devtrackers.gg
about 3 years
ago -
Shurenai
-
Direct link
First, as a Moderator, I'm going to strongly request that you remove the opening of this post. You're welcome to share your views all you like- But encouraging review bombing is against the forum rules, and encouraging purchase-bombing is also problematic.
However, I do want to respond to this thread as a user too; So rather than just deleting it, I will leave my reply below and give you a little while to comply with the request before removing the thread as a whole if necessary.
Honestly, while being overly-conservative, you(or the reviewer) did nail a lot of beats.
However you(or the reviewer) overlooked a few relatively important things. One, Noone has said they need more money to complete the game. More time, yes; But not more money.
Second, Regardless of how much they have made in profit, it does not change the fact that they are in fact a small company- You can air quote that all you want, but it will not change. If TFP makes a game, and Ubisoft makes the exact same game, Ubisoft will complete it in a fraction of the time. Ubisoft is absolutely monumental in comparison. Ubisoft has multiple development teams that are all larger than TFP is in it's entirety.
Third, Monetarily speaking, There's a lot of things glazed over that make a pretty big impact. Leasing a property for example, They need a place to work out of. Leasing a property varies quite a lot depending on where you are, what state you're in, etc; But it's not uncommon for it to go for $2 per square foot per month- It can be higher, it can be lower, this is a reasonable middle ground (Especially given that TFP where TFP is based, it's more often higher.) $24/sq.f a year for 7~ years.. A building with 100,000~ sq.f would be about right for a company TFP's size, So you're looking at around 20~+ million more right here. Even if we assume they started with a smaller building and went up as more space was needed, it'll still be in the loose ballpark of 15+million. (And also this would be scaled up a bit as it's been about a year since I previously did that calculation)
Then you also need to factor in the costs of voice actors, musicians, renting recording booths, artists and modelers, utilities for the building, equipment for all employed employees, advertising, web developers, customer relations, server fees for hosting the main forums, maintenence for all of the above, and much more. Without having access to their account books I can't know exactly how much was spent here- But, making an estimate based on viewing prices of al these things and expanding that over the course of 7-8 years and the expenditures will be in the ballpark of 10-25 million.
So already, we've just lopped, at minimum, another 25~ million off the top of the reviews estimates; And at most another 45-50~ million. And that's assuming no other hidden costs like, oh, I don't know, the court battle to get the rights back for the console version which probably took millions as well. So suddenly those 'Overly conservative estimates' actually put the company millions in debt, which they are not.
Fourth, They do need to keep some money in reserve to actually work on another game in the future- Spending every last cent to get this one done will mean having to shut down as a company.
Fifth, Even IF they threw more money at the problem, that's one of the dumbest things you can do. Too many cooks spoils the soup- You can't just add a dozen new developers to a team and expect everything to be hunky dory. It takes time to integrate members into a team in a good way. And failing to take that time can lead to mismanagement, poor quality, things getting overlooked or lost in translation, and worse.
Sixth, TFP did not have access to all of the funds from the lifetime of this game from the start. They started with a very small amount of people with a limited amount of funds and had no idea when or if they would even get more. They spent the first several years of development with a small team that was rationing funds because they simply couldn't afford to spend additional money to get things done without going broke. This stretched out the development timeline a bit, but even then, They're still not that far away from the average development time of games in general nowadays; Let alone for a game of it's scope.
However, I do want to respond to this thread as a user too; So rather than just deleting it, I will leave my reply below and give you a little while to comply with the request before removing the thread as a whole if necessary.
Honestly, while being overly-conservative, you(or the reviewer) did nail a lot of beats.
However you(or the reviewer) overlooked a few relatively important things. One, Noone has said they need more money to complete the game. More time, yes; But not more money.
Second, Regardless of how much they have made in profit, it does not change the fact that they are in fact a small company- You can air quote that all you want, but it will not change. If TFP makes a game, and Ubisoft makes the exact same game, Ubisoft will complete it in a fraction of the time. Ubisoft is absolutely monumental in comparison. Ubisoft has multiple development teams that are all larger than TFP is in it's entirety.
Third, Monetarily speaking, There's a lot of things glazed over that make a pretty big impact. Leasing a property for example, They need a place to work out of. Leasing a property varies quite a lot depending on where you are, what state you're in, etc; But it's not uncommon for it to go for $2 per square foot per month- It can be higher, it can be lower, this is a reasonable middle ground (Especially given that TFP where TFP is based, it's more often higher.) $24/sq.f a year for 7~ years.. A building with 100,000~ sq.f would be about right for a company TFP's size, So you're looking at around 20~+ million more right here. Even if we assume they started with a smaller building and went up as more space was needed, it'll still be in the loose ballpark of 15+million. (And also this would be scaled up a bit as it's been about a year since I previously did that calculation)
Then you also need to factor in the costs of voice actors, musicians, renting recording booths, artists and modelers, utilities for the building, equipment for all employed employees, advertising, web developers, customer relations, server fees for hosting the main forums, maintenence for all of the above, and much more. Without having access to their account books I can't know exactly how much was spent here- But, making an estimate based on viewing prices of al these things and expanding that over the course of 7-8 years and the expenditures will be in the ballpark of 10-25 million.
So already, we've just lopped, at minimum, another 25~ million off the top of the reviews estimates; And at most another 45-50~ million. And that's assuming no other hidden costs like, oh, I don't know, the court battle to get the rights back for the console version which probably took millions as well. So suddenly those 'Overly conservative estimates' actually put the company millions in debt, which they are not.
Fourth, They do need to keep some money in reserve to actually work on another game in the future- Spending every last cent to get this one done will mean having to shut down as a company.
Fifth, Even IF they threw more money at the problem, that's one of the dumbest things you can do. Too many cooks spoils the soup- You can't just add a dozen new developers to a team and expect everything to be hunky dory. It takes time to integrate members into a team in a good way. And failing to take that time can lead to mismanagement, poor quality, things getting overlooked or lost in translation, and worse.
Sixth, TFP did not have access to all of the funds from the lifetime of this game from the start. They started with a very small amount of people with a limited amount of funds and had no idea when or if they would even get more. They spent the first several years of development with a small team that was rationing funds because they simply couldn't afford to spend additional money to get things done without going broke. This stretched out the development timeline a bit, but even then, They're still not that far away from the average development time of games in general nowadays; Let alone for a game of it's scope.