How do you spend 500,000,000 making a video game.

When I first seen this thought it was a misprint on the figure
The adventure game Destiny cost 500,000,000 to make I will admit I no very little about what I takes to make a game from start to Finnish. I realise they probably had a staff numbering in the hundreds. and I would say there advertising budget was huge
You hear movie company's spending that much on movies you can sort of figure out what they spent it on sets actors fees etc.
But how the hell do you spend that making a game (genuine question)
PS, I have not played to game is it any good.

Never even heard of "Destiny". What is it? An MMO? With that kind of budget I'm assuming it's a cross-platform game.

Oh, and where did you get the 500 million dollar stat? Do you have a link?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...ON-develop.html

That is a brilliant way to launder a HUGE amount of cash.

I blame the Russians, as the French don't really have a global organized crime syndicate. Other than UbiSoft, that is.

I would love to know how many copies of the game would need to be sold in order to break even.

Could this be the next "Daikatana"? lol

Hookers and Blow can increase your expenses drastically.

I wonder if bungie are hiring I am prepared to work for minimum wage sounds like the benefits a great.LoL

It's not even releasing on pc, and one of the reasons for that was that it would dramaticaly increase the costs ...

500 Mill to make one game?

Need to sell 10 Mill copies to break even?

Someone's a bit crazy.

I would say more than 10 million once you factor in distribution and marketing costs.

Seriously never heard of it? It was one of the Xbox One's flagship titles. It's Bungie's new IP now that they've handed off the reigns for Halo to a different company. Considering the amount of advertising I'm sure Microsoft crammed behind their butts, and the overall quality of their products, I'm not surprised by the dollar figure.

A lot of that money is advertisement.

For instance GTA5 cost $265m but more than half of that was marketing/advertisements. One figure I saw was this, "Rockstar Games reportedly spent $115 million developing Grand Theft Auto V and $150 million on marketing." And even more again recently for the next gen titles.

That is why a lot of games can get away with such small budgets compared to these big budget games. Mostly they all develope at the same cost and then the extra money that makes people go, "WTF? how can they spend that much?" comes from advertisements that have to be paid all over the world for weeks leading up to release and post release.

A month or two before release Destiny was almost unheard of except in gaming forums. A week before release it was the most anticipated game of the year. You could go up to people on the street who didnt even play the game and they would have seen enough advertisements and tv ads to know what it was. That is where the money went.

I haven't owned a console gaming system since the Atari 2600 and I don't check out any console gaming websites or forums.

But...still. The commercials were flipping everywhere. I couldn't sit down to eat somewhere without seeing the trailer

Thus the cost of advertising!

I never heard of it either but I chuckled at the Ubisoft comment. It's funny 'cause it's true.

-C-

The following is a list of the most expensive games ever made with a minimum total cost of US$50,000,000.


Rank

Name

Year

Developer

Publisher

Platform

Estimated development cost (US$)

Estimated marketing cost (US$)

Estimated total cost (US$)


1 Destiny[nb 1] 2014 Bungie Activision PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One 500,000,000[2]
2 Grand Theft Auto V 2013 Rockstar North Rockstar Games PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One 265,000,000[3]
3 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 2009 Infinity Ward Activision PC, PS3, Xbox 360, 50,000,000 200,000,000 250,000,000[4]
4 Star Wars: The Old Republic 2011 BioWare Electronic Arts, LucasArts PC 200,000,000[5] 200,000,000+[6]
5 Final Fantasy VII 1997 Square Square PS, PC 45,000,000[7] 100,000,000[8] 145,000,000
6 Max Payne 3 2012 Rockstar Studios Rockstar Games PC, Xbox 360, PS3, OS X 105,000,000[9] 105,000,000[9]
7 Disney Infinity 2013 Avalanche Software Disney Interactive Studios PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, 3DS, PC 100,000,000[10]
8 Deadpool 2013 High Moon Studios Activision PS3, Xbox 360, PC 100,000,000[11]
9 Grand Theft Auto IV 2008 Rockstar North Rockstar Games PS3, Xbox 360, PC 100,000,000[12] 100,000,000+[12][13]
10 Red Dead Redemption 2010 Rockstar San Diego Rockstar Games PS3, Xbox 360 80,000,000-100,000,000[14] 100,000,000[15]
11 Tomb Raider 2013 Crystal Dynamics Square Enix PS3, Xbox 360, PC 100,000,000
12 Too Human 2008 Silicon Knights Microsoft Game Studios Xbox 360 100,000,000[12] 100,000,000[12]
13 Halo MMO cancelled Ensemble Studios Microsoft Game Studios PC 90,000,000[16] 90,000,000[16]
14 Defiance 2013 Trion Worlds Trion Worlds PC, PS3, Xbox 360 80,000,000 80,000,000[17]
15 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots 2008 Kojima Productions Konami PS3 70,000,000[12] 70,000,000+[12]
16 Rift 2011 Trion Worlds Trion Worlds PC 60,000,000-70,000,000[18]
17 Shenmue 1999 Sega AM2 Sega Dreamcast 47,000,000[19] 23,000,000\[12] 70,000,000\[12]
18 Watch Dogs 2014 Ubisoft Montreal Ubisoft PC, PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One 68,000,000[20] 68,000,000+
19 Crysis 3 2013 Crytek Frankfurt Electronic Arts PS3, Xbox 360, PC 66,000,000[21] 66,000,000+
20 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier 2012 Ubisoft Paris Ubisoft PC, Xbox 360, PS3 65,000,000[22] 65,000,000[22]
21 Star Citizen 2016 Cloud Imperium Games Cloud Imperium Games PC 63,000,000+[23]
22 Gran Turismo 5 2010 Polyphony Digital Sony Computer Entertainment PS3 60,000,000[24] 60,000,000
23 Halo 3 2007 Bungie Microsoft Game Studios Xbox 360 60,000,000[12] 60,000,000[12]
24 World of Warcraft 2004 Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment PC 60,000,000 60,000,000
25 Heavy Rain 2010 Quantic Dream Sony Computer Entertainment PS3 23,200,000[25] 32,400,000[25] 55,600,000[25]
26 Halo: Reach 2010 Bungie Microsoft Game Studios Xbox 360 55,000,000 55,000,000
27 APB: All Points Bulletin 2010 Realtime Worlds Realtime Worlds PC 50,000,000 50,000,000+[12][26][27]
28 Call of Duty: Elite 2011 Beachhead Studios Activision PC 50,000,000[28] 50,000,000[28]
29 DC Universe Online 2012 Sony Online Entertainment Sony Computer Entertainment, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment PC, PS3, PS4 50,000,000[29] 50,000,000[29]
30 Homefront 2011 Kaos Studios THQ PC, Xbox 360, PS3, OnLive 50,000,000 50,000,000+
31 L.A. Noire 2011 Team Bondi Rockstar Games PS3, Xbox 360, PC 50,000,000[30] 50,000,000
32 This Is Vegas cancelled Surreal Software Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment PC, Xbox 360, PS3 50,000,000 50,000,000
33 The Secret World 2012 Funcom Electronic Arts PC 50,000,000[31] 50,000,000[31]



I think now I no why my two favourite PC Sims will never make it to the next gen consoles.
Unless they turn them in to war thunder type clones

Half of our Dayz crew left Dayz for Destiny when it released. I've already got one grind game, i don't need another.

considering half the internal assets were taken from Halo IP, lol.

LOL, I've only played TWO games on that list, the top being Tomb Raider at 11 and the only other being Crysis 3!

Anyway, to miss the Destiny ads you had to limit yourself to a very small number of niche-oriented websites. Even Blue's News, which is pretty much all PC games, talked about it numerous times. PC Gamer talked about it.




The Jedi Master

Odd to see Star Citizen listed ay all. It's still in crowd-funding mode, so the listed $63 million is just that, funds pledged for development, not actual development costs.

The one I don't get is COD.

What exactly is in COD that cost 265 million to make? They've been using the same engine for a decade. Must be all advertising.

Content development, and actor fees (Mr. Spacey, I guess). You need artwork - 3D models, textures, animations, levels - also cut scenes, a story, and then the labor intensive quality assurance (play tests, bug hunts). In short, you need lots of personnel to finish a massive, story and location driven game title within a manageable time frame (before your technology is made obsolescent by general progress in competing titles).

You just can't substitute money for time: You HAVE TO finish the work in 15...20 months, you HAVE TO make the deadline for an optimal release date as specified by consumer habits and the marketing plan (which is based on those habits). Also, you have to purchase equipment (PCs, office space, software tools, mocap equipment), have a musical score composed and recorded, ...