Yeah, sometimes a movie or a game is a turkey, and the [dev] studio knows it. I imagine this is how Chinese Room must feel about being given the cold corpse of Bloodlines 2.

I don't know if Sony knew, which is sort of the problem. Being a distant overseas studio who is overseeing exactly zilch means that a project like this, which normally would have been killed, culled, or drowned by careful managerial oversight was allowed to balloon in budget and scope.

See also Post Jack Tramiel Commodore. No, Jack wasn't a perfect leader, but he at least had business sense.

See also Bungie any time after Halo ODST or whenever the wheels fell off that particular bus. If Sony Entertainment Japan were directing the studio like they do their associated partner studios they actually care about, I don't think Marathock would have made it this far.

Well marketing works because the average gamer again only cares about superficial things. I dont think EA really markets their sports games much apart from a new one is coming out, get your wallets ready. You should know what to expect from an EA game. They do some marketing for CoD but its basically the same FPS shooting screens ending with CoD xxx plastered at the end. Star Wars Outcast did get alot of marketing and is apparently one of the best sold playstation games this month despite being a walking red flag. I feel "gamers" have spoken a long time ago and its that they want their favorite IPs in game form and very pretty graphics so they look like the characters they portray in the movies. Gaming has been very casualized and that has resulted in

Look at dnovraD's comment. Smaller budget equals shorter games with worse graphics equals worse game. No consideration for combat system and mechanics, enemy variety, story, sound design, etc. The only points of value in a game according to this comment is game length and graphics. The longer a game is and the prettier it is, the better it must be. This seems to be the attitude of alot of gamers with complaints immediately focusing on a game being too short for only being 30 hours instead of 100 hours long or characters not looking pretty enough.

The problem I generally have with the shorter and longer ones, regardless of the length if they are AAA, both of them tend to have no good replay value. I am NOT saying all AAA games have this but the more recent ones tend to. So between the two you choose the longer one. This is the problem with just making them a visual experience...oh SURE, they are an experience but given the gameplay isn't DRASTICALLY compelling, I mean it doesn't just have a hook there.
Shenmue is a visual experience but I want to replay it, granted that may be a more notable exception to the visual experience rule since for many of us that is nostalgia bait.

I definitely agree for video games, OP.

Unfortunately, when I read that Twitter thread with a former SE executive, somehow he's still convinced that if you make lower budget AA games, mass market consumers are picky with their remaining disposable income and will usually opt for the AAA games instead of AA games. I'd assume this is how most of these AAA devpubs think.

And if you're going to make an AA or even A game, then these big guys will have to either come up with new IPs (very risky even if tangent) or they have to take a chance on acquiring an old IP and reviving it than sticking with what works / sequelitis.

There are definitely case examples of AA, A, and hit indies succeeding, but they are far and few in between due to survivorship bias.

Not everything needs to be big, but I think we are just seeing another symptom of late stage capitalism where profits need to break new records every quarter and every year.

The weakest board of investors on a gaming company table discussing their next product:

Cellphone gaming = Ad based short attention span gameplay focused on colourful and shiny screen effects for full attention retention and quick and easy money spending for upgrades or time based advancement

It should be a cellphone game. If it isn't...:
PC gaming = Looter Shooter with microtransactions based on predatory Neurolinguistic programming with visual stimulation to make people spend money continuously for quick progress on a competitive based context

This is how they think it seems by what we hear and see in those corporate big talks and reunions...
It's hard to find a big company which understands the gaming community because big companies aren't made of gamers.

They're made of investors and those tables of discussions on how to maximize profit through statistical data.
And the statistical data of previous years shows that these two kinds of games is what makes money, fast.
Can't blame them. It's what they know and what they can understand.

That's also why, it seems to me, so many A and AA devs/studios are achieving success lately.
They're gamers doing games for gamers. It simply works. :P

If you are talking about modern games, that probably because alot of modern games dont really have great gameplay or depth to encourage repeat playthroughs. Older games have that replayability because the fundamentals are good. Try playing Megaman without using boss weapon weaknesses against them or no upgrade, Kingdom hearts 2 level 1 runs, Resident Evil knife only runs, Dead Space one weapon only runs, etc. These games have great balance and depth of options where purposefully restricting yourself helps you discover new tech and honestly helps you appreciate the games more. I heard great things about Hades in this regard and Slay the Spire did a great job at this with its pretty wild variety of builds. Apparently the new Final Fantasies also have some great combat and character actions like Devil May Cry encourage mastery with style meter.

However, this means the game is harder and requires time and practice to master. Games in the PS2 era tried to address this by providing multiple difficulties with easy difficulties to just get through the game and replaying with a challenge locked behind higher difficulties. This has resulted in games getting a bad rep as "button mashers" though (like OG God of War) so this may not be the best solution although it was a good one imo.

I don't think the problem is so much the size of the budget, it's more about where the budget is going. With modern games, so much of the budget is being poured into graphics, FMV, presentation, marketing, Keanu Reeves (couldn't resist that one!) ... and very little is going into the actual gameplay design and content (and, heck, QA!).

Smaller studios are often able to produce better, more fun games, because they are focusing on design and content, and the amount (time and money) they are spending in that area probably exceeds what the AAAs are. (plus the fact that smaller studios actually care about the art)

Ummm yes it is the budget. "LA Noire" was a hit and Bondi went bankrupt, that was a solid game and should they have worked out better contract details yes but the point is that was back during the 360 area and those risks were being run. Same with the failure of RE6 and that was STILL more focusing on gameplay.
Granted are MORE of them likely failing because they are spending in the wrong area? Yes but my RE6 and LA Noire arguments disprove your assertion. We have already heard talk that at least PART of the reason why many companies are so wedded to microtransactions and DLC is because they are MASSIVELY overspending and if they charged the real price of the game on what they spend and dumped the aforementioned annoyances games would be $80 or more. That is OBSCENE. It is also part of the reason why CE's are so overpriced now for such shitty offerings. Heck it is even worming its way into Japan companies CE's over in the US and elsewhere when they use to be more reasonable...at less than $100 for a pretty nice full one.
Now I bought the SMTV CE but thankfully scalpers overbought them so I got mine for a more reasonable price. THAT retailed for $130 with an artbook, steelbook case, game and OST along with a bag. That bag was sized like a fanny pack.
Compare this to the release of Persona 5 CE which included a freaking duffle bag and blow up Morgan and a number of other fair swag at under $100.

Oh, budget sizes bloating is a problem as well. The main problems I think it causes are as follows:

1) When the budget to make a game gets up to $100M+, then the executives become very risk averse, because a failure on that scale could bring the publisher down. So, it tends to lead to a lack of innovation, with big-budget games 'playing it safe'. This leads to a tendency to just re-hash or slightly iterate on previous ideas that worked (which gets boring and repetitive).

2) A very large budget also forces the developer to have to widen the appeal of the game as much as possible, to maximize on ROI. This leads to the dumbing down of games, all the hand-holding etc., because they have to appeal to the huge numbers of more casual gamers to make the money back. So, the games suffer from the problem that they are designed to try to please everyone, but end up pleasing no-one.

So, in my view, when the budget becomes too big, it starts to become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy - a weight around the game's neck that pulls it down and makes it more likely to fail, due to lack of creativity/innovation and trying to please everyone, which leads to popular franchises becoming ever more dumbed-down. The influence of big money on video games isn't a good one. When I see a big franchise getting bought by a large corporate publisher, I generally consider it a death-sentence, because it will invariably get dumbed down and lose the magic sparkle that made it appealing in the first place.

But I still maintain that the allocation of the budget is also a major problem, that often so much of it is going into graphics, presentation, marketing. If a proportional amount of the increased budget was going into the gameplay, writing, content design, AI, QA, then we could be seeing some truly incredible games. But no, sadly not. More often than not, the actual game design and content of AAA games seem to have less put into them than games that cost a fraction of the budget.

Time4Tea I would like it to be noted I suggested games UNDER $100 million being a thing. I also brought up movies as an example when you look at what movies use to cost before Bob Iger really brought in overpriced MCU movies. Disney can bs the numbers better though as now it is looking like Endgame MAY not have actually made its budget back or broke even.
Those big numbers might wow shareholders but who cares if the net is negative or the returns are in the single or low double digits for percentage points. The bigger players WILL notice.
RGT85 did a video echoing my sentiments on concern in cost but he thought we may see a crash. He also noted another validation to when I mentioned RE6 and LA Noire and it being the big budgets being the problem. It looks like the "Visions Of Mana" studio is being shut down and the game just barely launched. I totally forgot the company who made Star Ocean for years was also closed too, Tri-Ace. I have heard "Divine Force" wasn't that good but I wonder if there was some interference.

Just read that Black Myth: Wukong cost only $70 million to make. The China-made game has sold about 18 million copies in two weeks since launch, and it has made about $850 million in US dollars. By the end of the month, this one will sell 20 million copies and make US$1 billion, (most likely more.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-05/investor-who-risked-it-all-on-wukong-scores-another-sales-win

And, based on what I've read in the Chinese media, (I read Chinese,) Chinese investors are looking at all that mooney flooding in, and now the Chinese money want to find promising video game development and studios, IN CHINA, at which they can throw their money.

As you may already know, in the past four or five years or so, the Chinese government has passed a series of stricter and stricter laws to crack down on video games. What the Western media has failed to observe and differentiate: the crackdown has really targeted only ONLINE and MULTIPLAYER games. The Chinese government have identified — and, IMO, rightly so — those games as addictions and/or gambling that is extremely harmful to impressionable, developing young minds and harmful to social order.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-issues-draft-rules-online-game-management-2023-12-22/

As the CCP has cracked down on addition-based and gambling-based video games, a somewhat unexpected side effect of those public policies is that game developments in China are being re-directed into offline and single-player games, (i.e., just go to YouTube and search for all the upcoming single-player games in the pipelines from China over the next couple years.)

Now that Black Myth: Wukong has become an international success and (somewhat unexpectedly) brought positive lights to China and the Chinese culture, the Chinese Communist government has just realized: video games are a great way for China to spread its influences and soft power overseas, AND it may create a new venue to create much-needed jobs for Chinese university science and engineering graduates who refuse to take factory jobs.

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2024/09/07/black-myth-wukong-and-chinas-soft-power/

And when China decides it wants to "win" and DOMINATE a particular industry, they just switch to "total war" mode and pump money, talents and resources into it until all competitions are wiped out.

I think there is going to be a boom and gold rush of single-player video games from China... which is gonna threaten the US and EU. Seems like in a few years there will be an "overcapacity" of video games from China.

Ktchong I am not worried as Mainland Chinese are raised to be creatively bankrupt because of repression of Free Speech(I am NOT trying to be political anywhere here. just that blocking Free Speech inherently limits creativity and innovation). The only way they win is by hiring a foreigner/s to write the story and likely gameplay as well. A great case in point against them is Suikoden. Suikoden is a big fictionalization of a legendary Chinese novel called "Men From the Marsh". That is a Japanese game and I believe in no way could Mainlanders create it.
The best they can hope for is to be like TenCent and drop a ton of investment money into foreign gaming companies.

Gaming isn't like manufacturing where you can just pour money into it and voila. Heck why haven't the Chinese taken over in movies by your comparison? I love Wuxia but they make little of them or what they make now is not competent else they would keep importing much of it. Instead TenCent and Alibaba would co-produce films that are international.

As for budget I don't think this is a fair comparison as the cost for labor is much cheaper there and I believe it would cost $100 million+ elsewhere. Especially now you will be able to get some real talent for a song there. By this I mean in various programming languages with a Masters or Doctorate.

Oh and regarding that 10 million, 8 million of that is from China itself. I am less thrilled of the run it has put on Japanese PS5's there.

That being said I am slightly worried the Chinese may make a foothold in one area of the market with "Infinity Nikki". I am not sure if that lovely movie made introing her was done by a Japanese or Chinese game but I think that may be a separate movie.

As for rtcvb32 and the Open World vs. blocks...getting rid of Open World ages ago and replacing it with an overworld map you navigate would have made a lot more sense for Final Fantasy and decrease the budget enormously. I feel the same about Xenoblade but some may argue with me there.

> I am not worried as Mainland Chinese are raised to be creatively bankrupt because of repression of Free Speech(I am NOT trying to be political anywhere here...

You believe whatever you want to believe, but here are the FACTS and FIGURES:

* https://www.aspi.org.au/index.php/report/critical-technology-tracker

* https://itif.org/publications/2023/01/23/wake-up-america-china-is-overtaking-the-united-states-in-innovation-capacity/

* https://hbr.org/2021/05/chinas-new-innovation-advantage

* https://www.creativeboom.com/news/china-is-named-as-the-most-creative-country-in-the-2019-world-design-rankings/

* https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/06/12/china-has-become-a-scientific-superpower

* https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02159-7
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-03-12/bloomberg-evening-briefing-china-leads-the-world-in-hypersonic-technology

* https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/china-leading-generative-ai-patents-race-un-report-says-2024-07-03/

IMO, your opinion is based on racist + nationalistic biases:

"Chinese people are stupid, lack creativity and can't innovate. They can only copy and steal."

"AMERICAN IS NUMBA ONE!" (i.e., the blind belief/faith that America is somehow inherently superior, that the American system is always the best, and Americans do not have to do anything or put in any real effort to compete and stay ahead.)

But hey, you keep believing that.