We don’t report on heresy and rumors very often here at PGM, but the following Forbes article on Concord’s ridiculously expensive AAA game development is disturbing.
“A new report from Sacred Symbols’ Colin Moriarty, citing a source that worked on Concord, claims that the game had a higher budget than anyone envisioned, a full $400 million, broken up into two halves of development.” – New Report Says Sony’s ‘Concord’ Cost $400 Million To Make (forbes.com)
For those not up to speed with the disastrous launch of Concord that basically had so low player count that Sony shuttered it less than a month after release. Call this, if true, literally a $400 million mistake. That’s not the kind of mistake accounting can easily wash away.
Several times here at PGM we’ve railed against the overinflated team size and development costs of some games these days, see:
- After Dungeon Golf Underperformed, Developer Switched Strategy to More Releases, Quicker Publishing
- OPINION: Maybe the problem isn’t AI, it’s too many people working on a single game?
There isn’t much to say about why this is all so financially stupid. I don’t think these big game publishers understand what gamers truly want. Maybe in some parallel universe they will read and react to gamers like me that keep saying loud and clear:
Make games we want to play.
It doesn’t take hundreds of millions of dollars to make a good game. It doesn’t take any money at all, in fact, it takes love, passion and care to craft something first and foremost that the creator(s) want to play. If you don’t like what you’re making, then throwing more money at developing it even more is not the right answer.
Start from a prototype stage with a basic idea for the game. Make sure you have something fun to play, then expand on it, but not at such a grand scale that ruins what made the original and simpler concept. This feels like game design 101 and Sony, the massive company they are should understand this.
Clearly, Concord wasn’t a fun game to begin with. These are crazy gaming times for these mega budgeted games. Hopefully, there is course correction. Will there be?