The developers and artists absolutely need to be fairly compensated for the highly skilled work they’re doing. The question is, does a good game require 1500-2500 of them? That’s where you need to sell 9 million copies of an $80 game to break even. Particularly in an era where online sales mean you no longer need a distribution partner who will produce hundreds of thousands of discs at a time, and who has existing partnerships with big box retailers, so much of that publishing budget, relationships and supply chain are no longer needed. Even with the standard 30% cut that digital storefronts take, a team of 30 people can spend five years developing a game for $15-20 million, including marketing and localization, sell 500K copies at $50 and break even. This type of scaling back is what’s needed to keep the industry profitable and sustainable. I’m not saying there’s no place for huge budget games, but they don’t need to be the norm that bankrupts developers from one bad release.
How can you have that much time without having finished act 1? Is it from multiple saves? You can totally clean out everything there is to do in act 1 in about a third of that time.
Having watched all of Mythic Quest, I had no idea what you meant and looked it up - I didn’t realize there was any connection. How does the show promote Ubisoft?
It’s a good point, they all have item or ability gated progression with backtracking and alternate routes. The more I think about the question, the less of an answer I have…