this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
25 points (76.6% liked)

Games

48683 readers
931 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not that long of a video, and he gets to the answer fairly quickly, then outlines examples using back of the napkin math. (average cost per developer per month) * (months of development) = cost of game. And then it's the difference between real world numbers for those in 2015 and today. Average salaries have gone up, especially in major cities in the US, as have staff sizes to make AAA games, as has time needed to develop substantially larger games than we typically made in 2015, and that number balloons very quickly.

[–] user_6282638282@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think anyone with a fairly basic understanding of economics (and that is admittedly a declining number in many places) understands the idea that "salaries and benefits are expensive".

What he doesn't explain that would actually be helpful is why teams are so big. Like what are all the departments that work on AAA titles, what do they do, how many people on staff relative to other departments, what does a 3D modeler make vs. a gameplay programmer?

He also doesn't talk about anything outside of staffing, like marketing, cinematics, voice acting, localization, bribing Geoff Keighley...

This would all be more useful than the baby math lesson provided.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world -3 points 23 hours ago

What he doesn’t explain that would actually be helpful is why teams are so big.

Can you not see the difference in money on the screen between Halo 1 and Destiny 2? One person can make Halo's relatively simple models, complete with nutcracker-esque mouth syncing, much faster than you can make the likes of Destiny's quest givers with far more complexity to them. So if you want to make more of those kinds of NPCs, you need more people making them. The same goes for any other discipline involved in making a game.

Like what are all the departments that work on AAA titles, what do they do, how many people on staff relative to other departments, what does a 3D modeler make vs. a gameplay programmer?

That all comes out in the average cost per employee, which is the same ballpark math the publishers are using to estimate, and he says that in this video.