still wonder what he was doing spending so much time
> playing video games when he has three companies to run, and so many
> elections to subvert, but I guess all that ketamine he (allegedly)
> takes gives him that extra energy to keep going on through the night
> ;-)

And not just gaming. He's doing politics with our old President again. Oy!

--
"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." --Romans 5:8. Back 2 loco life again.
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/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
> So, I guess this is the new reality of game development. Recent
> reports by the UK CMA (the agency that deals with whether or not
> mergers should be allowed) recently noted that triple-A games can cost
> upwards of one billion dollars (with included marketing). Yay?
>
> It's a ridiculous amount, of course; not only that so much money and
> resources should be poured into what's a completely disposable luxury
> product, but that it should cost so much to begin with. Nobody's
> getting value for money from these overpriced behemoth games; not the
> developers (who are crunched and forced to make mass-market garbage),
> nor the publishers (who risk way too much money for games that have
> such a high probability of flopping, or just breaking even), and
> certainly not the gamers, who are saddled with increasingly excessive
> MTX as the publishers struggle to make their money back.
>
> And you have to wonder, WHERE is all this money really going? Does
> "Call of Duty CCCLXIV: More Call, More Duty" really look and play so
> much better than "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" released in 2007? That
> game is estimated to have cost $60 million USD (with another $100
> million USD for marketing); even adjusting for inflation, do the newer
> Call of Duty titles really feel like they're offering three times as
> much content? And now let's compare that to "Grand Theft Auto V"; its
> total budget was $250 million USD. How can the latest "Call of Duty"
> (or generally, _any_ modern shooter) justify their cost? Do Activision
> programmers do their programming on solid-gold keyboards or something?
>
> It doesn't have to be this way. The total budget for "Black Myth:
> Wukong" was $70 million. "Control" was $30 million. There aren't any
> official figures on "Space Marine 2", but the few estimates I saw put
> its total budget at < $100 million. These are all still incredible
> amounts, but a far cry from the wastefulness of the triple-A studios.
>
> The big studios cry at us that they just HAVE to put all these
> lootboxes and MTX and other nonsense into their games because
> development costs have skyrocketed so much. Arguably, they're right:
> its unlikely that the publishers could make their money back if they
> depended entirely on retail sales as their sole source of revenue. But
> maybe a better solution would be to cut back on the fucking costs
> instead?
>
> It's not just that MTX/etc. are fucking over games. It's that it's an
> unsustainable business. In order to get Fortnite money, you need
> players to spend incredible lengths of time with your game. Nobody's
> going to spend $500 on cosmetics and DLC on a game they'll only spend
> 30 hours on. But there's only so many hours in a day; you can only
> have so many mega-live-service Fortnite-style games out there. If you
> reaching for that gold ring with your next game, the odds are
> incredibly high that you will miss... and if you spend $1 billion
> developing and advertising that game, that miss (and the subsequent
> fall) is going to be very painful.
>
> It makes a $30 million flop look almost cozy in comparison.
>
> Aim lower, triple-A publishers. It's more certain and -while not as
> flashy- will probably net you more cash in the long run.
>
>
>

The problem with Saints Row 3 and GTA V is we have to endure those
terrible personalities in the game. I don't play GTA V because I hate
the mafia guy who is the lead character (although you may switch between
characters easily). You get a game like Random Heroes: Gold Edition and
it's non-stop action. It's well polished for an Indie game and doesn't
have some misogynic homocidal jerk as the protagonist. By them putting
a whole lot into GTA V and SR 3, we have to suffer these mafia rednecks
and grandstanding purple knuckleheads. They put too much into the game.
I don't want to see their cigar smoking beer swilling child abusers
who always have something to say about everything under he sun. I want
a GTA V hack where the only thing mafia Sam says is "I t'ought I saw a
putty tat," because every time he opens his mouth I cringe.

This day was coming. In 2008 my mom told me to get out of the video
game industry because studios are spending millions to make a game.

On 1/21/2025 7:13 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:09:57 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>
>> On 20/01/2025 21:15, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>
>
>>> Well, I was going to say Elon Musk but the gif only says 1 billion
>>> dollars which is too small for Elon to put any effort into it.
>
>> One billion you say, so about the same as he spent on paying people to
>> make him an uber gamer?
>
>
> <chuckle>
>
> That whole story* is just so sad and cringey, but then the same can be
> said for the person it is about. Musk is just so desperate for
> attention and validation. I'd almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't
> so otherwise loathsome and willing to use his enormous advantages to
> the detriment of others.
>
> The thing is, if he had just said, "hey, I'm a gamer; I'm pretty good"
> he'd have been fine.** Apparently he had some (not a lot, but probably
> better than average) skill at Quake, and I'm willing to believe he is
> the same in a number of other games. But its his insistence that he's
> always the best, always right is what keeps getting him into trouble.
>
> Hubris, Musk. Look it up.
>
Well, apparently Trump is 1 inch taller than Musk so I guess he does
have to look up at least a little bit.

(And I found it funny that when I typed "Elon Muck" in the search engine
by mistake it still went straight to "Elon Musk".)

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 1/21/2025 7:13 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:09:57 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 20/01/2025 21:15, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> Well, I was going to say Elon Musk but the gif only says 1 billion
>>>> dollars which is too small for Elon to put any effort into it.
>>
>>> One billion you say, so about the same as he spent on paying people to
>>> make him an uber gamer?
>>
>>
>> <chuckle>
>>
>> That whole story* is just so sad and cringey, but then the same can be
>> said for the person it is about. Musk is just so desperate for
>> attention and validation. I'd almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't
>> so otherwise loathsome and willing to use his enormous advantages to
>> the detriment of others.
>>
>> The thing is, if he had just said, "hey, I'm a gamer; I'm pretty good"
>> he'd have been fine.** Apparently he had some (not a lot, but probably
>> better than average) skill at Quake, and I'm willing to believe he is
>> the same in a number of other games. But its his insistence that he's
>> always the best, always right is what keeps getting him into trouble.
>>
>> Hubris, Musk. Look it up.
>>
> Well, apparently Trump is 1 inch taller than Musk so I guess he does
> have to look up at least a little bit.
>
> (And I found it funny that when I typed "Elon Muck" in the search engine
> by mistake it still went straight to "Elon Musk".)
>
At the top of the screen it will say searching for Elon Musk, did you
mean Elon Muck.

On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 21:00:28 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

>And not just gaming. He's doing politics with our old President again. Oy!

I guess his success will depend on how well your president responds to
Nazi salutes ;-)

Anyway, Musk has since admitted* that he did pay someone to boost his
account (that is, give access to an somebody so they could do all the
hardwork of leveling up and getting the good gear; essentially the
rich-man's way of using a console command to add XP and equipment).

According to Musk, "the top accounts in Diablo or POE [Paths of
Exile] require multiple people playing the account to win a leveling
race." The old, 'everybody does it so its okay' excuse. Which -despite
what he thinks - does nothing to prove that he's good at the game. It
just shows that he has more money.

But the whole incident is just another indicator of how petty Musk is.

* reported here:
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/elon-musk-comes-clean-about-path-of-exile-2-and-diablo-4-credentials-and-i-am-shocked-shocked-i-tell-you

On 1/22/2025 7:33 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jan 2025 21:00:28 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>
>
>
>> And not just gaming. He's doing politics with our old President again. Oy!
>
> I guess his success will depend on how well your president responds to
> Nazi salutes ;-)
>
> Anyway, Musk has since admitted* that he did pay someone to boost his
> account (that is, give access to an somebody so they could do all the
> hardwork of leveling up and getting the good gear; essentially the
> rich-man's way of using a console command to add XP and equipment).
>
> According to Musk, "the top accounts in Diablo or POE [Paths of
> Exile] require multiple people playing the account to win a leveling
> race." The old, 'everybody does it so its okay' excuse. Which -despite
> what he thinks - does nothing to prove that he's good at the game. It
> just shows that he has more money.
>
> But the whole incident is just another indicator of how petty Musk is.

Ah so he's basically botting only by paying people instead of using bots.

I don't really care, and it lowers my impressions of the games rather
than Elon that they are so grindy that that's valuable. (Not that I
have a great opinion of him, after all he started with PayPal that I've
had nothing but trouble with at the time he was at the helm and refuse
to ever use again. Yes I'm holding a 22+ year grudge.)

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'