It's great to see people admitting their mistakes. On the other hand, the project was doomed from the start $50,000 just isn't enough money to produce a game, let alone a game and collateral merchandise. And the commitment to collateral merchandise for a project like this meant that effort that could have gone to making the game was committed to dealing with posters, printers and postage. There's a reason startups don't return dividends to early stage investors. There's a reason sophisticated early stage investors don't want their investments to pay dividends.
“It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
71–80 of 392 posts
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#72I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…
Offtpic but you worked on Crash Bandicoot!? That's so awesome. I loved each version of that game and it made our childhoods much more fun (at countries all over the world, just as an example I'm from Colombia)
I never get tired of hearing that -- thank you! :)
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#73From TA: "What about our Kickstarter backers? The people that believed in us from the beginning? People we made promises too. People we have let down. Even worse… people we will not be able to give the full rewards they invested in. The crazy thing is, that we have most of the rewards ready for postage. All the backer stickers and letters of enlistment just need a stamp. All the poster sets printed, signed and ready.…
> Or maybe even go open source?
While that is the ideal way to close up a failed start-up (in my opinion anyway) I don't believe they would entertain that considering they're trying to sell the IP.
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're based on Antwerp, Belgium, That could make it work. Since the regular salary is $24k I'd expect it to be around $5k per person.
> Since the regular salary is $24k Where did you take this number from? Try at least, the bare minimum, double that in Western Europe for anyone calling themselves a game developer
That sounds like the number for the average salary in Belgium.
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#75I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…
Completely agreed. I work in a large games studio and on our project the team that does nothing else but makes sure the game is compliant(so that it is accepted by Sony and Microsoft for release) consists of 7 people - 5 programmers, a designer and a QC tester. I imagine doing the work we are doing for an indie game would be extremely time consuming.
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#76I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…
Also, the original kickstarter [1] was for $50,000 with $72,000 raised. I'm not an expert on the economics of the video game industry, but I can't believe that would pay a team of 6-10 people for very long. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/45588301/woolfe-the-red...
It was way too little money ... but I guess what happened is that they expected a third party investor to complete the development budget given the success of their KS campaign. Well it looks like it didn't happen. In my opinion , if one choose this strategy, one should make sure some investors are actually interested,even better, sign an agreement with potential "angels" before launching a campaign.
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#77I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…
For NHL2k2/NHL2k3 we had dozen of people just doing the UI - Granted good UI is crucial in a sports game. That also was back in 2001
For something like that, do those people work full time on just that one game? Or are they also working on NFL/NBA 2k2 at the same time, creating UI code that works across all the games in the series?
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're based on Antwerp, Belgium, That could make it work. Since the regular salary is $24k I'd expect it to be around $5k per person.
> Since the regular salary is $24k Where did you take this number from? Try at least, the bare minimum, double that in Western Europe for anyone calling themselves a game developer
Lol. I work as a programmer in one of the largest studios in the UK and make $30k/year. Games industry is brutal with wages.
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#79I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…
What does "AAA Game" mean anyway? I'm a bit lost on the definition. Wikipedia says:
> In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers.
By definition, a budget of $75k + 6-10 people wont make an AAA game.
> When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago.
I'm biased/invested in this area, but I think nowadays tools are really helping strip away the technical challenges of making a game. Increasingly game development is less about technical challenges but more about the creative challenge. Individuals are willing to pour thousands of hours of work into artistic and creative projects, and I am seeing far less resistance and challenges going forwards for these sorts of people to produce AAA quality games, when previously game creation was extremely inaccessible to them.
Also, thank you for Crash Bandicoot. Amazing game :) One I loved playing growing up!
Re: “It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed”
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I say the exact same thing about Agile practices, "methodologies and procedures are not a substitute for knowledge and experience." That message is a LOT harder to get through than it seems.
OTOH, if they embraced the agile methodology, they could've said "We do not know how long it will take, it depends on our velocity which we haven't yet established". $72K for a team of 6-10 developing an AAA-level game is just unrealistic.
I really don't like velocity as a metric. It's about as useful as counting lines of code to judge a project's completion.
I don't think I could explain it as well as Dave Thomas says it, so here's a link to his fantastic keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M