Kingdom Come: Deliverance - AAA As An Indie

Making Games has posted a new article for Kingdom Come: Deliverance with Creative Director Daniel Vavra about the dark side of AAA production.

Building a AAA medieval game as an Indie studio is tough. Experience and passion won’t do the trick alone. Simply put: you need money! A lot of money!

Our original plan for Kingdom Come was to develop a prototype in 15 months and show it to all the publishers. Given our original commencement day this was supposed to fall on September/October 2012. Unfortunately, there were some delays when starting the company, and the deadline shifted to Christmas 2012. We didn’t realize at first that you can’t actually sell anything but trees, turkeys and trinkets at this time of the year. We shifted our deadline to February and that gave us space to improve the thing (and it also cost us some extra money).

In the end we moved the presentation till after Christmas which gave us more time to improve the planned features and add some extras. We created more cutscenes and dialogues than we originally planned, we had a completely functional GUI and map, and we even had details like accurate item pick up: the character will actually correctly grab the item it is picking up. I was really proud about our final build because it contained almost 100 per cent of what planned for it, looked very good and didn’t crash (almost).

Click to expand...

More information.

Not that I know what I'm talking about, but I disagree.

I think if you organize your work well and don't shoot for the final product you'll be fine.

Like you build the assets, story what not, let those people go (unless they accest doing this project based and are payed by hour.

You keep some core people who know the project best and know what they need when they need it.

Currently all companies are inefficient as hell. I'm saying that cause I work in one.

You pay 15 people when 3 people are doing all the work, you pay 5 big time admins, when you only need their help a few minutes / week. ETC.

This way most people are not dedicated, and just take the situation as normal. Whos mad enough to say - Hey im just sitting on my ass till I get this stuff. you shouldn't pay me.

If you have the right people, especially the right leaders, everything is possible. And begging for money is the last thing a leader would be doing

borcanu said:

Not that I know what I'm talking about, but I disagree.

I think if you organize your work well and don't shoot for the final product you'll be fine.

Like you build the assets, story what not, let those people go (unless they accest doing this project based and are payed by hour.

You keep some core people who know the project best and know what they need when they need it.

Currently all companies are inefficient as hell. I'm saying that cause I work in one.

You pay 15 people when 3 people are doing all the work, you pay 5 big time admins, when you only need their help a few minutes / week. ETC.

This way most people are not dedicated, and just take the situation as normal. Whos mad enough to say - Hey im just sitting on my ass till I get this stuff. you shouldn't pay me.

If you have the right people, especially the right leaders, everything is possible. And begging for money is the last thing a leader would be doing

Click to expand...

I am sorry, but what the frakk are you talking about ?

He sounds a bit jealous of the amount of money Chris raised... very interesting article!

GothicGothicness said:

He sounds a bit jealous of the amount of money Chris raised… very interesting article!

Click to expand...

I don't see it. If anything, he admires it, being self-admitted Wing Commander fanboy that he is. Warhorse are even co-operating with Roberts and his company on development, sharing and exchanging tech (since both games are Cryengine powered).

I'm not sure most of those things can be compared with the rest of the world, considering he can get away with much lessened development costs due to being located in a second world country. It's the same reason why CD Projekt RED is able to make Witcher games with a very low budget (relatively speaking).

Humanity has risen! said:

I'm not sure most of those things can be compared with the rest of the world, considering he can get away with much lessened development costs due to being located in a second world country. It's the same reason why CD Projekt RED is able to make Witcher games with a very low budget (relatively speaking).

Click to expand...

Bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about. Do you realize that most big companies have studios in these so called "second world countries"? And for example in Canada with its tax incentives the costs of developing games is comparable to Poland. The only difference is that in big studios 300 people is doing the work that can be done by 100 people. I'm pretty sure there are more people working on the next Dragon Age than on the Witcher 3, yet the latter looks far more superior.

I doubt the average salary for a game developer in the Czech republic or Poland is that high, even factoring in the very generous Canadian subsidies. Right now it is a 30 % tax break, for employees who make from what I recall 30k to 60k (and I guess more for some senior and management roles). Montreal, where most of these studios are located due to the subsidies program which was first crafted for Ubisoft in 1996, has some of the lowest salaries for game development in North America. Even so, I think from what I recall the total budget for The Witcher 2 was something like $8 millions. For a really huge RPG with very expensive environments and a lot of well animated characters, plus the marketing, along with voice acting and translation in multiple languages, that's really very little.

However it is true that there is a lot of bloat in AAA studios. I remember Daniel Vavra made a parody blog post about this:

http://www.warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_007

However from what I can see the numbers don't add up for more expensive parts of the Western world. I think this is also part of why it's easier to make a sustainable Kickstarter if you're located in a slavic country (for example with Legends of Eisenwald). Even then, Kickstarter was just gravy for Warhorse. None of what they did would have been possible without the vast wealth of their private investor.

ua said:

Bullshit.

Click to expand...

Codexian? I bet it is.

But I'll agree 100% on this.
Some studios have less employees but more talent. And those studios still make great games, sometimes even better than studios with more people and less talent.
Movies prove you don't need a blockbuster to earn a crapload of cash, all you need is talent.

But in the end, what AAA stands for anyway? A game that had 10+ millions invested in? More?

When is the game supposed to be released ?

Well, people who don't know much talking I see.

I've been in the game industry, and if you as a game developer move from for example Europe to US / Canada you'll at least double you salary probably tripple it, so yes CDPR has a lot lower costs for making their games, and that's why they can make a game like TW3 for that kind of money, I am sure they also have some of the most talented people in the industry, but that would mean paying more for those very talented people if the studio had been in the US.

Pladio said:

When is the game supposed to be released ?

Click to expand...

As far as I can tell sometime in late 2015 if the game doesn't have any major setbacks.

Humanity has risen! said:

I'm not sure most of those things can be compared with the rest of the world, considering he can get away with much lessened development costs due to being located in a second world country. It's the same reason why CD Projekt RED is able to make Witcher games with a very low budget (relatively speaking).

Click to expand...

Humanity has risen! said:

I think this is also part of why it's easier to make a sustainable Kickstarter if you're located in a slavic country (for example with Legends of Eisenwald).

Click to expand...

"Second world country"? "Slavic country"? Pray tell me more! What kind of a country is a "Slavic country"? 2nd world? 3rd? Or is it a special kind where people are prepared to work just for food and shelter?
I have news for you - we moved on a bit and started accepting money instead of glass beads and blankets.

Couchpotato said:

As far as I can tell sometime in late 2015 if the game doesn't have any major setbacks.

Click to expand...

Oh, long time before it gets ready...

zahratustra said:

"Second world country"? "Slavic country"? Pray tell me more! What kind of a country is a "Slavic country"? 2nd world? 3rd? Or is it a special kind where people are prepared to work just for food and shelter?
I have news for you - we moved on a bit and started accepting money instead of glass beads and blankets.

Click to expand...

It's absolutely not a backwater country in any form. Just one where living wages and standards fall somewhat short of for example the G7 countries.

I have great admiration for these countries, but this is simply factual.

It is factual. I just needed clarification.

It was Dan Vavra himself who said recently that cost of employing developer in CZ is comparable to one in Canada, when in Canada you get subsidies and tax breaks by the government, as opposed to CZ where you get nothing. Which is why he hates any kind of government intereference into the market.