Making games is crazy expensive
Employing hundreds of game developers isn't cheap. With increasing demands on games looking, sounding, and feeling more expensive, especially if you're looking to appeal to a mass-market, there is a buildup in cost to deliver that quality. Not only that, with demands in increased complexity where new games have to be better than the old games, from an increasingly demanding player-base, the prices tend to go up, and some things gotta give.
This is where "cost-efficiency" becomes a factor, but here's also where things like compromise starts lingering. What, for example, is the cost versus return on investment on having voice-acting? What is the cost versus return on investment for having great writing?
Some studios either publicly or candidly have found ways of "optimizing" their costs, be it through outsourcing that work at a lower price point, or to AI. We've seen illustrator jobs, and concept artist jobs take a swift nose-dive lately, and it isn't because there's no demand for what they're good at.
At the end of the day, AAA games tend to take many years to make, and the cost of employees to make those numbers quickly reach hundreds of millions of dollars. In the extreme cases, at certain points in the development, figures like those are the monthly costs.
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Let's play it "safe"
This is where the people holding the capital, with all right, start to REALLY look at the numbers. Because even with deep research, there's never a guarantee that a game that cost extreme amounts of cash will make a profit, break even, or ... at least cover most of the costs.
Some games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars were simply cut just before, or short after, their release.
Not necessarily because they were "bad games", but because even after a game is done, it is costly, and the decision to pull the plug might be cheaper in the long run than launching and selling a limited number of copies.
[b]But why do bad games get to go that far before they're cut?[/b]
Passion is one factor that plays a part here. Great designers, directors, and game innovators can use past pedigrees with great skill, and that passion resonates with investors who would love to be the next "Baldur's Gate 3" (a game that relatively few thought would be anything but a niche, RPG-nerd mini-success).
So some investors definitely go for the passion. But some? Some are extremely methodical in their approach to things, and have long since stopped caring about passion, and instead look at demographics, target audiences that have more money, and what patterns those exhibit when they buy their games.
Predictability is a model that is proven, and when you invest. That's what creates the "Cola flavored-beverage number 4885" of games.
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But will that work forever?
No. While you can slap bacon, cheese, and a meat-patty in-between two slices of bread and sell a number of them. The more people who do that, the higher the standards are, because there's competition in the game equivalent of burgers.
This is why so many burger-chains die, and why so many visually high-quality games in predictable genres perform so poorly. Adding a new number (usually +1) to a previously successful game can be lethal. Studios that became comfortable in their ability to make money suddenly face dire news.
Sometimes they lose their prime talent who made the original success that innovated a genre, but other times the genre evolved. What used to be the highest standard became mediocre.
Because the supply is high, gamers expect more
This is where the consumers come in. Many in the game industry say: "The games' industry is larger than the music and film-industries combined", with pride I might add.
That's true, but with that increase in size comes more competitors who all want a slice of the profit, and at the end of the day the games that end up selling do so because they understand what the players want.
When you have 10, 20, or 50 racing games, you can no longer sell because you made a good racing game. You have to be spectacular at several things.
You really have to understand your player-base. What do they want NOW? Not two years ago, or ten. You have to be making a game that feels spectacular, or your competitors will. Minimum effort doesn't count.
Sure, you might get a 7/10 for your racing game, but a seven in 2025 is like a 5 in 2015. The players have too much to choose from, and only very few will purchase a game in the genre that ranks #9. Even if it has "Very Positive" ratings on Steam, and unfortunately, making that game will most likely not bring back the cost of development.
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Have gamers become too entitled?
I was watching an old classic movie from the early 1990s a few weeks ago. For all of you who haven't seen too many movies from this era: that period was considered as a "Golden Age" in Hollywood. It's when multiple smash-hits came out. The Terminator 2's, the Dances With Wolves, Batman Returns, etc. etc.
Anyway, I was watching this movie through the eyes of someone who has seen thousands and thousands of movies since, and I have to say that the art of movie-making has evolved. The recipe for a "guaranteed action-movie smash hit" back then is definitely not as safe now.
But even movies that I feel still hold up today, aren't exactly loved by someone in their 20s or 30s today. Either the visual effects look dated, or the jokes, or the pacing is different to what is expected, and suddenly a movie that back then was a 9/10 is a 7/10 today.
Not because consumers are entitled, but because the boundaries have been pushed or changed, which lead to different expectations.
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When is it the consumer's fault, then?
Some of my peers in the game dev industry are not too fond of all of this. They don't think players are educated enough, they don't think they have good enough computers, or they don't think they understand "the art" of gaming. When a game that multiple game-developers themselves considers "brilliant" doesn't end up selling enough (because it probably was too niche), they deplore the audience lack of understanding.
This anti-consumer/anti-community point of view is an arrogance the game industry can't afford. If game-devs expect to have game-development as a long-term profession, I don't think passion is enough. I don't think data is enough, and I certainly don't think following trends, or otherwise copying "what works" is enough.
Brilliant designers like Josef Fares, or Hideo Kojima become household names not because they just create what the data shows, or what they themselves consider art, more than that, they understand what the players, the gamers love. Just like Nintendo at least used to.
Companies like Capcom, Larian, Supergiant Games, and Arrowhead consistently continue to be able to adhere to their players' needs over the years, and THAT is what give players hope.
To lay the puzzle, it's not enough to put out two or three, or ten pieces that fit well together. You have to make the whole bigger than the sum of its parts. Which requires an understanding and a willingness to humble yourself as a game-developer.
Which, as it turns out, is very difficult, and why the Expedition 33's isn't coming from studios that repeat what's predictable and safe.
