Did Concord REALLY Cost 400 Million Dollars?!

[@MarkDarrah]

To reiterate here: Staff Month Cost is EVERYTHING not just salary.

[@amharbinger]

For me what's even worse is the time. All that work for a game that didn't last a month.

[@MarkDarrah]

It’s hard to get to 400 without taking this long

[@julilla1]

It's mind boggling that so many companies just don't seem to be anywhere in actual gamer spaces hearing what they want and what could bring them money. They could have saved themselves 400 million.

[@MarkDarrah]

But live service == free money! right? RIGHT?!

[@cursedshadow]

Save 400m and 8years

[@JeannieLove]

Well, they also shut down criticism internally.

[@ChroniclesofNoria]

This was such an enlightening video. Thank you so much for sharing this with us Mark.

[@MarkDarrah]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@markm4394]

I find it absurd that nobody in the gaming industry asks themselves, "Why are we making these massive games that take 6-7 years to make when we can make a smaller, more focused AA game in 2-3 years?" Like, why is this model not the norm?

[@MarkDarrah]

AAA live service can make billions of dollars. IF it works.

[@markm4394]

@@MarkDarrah of course! And I have nothing against that. But as you said, it is very risky. Investing 5-6 years without any cash flow while keeping the hype up is extremely difficult. One mistake and the company goes bankrupt. Why do so many medium sized companies still use this business model when they know they are one commercial failure from going under?

[@MarkDarrah]

@@markm4394 The magnitude is very different. A AA game that sells 2-4 million copies i a different league then a 10million seller that makes another 50$ per person after launch. Ultimately, you are 100% right but we have developed a very "winner takes" all mentality

[@HandOn-c40009]

​@@markm4394Investor. the answer is Investor. notice that most of these company who done these short sighted decision are public company. CEO will promise infinite growth to the investor and then forcing the people under them to figure it out and if it doesn't work? lay them off so the profit you get from not paying the layed staff could be counted toward earning.

[@BboyCustomz]

Another factor is that there is so much competition, from games and other things, that even for AA games the cost of marketing to stand out has increased significantly. Something similar has happened to movies too. So this helps nudge them towards a bigger game that could make more money since proportionally they'll have to spend more on marketing for AA. Then there's the big live service pull. If you're Sony you're making actual successful AAA single player games (critically and commercially) but you're seeing player numbers across your consoles consistently show a handful of live service games individually beat all of your games combined. None of those live service games belong to you, one of your biggest competitors owns one of those ever popular games (Minecraft) and just bought what might be THE most popular franchise on your consoles (COD) plus a bunch of very popular live service games (Blizzard's catalog), it's getting harder and harder to reduce cost of a console during the generation, there's an increasing trend among younger gamers to play only a few games and not care as much about consoles. Regarding all other companies doing it, another tv/movie comparison can be seen in the "streaming wars". We often ask "are they crazy? Do they think we have all this money and time for all these streamers? Most of them are gonna fail!" They know this! They expect this! They just all think they're gonna be among those that survive.

[@Knight1029]

I am always surprised when I hear games costing 100s of millions of dollars. Like how could that be? So, thanks for explaining it. I think it can cost a lot but I am not sure. I don't know much about it. You are the only one I have seen who has been rational about Concord.

[@MarkDarrah]

It’s pretty common these days

[@Bridenbrad]

i doubt this is something that would be in your area of interest to make a video on, but i've been hearing a lot of discourse over the last couple of years about video game costs. how the current cost of making AAA games isnt sustainable anymore, and that something has to change or give. as someone whos worked in the industry as long as you have, im curious what your thoughts on it would be, where you see things heading for the future of game development, and how it could potentially be fixed.

[@MarkDarrah]

Yeah I’d have to think about structure for that kind of video…

[@mjohnsen8606]

Man I really wish you'd been in charge of developing The Veilguard.

[@MarkDarrah]

I suspect you will be pleased with the end result

[@alqualondesnerevea6313]

I used to wonder why AAA game studios always try to make live-service games, but after seeing the money games like Fortnite and COD bring in, I’m no longer surprised. Especially after realizing that 80% of the most-played games this year are live-service games, it makes more sense to me now. It also made me realize how small social media really if I were to only rely on social media, I’d think the most-played game this year was BG3 or Elden Ring.

[@MarkDarrah]

BG3 and Elden ring sold huge numbers

[@alqualondesnerevea6313]

​@@MarkDarrah Yeah, that’s why I’m shocked. Even though they’ve sold huge numbers, they still don’t reach the level of Fortnite or the COD franchise. This just shows how massive some of the big live-service games really are.

[@anthonyfaucy2761]

Just because they are big doesn't mean theres a market for more live service games. Everyone has their go to live service games now. People don't want more which is why alot are flopping now. Hopefully Concord flopping puts off companies from live service games from here on

[@ultimategodgohan804]

Dragon Age Veilguard releases in 30 days :)

[@MarkDarrah]

Indeed

[@cshahbazi1220]

Really looking forward to that future video about the eerily familiar idea about revolutionary live service games

[@MarkDarrah]

Yeah, eventually

[@anthonyfaucy2761]

One of the biggest flops in not only the videogames industry but the entertainment industry in general. How did noone at Sony look at this game and not cancel the game?

[@MarkDarrah]

The problem is that it isn't BAD. It just isn't good enough. I can absolutely see how it made it through

[@DarthKrytie]

Game math is fascinating. So many costs you don't think of if you're only thinking of casually. Tho, I do wonder if this game is along the lines of movies that get over funded purely to become a tax write off. Like, when it was acquired, was ever intended to be successful? or was it always intended to get pulled, shelved, and written off?

[@MarkDarrah]

Yeah it will be written off now for sure

[@BoxingDawg]

You have to include the cost of tons of pizzas for the overworked staff. Instead of making a game no one asked for they could've been visionaries feel the market feel the demand and instead of going further.. just put the money in their pockets and go on a long vacation somewhere with lots of sun

[@MarkDarrah]

That would be wrapped in the staff month cost

[@MoosebreathMan65]

I believe there was a job posting from Firewalk for a non senior technical designer role that was 180k a year, which was about 10k higher than what Bungie was paying for a senior position of the same role. Not sure what the rates were for other kinds of positions but it suggests that even compared to other devs in the Bellevue area they were spending more on staff.

[@MarkDarrah]

It certainly does

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

15000 per employee a month is CHEAP. Health Insurance + 100k (which is low balling) salary would already top that number. That doesn't include security, supplies/licenses, location and location management and other expected tech-culture benefits, IT, Servers. Then you're also paying for food, HR, usually bloated outsourcing budgets, etc. Now you got leads, director's etc. Coders make 150 minimum. You should've doubled that number. It's 25k a month, easily. So, now, your team size needs to be half what you thought it was. Now include the end-of-project bonus. Now, include marketing. The cost of laying people off. The cost to give customers refunds. It's a multiplayer game, so that needs servers as well. Now it's not so much a maybe 400mil but a probably.

[@MarkDarrah]

100k for entry level QA, design, and art isn’t low. But you are pretty much right. My data is certainly out of date

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

@@MarkDarrah Certainly QA is

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

To your credit, 15000 a month after all the bleeding out of gaming companies in the last couple of years is more likely true than it was during Covid, during Concorde's development.

[@ironclad9769]

Another part of that 400 million could very well be marketing, hollywood normally avoids tacking marketing costs onto their budgets so sony could very well do the same

[@MarkDarrah]

Yes. Almost definitely. I left it off on purpose but should have mentioned that

[@AnimeLover-xr6mc]

It's funny that a Triple A game is becoming more expensive than presidential campaign budgets we should stop somewhere lol

[@MarkDarrah]

It would be interesting to plot political spending and AAA budgets on the same time axis. I imagine they may go exponential at similar points...

[@Asfaril]

Did the same math when this was questioned on Slack. My math said 10k per month, and ended up around 200M, and just doubled that for Marketing, as was the default for napkin math when I worked for EA. (and a number I had seen applied to several projects) - The 100M for the studio also makes sense.

[@MarkDarrah]

10k for Bellevue is SUPER low. I forgot to talk about marketing because we aw so little or the game...

[@MarkDarrah]

Concord Marketing #concord

[@Asfaril]

@@MarkDarrah my thinking was 200x12x6 for people, month, year, at 10k a month - Giving 144M, double for marketing, and 100M for the cost of purchase company, yeah 400M sounded doable. - Once we dial deeper into it, and say 15K we get there much easier, so we can have a much smaller team pre-alpha, scaling up makes us hit 400M without much effort at all. The marketing double was due to looking at marketing budget for things like Old Republic and Battlefield. From what I was told, BioWare had it closer to 35%.

[@theazhang997]

That was interessiert, thx

[@MarkDarrah]

Thank you for watching

[@farmsalot1233]

If game development costs are that high, I'm surprised more publishers don't relocate studios out of the West to reduce expenses. Or at least acquire studios in areas with a lower cost of living.

[@MarkDarrah]

See CD Project in Poland

[@MrTomSmoke]

Thanks for providing a perspective that is informed by real experience and knowledge of the industry. The wild speculation by random nobodies who have not spent a single second working in gamedev was getting tiresome.

[@MarkDarrah]

Its starting from a pretty shaky bit of data.

[@sofajockeyUK]

Before watching I'd assumed it was half that number. (watches) Oh. Fascinating.

[@MarkDarrah]

200 would be possible too

[@realizewave1513]

I think most can agree it's a huge loss whether it cost 200 million or 400 million. It was extremely costly either way. Hate to say it, but I would very surprised if the studio survives this.

[@MarkDarrah]

Likely not

[@greg3885]

Did Concord REALLY Cost 400 Million Dollars? When you do a tax write off, then yes.

[@MarkDarrah]

Yeah I expect they’ll load it up before they write it off for sure

[@YoRouable]

How much of that money ended up in an exec's pocket? When big chunks of money go missing, or are misappropriated, it's usually not the people on the ground level who are responsible. As you said; the team wasn't making $15,000 a month each.

[@MarkDarrah]

One possible shenanigan would be some sort of IP licence.

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

Nothing has gone missing. We do NOT know actually how much this project cost. This is all theoretical.

[@MarkDarrah]

@@bobmcbobbington9220 VERY theoretical. Based on a single rumor

[@Arauto_Kagnos]

I am pretty sure cost being 400 million was just a rumor, it's mathematically possible but from what I hear the original source for this number wasn't correct and the budget was half that number. It's still expensive, and there is a discussion to be had there about the pitfalls that live-service games can fall into but I don't buy the 400 million development cost. I feel with the way the internet has treated this game it's very easy to make misinformation about it. And since very few people even played, nobody is going to question because it goes well with our biases about it.

[@MarkDarrah]

Certainly possible

[@goeddy]

tbh I can't really imagine this high of a cost considering the utter lack of content the final product had. The only way I could make sense of the math in my head is if this was a Blizzard Project Titan situation where they had a wholle MMO at some point and salvaged it for parts to create the shooter that we got in the end. There are 16 characters in this game... like the entire game. and the skins are just color swaps. I just can't imagine a team of this size having such little output. Its not even a custom engine and Unreal is made for exactly this type of game so I can't imagine them having a lot of struggles with that either. Even with seattle costs and all that I just can't see this costing more then 200 mil unless sony somehow got swindled into paying another 200 mil for the studio itself.

[@MarkDarrah]

It would have to be lost in iteration. Like there are 50 other half made characters in the garbage

[@GameUnionTV]

1. It can 2. It should never 3. We will never know for sure 4. All of the above

[@MarkDarrah]

Indeed

[@Nozzoi]

Commenting for algo

[@MarkDarrah]

Thank you

[@ainsley8863]

Is the first two weeks of a video game that big of an indicator on how the game will do? Realizing that the game might be very expensive to run on live servers, I am still surprised that they didn't run the game for a few months to see if it could build an audience. Esp. after spending that much on preproduction.

[@MarkDarrah]

... traditionally 100%. A boxed product game basically live or dies in its 1st few weeks. Or at least it REALLY sets the tone. Live service games don't necessarily work that way. Lots of LS have risen from the dead. the 40$ price tag kinda makes Concord act like both things

[@J0Llamas036]

Where do you have your citations ??

[@MarkDarrah]

I’m not really quoting many numbers. Most of this is the math required to get to 400. Let’s see: - 15k$/SM based on experience - 100M$ purchase is pulled out of my ass (as mentioned in the video) - when did Sony buy Firewalk: sonyinteractive.com/en/press-releases/2023/sony-interactive-entertainment-to-acquire-firewalk-studios-from-probablymonsters-inc/#:~:text=SAN%20MATEO%2C%20Calif.%2C%20April,(PS5™)%20and%20PC. - when was Firewalk founded www.firewalkstudios.com/#

[@kastrokuz]

did inquisition really sell 12 million copies?

[@MarkDarrah]

indeed

[@xfa93]

Your employee count is WAY off, in 2023 at the time of the Sony acquisition Firewalk had nearly 150 employees.

[@MarkDarrah]

Plus outsource Plus internal Sony resources asigned to the project

[@protekt1Cloud]

The lead design said they had less than a dozen people in the spring of 19 and you're estimating over ten times that much.

[@MarkDarrah]

I’m reverse engineering from the 400million rumour (which supposedly is well sourced) If the dozen is accurate it means a MASSIVE TEAM leading up to the acquisition, other shenanigans, or the 400 is wrong. But 19 to 23 is still 4 years so you could ramp up to a 200 million dollar team on there

[@Jonathan-fw6ty]

@@MarkDarrah "I'm reverse engineering from the idea that the earth is flat, therefore the earth is flat" Bro... How is this shit real? lol How did you think this warranted a video?

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

@@Jonathan-fw6ty You can just watch the video and see how practical it is. With a budget of 400 million, this is what you'd get for a certain period of time. I think much is forgotten in costs here, especially marketing, but the idea isn't complicated. You can prove 2+2 != 5 by subtracting 2 and 2 from 5. That's what this is.

[@Dangerman-zg3ui]

I mean personally I did "napkin math" and took worded statements that half of the dev cycle was pre-production and the other full-production. Assuming 12 people for the first 3 years and then 5 years full production (just to be more "pestimistic) of 150 people with a median salary of 200,000 USD which is a reasonable assumption in Seattle even if upper end for game dev wages. I got about 157,200,000 Total USD that in total. Now outsourcing adds costs sure *but* they tend to be worked on around the world with much lower wages than Seattle. Maybe Game development was just above 200 million USD but can't see much higher?

[@MarkDarrah]

Given the reports of the game at alpha, a massive surge is certainly possible. 150 in production is REALLY small these days

[@Dangerman-zg3ui]

@@MarkDarrah Maybe but statements from developers say 150 was production for 4-5 years.

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

@@Dangerman-zg3ui The credits are 1300 people. The credits are not lying to you. What they don't mention though is how long and how much it cost to hire each of those 1150 people the developers forget to mention. But considering it's more than 12X people than what the devs say worked on the project, even if they hired each person for just one year, that's 12 years of 150 people working, right? That's bloat. That's how we get a game like concorde for 300-400 million dollars. That's how you make a budgetary disaster.

[@volborg1000]

God video Mark. Sadly, I think you made some errors. 1) According to MobyGames, there is a total of 1,982 people (1,972 professional roles, 10 thanks) with a total of 1,992 credits involved in making Concord. 2 )We don't know what Sony got Firewalk for, but there was a Series A funding round of $250M in January 2022. So the valuation must have been higher than $100M.

[@MarkDarrah]

1) people come and go from the project. ESPEECIALLY if they were surging at the end, you could have HUNDRED of people who worked on the project for only a few months 2) MAYBE. But they were flushing that into salary, so not necessarily

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

Marketing along is widely considered half the cost of production of a project. So we're really talking about a game that costs 200 million to "develop" but 400 million to sell.

[@MarkDarrah]

It can. I don’t really see signs of that in Concord. I should have mentioned it in the video

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

@@MarkDarrah Probably right, but they got how many FMV's out before they closed down? 15 million a piece minimum.

[@bobmcbobbington9220]

And one last thing: If this is the ONLY game this company releases then yes, absolutely, you need to add the acquisition to the price of this game. You paid X dollars for one game to be made, then that's cost, isn't it?

[@MarkDarrah]

That's my assertion

[@Akimatu]

In original claim about 400 million it was stated that studio's acquisition wasn't included in that budget. So no, it definitely wasn't

[@MarkDarrah]

Yeah, I know but with out knowing the specific internal source, I’m not sure I trust that statement. Most people on a team don’t really know the complexities of the finances

[@16Vagabond]

what do you think about all the Veilguard drama

[@MarkDarrah]

Sigh

[@16Vagabond]

@@MarkDarrah hmm, I must concur

[@djisma69]

Mark what do you think about the new Dragon age? and them cleaning world states, not caring for the old choices we players did make? Also more on promoting agendas than what the game was about (dark fantasy) and whatever it is now...

[@MarkDarrah]

I think it a great game. I've played it front to back

[@djisma69]

@@MarkDarrah Fair enough, but Bioware was all about choices carrying over, seems like they forgot about it. (and I know what John Epler said about this... but I don't buy that excuse, the wardens are in the new game, Varric, Morrigan... it makes no sense everyone will avoid saying anything about the Hero of Ferelden, Hawke, etc.)

[@CorinneO.O]

May this be why cdpr opened in Boston? Like is it cheaper there? Is it still smart to have hundreds, sometimes thousands of staff in such expensive places

[@MarkDarrah]

CDPR was built on polish labor. Which is WAY cheaper then anywhere in US or Canada

[@MarkDarrah]

Not sure what costs are like in Boston. Poland is definitely cheaper

[@CorinneO.O]

@@MarkDarrah wow.. can't imagine the costs then if cyberpunk was made in America. Especially the rough launch costs could've hurt the studio much more

[@DarthKrytie]

Boston is in the top ten most expensive places to live in the world.