Um, I contributed to this?

I just have to name one game to be right

Divinity: Original Sin

Kickstarter Page : $944,282
Eurogamer Article Stating Dev Cost: 4mil Euros=$4,800,800.00

So, that's less than 6 million dollars right?

 

My wife hires people (US Gov) she must allocate 65% of the annual budget per employee to admin. The remaining can go to salary and bonus. When she was working at PSU she had to allocate 80%.

Average salary is based on what the employer pays the employee. Not the overall cost per year per employee.

 

Divinity: Original Sin is an isometric RPG without an MMO mode and a much simpler feature set. But if you want to compare that to the development cost of just the single player aspect of SotA, then that sounds about right.

 

"much simpler feature set" ?!?!

What?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!! As far as the MMO part, not what he asked. And the Single Player is the Exact same thing as the Multiplayer in SotA unless I misread the FAQ and About page wrong.

 

I don't think it is a great idea to discuss salaries publically. To begin with, they change dramatically based on experience, skills, company and geography. Moreover, it is really none of our business.

 

And not what you claimed... As $4.8m is not "Half or even a tenth" of the current budget of SotA. Quite a bit more, actually.

And well... apples to oranges, anyway... if you are going to hold something up as comparable, then it has to fit the category. Divinity doesn't.

 

The content and quests will be the same in single player and multiplayer modes. But that does not mean that developing all the features for the MMO-like mode is free.

* Instancing
* Network code
* Guild system
* PvP system
* Party system
* Persistent player housing
* Decoration system for player housing
* Town siege system

The complexity of delivering systems like that can't be overlooked.

Divinity: Original Sin is a game that Larian worked on on-and-off for 15 years with a much larger studio. When they went to Kickstarter, they had a finished game and just wanted funding a few small new features and exposure.

I'm sure the total development cost over 15 years was WELL over the $4 million cited. Part of the reason it took 15 years to finally make the game was the complexity of online systems for multiplayer. So saying that Divinity: Original Sin was made cheap or quickly isn't true or a great comparison. Their multiplayer is MUCH simpler. It is a two person multiplayer and that is it. And that took YEARS.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...me_Larian_Studios_waited_15_years_to_make.php

 

Yep, this was what I was going to put....the game was near finished when the kickstarter started....this isn't even getting into the fact the studios is run in a cheaper area for development.

 

Divinity:OS has a great multiplayer component. They ONLY spent 4mil on it. It said so in the same article Ender linked. And it didn't take 15 years...

 

I don't quite understand the purpose of all of this fussing and comparisons to other game studios, their budgets, and employee salary speculation. Sure, there are going to be a few outlier data points where some studios are able to do amazing things on amazingly small budgets, but there are plenty of studios that spend more than SotA's budget only to cancel development, or have the game completely flop. So where does that leave you? Aside taking a jab at the SotA dev team, you can pretty much call it a wash. I don't think there is any arguing that SotA dev budget is modest. I think the game is coming along fine, and is actually further along than I would have expected it to be at this point in the development phase. I'm consistently pleased with the features that are added each release, and with the team's ability to respond to the community, both in terms of communication on the forums, and in way of bug fixes, and feature tweaks in the development of the game. All things considered I think SotA development is going well, and will continue to do so in the months to come.

 

Game didn't take over 15 years to make. Didn't go much over 4mil.

 

I don't know, people think 6 million dollars is not enough to make a great video game. My point that I made even without D:OS, is that there are plenty of great games that have come out over the past 5 years well under the 6 million mark. And if that's all SotA gets, they will make do.

 

Do you realize it is much cheaper for labor in different countries?

 

We going into Global Economics now? I don't have a degree in that kind of stuff. I just know that if I were to make a video game, I would do it in China

 

Oddly enough.. not one person in this thread has said 6 mil isn't enough. *shrug*

 

That game was GREAT!

 

I think you are several others here forget that we will not get one game. We will essentially get 5 games, one new episode release each year and all of that already have fundings.

 

That's not entirely the case, Morkul... while most people pledged to a level that would give them access to all five episodes, this funding drive is only for Episode One. The other four episodes are supposed to have their own fund drives, from all that I have read.

 

Yea but until you know how much of the money comes from those that have pledge less than $90 (Artisan that get episode 1-3) you simply don't know the budget for episode 1. Any how to say $6 mil for episode 1 are incorrect.

 

Take that back, or we will delete you.