The Cost Of Doing Business (The Jimquisition)

I don't know if you can see it behind the lectern is the problem but the new waistcoat brass clasps in brass and so it's better than your family [Music] no Craig seriously worst one of them applied heartbreaking can't say anything because of embargo but it's oh did you know extra credits Donna video another one and this week did sort of turn into a rebuttal to their video I didn't want it to but it sort of happened that why feely bet though it puts the hat in hakonsen now before we begin I want to say I hold extra credits no ill-will I like him well enough I think their hearts in the right place I've met him at least one of them before twice nice enough he'll we worked for the same outlet at one point I'm sure we could share a beer and commiserations over our experience is there but they did put four tamargo montz that have been put forth by many people who defend the triple-a game industry and their latest video where they talk about why games cost so much to make was just something I started countering and my video just became sort of a point-by-point response to this that doesn't mean I'm attacking them and it doesn't mean you should attack them either okay that's not [ __ ] her fan base wars here this is why I don't like doing responses to stuff and it's why I've tried to keep the responses in this one general and all-purpose because like I say many typical arguments are brought up and this video here is to just well attempt to knock those arguments down not necessarily not extra credits down who again I think their hearts are in the right place if I sound married at any point in the video which of course I know for me is a very uncharacteristic I'm not mad at extra-credit son just frustrated at the situation okay that ought to prevent a war I think by now I've made it pretty clear what I think about corporate culture both in and out of video games I hate it I made no secret of that and just as the likes of extra credits are motivated by a sympathy toward a corporate culture they're part of I'm motivated by an immense distaste for a culture I desperately tried to escape and successfully did thank God for me I hate what the culture of Triple A games has done to a massive portion of my favorite entertainment medium I hate how massive publishers when given the opportunity to set their own prices and create their own markets continue to charge as much as they can get away with and damn the long-term consequences I hate how they've used to the fact our legal system hasn't caught up with technology in order to psychologically manipulate players and introduce gambling systems without regulation I hate triple-a culture triple-a cultures defenders are largely part of said culture it's important we point both these biases out both theirs and mine this video was not intended to be specifically about extra credits as their arguments have been used many times by many beneficiaries of the corporate culture they're defending but they compiled the typical defenses in a handy digestible fashion that I can use as a framework for today's video the industry's defenders talk about the fact that Ubisoft needs to hire around 900 staff to make an assassin's creed again conveniently forgetting to note that it was Ubisoft's idea to make so many massive open world games in the first place their CEO EOBs Grimaud said at the beginning of this generation how he wanted to take full advantage of the popularity of open-world games the ambitious nature of which would naturally facilitate a huge [ __ ] staff it was yuba softer that decided it needed to hire such big teams and make such big gains and they made that decision quite literally based on how much money these big games made by big teams were raking if they're doing it because open-world games are popular and profitable as Ubisoft itself tells investors then what's the actual [ __ ] problem here sounds like they hired to the right amount of people to make the right kind of game that was making number right kind of money or am i seeing different investor reports to everybody else why exactly are we supposed to believe they're doing an unsustainable thing that requires additional monetization cuz that's not what mr. gueermo saying at this point you're just saying Ubisoft isn't profitable because it insists on doing things that are very profitable at least according to them similarly when talking about the sheer size of development teams in their trip Hawaii space none of the defenders talked about the conditions said teams work under while it's estimated that the average developer costs $10,000 a month to keep around which includes not just their pay but all their added benefits and bonuses I've had currently former employees of major companies reach out to me with some [ __ ] shocking stories I hope to detail them more at a later date but here's a nice example of how game companies might already be cutting the costs that we're told cannot be cut one publisher for example allegedly loves to get out of paying health insurance to its QA testers with scheduled layoffs the employer mandate states that if you have more than 50 full-time workers you need to provide them health insurance within 90 days so what does the company do hires and lays off workers before they're 90 days are up typically only keeping on project managers and the like that's just the behind-the-scenes stuff I'm told happens before a game even comes out to say nothing of the public mass layoffs we all often see developers rewarded with once their hard work is actually released they talk about the cost of licensing engines and while licensing unreal engine is surely an expensive endeavor depending on what you're doing with it it's a [ __ ] site cheaper than what they were doing before remember Square Enix is [ __ ] fetish for building new engines all the time for no good [ __ ] reason whatsoever the growth of engines like Unreal unity and CryEngine are making games cheaper and more to build than ever before it's already a cost that's been cut and if it's still too much a price to pay I don't know what the [ __ ] that company is doing wrong but they're doing it [ __ ] wrong I won't even fully address the argument that it costs money to buy the computers basic software workspaces and janitorial staff because welcome to literally every [ __ ] business in the bloody world here's the thing about the games industry it thinks it's a special little flower that gets to escape having to pay for basic and obligatory things like you know royalties for voice actors all their taxes so again if they can't afford a janitor they're doing something wrong mate they talk about how expensive it is to hire those famous Hollywood voice actors we here in triple-a games these days and all I have to say to that one is who the [ __ ] among us even asked for that hell if I recall correctly and I do plenty of people myself included were actively pissed off that Kiefer Sutherland replaced David Hayter a snake hater wasn't just the voice of snake he was the voice of Metal Gear [ __ ] Solid in the West and he was discarded like trash in favor of a famous person didn't even get a phone call then there's the utter debacle that was Peter Dinklage's acting in destiny a performance so worth paying for they later redubbed all of his lines using a real voice actor in nolan north i find not just this particular argument but the entire notion of replacing experienced voice actors with celebrities [ __ ] offensive voice acting is a totally different school of performance than screen acting and with a few notable exceptions such as Mark Hamill many of these Hollywood talents are brought in and a total [ __ ] or the very least so unremarkable there was no point then being there except to take the job away from an actual voice actor if ever I needed to point to a gigantic waste of money the hiring of a celebrity voice just to have a press release about it would be one damn fine candidate with regards to localization costs this is one of those classic arguments that make me wonder how in the bloody hell the game industry is still around since game localization has been here long before microtransaction and loot box gambling became a thing it's also important to point out that the cost of shipping the games themselves is naturally decreasing as digital distribution rises in popularity in the same statement that saw you the soft commit to open-world games it also revealed that digital distribution is growing exponentially and has had a major impact on their ability to make money a positive impact not negative one and that to the audience for games getting larger and larger more people are playing than ever before more people are downloading than ever before this is all stuff you can see publishers boast about to their shareholders but when it's time to talk to us we get a sob story about how expensive everything is and as I've said before I am NOT claiming video games aren't expensive to make yes they are but you gotta spend money to make money and as near as I can tell these companies have always been making [ __ ] money it's just not all of the [ __ ] money in the [ __ ] world which as we've discussed before is the real problem for these publishers horror games have a niche audience [ __ ] that they'll only make some money not all of the money oh what's that Call of Duty's multi players become really popular let's start telling everybody that single-player is dead they're [ __ ] greedy bastards and I'm just surprised continually that that remains a point of contention graphics have of course being one of the most popular justifications for all the additional monetization avenues but I still maintain that this is a rod the game industry created for its own damn back the blame is placed on us the audience for demanding better looking games but it certainly wasn't my idea to come up with the concept of the bull shot doctored video game screenshots that publishes officially released to make games look better than they are it wasn't my idea to showcase games at e3 press conferences with amazing visuals that weren't actually possible on the hardware they were supposedly using it was the industry itself that decided to push video games as a visual medium to the exclusion of everything else and if they can't keep up with the demand they fan the flames for it's their own damned fault which I don't think many of us actually care about Lara Croft having individually animated strands of hair or a horse that shits on the floor in real time yeah game like Mass Effect Andromeda might get [ __ ] for it's terrible facial animations and low-quality graphics but that's only because Electronic Arts trained its audience to expect better than that we're told by corporate mouthpieces constantly that gamers who want higher fidelity better looking games and focus groups might actually tell them that because focus groups are complete [ __ ] in practice though a motion-capture daelin page doesn't actually make a game better Square Enix is visually impressive massively expensive crystal Pringles engine doesn't automatically make games more fun just remember that the ps3 was the most powerful console of its generation and it was humiliated at markets by the then visually outdated way and we're seeing that begin anew as the Nintendo switch becomes a market triumph and visually simple games like star to valley are top sellers on it so then we come to the sweetest plum the marketing it's no secret that a games marketing budget can practically cost as much as the entire game costs to make these days but I take umbrage with the idea that such sheer excess is required first of all what kind of games get the biggest marketing budgets you are IP from smaller studios that might need that attention Europe with a few notable exceptions the huge marketing budgets typically get reserved for the biggest and most famous games aka the ones already guaranteed to make a shitload of money in the first place if I recall correctly and I do it was a Call of Duty game that paid out the nose to license a Rolling Stone song for a TV commercial packed with a live-action explosions and action sequences if I recall correctly and I do it was a Call of Duty game that paid for Robert [ __ ] Downey [ __ ] jr. son to crack a one-liner for them and that speaks to a wider point that gets so completely lost in all of this it's typically the franchise's little already successful that cost so much to make if you've a soft had 900 people working on grow home then maybe there'd be a case for it being too expensive to make but it's your assassin's creed's you call of duty's your Mass Effect's these are the ones with the massive marketing budgets and the big teams behind them why because they're the ones that have already conquered the market and increased their budgets accordingly to justify their aggressive monetization by claiming they cost too much to make is quite frankly [ __ ] in my opinion as I say there are exceptions like that time Namco Bandai aggressively marketed enslaved and failed and let's not get me started on how badly I screwed up the idea of survival horror with dead space and thought it could turn that into a mega bucks franchise but in general game development is no different from the rest of life money goes to money as I asked da dice during its reddit AMA on Star Wars Battlefront 2 can you honestly tell me that a Star Wars game was too expensive to make that you couldn't have made a Star Wars game as in a game about Star Wars and then it would not conceivably sell enough to make its money back without all these additional monetization strategies should you be in this business if you cannot afford ibly conduct a business they never answered me what Electronic Arts did do however was stuff Star Wars Battlefront 2 to the brim with loot boxes despite the fact that the Star Wars game would have saw gangbusters regardless because it was a god damn Star Wars game and they did it not because it was too expensive to make but because it was a Star Wars game and they'd plan to milk that much loving fanbase for all it was [ __ ] worth it's just a shame they misjudged that fanbase woefully funnily enough battlefront who was recently revealed to have failed to meet its sales expectations shifting just over 7 million copies instead of the 8 million they'd expected to have sold by now oh poor EA the reason he gave the controversy over their loot boxes the success of games that didn't rely on massive marketing budgets huge dev teams or the ludicrous push for high-fidelity graphics is conveniently hand waved away and has been by many devil's advocates for a long time player unknowns battlegrounds for example was brushed off by extra credits as lightning in a bottle but that's simply not the case pub G shares a space with rust without survival evolved with undertale with hell-blade sin us sacrifice with god damn [ __ ] minecraft and they're not just finding success on pc but on console as well these games used smaller teams grassroots marketing and pushed for artistic originality over geographical horsepower to make a name for themselves they're not lightning in a bottle and to suggest so is to insult the work and ingenuity that made them possible the exploding fandom of Dark Souls even owes its existence to a game developed with a more indie mindset demon's souls are game published by Atlas that used amazing artistry to make up for its less impressive graphics marketed itself on a small-scale basis and only produced a limited number of copies that had to be increased once the game became a big con success from humble beginnings a major franchise was born and thank [ __ ] for a publisher like Atlas cuz no other company wanted that [ __ ] game we typically see microtransactions and loot boxes in the biggest games the biggest intellectual property the games were the biggest fan bases that's where the majority of them are and they're there to take advantage of the fact that these games do have big and loyal fan bases they're there to take advantage of you and I don't need to bring up that Activision patterns again where I point out that they literally are there to take advantage of you work but I'm gonna throw out the graphic anyway oh and one last thing if we need microtransactions and loot boxes because games are too expensive to make why then oh we told there they're simply for our own benefit for our so-called player choice that's the line most developers use when they tell us their reason for including them or when you don't actually need to answer it because we know why we're told that they're lying or they're telling the truth which means someone's lying about games being too expensive to make that's the thing about conflicting stories you sort of have to pick one but in any case considering the fact the Triple A game industry has demonstrably lied through its teeth about so many things over the years why am i obliged to believe any story I'm told about the reasons for it doing anything oh and again no need to answer I already know do you remember when Nintendo was in trouble a few years back this was long before the switch of course their illustrious leader their head honcho their boss man took a pay cut in order to protect the business that man was Satoru Iwata a [ __ ] decent person one of the few executives in the video game industry I could look at and say yeah I think I respect you so he started at the top when it came to cutting costs why don't we start there another thing that's not brought up along with these exorbitant costs that we pay the people at the top of the pyramid and the shareholders of course which no one ever seems to bring up the people who are demanding the real people I should say who are demanding things of the game industry as opposed to us who you know we get all the blind another thing that's not mentioned is how often the game industry plays it safe I mean a lot of the games we talked about today were sequels sequels and remasters and if they're not offsetting costs again what the hell is wrong with this industry does it deserve to stay in business thank God for me and all that so anyway I think I think that was a concise enough breakdown of the breakdown of the costs now I know what some of you are all waiting for the horrid spider contest after talking about a stagnant and stale triple-a game industry let's look at some real creativity serene in novice yawn courtesy of the gym positions own fan base let's look at the runners-up for the horrid spider contest then we'll talk about a main runner up I'm going to have to give some sort of prize and the ultimate winner let's go [Music] let's go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you to everyone who entered I was absolutely blown the [ __ ] away by the level of talent that was sent my wife over six hundred people sent stuff in and so much of it was amazing we included a lot of hand-drawn art in the runners-up just because they were so incredible but none of those could technically win because that was more fan art which wasn't really in the spirit of actively transforming the spider itself but before we reveal the ultimate winner we do have a genuine second-place so I'm gonna have to give an Amazon gift card or something the ingenuity of it just had to be highlighted now from now games.com turns the horrid spider into a bloody font no seriously now broke down the spiders body parts and turned them into an actual working font so just from me but the grand prize goes to Lord of the stack who tore the horrid spider to pieces and made an entire game out of it horrid perspective which is fully playable uses the horrid spider as everything from the environmental hazards to the environment itself to the playable snake made of eyeballs that loses said eyeballs when it takes damage and you have to pick stuff up to grow the balls back so well done Lord of the stack the sheer innovation that went on with this one blew my mind so the 500 bucks goes to you my friend and for everybody else some people have asked like I said you keep the rights to everything you've done some of the artists asked if they could sell their artwork I don't own it it's yours do what you want I'm not Warner Brothers I'm not gonna host a contest and use it as free artistic labor like they did but anyway congratulations to our winner and thank you so much to everyone who entered your talent is off the charts thank God for you me [Music]

Channel: Jim Sterling

Views: 696,263

Keywords: The Jimquisition, Jimquisition, Jim Sterling, Commentary, Criticism, Games, Game, Gamer, Gaming, Videogame, Video Game, Money, Cost, Expenses, Extra Credits, AAA Games, Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Star Wars Battlefront II, Microtransactions, Loot Boxes, Corporations, AAA Culture, DLC

Id: 6kIPNckHDN8

Length: 26min 22sec (1582 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/fotorobot]

If the cost of making games suddenly became much cheaper - does anyone really believe that companies would stop doing things like microtransactions that maximize profit? Of course not. Why would they leave any money on the table? Their job isn't to cover cost - it's to maximize profits. They'll have everything they think they can get away with, regardless of the cost of making games.

[u/StefanGagne]

I think the truth lies in... well, both videos, Jim's and Extra Credits.

These types of games ARE fantastically expensive to make, as EC detailed. And these types of games ARE fantastically profitable, as Jim points out, covering their costs. Also, EC doesn't make a value judgment on whether or not things like mega-graphics or hollywood actors are GOOD to have -- just that they bring more prestige and act as marketing in and of themselves, and Jim's right in point out that maybe we don't want or need those things.

If AAA is unsustainable, it's because AAA itself has decided to become such through balloooning expectations and vindictive practices, alongside aggressive profiteering. The costs are nice and high, as EC notes, and that's factual -- but the very concept of a AAA game is at fault, as Jim notes.

I guess the real question is... do we NEED these AAA games? And if not, if companies like EA or UbiSoft step back from the ledge, what happens when others step up and overshadow smaller releases all over again? It's an arms race.

[u/Fatal1ty_93_RUS]

I've said it once and I'll say it again

if the publishers are "struggling" to cover the development costs and games have become "too expensive" to make - that's a problem THEY themselves have created. It's not up to us, the players and loyal customers, to solve funding or budgeting issues, if they do indeed exist and it's not just corporate bullshit they're feeding us for years now. It's not my problem nor is it my obligation before a publisher to pay for ever-increasing development budgets through all kinds of microtransations

[u/Ubahootah]

Let's not forget how many games companies also participate in the sport of avoiding taxes.

[u/DeusXVentus]

Higher fidelity visuals get cheaper to make in the mid-long run as the industry develops tools to make the production of them easier and trains artists to equip them better. These aren't things that should be looked down upon or ignored. Not to mention we're meeting a plateau. We're not going to get another tech hike like we did from going to 2D sprites to 3D models, or from Standard Definition to High Definition. Here's a comment from a developer about that:

The difference between a 4k texture and a 2k texture is far less than the difference between a 2k texture and a 1k one. The same goes with 3D models and their polygon count. These increase the game size by a lot while not necessarily improving that much in return. Just as a simple example compare the first Mass Effect game to the latest. Andromeda borders around 50gb while the first was around 5gb. That's ten times the size while the improvement is hardly 10 times.

The artists should be fucking commended and paid well for the incredible work they do, and any technological advancement in this industry is a good one.
That's just another thing everyone loves to miss out when bringing up the graphics point.

Not to mention, being honest and self aware, the internet does show serious demand for graphical fidelity, whether or not publishers have trained us for that.

That's the only part that I disagree with Jim about. Yes, Stardew Valley, PUBG, Fortnite, and Minecraft are successful despite being meager in visual fidelity, but they are lightning in a bottle.

Stardew Valley came on the right platform at the right time.

PUBG was accidentally, perfect for Twitch stream hype, and Fortnite came along to fill the F2P gap it left.

Let's also keep in mind that yes, Senua's Sacrifice was successful... for what it was. It became profitable after 3 months, and that's definitely not something any company is going to want on their balance sheet. That's the case for a lot of these games. Something like Senua's Sacrifice or Celeste is a rampant success for what it is, but the cultural phenomenon that is a release of a new COD or GTA utterly trounces it.

I mean think about it, people lost hype for Watch Dogs because of the graphical downgrade. On top of these big E3 stages, which is inherent with mainstream elevation in any entertainment market, do you think anyone's gonna want to spend more than 2 minutes on a game like Stardew Valley? And no matter what, the games media, and people on reddit and other gaming forums will not talk about it as "game of the show". Humans are appeased by visuals, and I don't "blame" anyone for visuals being increased.

The thing is about those games is that they are "risks" in the wider scope of the market. And these risks don't always turn out great.

That's why I find it utterly insufferable when people in the films industry talk about "taking risks", because when it doesn't work out, the subject movie gets lambasted for it.

[u/eldomtom2]

The thing that people are forgetting is that the cost of making games is irrelevant to the debate over whether or not microtransactions are ethical or not.

[u/shinbreaker]

So there's a lot to unpack here with Jim's argument.

First off, bringing up Ubisoft and how they have several hundred members on their AC teams doesn't really counter what EC said. Ubisoft said their open world games are profitable and they're making more with big teams. Ok...and? The EC video was about why this lootboxes/microtransactions were happening and if the head of Ubisoft said at the beginning of this gen they would do more open-world games because it was profitable, well yeah of course they would since the AC games in last gen were full of DLC. This comes off as a "gotcha" but it seems to just restating the fact that Ubisoft has already been making money from their games, which included DLC. Hell the whole Ezio trilogy might as well have been 1 game with 2 giant DLCs to go along with it.

As for the working condition for developers, especially during crunch time, yeah, it sucks. Again, not really the point of the EC video. Also, if anything, this is more reason for them to unionize.

Then he goes on about engine. Yeah, it's cheaper to use Unreal or other engines than building one from the ground up. That doesn't negate the fact that it's a cost that should be factored in. That's like saying because they changed the light bulbs in the building to more efficient ones that save money on electricity, these places shouldn't factor in utility bills.

Then he complains about equipment and other expenses? Those are expenses that are going to happen regardless and it's not like the EC video said how much of an issue these expenses are.

As for voice actors, I'm not going to even bother, especially on here. Yeah complain about Hollywood actors coming in, which again is likely not for you but the rubes that get off to known actors acting in a game, but this subreddit is the same place that whined when voice actors went on strike. So nope, not even bothering.

Localization costs? Again, that was such a small part of the budget that EC mentioned. And I, as I'm sure gamers in other countries, are happy that games are being localized right away rather than waiting years for a release like back in the old days.

Them being greedy bastards is a point of contention? Why thinks these publishers are doing business out of the kindness of their hearts? This capitalism at work. They want more profits and we want a product so it's about finding that middle ground that works for both parties.

Aaaaaaaand here we go. The victim card. "I DIDN'T ASK FOR THESE GRAPHICS!" Well guess what ol' Jimbo, you maybe getting your rocks off to pixel art horror games, but that's not what millions of gamers that buy CoD, Madden and other AAA games want. I mean really, bringing up the Wii and how it outsold the PS3? Really? The Wii that stopped selling altogether after the iPad came out and couldn't touch the PS3 afterwards? As for Stardew Valley, it sold well, but not as well as any of the big Nintendo titles. He would have had a better argument if he went with Minecraft.

Now for marketing, he's complaining about how big franchises have big marketing budgets even though they're already established, but does he think that these games would sell just as much without a marketing push? Would the next CoD do well without any ads? I doubt it and frankly, a publisher isn't going to risk it in order to prove a point.

Regarding the games he brought up that were doing well without a marketing push such as PUBG, Rust and Minecraft simply ignores how many similar games are released that crash and burn.

In the end, he let something slip that really shows the mindset of those obsessed with this topic when at the end when talking about shareholders he said "We are to blame..."

No. Gamers aren't to blame. This is how the industry is changing and the EC video was there to explain things, and this coming from a guy who has his issues with EC. Think about how other industries have changed their business practices. Every airline used to allow checked bags and now for many, it's an extra charge. It used to cost $50 to get 2 tickets and a couple of hot dogs for a MLB game, now it's $50 just for one a ticket and $20 for 2 hot dogs.

The point being things change for various reasons and as a consumer, you can go along with it or tell the companies to piss off. Go out and buy a used game and don't buy any DLC. That option is available to you. Hell pirating is still out there. You have options and you can do whatever you like with those options. Gamers are not to blame, this is just the changing business and hell, a decade from now we could be going back to 16bit graphics and games for $20, who knows.

[u/TomLikesGuitar]

AAA programmer here.

Both Jim and EC are presenting two extremes with valid points. If you can't see that both sides of this argument are valid in many ways then you are biased and stubborn.

I have sat in meeting rooms with product teams during discussions about project plans going forward. I've seen cool, fun, nice-to-have feature ideas scrapped for development on microtransaction systems due to time restraints. I've also seen studios CLOSE DOWN after relatively good sales because the same publisher investment turned a MUCH larger profit elsewhere.

---

Is it true that game companies (like all companies) will pursue the largest profit available?

• Yes.

Is it also true that increasing the base price of a video game to $70 or $80 (or... gasp... a variable amount based on the game) would help studios justify foregoing the microtransactions instead of the nice-to-have, cool feature?

• You betcha.

---

I'm sure there will be endless arguments about this, but the whole thing can be summed up with 2 simple facts. I'll phrase them in a way that makes these companies sound evil since that's what I think many of you want to hear.

1. Companies try to make as much money as possible. That sucks, but it's life.

2. If you avoid giving them that money, they will find a way to get it. You can't fight the system.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]