The designer's explanation continues.

"The current game market is all about fighting for product value, and only the top 10 that do well will make money, and the other games will either be tied or lose to death. So why is everyone still doing AAA? Because the top ten basically made the money of the entire market, and distributed it to each game, the profit was much greater than ten years ago, so everyone worked hard to make quality and squeeze into the top ten. This is a virtuous circle. ”

Then, the designer was afraid that the audience would not understand what he just meant by small team, big team, so he further explained.

"When making a game, it was developed by a small team at the beginning, and this scale is generally supported by No. 50 people. These people just have to figure out what the game is, how to play it, how to do it, and so on, and so on, which is painful, but also very fulfilling. ”

"When it turns out that the game can be realized, it's not until it's fully rolled out, and that's when it's time to recruit people, determine the scale, and so on according to the cost budget. In general, a game of aaa requires at least 150 people. It will take these people nearly two years to complete the prototype of the game, and of course overtime is essential. ”

Then, the questioner went on to ask, what is the human cost?

The designer thought for a while, it should be mental arithmetic, and after the calculation, he continued to say with a smile: "We can calculate, the four operations at the elementary school level, the first is pre-, there are only fifty members of this pre-carried project, all of whom are elites or senior designers. Their average salary is about $80,000, and the number of years is one and five years, so you will know by multiplying it. Only at least six million dollars is required. ”

"Then, after pre-development. If the project is suitable, then carry out the research and development of the big project. ”

"And the big project will cost much more than the previous pre-development, because the number of people will be at least three times more, of course, this time in the big team, this time it is impossible to have all the senior designers, because to build such a large team, you need a lot of recruitment. A lot of them are inexperienced, don't think that studios like Ubisoft or EA will have so many people, they all recruit a lot when the team is formed. ”

"In this way, the average salary drops to seventy-five thousand, and the number is one hundred and fifty, which is the minimum, and the time is one and a half years, and multiplying these figures, it is about sixteen.8 million dollars."

"That is, just artificially on top. It will account for more than half of the 50 million R&D funds. ”

"Moreover, I still calculate according to the lowest number of people."

"In this way, if you count the wages alone, this is already 22.8 million. Accounting according to the company's operation. This true cost has to be multiplied by 2, so a total of 45.7 million is needed, I can't guarantee that this figure is absolutely correct, but * is not far from ten, after all, I have been in the industry for many years. ”

Then, after hearing the designer's answer, the questioner returned to square one again.

He asked: "So according to your calculations, is 50 million dollars really enough to make a 3A-level masterpiece?" ”

The Warner Montreal designer thought for a moment and shook his head: "It's not enough, there's still a big piece that hasn't been counted." It's marketing expenses, and there's actually a lot of attention paid to it. If it's not in the industry, you may not really know about it. ”

The audience made expressions of eagerness.

Let's put it this way, the reason why GTA is expensive is also because of the cost of the game market. But here's the thing. Generally speaking, the market fee is included in the cost of distribution, not as a development cost accounting, and the price of a triple-A masterpiece is 60 dollars, do you really think that all the 60 dollars can be obtained by developers? Then you are too naïve, on the platform, the publisher needs to share, according to my experience over the years, in the end, the sixty dollars, can fall into the developer's pocket, which is about 20 dollars of the sixty dollar selling price. ”

"If the studio or the developer is owned by the publisher, then it may get a little more share, but it won't be much, about five dollars more, that's twenty-five dollars, don't underestimate the five dollars, you must know that selling three million copies is the sales of "Bloody Scoundrel", and these five dollars are the gross profit of a full fifteen million dollars."

"This is why so many manufacturers now like to sell games on Steam more and more, and the reason why they like PC games is because, every time they sell a game on PC, they earn at least twice as much money as on the console."

"One final note."

"As a publisher, you need a certain amount of marketing fees every year, and this fee will be given to this game this year, and that game next year, and I have never seen a publisher who does not release games all year round, so this fee is there after all, and you can't escape it, so it is very reasonable not to count it in the development cost." This is the interview that Jester remembers in his mind about the cost of game development.

At that time, it still had a great influence on him.

It was only after reading this article that he had a very intuitive understanding of the distribution, development and sales of games.

Before Jester was also as many people thought, GTA5 sold 50 million copies, a copy of 60 dollars, isn't that as terrifying as a gross profit of 3 billion US dollars? In fact, the gross profit of R-Star is only about a little more than one-third of this figure, a billion dollars, of course, this is a lot.

When Jester walked into the conference room, it was already full of people.

Now the whole team has more than 90 people, and about 40 people are qualified to participate in this meeting, which is why Jester intends to maintain this scale within a year and carry out the pre-development of the game.

The information about the 'Era' project is available in the article issued by Jester before, so, after Jester announced the start of the meeting, he didn't say any nonsense, and went straight to the topic, the so-called main topic, which is the first part of the game development in Europe and the United States, brainstorming, Jester wants to hear other people's thoughts on this game.

Only by brainstorming can sparks of wisdom burst out.

Don't think that developing and designing a game is just a matter of design or planning, in fact, all the people on the entire development team can play a crucial role in the quality of a game.

For example, in the development of Blizzard's Diablo series, such examples are not uncommon.

At that time, the development team of "Diablo 2" consisted of three parts, not the common grouping of game development teams such as the program group, the art team and the planning team, but the program group, the character design group (including a qiē moving thing), the background design group (including a qiē moving thing), each team was probably a dozen people, why there was no planning group, that is, Blizzard at that time believed that all the personnel were the planners of this game, can participate in the content development and construction of this game.

It's very similar to Jester's philosophy.

To be precise, this is a philosophy that Jester learned from Blizzard.

Of course, these three teams are only the main development team of the "Diablo 2" project, in fact, because "Diablo" is still a Battle.net game, plus the * explosive CG in it, so, there are two other teams affiliated with Blizzard headquarters to assist in the development, one is called Blizzard-, their main job is to assist in the development of network code and support.

There was also the Blizzard Film Department, which later became an independent department, and at the time, it was still part of the Blizzard-in-house, where he was mainly responsible for the production of cutscenes, as well as assisting in the creation of storylines.

All graphics and cinematic animations in Diablo 2 were created and rendered using 3DstudioMax, while textures and 2D interfaces were mainly made in Shop. Programmers use C and C++ programming languages, and use VisualStudio and Safe as versioning tools.

At that time, it was Northern Blizzard who was in charge of this project, and after a few years, because of its opposition to the acquisition of Vivendi, it threatened to resign, and Northern Blizzard was completely disbanded and no longer existed.

One thing worth mentioning.

Many people say that without Northern Blizzard, the bloodline of the Dark series is not pure.

In fact, the predecessor of Northern Blizzard was called Vulture Studios, at the beginning, it was just a very small studio, and they were associated with Blizzard because they thought that Blizzard was looking for them to OEM a game, so that their technology was recognized by Blizzard headquarters, so it was directly acquired by Blizzard and renamed Northern Blizzard.

At that time, the first project after the establishment of Northern Blizzard, to be precise, was acquired during the discussion between this project and Blizzard headquarters, and this project was "Diablo".

It is precisely because of this willingness that many people feel that it is Northern Blizzard that has the bloodline of "Dark", not Blizzard itself.

Therefore, many people feel that the Northern Storm is disbanded, so the "Dark" series is not orthodox.

But in fact, what is the "Dark" series proposed by the Northern Storm, that is, Vulture Studios at the beginning? It might surprise you to say that they wanted to make this game a turn-based RPG! (To be continued) R466