Six million dollars on a trailer, Zero dollars on MMO content...

[CorellianWannabe]

Every game developer spends heaps of money on trailers and video content that doesn't represent game play. Would I prefer them to spend all that money on the game instead, absolutely.. but it's not like they aren't doing what every other developer does, so you really can't call it mismanagement.

 

And if the vast majority of those games are failures (as the MMO landscape in particular has shown) is it mismanagement?

Edited October 8, 2016 by CorellianWannabe

[CorellianWannabe]

Obviously, they believe the meat and potatoes is the story, which they spent the money on. If you think it's the group content, then you're mistaken.

 

The story with brain-dead combat thrown in to break up the cutscenes for a railroaded, cliched plot is the meat and potatoes? I'd hate to see what they offer for dessert then.

[AlienEyeTX]

My only assumption is this - EA gives $XXX amount to develop the game, and $XXX amount to market the game...this falls under "marketing" and is not $ that could have been used for development.

 

Yes, the money is from different buckets. These videos are a great spend of marketing dollars. That, of course entices people to spend and the money that comes in fills both buckets (and more).

[Tsillah]

The story with brain-dead combat thrown in to break up the cutscenes for a railroaded, cliched plot is the meat and potatoes? I'd hate to see what they offer for dessert then.

 

You did read that story content will get 3 difficulty modes right? So the combat may not be so braindead then...

[Andryah]

Pretty sure galactic command is just the new fancy word for alliance, like how premium is the new word for subscriber.

 

Pretty sure every MMO is basically the same broad game mechanics borrowed from other MMOs with a new name and some minor innovations stamped on them. Specific approaches vary by MMO... but they are all basically the same.. including raids/OPs.. which some MMOs put more emphasis on then others....but they remain repetitive treadmills like just about every other content in an MMO, with the only difference being larger group sizes and encounter mechanics that force players into a gear grind at end game. To some people... this is honey... to others (including a lot of former raiders in MMO) they are crushed glass disguised as ice.

Edited October 8, 2016 by Andryah

[Andryah]

Keep in mind that those numbers are a internet rumor neither Blur nor any of the company's they worked for so far has ever made the actual production cost public as far as iam aware.

 

Yeah.. the internet meme of it being 1M per minute is absurd. CGI is complex and time consuming, but it does not require that sort of capital investment for a company who has it has their core competency (and hence have all the infrastructure and staff in place to turn key any theme presented to them).

 

More likely it runs around 250k per minute, out the door, ready to publish. Which puts this trailer in the 1.5M dollar range, and that would include a healthy profit for Blur. Could also be that EA has a contract with Blur and gets an even better rate than this... on contract for multiple trailers.

 

A high quality trailer is MARKETING (not development funding) money well spent in todays market.. as it makes it extremely easy to proliferate across the world of social media and the internet as a whole. The only thing missing is to have an abbreviated format that can be shown in one minute as a preview in conjunction with the Disney release of a SWTOR movie (they have committed to release a new one every year for the forseeable future). But this is Disney's decision regarding theater trailers, not EAs.

Edited October 8, 2016 by Andryah

[Transcendent]

You did read that story content will get 3 difficulty modes right? So the combat may not be so braindead then...

 

They should have released that with 4.0 and level sync, not wait a whole expansion cycle. No excuses for it.

 

Could also be that EA has a contract with Blur and gets an even better rate than this... on contract for multiple trailers.

 

BioWare / EA Marketing would have contracted the trailers most likely at the same time (maybe for more than one game), no doubt at a set price. It does require investment to do that, and that means there is a budget in there for SWTOR, which has to be a good thing.

 

It's a shame that it doesn't translate directly over to providing an increased budget for the game developers to give them more manpower to nail down a lot of things that have been recently lacking in the games development, such as group content.

Edited October 8, 2016 by Transcendent

[TheRomanRuler]

Even if your made up numbers are correct, it still might be worth it for EAoware. Marketing is important. We already have MMO stuff, and apparently we are getting more of that in 2017, so it well might be better to spend money on marketing rather than MMO stuff.

[Exly]

I have nothing witty to say, no snarky remarks or nerdrage. I stand in sheer awe at the flagrant mismanagement of this game. Its mind muddleing, in what bizarro world alternate diminsion can this happen? Please, somebody justify this misallocation of resources because I cant wrap my head around it.

 

Your post got me thinking, and so I spent about 2 or 3 minutes working out how much staff time they could buy with 6 million dollars. Assuming an annual expense of $100k per person, 6 million dollars would pay for 60 peoples time for one year. Stated another way, it would pay for approximately 120k hours of peoples time.

 

Now, I have no idea how any hours of people time it takes to develop an operation or warzone, but I imagine that 120k hours would be enough to develop a reasonable number of them.

 

With that in mind, I do agree that it would be nice if the folks at EA would direct more funds to the development of group content, and I also think that taping into the funds that they use to produce trailers would make sense if they only have a limited budget, and need to be careful that they do not spend too much money in order to remain profitable.

[Exly]

Yeah.. the internet meme of it being 1M per minute is absurd. CGI is complex and time consuming, but it does not require that sort of capital investment for a company who has it has their core competency (and hence have all the infrastructure and staff in place to turn key any theme presented to them).

 

More likely it runs around 250k per minute, out the door, ready to publish. Which puts this trailer in the 1.5M dollar range, and that would include a healthy profit for Blur. Could also be that EA has a contract with Blur and gets an even better rate than this... on contract for multiple trailers.

 

A high quality trailer is MARKETING (not development funding) money well spent in todays market.. as it makes it extremely easy to proliferate across the world of social media and the internet as a whole. The only thing missing is to have an abbreviated format that can be shown in one minute as a preview in conjunction with the Disney release of a SWTOR movie (they have committed to release a new one every year for the forseeable future). But this is Disney's decision regarding theater trailers, not EAs.

 

I am not sure where you get your number from, but if you could produce some kind of evidence to support what you think that would be great.

[Rolodome]

I understand the general sentiment of wanting to see more stuff get done and feel like the money is going in SWTOR, not making EA rich or going into other games. I, too, have had that feeling "is it really worth the money spent on a trailer like that?" But...

 

I have a caveat. Making content like KOTFE provided (or what KOTET will likely provide)... content that is cutscene heavy, V/O heavy, dialogue-heavy, etc. That's not cheap. If it was, everybody would be jumping on the bandwagon to get those extra dollars from lovers of high-def story content.

 

So if you're wondering where all of the money is going, that's likely where the majority is disappearing into. The sink hole that is, essentially, making CGI movies, intermingled with gameplay. It adds up and these guys are trying to pump it out fast enough to match the "normal" content turnaround of other games.

 

I don't know if you're underestimating the cost of most of the game content or not (maybe I'm just assuming you are) but you wouldn't be the first to underestimate it and you won't be the last. I'd be willing to bet that the money spent on the blur trailer is only a fraction of the budget for KOTET as a whole. Millions sounds like a lot to us, but this is AAA game development, where teams are typically over a hundred people. In the initial development (prior to a game's launch) sometimes it's as many as 4-5 hundred. That's why pretty much every time a major MMO title releases, you see something about staff layoffs not longer after... a lot of people get hired on to do temp game dev work and then when they're no longer needed, they're gone.

 

I could be wrong about how much is spent on KOTET, but that is how it strikes me. My initial reaction was more or less the same as yours until I thought about it more.

[Evilatsixtyfour]

Just my opinion, but Bioware states KotFE represents a return to the heart of what an RPG is , I.e. the story, with choices that matter, (though I admit it doesn't change the ultimate outcome). If you've played Biowares other RPGs like the Dragon Age Trilogy..your choices have major consequences to the story...the main character can even die before the game ends. Imagine the Outlander getting snuffed out by Vaylin for example before the climax at end of Chap 16!

[TheRomanRuler]

Imagine the Outlander getting snuffed out by Vaylin for example before the climax at end of Chap 16!

 

See that is problem with MMORPGs. You can`t have characters dying like that.

[Andryah]

I am not sure where you get your number from, but if you could produce some kind of evidence to support what you think that would be great.

 

Using current Hollywood production planning/budget/bidding practices, baseline costs in 2016 are roughly:

 

Setting the bar at "photo-realistic" which I think is appropriate for this CGI trailer, the current industry norms are on the order of $5k-10K per shot delivered, depending on complexity of the shot.

 

The average shot in CGI planning is 5-7 seconds. That equates to $60K to $120K per minute for photorealistic CGI, if we assume the low end of seconds/pershot. for the sake of pessimism, let's assume all shots are complex (though I don't see that in the trailer to be honest) and assume the high end of the cost per shot. So that means 12 shots per minute of end product.

 

Now.. no production of CGI, even short ones like this trailer are ever done perfectly on the first pass. There is always some reshots. Production movies in Hollywood tend to do a lot of editing and re-scripting of shots, which of course drives up costs accordingly. For a short trailer style CGI production, such as this, a reasonable plan for bidding purposes would be to assume 2x the budget for reshots. That would raise the delivery cost to $120K-240K per minute of final product. I simply threw used the high end estimate and rounded up to the nearest 50K ... and... you get $250k per minute.

 

There is a lot of competiton in the CGI space these days, so it is a buyers market. If EA and Blur have a long term multi-production contract, I would expect them to be working in the neighborhood of $200K per minute... but let's go with my high end rounded up estimate of $250K per minute. If the shots end up less difficult, and or there are less reshots.. of course the price drops from there.

 

If you take all of the above and roll it back through recent samples of CGI production costs for something like Game of Thrones CGI costs per episode (just the CGI part), it matches fairly closely.

Edited October 9, 2016 by Andryah

[IanArgent]

I understand the general sentiment of wanting to see more stuff get done and feel like the money is going in SWTOR, not making EA rich or going into other games. I, too, have had that feeling "is it really worth the money spent on a trailer like that?" But...

 

I have a caveat. Making content like KOTFE provided (or what KOTET will likely provide)... content that is cutscene heavy, V/O heavy, dialogue-heavy, etc. That's not cheap. If it was, everybody would be jumping on the bandwagon to get those extra dollars from lovers of high-def story content.

 

Money-wise, it probably is pretty cheap. Genre writers are paid pretty poorly. VAs are paid pretty poorly as well. The animators, (guys who use the tools to stage and perform the cutscenes) are paid pretty poorly. The twist is - it all takes time, and it's time that you can't pile on extra people to shorten. The labor may be cheap, but it's not free, and its not quick, and you 're limited in how much you can stack the tasks. So not only is it timewise expensive, but it's not the kind of expensive you can fix by throwing money at the problem.

 

We don't see it in the MMO space, because the MMO space is basically a bunch of shoestring companies and Blizzard.

 

(QA is the same thing timewise, but QA drones are somewhat more interchangeable than authors, voice actors, and animators. But it still takes time to do proper QA, and there is a learning curve for the specific environments).

[Rolodome]

Money-wise, it probably is pretty cheap. Genre writers are paid pretty poorly. VAs are paid pretty poorly as well. The animators, (guys who use the tools to stage and perform the cutscenes) are paid pretty poorly. The twist is - it all takes time, and it's time that you can't pile on extra people to shorten. The labor may be cheap, but it's not free, and its not quick, and you 're limited in how much you can stack the tasks. So not only is it timewise expensive, but it's not the kind of expensive you can fix by throwing money at the problem.

 

We don't see it in the MMO space, because the MMO space is basically a bunch of shoestring companies and Blizzard.

 

(QA is the same thing timewise, but QA drones are somewhat more interchangeable than authors, voice actors, and animators. But it still takes time to do proper QA, and there is a learning curve for the specific environments).

Maybe so. I don't have any actual data on KOTFE production costs. But if you take into consideration the estimates for the cost of building the original SWTOR (assuming those estimates are at all accurate) it's probably in the millions for each expansion. I guess we haven't really established what "cheap" even means, so it's kind of an ungrounded argument.

 

One thing to keep in mind with V/O budget is that the player character VAs have been with the game since the beginning, so unless they have crappy agents and are being strung along on contract with no better job prospects, I doubt they're getting paid poorly. How much each VA gets paid, similar to actors, probably has more to do with their agent and the clout they hold in the industry, than SWTOR's budget itself. So I would imagine it's on a sliding scale, with guys like the player character VAs getting paid the highest, KOTFE's main characters going up a bit from KOTET but not by much, and then the more generic VAs getting paid significantly less (the bit parts).

 

As a sort of aside, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some money politics that goes on between BW and EA, not unlike what happens with government and cities, where BW has the budget that they want to fulfill their goals and then EA has the amount of money that they want to give BW (which is nothing). So BW has to make a case for every aspect of the budget and convince EA that it's all money they strictly need for the game.

 

A problem that a combined publisher/developer wouldn't necessarily have, especially if their main source of revenue is one title. The combined publisher/developer can then just funnel every excess into their flagship title and make it that much better. But then you have the risk... if that title goes south in its profits, it threatens the financial stability of the entire company. So to prevent that, the company diversifies and sooner or later, you wind up with the situation we have now. Where most companies have either gone belly up, or are answering to a mega publisher like EA or Ubisoft.

[Nommaz]

I literally just resubbed this month to play the "Story" 9-16, I am currently the only one on in a guild that would have had a solid 30 people on right now, the focus on the story only has effected the game, surely even the white knighters can see the number drop...

I am sure that the person that got a please explain the sub drop probably told them its just normal, people leave, etc etc etc, but the lack of group content is what killed our guild, I know I talk to most of them regularly and it the sole reason they have all gone.

 

I do not doubt there is people leaving for other reasons, but you guys in this thread berating the OP and saying yeah right that way, take a good look around.

 

on another point reading thru the thread someone said grp content in January, can I ask where you saw that ??

[Rolodome]

I literally just resubbed this month to play the "Story" 9-16, I am currently the only one on in a guild that would have had a solid 30 people on right now, the focus on the story only has effected the game, surely even the white knighters can see the number drop...

I am sure that the person that got a please explain the sub drop probably told them its just normal, people leave, etc etc etc, but the lack of group content is what killed our guild, I know I talk to most of them regularly and it the sole reason they have all gone.

 

I do not doubt there is people leaving for other reasons, but you guys in this thread berating the OP and saying yeah right that way, take a good look around.

 

on another point reading thru the thread someone said grp content in January, can I ask where you saw that ??

What we know about group content at the moment is that KOTET has something called uprisings that could be like FPs, but with solo modes as well. The details are not concrete yet.

 

We also know that ops are not coming with KOTET, but that they intend to talk about group content more in January and it's possible there could be group content coming down the pipeline in early 2017. But it's very "who knows what will come" kind of situation.

 

Source: http://dulfy.net/2016/10/08/swtor-news-nycc-cantina/

[Darkbloom]

What we know about group content at the moment is that KOTET has something called uprisings that could be like FPs, but with solo modes as well. The details are not concrete yet.

 

I've realized that whether or not I like KOTET enough to keep subscribing is probably going to really hinge on these Uprisings.

 

I believe I have a good guess as to what they might be like, after seeing the kind of content being produced in mobile games and games like Destiny. Also, the Eternal Championship was VASTLY better than any other solo content this game ever produced. Like, massively better.

 

If Uprisings are what they could be, if Uprisings are as big an improvement on 4-person content as the Eternal Championship was on solo content, I'll probably stay subbed until the game finally dies. If Uprisings are only as good as existing flash point content, though, eh, that's not enough.

[Rolodome]

I've realized that whether or not I like KOTET enough to keep subscribing is probably going to really hinge on these Uprisings.

 

I believe I have a good guess as to what they might be like, after seeing the kind of content being produced in mobile games and games like Destiny. Also, the Eternal Championship was VASTLY better than any other solo content this game ever produced. Like, massively better.

 

If Uprisings are what they could be, if Uprisings are as big an improvement on 4-person content as the Eternal Championship was on solo content, I'll probably stay subbed until the game finally dies. If Uprisings are only as good as existing flash point content, though, eh, that's not enough.

I'm just hoping they aren't like those things in KOTFE that are so memorable their name escapes me entirely... the things with the planets or whatever that are reskins of each other and are tedious to do solo.

 

My hope is that each one is unique and they are built for both solo and group play. I don't think I'd mind if they are enough like FPs to get put in the queue. I think we differ some on preference, cause I didn't find EC to be all that interesting.

 

I can understand the desire for things that break the mold, but I guess I'm more cynical about them doing so and actually making something that would be a hit.

[Nefla]

Well, 0 dollars does match the amount "MMO" content is worth to me and the number of minutes I've spent using it.

[Aeristash]

The trailer isn't made in house at bioware. They're made by a company called Blur who does contract work for all kinds of game dev studios etc at a rate of about 1 million per minute.

 

You won't be seeing anywhere near that quality in a "cutscene", this is just to draw in people who have no idea about what swtor is, it's a marketing device.

 

1 million per minute? Blur created the Four and Half minute Cgi short 'Gopher broke' and the 8 and half minute 2010 short Rockfish for 1.6 million total with their overall rates.

 

Source

[IanArgent]

Maybe so. I don't have any actual data on KOTFE production costs. But if you take into consideration the estimates for the cost of building the original SWTOR (assuming those estimates are at all accurate) it's probably in the millions for each expansion. I guess we haven't really established what "cheap" even means, so it's kind of an ungrounded argument.

 

My point (which I didn't make as clearly as I ought to have) is that money isn't the limiting factor. Time is.

 

One thing to keep in mind with V/O budget is that the player character VAs have been with the game since the beginning, so unless they have crappy agents and are being strung along on contract with no better job prospects, I doubt they're getting paid poorly. How much each VA gets paid, similar to actors, probably has more to do with their agent and the clout they hold in the industry, than SWTOR's budget itself. So I would imagine it's on a sliding scale, with guys like the player character VAs getting paid the highest, KOTFE's main characters going up a bit from KOTET but not by much, and then the more generic VAs getting paid significantly less (the bit parts).

 

I have friends in the computer gaming industry and genre writing industry. I follow a bunch more folks in the industries. A long time ago I used to work in the computer gaming (and specifically MMO) industry. (College job). With one or two exceptions, they are all paid poorly, especially on a per-hour worked basis. The recent brouhaha about VA "standard contracts" (there was a VA strike a year or so back) had a fair # of legitimate grievances listed in their justifications.

 

As a sort of aside, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some money politics that goes on between BW and EA, not unlike what happens with government and cities, where BW has the budget that they want to fulfill their goals and then EA has the amount of money that they want to give BW (which is nothing). So BW has to make a case for every aspect of the budget and convince EA that it's all money they strictly need for the game.

 

A problem that a combined publisher/developer wouldn't necessarily have, especially if their main source of revenue is one title. The combined publisher/developer can then just funnel every excess into their flagship title and make it that much better. But then you have the risk... if that title goes south in its profits, it threatens the financial stability of the entire company. So to prevent that, the company diversifies and sooner or later, you wind up with the situation we have now. Where most companies have either gone belly up, or are answering to a mega publisher like EA or Ubisoft.

 

This is a fairly common "conspiracy theory" I hear on these boards, and that's what I file it under. (That EA takes money from SWTOR and does not give back in proportion. EA doesn't need to funnel money from other projects into their "flagships." They are all proven moneymakers already.

[Darknestknight]

I'm not sure why all this is so complicated to people?

 

Marketing and development have 2 completely separate budgets.

 

Bioware is continuing to develop the game based on what makes money for them, the same way in your own jobs you do what is in your role to earn your pay, so if you're meant to be selling doughnuts and you start juggling instead I'm pretty sure you'd earn nothing, thus you do what you do to make money no different from them (I am aware this is a terrible analogy).

 

So here's the key points:

 

No MMO content? Wrong, uprisings and story are part of MMO content, a more accurate version of what you are saying is "Bioware spent money on a trailer and not specifically on what I want".

 

I won't get into trailer costs because let's be completely honest here, you have no clue whatsoever how much it cost, neither do I. Throwing out random numbers is pointless.

 

Raids, this is the big argument as far as I can see. From what I can see it's a problem that a minority of the community (albeit a very vocal one) want, that's great, I'm not a part of bioware but the way I see it is that they are making money on the parts of the game that are profitable, operations do not make them money, let's be fair here, does it involve any direct purchase? No. Subscription certainly but wait all you guys who threatened to quit the game if there aren't any ops have already left haven't you? You're just on the forums to talk to people because you miss them? Hmmmmmm I think not. Put it this way, go into supermarkets, you'll find an awful lot of items there are being sold either at cost or for less, the reason they can do this is because they are making very high profit margins on other items, same way bioware makes money from its story content.

 

There WILL be new ops, I have no doubt whatsoever. Will it be in 2016? No. 2017, quite possibly.

 

The simple matters you need to weigh up is this: do I enjoy this game enough to pay for it? Yes or no. If no, do I enjoy this game enough to play it as a f2p? If yes, do so, if not then leave. We don't need you to post on the forums begging for attention, we don't need flame posts, cancel any subscriptions, delete all your characters and leave. I left the game for more than 2 years when I didn't enjoy it anymore, no fanfare, just like I came back and stayed because I enjoyed it again. Don't be the child that tells everyone he's running from home because he didn't get what he wanted for Christmas. Just leave the game and find something you love to play instead, your negativity harms you and you alone.

 

PS sorry for what will likely be full of grammatical and spelling errors, did this on phone without proofreading.

[Sundragon]

MMO Trailers for any "major" expansion are expected by the community. Furthermore, MMO executives have found that exciting trailers generate many more subscriptions. If you release a major expansion without a trailer, you will not see a surge in subscriptions, thus making it harder to justify the expense of the expansion. Subscriptions pay for the game, combined with CC purchases.

 

So tell me, if you were an MMO executive and decided to produce an expansion, would you also invest in the production of a trailer as part of the cost of the expansion or would you simply release an expansion without a trailer?

 

You guys pretend that the executives are all morons. You pretend that they only are after money without any benefit to the game, not realizing that without the money grab, there would not be a game in the first place. You want them to create the perfect game, spend resources based upon your desires for the game. When you find that they don't, you never consider that perhaps it is because many people aren't buying subscriptions for another operation, or another PvP warzone, or fixing Ilum. If they were, they would focus on that. Instead, people are buying subscriptions for more story content, so that's what we're getting.

 

God bless capitalism. Without it, there wouldn't even be an MMO.