I always hear that Triple A video games cost millions to make why is that? Is it that all cost of workers? Does it cost money for a single person to make a game? Thanks in advance
In: Technology
Teams can be quite large, and a small number of teams I’ve worked on have had over 200 employees.
Office space has to be paid.
Salaries have to be paid. The lowest paid devs usually still make 50k annually. I suspect (but am not sure) the average salary is at least double that.
Hardware has to be bought and paid for. This includes monitors, computers, accessories, and if it’s for a console game, special consoles known as dev kits. I haven’t worked on console in a long time, but I seem to recall back in the early/mid 2000s, a console dev kit could be over 20k. And you’d need a lot more than one.
If you are publishing for a console, you also have to submit your game to the console manufacturer for testing to ensure it meets minimum specified requirements and a few other requirements. That’s also expensive because you have to pay the console manufacturers to submit the game for their review. And you cannot publish on their platform without their sign off.
If there is an online component, you also have to pay for the server farms.
To circle back to the salary bit… 100 * 50,000 = 5,000,000. So that is for headcount alone, and lowballing, for some of the larger game teams.
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