I’m sorry, but did you actually read the quote from Adam Isgreen? Let me re-post it for you:
I have no idea where you’re pulling a number like 80k for 1 new stage. If you actually read the quote, it says that 1 new stage would require a fund MULTIPLE times larger than Shago’s, which was 100k. No idea where you’re getting these numbers from…
i write from where i get the number.
so the cases are, the stages are more expensive than characters and @TempusChaoti wrote the numbers backwards or we funded only about one eighth of shadow jago, which is weird.
First, thanks for your detailed response. Putting aside for a moment a debate about the total cost of a stage, this is at least a productive way to havethe conversation.
One of the challenges of game development in the modern outsourced, contracted era is that you don’t just have people sitting around waiting to be told to do stuff. So if you wake up in the morning and say “you know what? Let’s do five new stages.” You have to develop a contract with milestones and specifications and negotiate a total cost and etc etc. So there is definitely a transaction cost. Add to that that MS is a pretty big place and, although this is speculation on my part, I think we’ve seen some evidence that the company bureaucracy isn’t always the most agile. I suspect this definitely contributes to the fact that we aren’t seeing any proposal for new stages.
But going back to your original assertion, I think the weak link in the chain is the idea that 40k people are going to pay $10 for five new stages. I don’t think that’s likely. I’m a huge booster for the game and I am starting to consider whether I need every monetized extra. Would I contribute $10 for five new stages? Probably. Would I contribute $5 for one new stage? Maybe not. So it depends on the math and the quality of what I think I’m getting. And I’m a financially comfortable adult. A lot of our community consists of kids and young people who can’t be as frivolous about $10 as I can.
So while I would love it if the scenario you describe was real, I’m afraid I just don’t think it is.
Shadow jago is not a “brand new character,” he’s a remix made using existing assets. Pegging his development costs at one eighth of what a totally new character would cost to develop is probably not that far off.
i don’t know 800.000$ to make a character seems too much for me. designing, 3d modeling, animations, stage lighting, story, icons, music, balancing and all the stuff for 800k? it seems too much, but ok i don’t know. And then sell him for 5$ in a game that it is free, it means that you expect at least 160k people to buy him. Do we have these people?
$800k may be a bit high, but running a multinational business like this with the right talent is going to be expensive.
Just going off of a bit of research, the average salary for both Game Designers and Programmers approaches $85k per year. That’s about $233 dollars per day per person.
Now we’ve read that in the height of Season 2’s production that it took about 3 months to take a character from concept to playable character. Let’s assume that IG has a core staff of about 10 people.
To keep 10 people employed for 90 days, that costs about $210,000 .
Then there’s freelance character artists. We know that for at least Eyedol’s concept art they hired outside help, which is very common. I actually have a professor who was an illustrator on Diablo 3.
Now a high end character illustrator will probably run between $20-40 an hour. Even assuming that they work 8 hours a day for only a week, that’d be another $1120-2240. Knowing that they’ll probably have multiple drafts and pitches to go through, it could take up to a whole month just to layout the character design, so that could put you upwards of $5-10,000.
Then you’ll have the 3d modelers, the animators, the sound design team, the gameplay/balance team, PR folks, utilities/rent…
Even with help and support from the Microsoft team that’s going to add up very quickly.
So would 1 million be a more realistic price for 1 stage?
This sounds about 300.000$ for a character at most. So a stage must be 120.000$. A little more expensive from what i said. So if not 5-stages pack, a 4-stages pack would cost 10$ for the same amount of people.
I think it’s not up to us to make these speeches, talk about IG’s money and finances.
If there is a question, the IG should simply find the way to do it. And we buy. We just have to ask and ask until they give it to us. If the developers tell me, to do all these images (retro stages, no mercy, etc.) and always propose it, and always ask, it does not serve anything, i stop today. But developers have never considered me. The only contact I have is with the moderators scolding me when I want to break everything. XD
Unfortunately,thats not how things work.We can ask and ask and ask until the cows come home,and if the dev’s simply dont have the funds to create everything we ask for,we wont get it.It’s not as cut and dry as you are trying to paint it out to be.
Sounds like a great plan to still not get what you’re demanding, and also make people really not like you!
You are right, it is not nice talking about money, i just wanted to say that i think it is possible to have the stages, and we are not making stage examples just for nothing.
I don’t know man, maya’s ultimate looks a lot like one of those no mercies you proposed for her.
Maybe a dev should update us on how much stages for new characters would cost.
One stage costs 2-3 characters
That’s as much as been told to us
I thought it was five stages = two/three characters
Huh let me check. I might have gotten one part wrong
Yea it’s 5 stages apparently
Let’s math this out… 5 stages = 2 characters.
Shago fund was $100K - 50K going to tourney fund = 50K left for real boy Shago.
Let’s assume new assets; animations, design concept, artwork, gameplay add another $250 on to that, totaling $300K for one new character.
x 2 characters = 600K for two characters
/ 5 stages = 120K for one new stage
However, this math does not compute with Adam’s statement that one new stage would cost multiple times larger than the Shago fund, which was 100K. So for a stage to cost, let’s say 400K
x 5 stages = 2 million
x .5 = 1 million for a single character
That seems like an awfully high number if the cost for Shago was essentially 50K to get a move set. Of course… That doesn’t necessarily mean Shago’s move set COST 50K, only that they were asking for that much.
Conclusion: We don’t know how much any of this stuff actually costs. We only know that stages are expensive and that MS / IG see more value in putting that money elsewhere.
We can keep giving them feedback on stages and hope that they listen and try and find a way to give us something close to what we’re looking for, but if they simply can’t do it and need to put money elsewhere, then so be it. This isn’t just a “we ask, you give” type of deal or “we demand and you supply.” A few people on a message board don’t necessarily constitute a real demand for something. Plus, they’re not a fast food restaurant and we don’t get to order the game the way we want it.
Here’s hoping they can do some less expensive versions of stages involving recoloring and shifting assets on current stages, as I would like to see characters like Mira and Eyedol get stages. Who knows, maybe some time down the line?