Spawn_of_Apathy Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 I’m a sucker for these kind of videos and thought this one was very well put together. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xbob42 Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 They don't, the lazy sunsabitches. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
best3444 Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 My question is why did it cost Insomniac $350 million to make Spider-Man 2? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spawn_of_Apathy Posted December 22, 2023 Author Share Posted December 22, 2023 25 minutes ago, best3444 said: My question is why did it cost Insomniac $350 million to make Spider-Man 2? I don’t think we’ll ever know, but it could easily been because making a game has taken on a process not unlike movies, but also taking longer because it is an interactive medium. It also wouldn’t surprise me if SM2 suffered from a common practice plaguing game development, the old “complete change in direction” that cause months or even a year or more of work to get scrapped. Or when it causes something to be added that was never planned for. Like if Miles having a large playable role and swapping between Miles and Peter was added late. Also, this is just a guess too, but NYC is not a fictional place. It is possible that some locations and landmarks need to be licensed. If true that can also add up on top of everything else. lastly there are ~400 employees at Insomniac games. While not all 400 may have worked on SM2, but for a 3 year dev cycle they could claim $100M in labor alone. Add in equipment for all of them, like PCs and PS5 dev kits and you’ve added several more million, easily. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyser_Soze Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 Also, look more into those leaked documents. They get a bit more granular with what things cost. Like marvel taking 20% of every sale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remarkableriots Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 3 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said: I don’t think we’ll ever know, but it could easily been because making a game has taken on a process not unlike movies, but also taking longer because it is an interactive medium. It also wouldn’t surprise me if SM2 suffered from a common practice plaguing game development, the old “complete change in direction” that cause months or even a year or more of work to get scrapped. Or when it causes something to be added that was never planned for. Like if Miles having a large playable role and swapping between Miles and Peter was added late. Also, this is just a guess too, but NYC is not a fictional place. It is possible that some locations and landmarks need to be licensed. If true that can also add up on top of everything else. lastly there are ~400 employees at Insomniac games. While not all 400 may have worked on SM2, but for a 3 year dev cycle they could claim $100M in labor alone. Add in equipment for all of them, like PCs and PS5 dev kits and you’ve added several more million, easily. They might do what movie productions do and repeatedly charge for the same equipment under expenses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLeon Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 I don’t know how they work, but I know they need tightened up on level three. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fizzzzle Posted December 23, 2023 Share Posted December 23, 2023 Like @Spawn_of_Apathy said, just on labor al didone, they're looking at like a minimum of $80 million or so. But now you get into the nitty gritty of how companies purposefully obfuscate numbers like that for tax reasons. Were 100% of the employees working only, specifically on spiderman 2 for that entire time? Assuredly not. Did they pay for assets they already own through another company they already own therefore they just paid themselves and wrote it off as an expense? It's far more common in the movie industry than in the game industry, but they almost certainly did. Movies and games make money far more often than the people who make them like to say they do. If they didn't, no one would make them. It's all a game of obfuscating your finances in such a balanced way that you pay as little taxes a possible but can also show your shareholders that you grew. That's why accountants get paid what they do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chakoo Posted December 25, 2023 Share Posted December 25, 2023 Worth adding that often marketing gets lumped into a games development cost. Marketing can often be 1/3-1/2 the budget alone. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamer.tv Posted December 25, 2023 Share Posted December 25, 2023 So I’m summary, triangles and maths is the answer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unogueen Posted December 25, 2023 Share Posted December 25, 2023 14 minutes ago, gamer.tv said: So I’m summary, triangles and maths is the answer? Always has been. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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