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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Starfield had less than half the budget of Star Citizen and actually came out.
That depends on your perspective on the engine and dev tools.
Does it really though?
Starfield could have been programmed in potato with ti-84 calculators as dev tools. The work has been done to bring a playable game to the market.
What goes on behind the scenes isn't really important to an end user. They are purchasing an entertainment experience, not an investment into a game engine.
The point I was making was a response to the budget statement. Starfield uses an engine that bethsoft first licensed expensively, modified extensively at expense and then bought the company's assets. The game's singular budget does not show the development cost. That was my point.
If we're discussing game dev budgets we're not talking from an end user perspective.
Are you suggesting that we should raise the cost of Starfield’s development then and account for hidden engine costs?
We can do that. I don’t know what a good number would be, but let’s quadruple or quintuple it for fun. Are we sitting at the $1.5 billion dollar mark? This gives us a scenario where Starfield has now cost twice to develop than this game.
The game was still developed and released. At some point, long development times start to work against a product. This isn’t a field where consumer expectations and tastes remain constant. The longer a game takes to make, the more dated design decisions may appear. Graphics cannot remain cutting edge for the entirety of a 10 year development cycle without rework, which can be seen as a waste of resources. That time and energy could have gone towards something else. Rework enough systems and you begin to paralyze your ability to actually complete the project.