Sales logistics

[Chief]

Big Ant studios paying $1,200,000 a year on staff costs that's insane! The game's Big Ant make don't even come close to costing 1 million to make, not even $500,000!

$1.2m in staff costs would buy you about 9 people, based on standard industry rates. For one year. And that's just the core game team: not equipment or offices or admin staff or management or QA or Audio or Marketing or...

So yeah: that IS pretty insane - You are crazy underestimating how much it costs to make a video game.

 

[manav599]

Which ones?


I'll leave you guys with these actual facts.. Cricket is the second most popular game in the world, with an estimated 3.5 billion fans world wide, soccer is the most popular game in the world with 4.5 billion fans. Worlds population is 7.5 billion... Gives you a good idea just how popular cricket really is in actual fact. With the popularity of 20/20 these days it is conceivable to think that big ant could possibly sell 500,000 games... After all only 1 in only every 7000 cricket fans would need to buy DBC 17 for that to be possible.

A billion of those fans are Indians and India is mostly market for pirated games. Very few actually will buy the game. DBC has a great market in India but they will need super strong anti piracy technology to sell here.

 

[Biggs]

And that's just the core game team: not equipment or offices or admin staff or management or QA or Audio or Marketing or...

....or health benefits or insurance or travel or accountants or beer o'clock on Fridays or building rental or staff benefits or matt's outrageous my little pony collection or payroll...

 

[LittleBigPlanet]

To vaguely engage

Yep, this is generally the first symptoms of too much "Blow and Hookers"

 

[LittleBigPlanet]

$1.2m in staff costs would buy you about 9 people

Well what if i wanted 7 people and 5 midgets? Hmm

 

[Dutch]

Just waiting for this to turn into yet another "piracy in India ruining cricket game development" cul-de-sac..

 

[Chief]

Well what if i wanted 7 people and 5 midgets? Hmm

Well first I'd tell you that it's considered a pejorative term, that I'm pretty sure that they are also "people", and that to pay them any differently would be illegal in most countries.

 

[DBC14 Rocks]

$1.2m in staff costs would buy you about 9 people, based on standard industry rates. For one year. And that's just the core game team: not equipment or offices or admin staff or management or QA or Audio or Marketing or...

So yeah: that IS pretty insane - You are crazy underestimating how much it costs to make a video game.

I know making a video game is expensive but come on this is Big Ant Studios we are talking about, surely they wouldn't spend 1 million dollars on staff costs when the game itself was $250,000

 

[grkrama]

Which one was right?

Which ones?

Apologies just couldnt resist

 

[Chief]

I know making a video game is expensive but come on this is Big Ant Studios we are talking about, surely they wouldn't spend 1 million dollars on staff costs when the game itself was $250,000

What are you talking about? Who said the game cost $250k?

 

[grkrama]

$1.2m in staff costs would buy you about 9 people, based on standard industry rates.

I thought you would get double that people, Au average rate is around 50-60k p.a Still like you say its a massive costly affair even without counting the extras and whatnots biggs mentioned!

 

[grkrama]

I know making a video game is expensive but come on this is Big Ant Studios we are talking about, surely they wouldn't spend 1 million dollars on staff costs

Staff cost is in respect to bigant studios and not just dbc, so that 1.2 mill or i dont know how many staff are there in BA but, whatever is spent on staff is with respect to studio, like the team would be working on various titles in pipeline unless they separate them exclusively to projects!

That said how did you end up with 250k estimate source ?

 

[Dutch]

Why oh why oh why are we even having this "discussion"? About as much use as a knitwear condom....

 

[blockerdave]

I know making a video game is expensive but come on this is Big Ant Studios we are talking about, surely they wouldn't spend 1 million dollars on staff costs when the game itself was $250,000

they dont make 1 game you know. i would suggest they even employ staff - hr for example - that dont even make any games.

even leaving out fantasy numbers, the premise of this thread is:

it costs x to make the game, but big ant only make y, so shouldn't they cut out the middle men and keep all that lovely z?

and the answer is an emphatic no because that amount represented by z is spent on people with experience and economies of scale in a massive range of areas (publishing, distribution, marketing, infrastructure) that means they can do a better job, cheaper, than BA would do and BA don'tbhave to finance it all in advance of a single sale being made.

*drops mic and smashes it with a sledgw hammer in an attempt to end this ridiculous thread.[DOUBLEPOST=1466846385][/DOUBLEPOST]

I thought you would get double that people, Au average rate is around 50-60k p.a Still like you say its a massive costly affair even without counting the extras and whatnots biggs mentioned!

the extras and whatnots biggs mentioned are EXACTLY WHY staff costs are not simply avg salary * number of staff.

 

[Dutch]

I am sure BA will be reading this thread, with head in hands; if only we had thought this through and had read this thread before setting up our company....