Earlier these few months, an article popped up educating indie devs on how to attract a publisher and it basically boiled down to "appeal to their money-grubbing soulless husks", because investors don't care about games, they care about making profit out of an investment.

But it defended this kind of practice because profiteers care about results. They want a game to be successful, because it makes them money. However, they'll also cut their losses early if it doesn't look good.
Developers on the other hand just want to express their creative vision, even if this might bring them to ruin.
And it's this cooperation between realism and idealistic, when done properly, that brings out the greatness of a game. Or so they said.

Unfortunately, a lot of the decision makers involved are idiots who fail to understand the need for balance between the costs of production and unhinged desire for success, artistic or material.

Kingdoms of Amalur failed because the people in charge spent their money like crazy on comfort and knickknacks.

Concord failed because the publisher threw a large sack of money at the devs and then fucked right off without a care in the world, leaving a bunch of headless chickens to run around it with no purpose or direction.

New World failed because it was a project run by scammers looking to scam investors (or so I've been told).

Highguard failed because the owner was dumb. And probably still is. Also, Tencent was their silent investor, who pulled out when shit went sideways.

Indeed, the formula for a good game doesn't guarantee success. Even the best of games will fail if the conditions allow it. Yet, for those who simply do not give damn about what they're making, their carelessness will make damn sure they guarantee its failure.

Meanwhile an indie game from a single dev: 500k players on steam.

Executives should still be accountable for inefficiencies and bad scoping.

300 million would kinda make sense, as it would mean an avg of 60k/year for a five year production on a 1000 people team. But how many AAA games are actually that large?

That makes sense after some thought on it because of how long games are in production. Like 5-8 years of a main studio of like 300+ people. Like if it's plain 100k salary per person a year at 300 people, $30 million in payroll a year. Add overhead like insurance, taxes, benefits. AAA games have support studios they contract out to. Think like the credits having 1000+ names in it. Getting to 300 million for a US/Canada AAA game sounds unsurprising considering how many years games cook now

Does it count also the Publisher budget (which usually goes to marketing, advertisement, etc.)?

300 million moneyz? And still most games feel empty, dumb and copycats with the ambitious flow of a snail with slime-deficit-disorder?

Sad...

Well yeah 300 million, but is the game any good or is it just made to be doodling with the D‘s of game "Journalists"? Just because you pay a lot of people doesn’t mean it’s good.

These are US and Canada productions. If you’re wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere

Stardew Valley was made in the US. Same with Terraria, Axiom Verge, Outer Wilds, Balatro, Risk of Rain, Undertale, The Stanley Parable, Hyper Light Drifter, and a shit ton of other games.

If you're wondering why game X costs so much less, it was probably made by a indie studio!

Jason is just lying at this point, if he believes otherwise.

What’s an Overheard, did he means “Overhead”?

Last time I checked it’s neither salaries, nor overhead, nor executive budgets, but it’s the PR efforts that spend the most chunk. This shithead trying to load that over the shoulder of developers and not advertising teams.