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Quarterly Producer Letter for Q2 2024 ×

I love the game, but seriously, $300,000,000?


BOLTgamer

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you made thread two days ago wishing for them to cancel swtor? and now you love it? are you on drugs, bored or both?

 

Did you even read my thread?

 

"I wish they would cancel SWTOR because Im playing it to much and it's ruining my social life!"

 

-1 for you

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its painfully obvious some people have no clue what it takes to start a project of this level, much less knows what it takes to run a business

 

WoW cost what, 50 million? And it was way more bigger then any other game at the time!

 

This game has VO, so what, shouldn't cost 250 on vo

Edited by BOLTgamer
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I mean I love this game and all, but it took them that much to make? I mean, you would've made so much more money from making another Star Wars movie like the cinematics based on the old republic era, or making KOTOR 3 and 4. I'm in love with this game but if it took them this much im sorry, this game doesn't look 300million dollars!

 

It took 80 million. the problem is they spent 20 million on voice acting instead of game mechanics content and Devolpment , world design. There will be a massive burn off next sub cycle if the game is not enriched and devolped.

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It took 80 million. the problem is they spent 20 million on voice acting instead of game mechanics content and Devolpment , world design. There will be a massive burn off next sub cycle if the game is not enriched and devolped.

 

Thank you, this seems much more helpful, someone who actually can explain to me instead of bashing me. Good game, but I would love to see more done with this wide of a budget from EA.

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This probably. Probably overpaying employee's that work about 50% of the time and browse forums for the other 50%.

 

Umm..EA had been working their employees 100 hours a week 7 days a week and recently was sued for this behavior. Believe me, it's not the employees. They have a business model. Whatever makes them money, no matter how much is invested, is worth pursuing. If you can profit from the 200 million spent then why not do it? The free market is about money money money and nothing else. Hence the overworked employees.

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WoW cost what, 50 million? And it was way more bigger then any other game at the time!

 

This game has VO, so what, shouldn't cost 250 on vo

 

Wow was announced in 2001. 50 million 11 years ago...... let that sink in there a minute.

Wow was nowhere near as complex at launch.

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I mean I love this game and all, but it took them that much to make? I mean, you would've made so much more money from making another Star Wars movie like the cinematics based on the old republic era, or making KOTOR 3 and 4. I'm in love with this game but if it took them this much im sorry, this game doesn't look 300million dollars!

 

Before you make any more uninformed assumptions, do you know the average pay for Programmers, project managers, artists, designers, etc?

 

An average programmer is usually around $75k/yr to $150k/yr.

 

Assuming on the low end that you have 50 programmers (and this is a very low guess). You're looking at an average about $5 mil a year. This is not including employee benefits, taxes and other things. Now add in the average of all the other employees on the project.

 

Then add in the voice acting, possible Lucas royalties and Star Wars licensing.

 

Now times that by 5 years, or however long they said it took for this game to develop.

 

Then add that we don't have the official numbers on the true cost of this game's development.

 

Oh, and don't forget marketing, and their marketing team. That's usually a big chunk of the costs from any company.

 

Didn't add Lawyer fees either... you know, for licensing.

 

Now what do we get? That's right, a whole lot of assumptions and nothing conclusive to base your opinion on.

 

 

EDIT: Forgot to add in Server and maintenance costs. The list goes on...

Edited by Lazorous
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Before you make any more uninformed assumptions, do you know the average pay for Programmers, project managers, artists, designers, etc?

 

An average programmer is usually around $75k/yr to $150k/yr.

 

Assuming on the low end that you have 50 programmers (and this is a very low guess). You're looking at an average about $5 mil a year. This is not including employee benefits, taxes and other things. Now add in the average of all the other employees on the project.

 

Then add in the voice acting, possible Lucas royalties and Star Wars licensing.

 

Now times that by 5 years, or however long they said it took for this game to develop.

 

Then add that we don't have the official numbers on the true cost of this game's development.

 

Now what do we get? That's right, a whole lot of assumptions and nothing conclusive to base your opinion on.

 

And don't forget a lot of programmers that need to be fired. :)

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I bought a hotdog the other day for a dollar. after tasting it i went back to the guy who sold it to me and said "this hot dog is NOT worth 50 dollars!" and punched him in the face.

 

the audacity of these hotdog salesmen nowadays!

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I saw $500m at one point, lol

 

I've seen $600m quoted a couple times.

 

I'd guess the truth to be in the $150-200m range. Of that, I could see spending up to $50m just in startup costs to set up the servers/rackspace/datacenters. Then there is the cost of marketing (which WoW basically ignored at release) and the question of how much of those costs were overhead due to spinning up the Austin dev team.

 

The number is high, sure, but I don't think we really have any other games to compare this to at the moment. The reported $50m for WoW is a reasonable comparison, and I don't find the two to be so far apart to make SWTOR seem wasteful. I'd say the difference just about covers marketing + voices + better art/models + actual writers + initial setup (WoW had reduced costs due to a lot of pre-existing infrastructure).

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0.5 million people paying for 12 months is $90 million Plus the initial $60 million. That's almost breaking even. After a few years I'm sure they'll see a profit.

 

LOL.. YES here you go.. heres 200 million dollars to make a game thats an exact copy of an already existing game. Hopefully in a "couple years" we can suck enough people away froma game thats making 135mil/month and MAYBE turn a profit off our Initial INvestment. Yes.. what we are really looking to do here here folks is just squeek out a few bucks. We arent looking to pull in the same kind of cash that the other game we copied is making. Afterall.. WHY DID WE COPY IT. I mean.. we could have just invested our 200 million dollars in a low risk slow growth investment and in a "couple years" we could easily have made our money plus 5-10% extra. Yes.. We here at BW and EA are just looking to eek by, which is why we put out great products such as SWTOR.

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I've seen $600m quoted a couple times.

 

I'd guess the truth to be in the $150-200m range. Of that, I could see spending up to $50m just in startup costs to set up the servers/rackspace/datacenters. Then there is the cost of marketing (which WoW basically ignored at release) and the question of how much of those costs were overhead due to spinning up the Austin dev team.

 

The number is high, sure, but I don't think we really have any other games to compare this to at the moment. The reported $50m for WoW is a reasonable comparison, and I don't find the two to be so far apart to make SWTOR seem wasteful. I'd say the difference just about covers marketing + voices + better art/models + actual writers + initial setup (WoW had reduced costs due to a lot of pre-existing infrastructure).

 

Wow was announced 11 years ago. You can bet they were in initial development before that. 50 million 11 years ago does not equal 50 million today. Cannot compare the two.

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I would like to see how much was spent on copyright, tm and the other legal crap involved.

Music and voice acting = royalties over 4...5 years is how much?

You just don't throw alot of money at something and it appears....loan payments, interest....waiting for copyright permission, overviews this all adds up. Star wars isn't cheap.

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LOL.. YES here you go.. heres 200 million dollars to make a game thats an exact copy of an already existing game. Hopefully in a "couple years" we can suck enough people away froma game thats making 135mil/month and MAYBE turn a profit off our Initial INvestment. Yes.. what we are really looking to do here here folks is just squeek out a few bucks. We arent looking to pull in the same kind of cash that the other game we copied is making. Afterall.. WHY DID WE COPY IT. I mean.. we could have just invested our 200 million dollars in a low risk slow growth investment and in a "couple years" we could easily have made our money plus 5-10% extra. Yes.. We here at BW and EA are just looking to eek by, which is why we put out great products such as SWTOR.

 

You are like a bumbling idiot, paragraphs are your friend.

Wow doesn't make 135million a month. Not all subs pay $15. This is common knowledge that has obviously passed you.

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Bioware spent 150-200 million on the project. They didnt spend more than 200 million, but it very well could through new content in the coming years.

 

What I found hilarious was that during the anti-TOR campaign (which is still going on i guess), the price tag kept getting higher. It was absolutely hilarious. I remember lurking /v/ just skimming the hate threads, seeing posts like "Oh boy, looks like everyone is abandoning the TORtanic! 300 mil and counting!" "380 million on a piece of crap, blunder of the century" "450m.... WHAT WERE YOU THINKING EA" "enjoy your 500 million dollar **** stain of a game, Biodrones"

 

All in consecutive order. I, quite possibly, have never laughed harder.

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You are like a bumbling idiot, paragraphs are your friend.

Wow doesn't make 135million a month. Not all subs pay $15. This is common knowledge that has obviously passed you.

 

Not only that, but saying that SWTOR is a direct copy of WoW is silly. It's like saying that WoW is a direct copy of EQ. They're spiritual predecessors, that's all. They share features. But that's it.

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Still haven't figured out if you love the game why does it matter how much it cost to make? It's standard pricing on it: $60/Box, $15/mos. What's what the manufacturing cost mean to you if it's not reflected in any way in its cost to you?

 

If you liked Avatar, why would you care what the price tag was if it doesn't affect ticket pricing? Are you an investor? Was it your money?

Edited by Scar
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