This game seriously needs a matchmaker

[nande]

Finally, and very bluntly, the figures I gave were already pretty low. It would not be unusual for a game the size and scope of Steel Division to cost at least $10M nowadays

Well if what you're saying is true, Eugen's business plan is rightly not sustainable. But I doubt that assessment is accurate.
NieR:Automata's rumoured budget is also 10-15mil and I sure know which I'd consider the more competent product.

 

[Zinegata]

Well if what you're saying is true, Eugen's business plan is rightly not sustainable. But I doubt that assessment is accurate.
NieR:Automata's rumoured budget is also 10-15mil and I sure know which I'd consider the more competent product.

First of all, your "rumored" dev cost for Nier is pretty much derived from the exact same formula I used - which is number of employees multiplied by average wages multiplied by time spent in development (just two years in the case of Nier). If you assume all 200 employees of Platnium worked on Nier for those two years then the payroll estimated cost would be around $16M. Since they likely all didn't end up working in Nier then a 10-15M development budget is entirely reasonable.

Second, if Eugen only needed a year to develop SD then the dev cost for a payroll would in fact only amount to $2M, and a two year cycle would double it to $4M.

The thing is you're also likely looking at other costs they had to also foot - like servers, previous development costs for the engine, etc - which is why the likely total amount they spent for SD is closer to $10M. These don't vanish just because some fanboys on the Internet demand Wargame 4 and are suddenly confronted by the reality it may never happen.

 

[nande]

If you assume all 200 employees of Platnium worked on Nier for those two years then the payroll estimated cost would be around $16M. Since they likely all didn't end up working in Nier then a 10-15M development budget is entirely reasonable.

you're right in thinking the entire studio didn't work on the project, considering Platinum's A team was working on Scalebound at the time. Nier was a B team effort and the credits list 50-60 inhouse employees. But of course a lot of work was outsourced.

That SD $10M figure is still impossible to believe. Servers? Previous engine development costs? After already 5 games on IrisZoom? Even the $4M figure is difficult, although less so after reading that "For two years, close to 60 people worked continuously on the project".

 

[I WUB PUGS]

Steel Div has the capacity to grow (and I don't mean that as a backhand slap, either). All it needs is for the base game to be expanded out with more nations, more terrain, and portability of units from each new iteration of the game. Throw in 'career mode' leader units that a player can keep using and 'growing' through XP (till they die), and you have the makings of a classic game.

I'd like to see jungle, desert, steppe and a big urban battlefield for the series...and I'd like to throw Guards Armoured at elements of 5th Guards Tank Army.

All SD needs is to be morphed from a discrete 'game' into a 'game system'...in a sense, recreating Avalon Hill's 'Squad Leader' (for those old school gamers who still remember it).

I doubt they have money for that.

There's no way that they have any cash reserves after sales for SD fell flat.

 

[jammiebadger]

They'd better do some more DLC's for Red Dragon, its basically a license to print money compared with their last two new game releases, provided they have skin thick enough to deal with the pay 2 win salt.

 

[I WUB PUGS]

They don't really have a choice if they want to remain a game studio. I can't imagine that two colossal flops in a row are doing wonders for their bank account. I think SD was envisioned as a way to break into the mainstream, I even thought it was a sure shot, but it failed. Just look at how much more marketing they did compared to previous Eugen titles.

I mean, it blows, this really blows. I'm genuinely concerned for the longterm health of the studio.

Surely they can cobble together some desert maps and maybe an Arab faction DLC for Red Dragon just to grab some dough.

 

[morpher]

They'd better do some more DLC's for Red Dragon, its basically a license to print money compared with their last two new game releases, provided they have skin thick enough to deal with the pay 2 win salt.

Nah it will never happen. I hope it will never happen. Did you miss the salty dev ranting on reddit?

 

[jammiebadger]

Nah it will never happen. I hope it will never happen. Did you miss the salty dev ranting on reddit?

Reddit is for plebs

 

[morpher]

Reddit is for plebs

Eugen PR on reddit is the most entertaining.

 

[jammiebadger]

Eugen PR on reddit is the most entertaining.

Eh, well i can't be arsed with the drama queens and people who haven't a clue what their complaining about, basically if Eugen does more DLC for Red Dragon, i'll happily buy it for both my Accounts. If they go with mainstream nations like Italy there's less scope for broken fantasy units, hopefully...

 

[morpher]

Eh, well i can't be arsed with the drama queens and people who haven't a clue what their complaining about

Eugen never change.

If they go with mainstream nations like Italy there's less scope for broken fantasy units, hopefully...

You won't believe it but there are people still compiling unit lists for new nations.

 

[I WUB PUGS]

Nah it will never happen. I hope it will never happen. Did you miss the salty dev ranting on reddit?

Link me.

 

[morpher]

Link me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wargame/comments/6ovck0/its_one_high_maintenance_pet_alright/dkkqxqs/

 

[I WUB PUGS]

Ugh. Ded game. Ded developer soon.

 

[Zinegata]

That SD $10M figure is still impossible to believe. Servers? Previous engine development costs? After already 5 games on IrisZoom? Even the $4M figure is difficult, although less so after reading that "For two years, close to 60 people worked continuously on the project".

The issue here is you're assuming that they've already made back all the money on the previous titles on IrisZoom. I'm more doubtful especially given their last actual game was AoA which is another flop, and that they had to move to a new publisher after that.

Indeed, the fact that the servers are getting wonky tells me that cash is becoming a very real issue for them. Servers simply don't go down unless you don't have the money to spend on the redundancies to keep them up.

But yeah sure keep saying it's impossible. It's not as though the WG community has ever proven that it actually understands the industry in the slightest; with its increasingly fantastical ideas of how the community can "support" a developer without actually paying for any of its new games.

 

[Zinegata]

They'd better do some more DLC's for Red Dragon, its basically a license to print money compared with their last two new game releases, provided they have skin thick enough to deal with the pay 2 win salt.

Unfortunately Steamspy doesn't look at the DLC figures but based on snippets that have come up it's unlikely that the new DLCs have sold more than single-digit thousands. It's not going to really pay for the bills.

The DLCs quite simply came out a bit too late in RD's lifecycle when most of the players had already lost interest.

 

[Protosszocker]

Unfortunately Steamspy doesn't look at the DLC figures but based on snippets that have come up it's unlikely that the new DLCs have sold more than single-digit thousands. It's not going to really pay for the bills.

The DLCs quite simply came out a bit too late in RD's lifecycle when most of the players had already lost interest.

I think the best way to sell Dlcs is the way Paradox interactive and Creativ Assembly are doing it. hype them together with a free Update that bring players back to look on the game again. (Like one Free nation in Total war or some new features in Paradox games)

 

[eMeM]

The thing is interns and part-timers are typically not counted as part of the official headcount. Relic for instance has hundreds of testers - who are all part-timers - but has an official headcount of 120, which is only slightly more than double Eugen.

$40,000/year moreover is the actual national average for France. If they offered their regular employee programmers much less than this, then they wouldn't have anyone working for them especially since they are based in Paris. Indeed, I suspect any labor shenanigans (including using interns for an extended time period almost like regulars) in Paris would very likely result in a quick labor suit.

Finally, and very bluntly, the figures I gave were already pretty low. It would not be unusual for a game the size and scope of Steel Division to cost at least $10M nowadays, thus requiring 500,000 copies sold to break-even on Steam. But hey, Wargame 4 is surely around the corner right? Eugen must surely have stacks of money somewhere because they use interns just like every other game company does.

500k to break even? When Wargame SERIES, three games, sold one million copies a few months after RD release, and after multiple sales of the first two games?

 

[Protosszocker]

500k to break even? When Wargame SERIES, three games, sold one million copies a few months after RD release, and after multiple sales of the first two games?

I think 500k is to high but I would say 200k is where to go. So they need to sell double what they have atm. But i think they are quite active at the moment to make the game better and better, so I hope we will see this game becoming the WW2 RTS we all wanted it to be. Till then lets hold it alive because its a good and fun game.

 

[Zinegata]

500k to break even? When Wargame SERIES, three games, sold one million copies a few months after RD release, and after multiple sales of the first two games?

You need to take a look at the WG numbers again.

No single WG ever sold more than a million copies. EE is still the best-selling out of the three, and that's mainly on the back of sales. Indeed, RUSE still has higher overall sales than both ALB and RD individually. An individual installment of Total War in fact generally sells more than the entire WG series combined, and both CoH games have sold more than all of the WGs combined.

WG sales have in fact been in decline since EE. Nobody in the WG community even seemed to realize this until I did the Steam Spy analysis.

Also, do note again that Steam takes a significant cut of each sale, and that there are considerable marketing costs involved. Paradox itself hasn't had a game with less than 500K sales for the last couple of years too, which is why I highly suspect that's their new benchmark for success.