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Quarterly Producer Letter for Q2 2024 ×

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


BOLTgamer

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If price tag keeps escalating at this rate Bioware would have been better off building a real Death Star and extorting the entire planet for all it's money.

 

How do you know they didn't??? This game could just be the front you know.

 

Meanwhile, back at the BioWare office..

 

"How much longer until the battle station is fully armed and operational?"

 

"Almost ready, sir. I just need to roll out a quick patch and notes write-up to keep them distracted for just a little while longer"

Edited by Code_Airwolf
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I find it odd how the price tag in the last month has gone from $80 million to $100 million, $125M, $150M, $200M and now $300M.

 

If price tag keeps escalating at this rate Bioware would have been better off building a real Death Star and extorting the entire planet for all it's money.

 

I am pretty sure the 200+ mill budget and the game were revealed at the same time because I remember reading the news somewhere about it. It's not a made up number. It exists, it's just that you are late to party.

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you're all idiots, no one knows the cost.

 

Except most Bioware employees, their investors, EA, and many market analysis's (those who actually get paid for their work, not internet bloggers) have an accurate estimate.

 

Your half right at least, most people in this thread are indeed idiots for thinking the project cost more than 200 million.

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The "$200+ million" number is, from where I saw it, a Shacknews article that actually said "over $200 million." Now, if it were actually around $225, $250, or even $300 million, they would have gone with something closer to that number. "Over $200 million" means as little as $200,000,000.01 to... well technically, I guess there is no upper limit. But why would a news agency NOt report a more accurate number? And I don't buy the "EA bought them off" excuse I know someone will throw out - there'd be no logical reason to do that, especially given how much it would cost to do such a thing to begin with.

 

That gave some more estimates of how many people were involved with the work and such on that, since it gave something like... 1,000 hours of VO recording for over 4,000 lines in six languages or some crazy number like that. And remember, that's more than just the people reading the lines - that's the people needed to use the recording equipment, probably a voice-over director, the usage fees for recording the dialogue in a booth somewhere (even if EA owns the booth, someone else could have been using the booth at the time)... there's a lot of "stuff" that gets factored in.

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Wouldn't really surprise me all that much. There is a lot of voice acting work, and voice acting is stupid expensive. Expensive because of the actors guild and all that, and because you want people with at least a moderate amount of talen. And stupid because it provides negligable actual benefit to the game. I space through most of the conversations after reading the text anyways. I rather expect that spoken dialog vs. text dialog wouldn't exactly be a deal breaker for many. Heck, pretty sure wow has mostly text dialog, and it seems to be doing alright. And in SWTOR, I suspect getting rid of the spoken dialog would actually improve things. Certainly make flashpoints a whole lot less boring.

 

Now, somebody suggested that the difference is the same as that between silent movies and talkies, and how dare I come down on the side of the silent movies.

 

Problem is... it isn't the same from a cost perspective. Silent actors weren't acting in movies for free. And it's not like they were suddenly making triple their pay because they were now talking in their movies. Regardless of whether you were making a silent movie or a talkie, you still had to pay your actors. With games it's different. w/o voice acting, there aren't any actors you have to pay. With them. You do. Significant production cost increase.

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I like this game, who cares that it costs around 200m

 

Because if it wasnt Star wars it looks like some mid budget type affair.

 

In its present state.

 

I got sucked in like thousands of others ...

 

OO OO Star Wars MMO , Bioware making , praise be we MMOers are saved and look at the high rez textures ingame from the screenshots ^^

 

Its gonna be one mega MMo to beat em all ........

 

The above view i had and what a slap in the face generally its been .

Edited by Urko
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Most of it is to pay for the voice acting i bet. Because it sure ain't on the engineers LOL.

 

Okay, so I see this statement going around the forums very frequently and I just want to chime in and clear things up at least to some degree. Hiring voice actors does not cost millions of dollars, it won't even cost close to a million UNLESS you're hiring actors such as Bratt Pitt or Natalie Portman for example, then you'll probably reach the hundred thousand mark.

 

I know this for a fact because I have a few friends here that do voice acting for studios such as WB, Disney, etc. They are seasoned voice actors for both the movie and video game industries. One of them was a voice actor for the Justice League cartoon from WB a few years back and he did that the whole time it was aired, from 01-06 and he wasn't filthy rich after. Also you have to put into consideration that some voice actors also do multiple characters as well so it's not like they're hiring an army or voice actors.

 

Hope that clears it up a bit and give you the insight that voice acting isn't in the same pay range as heart surgery as some of you think.

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Because if it wasnt Star wars it looks like some mid budget type affair.

 

In its present state.

 

I got sucked in like thousands of others ...

 

OO OO Star Wars MMO , Bioware making , praise be we MMOers are saved and look at the high rez textures ingame from the screenshots ^^

 

Its gonna be one mega MMo to beat em all ........

 

The above view i had and what a slap in the face generally its been .

 

Which still never explained why anyone cares what it cost to make if it doesn't effect the cost to the consumer.

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what do you mean isn't worth it? Why isn't it worth it....and please don't be a drone and go by what all the others say.

 

This game is going to continue to grow...bioware was smart. They didn't give it ALL to us what they have in the beginning like RIFT. Trion's mistake was simple, too much too fast. They gave the players what the wanted at the launch and then ran out of content in a couple of months.

 

Whereas BioWare released with what they have and will keep building on that and have teams that will constantly work on future content updates and expansions.

 

But if you don't like the game...leave :) do what you love

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This game has a very garbage design I'm running a I5 750 quad core with a ATI 6970 and still get lag at times.

 

one of the dev blogs said they are having performance issues right now with ATI 6900 series cards and are working on it. Sith happens

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I live in New York and there is a GIGANTIC ad campaign going on for SWTOR during December. I work in outdoor advertising and what they have in Times Square has to cost 600K per month minimum just for ONE building wrap. Not to mention bus shelter and phone kiosk posters, etc.

 

Television commercials? Only the biggest budget games have TV spots. In NY thats easily 2 million a WEEK and they've been running these ads for months.

 

So when you hear astronomical budgets, consider promotion.

 

The other major cost is more than likely going to be the voice actors.

 

cheers

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