The 30th most expensive game ever made?

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#1

So I thought how big a budget do they actually get? Then I googled this list:

Since 300k GBP are (about) 10% of what the private investor is putting there and since they will get about 1.2m GBP on Kickstarter and through Paypal (and of course Kickstarter and Amazon take about 5% of the raised money, Paypal also takes about 5% of each transaction), their budget should be approximately 4.2m GBP (I should also subtract the money they will spend on the swords and other goodies, but this goes into “marketing costs” which are part of those costs in the wikipedia list) which makes about 6.7m USD making it the 30th most expensive game.

Of course, the list is very extremal, the difference between the 1st and 7th place, for instance, is over 200m USD. And more money does not necessarily mean better quality (some of the very expensive games at the top of the list are good, but not all of them). Still, if the wikipedia list is correct (which is not all that clear given that “issues” box above it), it seems that Warhorse will have not have to worry about making too many compromises budget-wise and that’s good.

#2

*[citation needed] *

1 Like
#3

lol at APB… 50 millions for a game I never heard of before…? lol just lol

#4

Which is why I write “if the list is correct…”

@napoleonic I have never heard of about a third of the games from the list actually :smile: Especially that Disney thing sounded funny to me. And of course, the ludicruous budget of GTA V. And they have not even managed to release a PC version for that shitload of money yet :D.

#5

The list is correct on GTA V though, I think (It exceeded a billion $ in sales already; alone the marketing budget of gtaV was huge (tv ads; street ads; cinema ads and so on).
But the list is not a tiny bit complete and thats why you are not even close to the top 50 games with a budget of 6kk.
The list is missing out all the big games like Skyrim (around 80MIO*); Starcraft 2(WSJ said it exceeded 100Mio though the producers denied it; world of warcraft (over 100Mio*); And the list of big games is long. (COD series; Total War Series; Elder Scrolls; Witcher and so on)
Even small games for smartphones can cost a million bucks nowadays. What I’m saying is dont get too excited over the budget. Every Penny counts as it is still a small budget compared to the budget of other studios.

What they achieved with the budget thus far is amazing though!

#6

Well, then the wikipedia article is not just inaccurate, but wildly inaccurate. Well, that is probably why you have those warning signs above it :slight_smile: Thanks for the correction!

#7

i am more than convinced that gta, red dead, etc have those types of budgets.

the difference is the way they use it. ad campaigns. painting sides of buildings. according to chris roberts, typically only 30% budget of most major publishers go into the development of the game itself. i have no reason to doubt that.

and even then, big companies are hard to manage. 200 man teams plus tight schedules means crunchtime and overtime. wastefulness, poor coordination, etc. probably a lot of that money ends up being wasted.

oh man, and look at the end product. buggy, glitchy, ugly. and they endd up bankrupt as a result. i hope they release documentary about their work process to teach devs how NOT to make games.

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