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Comment by that_guy_iain | Hacker News Reader

> The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million with around 200 employees:

That just seems like crazy high figure. One of the things that is kind annoying me with games these days is how long it takes them to build the next one. Edler Scrolls is about 5-6 years away and that probably means Fallout is 10 years away. Sure we'll have Starfield but decades between games in a series is just bonkers.

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$220 million is not unheard of, particularly for a game that's intended to sell consoles. GTA 5 had a similarly sized budget.

https://www.dualshockers.com/biggest-video-game-budgets/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...

As for waiting years between installments, we have plenty of great games to play through in the meantime. "We will release it when it's ready" is a mentality that has sadly been forgotten over the past several years.

> As for waiting years between installments, we have plenty of great games to play through in the meantime. "We will release it when it's ready" is a mentality that has sadly been forgotten over the past several years.

It's very questionable if we do have plenty of great games. And there is a difference between rushing a release and spending 15 years between releases.

Putting it as waiting years is presenting it in a false light, it's waiting decades. It's very possible the time between Skyrim and the next installment is 20-years.

GTA5 was 10-years ago and has been on 3 different generations of consoles. It could very well be that GTA6 doesn't even get release on PS4 because it'll take so long.

I don't see it any different to films in a franchise or novels by an author. They can work at whatever pace they want to. We aren't entitled to their efforts and we have no claim over how long they choose to spend making something. I'm just glad they do.

> We aren't entitled to their efforts and we have no claim over how long they choose to spend making something.

I think as paying consumers who they keep selling to there is a level of entitlement. The whole "they don't owe us anything" doesn't really work, they kinda owe us their success. Especially when they re-release the same game multiple times instead of a new one.

More frustrating, I don't think those games necessarily need that much time, it's also Bethesda spacing out the main titles of their major franchises evenly so they don't cannibalize each other. Every time Starfield got delayed, everything after it was delayed too.

Elder scrolls has it's MMO at least (which as someone who hates MMOs doesn't mean much) but agreed, it's insane that we went from 4 years between morrowind/oblivion, then 5 for skyrim to likely 15 years for another mainline game. Especially since it feels like morrowind to oblivion probably had a bigger change in gameplay style than I'd expect from jumping from skyrim to the next one.

Maybe I'm an outlier because I play tons of games that are 10+ years old, but...

Skyrim w/mods is totally viable to me as an open-world RPG for years to come. I skipped Fallout 4, but if I had a refreshed (optimized, less-buggy, Linux-friendly) version of Fallout: New Vegas I wouldn't be concerned about getting another FO entry anytime soon either.

Hugely excited for Starfield though, it scratches an itch I've had for years: blending Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls.

>Maybe I'm an outlier because I play tons of games that are 10+ years old, but...

To be fair, everyone is playing 10+ years old games. GTA, Skyrim, Fallout, etc. The next versions haven't been released and are still all years away.

> Hugely excited for Starfield though

I pre-ordered it which is huge for me since normally I just wait years until the price drops. I just picked up Cyberpunk at the weekend which should show how long I am willing to wait before getting a AAA game.

I'm contemplating a Starfield pre-order as well. Last game I pre-ordered was perhaps Hearts of Iron 4. I STILL haven't bought Cyberpunk 2077; until a game hits 75% off on my Steam Wishlist it doesn't exist. If that means I don't play it until 5 years after its release...that's ok.

I don't understand how this can possibly be true. Game devs make nothing, how did it cost more than a million dollars per (peak) employee working on the game? Are there some significant costs other than employee salaries?

Maybe they aren't counting contractors as employees?

Even assuming those costs were _only_ employees and don't include licensing costs, contract costs for major voice talent, etc then you're still looking at about 1,000,000 per employee over the course of the games development. If a game takes 5-6 years for development, then you're looking about 200k average total employee cost per year, which once you factor in things like healthcare and other expenses an employer might have to pay doesn't seem too wild to me?

My understanding is that a lot of work on TLOU2 was performed by contractors.

Fully loaded cost will be could to 2x salary. Spread over the entire game's development, this would come out to a couple hundred k per employee. This isn't insane.

Probably stuff like offices, hardware, software licences, marketing, server costs and more together with the fact that they worked on it for 5 years (that would mean only 200k per employee) and had all those other costs for those years as well

I'm guessing there's some hollywood accounting going on too

also contractors as others have already mentioned

According to wikipedia, The Last of Us Part II took 6 years to make, with over 2,100 unique people working on the product. The 200 employee number clearly isn't including contractors.

Even if we excluded the contractors and only included the employees, that's $183,000/employee/year. That doesn't seem that insane, considering that's the upper-bound cost per employee. One you start to add in any other expenses and the contractors, it would quickly approach reasonable.

1 million per employee over 3 years is about 150k-200k net per employee per year (if it was salary only). 3 years is a low estimate and salaries are far from the only thing companies spend money on

I can't quite make out the actual number but Sony said TLOU2 took longer than Horizon Forbidden West's 5 years to develop. Let's just call it 6 years to make it an easy number. $220m over 200 people over 6 years ~= $200k/year/person? That seems if anything low, no?

> probably means Fallout is 10 years away.

unless Microsoft gets obsidian to make 'New Vegas 2' on the fallout 4 engine.

The marketing cost is not included, the budget for the average AAA game is probably very close to half a billion.

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