You’ve been working seven days a week all
year round, taking only a few holidays, and
being told constantly that your work needs
to be changed.
Two guys on your developing team have had
to quit due to almost having mental breakdowns.
You’re working on what could be the greatest
game the world has ever known, perhaps the
most complex game ever created…well, partly
created, because every time you get close
to finishing just one part of the game you’re
told it’s just not right.
In fact, you’re starting to feel like you're
looking for a pot of gold at the end of a
rainbow, chasing your own shadow, being asked
to believe in something that doesn’t actually
exist.
This is the story of the most expensive game
never created.
First of all, modern video games are very
expensive to make and they take a long time
to complete.
Here at the Infographics Show we actually
know a guy who spent years working on some
very big video game titles.
He had two nervous breakdowns in those years
and said developing video games was the most
stressful environment he’d ever worked in.
We guess making games sounds like a really
fun job, but trust us, playing them is not
like making them.
So you have these big teams of developers
working really long shifts and going out of
their minds.
They need to be paid a fair bit of money for
this, and then after that you’ve got marketing
and packaging and office space to pay for.
You might have a team of say, 150 core people,
to make a complex game such as “Grand Theft
Auto”, and they might be working on it for
three of four whole years before any cash
comes back.
“Grand Theft Auto V” is estimated to have
cost anything from $139 million to $270 million
to make.
The good news is, it also made tons of money
for its publisher, Rockstar Games.
That was about $6 billion in total revenue.
The game “Destiny” cost about $500 million
to make and market, which is more than any
movie that’s ever been made.
Ok, so it can be costly to make a game, and
of course it’s a big risk.
It certainly paid off for Rockstar with their
Grand Theft Auto franchise, and we reckon
Nintendo with its Super Mario franchise has
a bank full of billions of gold coins.
But imagine this for a second…you’re spending
years and years on a game, you, and lots of
over-worked, stressed-out, Adderall-eating
developers, and you just can’t finish the
thing.
It’s like the search for the Holy Grail,
but not quite as exciting.
Maybe a better comparison would be quarantine
with a computer.
The game we are talking about is called “Star
Citizen”, and its story is mind-blowing,
if not confusing.
You see, back in 2011 when this game got off
the ground it did so only with the help of
the public.
It had raised two million in crowdfunding
by 2013, and the bosses said, ok, now we can
start- developers, start writing code.
That was seven years ago, and you know, those
guys, the ones that lasted, are still at their
stations, no doubt now on an Adderall drip.
The team of guys in charge of making this
game belong to a company called Cloud Imperium.
They’ve been busy getting more funding,
and believe it or not, they’re now at around
$328 million.
This makes it the most expensive game ever,
in terms of development.
The game Destiny might have cost around $500
million, but that was the full shebang…there
was tons of money on marketing and packaging.
Destiny’s creators actually said the production
alone was not even close to $500 million,
and Destiny is actually finished, which is
quite important indeed.
So, we have Star Citizen, right now the most
expensive game, not ever made, but never made.
We’re not going to go into details about
the game itself, but will tell you that it’s
in the “space trading and combat simulator”
genre of games, meaning you’ll be flying
around space, shooting things and buying things.
Did we ever tell you this amazing fact; space
is a big place…like, really big...there’s
a lot to work with if you’re trying to make
a space game seem realistic.
Let’s say there are around 2 trillion galaxies
in the universe, and each of them holds millions
and millions of stars.
Then you've got a star system, like our solar
system.
That in itself is pretty big, but we hear
that Star Citizen wants to create 100 star
systems.
Maybe that is just too ambitious.
We think you’ll soon find out that it is.
That’s kind of the whole problem these guys
are having making this damn game.
Just how BIG do you make space when you’re
trying to make the best space game ever?
How perfect do you make it all?
There have been investors sinking millions
into this game, but the majority of the cash,
over $250 million of the money, has been crowdfunded.
That’s Joe Public putting his hard-earned
money into a game that can’t seem to be
finished.
People are starting to say, well, if Rockstar
could blow your mind and do a GTA title in
three years, then surely Star Citizen is not
just literally going to be out of this world,
but figuratively, too.
Almost a decade on a game.
Surely they’ve got something really special
already...or maybe not.
There are people out there that think Star
Citizen won’t be that mind-blowing at all,
and the money has all been virtually vaporized.
Those critics, and we are reading one right
now, say there is no Holy Grail.
They say Star Citizen is a chimera, the game-version
of Keyser Soze.
Other’s just say it’s a scam, or has just
been very badly managed.
We have no idea.
Don’t shoot the messenger...we're just telling
you what we’ve read.
This is how one reporter put it:
“Star Citizen has become a lightning-rod
for controversy, with several entire forums’
worth of people dedicated to forensically
dissecting every tiny detail, rumor or allegation
surrounding the project.”
The thing is, that report was made almost
four years ago, and the game STILL hasn’t
been completed and the guys are still asking
for more money.
One thing might just be that the person at
the head of the production team is a perfectionist,
but you know, one of those perfectionists
that can be quite hard to work with.
Creating the perfect universe might not be
so easy.
More recent reports we found say the game
has been mishandled, mismanaged, and working
on Star Citizen has been “chaotic.”
That’s 537 employees at five different offices,
all being micromanaged by a perfectionist
and likely so over-worked they haven’t even
been told it’s 2020.
They get paid well though, with $30 million
being paid out in total in salaries in 2019.
That’s quite a lot of cash for a game that
hasn’t been made and may never be made.
Imagine you paid some construction company
300+plus million to build you an amazing house,
and after ten years they told you they still
hadn’t quite finished the bathroom toilet.
We actually found out where some of the cash
went.
We found one graphics engineer who spent months
on visual effects, but for a really small
element of the game.
A developer said he quit after spending 17
months on making characters, and then was
told to change them.
He said this was going on all the time, meanwhile
the company was spending lots of money on
making demos so it could impress people and
get more funding.
The enterprise was a money-making machine,
but for the workers it was like being trapped
in a Franz Kafka novel…like going down a
rabbit hole and getting lost in a network
of confusing tunnels, or being told to travel
to a Castle it’s just impossible to get
to.
This is what one investor said after he saw
where his money had gone and how far the game
had got in terms of development:
“The game they promised us can't even barely
run.
The performance is terrible and it's still
in an 'Alpha' state.
I want out.
They lied to us.”
He wanted his money back.
This guy said that back in mid-2019.
He was promised that the game would have 100
star systems, but guess what, when he looked
at the Alpha mode, it didn’t even have one
fully-completed star system.
Hmm, not one star system in one entire decade.
Let’s do some math…10 years...1….100…Maybe
the game will be completed around 2120.
All its fans will be dead by then, or at least
have grown out of computer games.
Now check out, “Why Do Games Cost $60?
Why Hasn't The Price of Video Games Changed?”
or, “Are You Playing The Losing Game: Fortnite
vs Apex vs PUBG”
