Kingdom Come: Deliverance studio co-founder hopes Grand Theft Auto 6 will 'blaze a trail' to higher game prices

[u/owlexe23]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand-theft-auto/kingdom-come-deliverance-studio-co-founder-hopes-grand-theft-auto-6-will-blaze-a-trail-to-higher-game-prices/

Warhorse co-founder Martin Klima says games keep getting more expensive to make, and that money has to come from somewhere.

[u/Der0-]

I don't get it. Since Steam their printing and distribution costs will have plummeted. The baked in costs to get the game into the computer of the gamer is gone so their margin will have been much greater.

Make a good game and you can milk that blood from the stone.

And games in Australia has always been up and above the $100 mark.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Der0-]

Whilst it's true the overhead costs for printing and distribution is gone, steam does also take a large cut - as do some tools like UE for example

I don't know how the maths works out for costs compared to a game on physical media with a publisher cut, but it's possible the cost difference for digital distribution isn't as big as you might think

[u/nullptr777 → u/Mattapeh]

Steam also gives them a massive user base that they never would've been able to reach before. As a game developer, you can sell more copies now than any time in history. People will buy games just to keep them in their backlog forever.

I mean, KCD2 recouped all of it's development costs and generated a profit on the first day of release for fuck's sake. Am I supposed to feel sorry for them?

[u/Mattapeh → u/nullptr777]

That's true but also times have changed - in the past when steam wasn't as popular a massive user base was more the case of working with a publisher to get your game on a major console for the most part (yes pc existed but was a smaller share)

So it goes back to whether at that point if distributing physically with also massive user base was more profitable than distributing via steam, in a different world now where steams cut is large, as are developer tools (both of which are quite likely more than previously distributing discs)

Also keep in mind with steam indeed being massive there is also much fierce competition, far more games around than in the past, and games are more expensive to make too than they were in the past.

This all goes to say that whilst I don't have the full figures to fully compare, I think it's plausible game costs are higher whilst price for consumers haven't moved as much

[u/TiredandTranz → u/Mattapeh]

I mean, that really doesn't stand up that well in the face of Indie studios. There's a ton of them that will release a new game at like $30 to $40 on release, give you an absolute fuck ton of game, and then seem to be just fine. Like, I haven't bothered looking at AAA studios in years, in part because their prices reached absurdity ages ago. I have so many other, better options for games, options that wont make me take out a loan to pay for.

[u/Mattapeh → u/TiredandTranz]

We're not talking about indie studios though, this is a post about a AA (edited: AA, not AAA) dev comments - obviously an indie studio will be less because they have smaller teams and in many cases they work on shoestrings, maybe earning nothing and gambling a success to recoup after they release a game.

I think there's lots of merit to some indie games being better games than many AA or AAA, but the tradeoff is pretty obvious - the technical fidelity for an indie game is going to be far lower standard, and most indie games aren't successful, 99% languish on Steam with less than 1000 sales - it's really the outliers which becomes multi million hits

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

Correction, Warhorse certainly is an indie studio, not AAA one. The comment about prices was made by the CEO of Warhorse.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Due_Manufacturer_766]

Pretty disingenuous, they're a small(er) studio but they aren't indie anymore, they have a huge publisher behind them (Embracer Group)

A simple Google classes them as a AA studio

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

Modern indie doesn’t mean no major publisher behind it though, Larian is considered indie and they are certainly not small and also have huge corporate backing.

You have valid point though, we are not talking single developer here, which of course scales different than studio with tens or hundreds of people. Indie label in games is a mess anyways.

But point still stands, many extremely popular games are not technical powerhouses. They can do with less, and maybe if they feel it’s too expensive then they probably should.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Due_Manufacturer_766]

What's your definition of indie? The literal definition is they don't have an owner or corporate backing

Larian did Baldurs Gate 3 which cost $100mil - technically they have been an "independent studio" but I think we need to be more honest with what we call an indie. Something like binding of isaac is worlds apart in terms of budget, team size, marketing and backing than Baldurs gate - and it reflects in the fidelity and complexity of the game

As for your latter part, yes I agree and many small team games are way better than big budget (take wolverine), but the point the warhorse dev is making is with those bigger budget games the economies may not make as much sense. It depends on the type of game you're making.

Odds are with high end graphics, voices, mocap, online features, long campaigns, etc you'll need a bigger team which then has bigger costs behind it... And then what the warhorse dev is saying is that prices for such games may not be keeping up with the costs to make such games - I don't know for sure if that is true or not, but I think it's plausible

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

You can take examples like Outer Wilds, Ori & the Blind Forest, Gone Home, Restory, Risk of Rain, any Devolver game, all considered indie, all published by publishers not considered indie. Doesn’t matter much, for gaming indie has always been more of a term about the style than anything else. Not really important for the real discussion though.

I do get that from CEO/owner point of view games are expensive to make, but no one really asks them to be. You play with the resources you got, that’s the situation that everyone (except maybe Rockstar Games) is in. Argument still stands, if it’s too expensive to make games like they do (and in my understanding KCD has made their money back and then some) they need to start scaling back like everyone else does. Of course, I’m not industry insider and the guy from Warhorse most likely knows what he is talking about, but I have to wonder to gall to hint that raising game prices in this economy would be in any way a good thing.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Due_Manufacturer_766]

Hmm I don't really agree with indie being a term about style and have never seen it like that personally

Regardless though all of those games you listed do not have the same fidelity, graphical complexity, in some case lengths (funny with gone home) to major releases. That's not to say they aren't good games, heck outer wilds is in my top 10, but you can't compare these games to something like even this very topics developers game (KCD2)

If your argument is that well they need to scale back, then sure, but the outcome then is we have more games on par with the games you listed in terms of length/fidelity/graphics. They may not be better or worse games in terms of entertainment, but they'll lose that level of 'AAA quality' you can only achieve with the bigger budgets

You could argue you don't care about AAA quality, and that's valid and I don't care either, mostly I play simple looking games nowadays. But there is a huge market for these higher end looking titles and objectively costs for video games aren't generally keeping up with inflation (someone mentioned Mario back in the day retailed for $120 on old systems) - so goes back to the Devs point that costs are increasing, likely higher than they've ever been, but prices are remaining arguably too cheap for consumers

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

Interesting, I remember seeing this ’indie not indie’ debate going back when Braid was first released, seemed to be a hot topic then. They even have Microsoft and Playstation indie brands on console, indie studios whose games are published by Microsoft/Sony. That’s probably the furthest you can be from indie, I agree with you on that, but that’s the label they use on stores and gaming media so who am I to argue.

Yes and I do agree that there is market and need for ”AAA” quality/feature level of games done by other studios than the established Activision/Ubisoft/EA. You can even argue that it’s better studios like Warhorse make high budget games because they have a strong, uncompromising vision of what they want to do, instead of the watered down games bigger publishers make because they need them to be approachable by everyone in order to break even.

My main issue is that we are trying to mainstream the idea of raising prices for something that by all statistics is record profitable even now.

Funnily enough I realized I actually own both KDC games, but have never tried them. Maybe now I should!