What did BioWare spend all of their money on?

clbembry

After giving SWTOR it's fair shot I'm left wondering, what in gods great gullet did they spend all of their money on? They had, what, a 200 million dollar budget?

 

Here's SWTOR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ayDPTpGRbk

And heres GW2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjLmknda6_Q&feature=plcp&context=C39000e4UDOEgsToPDskKp6CRv674jDJmrhyFsW9E5

 

I'm not a GW2 fanboy, but after comparing the two videos I'm beginning to wonder how much money BioWare spent [mod edit]

Brisky29

I'll take a guess at the voice acting and story stuff.

clbembry

I guess that could be a reasonable explanation; SWTOR does have awesome voiceovers.

karmath

The majority of it would of went to Lucas and EA execs.

Magnetia

Paying for the Star Wars IP. I can't really imagine how much it cost to do all the voice chat (player branches and future content) so maybe those too. More voices = more people hired = more money needed.

pharazonic

I can't provide a full answer (only EA's accountants can do that) but it's quite evident that they spent a fair bit on alll their marketing. Aside from the actual ad campaign that stares us in the face, a Funcom rep also jokingly stated at how SWTOR's marketing budget was way larger than not only AoC's ad budget but also the development budget. 

 

Obviously, that's hyperbole, but as I said - the extensive campaign speaks for itself. The stupid stunt BW pulled in Times Square does not come for free. CGI cinematics are notoriously expensive to make and BW made quite a few before SWTOR was released. Furthermore, they also outsourced it (as is the case with all their CGI cinematics) so it is probably a tad more expensive than usual. 

 

I doubt that's all they squandered their budget on though... because the reality is, for whatever there budget was, they really put out a poor product. Everything, except the voice acting, is mediocre. That said, even the voice-acting isn't ground breaking. Sound bites are frequently reused; and the script lacks the charm and panache of games like WoW. 

 

TLDR: I'm stumped at what they blew their budget on. Really am. 

The final product is the perfect iteration of mediocre. Usually there is a redeeming feature somewhere in these failed products. I don't see what SWTOR offers to redeem it.

nikoliath

Does the production budget influence your enjoyment of a game? Wether they blew a thousand million or a hundred dollars it is what it is. Would you have had more fun in SWTOR, or any other game had they made it for zero cost?

clbembry

Originally posted by nikoliath

Does the production budget influence your enjoyment of a game? Wether they blew a thousand million or a hundred dollars it is what it is. Would you have had more fun in SWTOR, or any other game had they made it for zero cost?

You clearly misinterpreted the point of the thread. I've spent the past month and a half playing a bland and subpar MMORPG, and when I compared SWTOR to Guild Wars 2 footage I was left puzzled as to what they spent all of their money on. I couldn't care less if BioWare had spent 25 dollars total on SWTOR, it would still be a failed game.

itgrowls

Originally posted by clbembry

Originally posted by nikoliath

Does the production budget influence your enjoyment of a game? Wether they blew a thousand million or a hundred dollars it is what it is. Would you have had more fun in SWTOR, or any other game had they made it for zero cost?

You clearly misinterpreted the point of the thread. I've spent the past month and a half playing a bland and subpar MMORPG, and when I compared SWTOR to Guild Wars 2 footage I was left puzzled as to what they spent all of their money on. I couldn't care less if BioWare had spent 25 dollars total on SWTOR, it would still be a failed game.

I couldn't help but notice that a lead writer and three developers jumped ship just after a so called amazing launch. That kind of thing sends the red needle on my weird-crap-o-meter to off the scale scary. Not to mention i had a very interesting set of global chat conversations with about 20 folks on my server in Rift who were all SWTOR refugees so to speak, and they were all saying the same things, pvp was broken, the devs messed up the graphics, they didn't include enough mmorpg features like LFG and guild perks, and they left in general because they didn't like an incomplete product. (they called themselves refugees btw.)

Metentso

And they payed the top guys well too, some have left the company to start their own game now, that means a lot of money.

gaeanprayer

Marketing (Super Bowl ads aren't exactly cheap), voice acting quantity, purchasing rights to the IP and of course, over-paid execs. Honestly once you get those things out of the way, I'm surprised there's any money left to make a game.

Adamantine

Man, this thread is such a sad read !

I was hoping for at least the story being good in SWTOR, but apparently that didnt happen much either.

 

k-damage

Originally posted by Brisky29

I'll take a guess at the voice acting and story stuff.

This. Famous voice actors are extremely expensive, and there are tons and tons of VO lines. I would be ready to bet 4:1 that at least 50% of the budget is gone into Voice Acting.

tom_gore

Originally posted by k-damage

Originally posted by Brisky29

I'll take a guess at the voice acting and story stuff.

This. Famous voice actors are extremely expensive, and there are tons and tons of VO lines. I would be ready to bet 4:1 that at least 50% of the budget is gone into Voice Acting.

So 150 million US dollars into voice acting? That sounds quite a lot, even if they used top-dollar actors, which they didn't.

 

quasi_dead

Paying off gaming websites

k-damage

Originally posted by tom_gore

Originally posted by k-damage

Originally posted by Brisky29

I'll take a guess at the voice acting and story stuff.

This. Famous voice actors are extremely expensive, and there are tons and tons of VO lines. I would be ready to bet 4:1 that at least 50% of the budget is gone into Voice Acting.

So 150 million US dollars into voice acting? That sounds quite a lot, even if they used top-dollar actors, which they didn't.

 

Maybe not 150m, but you have to remember that they had to do 3 times the voice acting (Eng, Fr, Ger).

Plus I was pretty sure they used top voice actors ? (cf. imdb)

Ridelynn

A couple of years ago there was this rant from a disgruntled ex-EA (Mythic I think) employee - it was a classic rant, and it talked specifically about SWTOR (keep in mind, this was a couple of years ago).

I wish I could find a copy, as the original Wordpress blog has long since been taken down.

It wasn't entirely accurate (the guy was pissed), but it did come ~fairly~ close to stating the actual budget of SWTOR, and claimed that voice acting was the one single facet of the game all the execs were pinning their hopes on.

Hooray for Google and their privacy-sniffing search engine, I found a link:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/ea-artist-soon-to-be-laid-off-burns-ea-management-2803

There was another post, along a similar vein when the actual budget number was released, that detailed just exactly how much voice acting went into the game, and it's a staggering amount: 1,600 story hours, 1,000 Actors, 4,000 NPC's, 3 languages

http://tor.zam.com/story.html?story=28811

Ozmodan

They spent a lot of cash on the voice acting.  They would have been much better off just hiring no name actors to do it and saved a bundle of money.  Personally, having every quest use voice acting is way over the top.  It really does not add that much to the gameplay when you get down to it.

I would have preferred they spent time on expanding their worlds instead.  They are tiny compared to what SWG offered.  Very little chance to explore.

What the EA execs are going to find out, all that voice acting does not keep people playing when the content runs out, which most players will find within a few months.

k-damage

 

Originally posted by Ridelynn

A couple of years ago there was this rant from a disgruntled ex-EA (Mythic I think) employee - it was a classic rant, and it talked specifically about SWTOR (keep in mind, this was a couple of years ago).

I wish I could find a copy, as the original Wordpress blog has long since been taken down.

It wasn't entirely accurate (the guy was pissed), but it did come ~fairly~ close to stating the actual budget of SWTOR, and claimed that voice acting was the one single facet of the game all the execs were pinning their hopes on.

Hooray for Google and their privacy-sniffing search engine, I found a link:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/ea-artist-soon-to-be-laid-off-burns-ea-management-2803

There was another post, along a similar vein when the actual budget number was released, that detailed just exactly how much voice acting went into the game, and it's a staggering amount: 1,600 story hours, 1,000 Actors, 4,000 NPC's, 3 languages

http://tor.zam.com/story.html?story=28811

 

I forgot EA louse ... It's scary how much he was accurate in the end

 

Also thanks for the VO numbers. Then 1.6 hours per actor. A good voice actor earns an average of 47k $ per year, far more if they're reknown ( http://voiceactors.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/how-much-do-voice-actors-earn/ ).

 

So we can assume that swtor ones not being perfect from the start, each one had between 1 and 2 monthes of work, and a lot of them being reknown (at least according to imdb). This pushes a gross estimate at 10k to 30k $ per actor (which is the usual 30% error margin, considering the dialog last minute changes, the actor changes over 5 years, etc).

 

10k x1000 = 10 to 30 millions. So I was wrong with the "half the budget" it seems ;-)

 

edit : oh and I forgot to multiply this estimate by 1.5-2, thanks to the social charges.

 

edit 2 : holy cow, I was wrong, you might want to double the estimated annual income above, as I did not see the article addendum :

 

Update: 2.10.2010 — Excerpts from a Feb. 2008 article onVoiceOverTimes.com — “Actors Score $500K for Video Game Voice Overs”:

According to Screen Actors Guild rules, union voice actors can expect to be paid $760 for one four-hour recording session.

That’s just the fee for a professional voice actor with union status.

Now, if you were to talk celebrity voice talent, that figure increases exponentially. Speaking to Reuters, Blindlight production company general manager Lev Chapelsky said that some stars have demanded $750,000 for an hour’s worth of work, and one voice actor actually received $500,000 for a single session. Chapelsky told Reuters that top talent commonly receives “in the high five figures for a single session.”

 

So in the end we might no be very far from that 50% budget ...

Xasapis

Other companies create a whole featured MMO with those 30M you mentioned just for voice acting. Imho it seems like a huge waste of resources on a feature that has no lasting appeal.

Yamota

Originally posted by Xasapis

Other companies create a whole featured MMO with those 30M you mentioned just for voice acting. Imho it seems like a huge waste of resources on a feature that has no lasting appeal.

I agree... if it was a minor expense I could see how it is warranted but for the huge cost? No. Specially since I, and apparently many others, just space bar through most of them.

karmath

So I see the fanboiz have stopped buying into the EA bullshit. This thread 2 weeks ago would have blown out to 40 pages of tards defending it in an hour.

Yamota

I will take a shot (in order of descending cost)

1. 
   Voice Acting - For anyone who knows how much Hollywood actors charge for this you would guess that they would have spent ALOT on actor fees.
2. 
   Development cost - Artists, coders, designers. Probably a total of 100 of these working for several years. This cost alot. However this is no different for any other triple A MMORPG.
3. 
   Storywriting - Believe it or not, it costs some money to hire good story writers and SW:TOR class stories are pretty good.
4. 
   Licensing cost - Lucas Art mainly but also for the Hero Engine and other stuff they licensed to make this game
5. 
   Marketing - Good marketing cost alot of money.
6. 
   Infrastructure cost - servers and bandwidth to host servers.

Add all these up and I am sure the total cost would exceed $150 million. Can't imagine it being lower than that.

 

Question is, are they in the black yet? Let's assume 2 million copies have been sold and of those 2 million they got average of 1.5 months of sub. fee of $15. With an average unit price of 60$ (collectors editions and what not).

 

2.000.000*60+2.000.000*15 = $150 million

 

I dont know how much of this raw income will go to distributers and what additional chunk Lucas Arts will take but for sure it is not pocket change. So imo they are still in the red.

karmath

---

Originally posted by Yamota
I will take a shot (in order of descending cost) [*]
Voice Acting - For anyone who knows how much Hollywood actors charge for this you would guess that they would have spent ALOT on actor fees.
[*]
Development cost - Artists, coders, designers. Probably a total of 100 of these working for several years. This cost alot. However this is no different for any other triple A MMORPG.
[*]
Storywriting - Believe it or not, it costs some money to hire good story writers and SW:TOR class stories are pretty good.
Licensing cost - Lucas Art mainly but also for the Hero Engine and other stuff they licensed to make this game
Marketing - Good marketing cost alot of money. Add all these up and I am sure the total cost would exceed $150 million. Can't imagine it being lower than that.

---

Move the marketing to 2 or even 1st, a Funcom dev stated that SWTOR's marketing budget was way more than their entire budget for AoC including the Dreamworld engine development.

Yamota

Originally posted by karmath

 

---

Originally posted by Yamota

I will take a shot (in order of descending cost)

 

[*]

Voice Acting - For anyone who knows how much Hollywood actors charge for this you would guess that they would have spent ALOT on actor fees.

[*]

Development cost - Artists, coders, designers. Probably a total of 100 of these working for several years. This cost alot. However this is no different for any other triple A MMORPG.

[*]

Storywriting - Believe it or not, it costs some money to hire good story writers and SW:TOR class stories are pretty good.

Licensing cost - Lucas Art mainly but also for the Hero Engine and other stuff they licensed to make this game

Marketing - Good marketing cost alot of money.

 

Add all these up and I am sure the total cost would exceed $150 million. Can't imagine it being lower than that.

---

 

Move the marketing to 2 or even 1st, a Funcom dev stated that SWTOR's marketing budget was way more than their entire budget for AoC including the Dreamworld engine development.

Really? 

I guess not much of that has come to Europe because in France and Sweden I haven't seen that much advertising for the game. Certainly nothing on TV and billboards like WoW have/had. In US this is the case?

Vesavius

I would guess that the global promotion budget (not just advertising) was probably higher then the development budget.