I am becoming progressively more worried for our humanity due to extensively terrifying improvements to AI generated content media.
From blatant misinformation to even the recent commercial adaptations of AI (acquisition of Suno into the music industry) WHICH NOBODY NEEDS.
We need artists to thrive - not feel discouraged.
Please be weary with what you see or hear online, contemporary media feels like nothing is real anymore.
AI sucks and we need to stand up against it.
Bit of nonsense here.
You can’t make a game like that for 1.7million.
Here’s why.
Just throwing out some random numbers. Even if everyone of the 33 (not including additional support) were on 30k each. Thats $990,000 a year. It was 6 years from concept so let’s say 4.5 years actual dev.
Thats 4.45mill on salaries.
Here’s some other costs for making a game that would run the cost higher.
-IT infrastructure
-Hardware/software
-Admin/accountancy
-Office costs (they have one registered)
-Benefits
So a few people are saying the devs didn’t get paid and they did it for free.
I can’t find evidence of this but it shouldn’t matter. Their time, their skill, their knowledge is still a value. It’s a cost at standard even if remuneration comes later.
Are you just expecting all devs to work for free now? Cmon.
I’m always telling indies to track their time at minimum wage at the very least to understand how much their game cost to develop because if you’re working, it’s a cost.
I dislike misinformation about finances in games because there’s a narrative going about that AAA = bad. But it’s mostly just ignorance about how much games costs and why there’s a creative stagnation. Often the issue is cultural not monetary.
I want to see more studios of this scale putting out passion driven projects like this. But we have to be reasonable about our expectations on costs. Saying this game cost less than 1.7m is the most absurd take I’ve seen.
Vanquish and mirrors edge would have likely cost 15-25m.