That's all fine. But you now didn't cut the budget, you just fired some people. 20 millions are still 20 millions. Same budget, same manhours, longer time.Part One:
If you cut the budget, That means the company is "bleeding less."
I was imagining cutting the staff by a quarter. But for argument's sake, lets say by as much as half. You cut the number of people working on a game by half, the company is spending half the money over the course of every single month the game is under development.
(I'm American, and it's beyond me how to use the Euro symbol on my keyboard, so I'm going to use the $ sign here)
If you have $20 million in a project's total budget before the company has to put SOMETHING onto the market to begin earning some revenue....
Over the course of one year with 200 people making $100,000 a product would need to hit the market at the end of the 12th month.
If you cut the number of staff by half, to 100 people and they are making $100,000 / year, that extends the timeline out to TWO years instead of one before hitting that $20 million benchmark when the company has to start making a revenue stream off that project.
computer games, engines, and all computer programs in general are becoming more and more complex. With more and more features and "working parts." Particularly with games' AI that has to be able to function with all those extra moving parts in order to provide the single player with some sort of challenge.
With increased complexity, necessarily comes a LOT more code. More code, means more potential for more bugs and/or broken game play mechanics. This is actually why I SUPPORT the concept of DLC. I understand and appreciate the fact that a basic functional game needs to come to market. That more features can always be added later on, which gives the company the opportunity to make more income so they can continue to provide the great products I enjoy.
I personally prefer a basic vanilla gaming experience that works "out of the box," and I am patient enough to wait longer to allow the developers to work more methodically as opposed to haphazardly under increasingly impossible time constraints. That's how we end up with disasters like Cities Skylines: II. (Not a complete "disaster" in my book, but this post is already too long to delve deeper in that and I have a bit more to say.)
Part Two:
There is an optimum number of people for peak efficiency for working on any given project. Beyond that, adding more people nets diminishing returns on the investment into more staff.
If a project is bleeding cash, there is a corporate tendency where "panic" begins to ensue. I'm going to again pick on CS 2 here.
When the corporate structure begins to "panic," they begin to put more and more pressure on those below them to hurry up and put something out. The "panicking" can bleed into other departments unrelated to the actual development teams. Such as the sales department. Sales will begin to want to....well....make sales!
When Sales wants to start pushing, that department in turn starts to turn up the pressure on the Marketing department. So Marketing starts turning up the hype. When Marketing starts hyping something, it generates an ADHD atmosphere for the future customer base who increasingly want something NOW! And if there are any delays, they start getting irritated and angry and begin leaving ugly reviews online. Which in turn, increases corporate "panic" at the top even more.
Part Three:
Remember, these are just hypotheses. I don't know what's happening behind the scenes at PDX. Most PDX products are perfectly fine. Stellaris and its DLC was a stunning success, as it deserved to be. CK III and Vicky III were good, with their later updates and DLC making them even better. EU IV is by far the greatest piece of work by PDX (IMHO, of course. There is literally no need for a successor title, and hope to see continued development for a long time to come).
CS 2 was probably the worst (I know it was developed by CO, but PDX had a hand in marketing and pressuring the product as well.) Based on what I've seen from CS2's marketing and advertising, it comes off as being overhyped almost to the point of being panic-driven.
Now, IF PDX DOES plan on making an EU V, it's gotta have a REALLY long development cycle. EU IV would be an extremely difficult act to follow. And this is where my entire point in "Part One" is derived from. EU IV comes from a place of absolute love. You could almost FEEL it with how well the game plays, the deep layers, all the different details from all the different DLC even focusing on various cultural clothing sets! The music packs! The different sprites! The dedication to squashing bugs and improving the AI.
Creative types like coders and artists can't be pressured. It's got to come from a place of love. And love is patient, as they say.
Your point above was to achieve it with _less_ budget.
/edit: besides of that I totally agree to what you say, I'm a software developer myself and can relate. I just Don't get your "less budget means more time and same manhours" magic
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