idk about that, i think you just don't see all the failed projects as much

better hidden

More cheaply failed?

quicker to crash

That's the sort of thing I mean

well some things just have shorter life cycles. anything software based is gonna have a pretty long life cycle relatively speaking

I think it's more to do with it being art vs. directly useful

I have lots of friends in software stuff where they can narrow down what's working and what's not pretty easily

"Fun" is...a lot fuzzier

true

although so is figuring out interfaces that work

If you're in that market, anyway; I'm not sure what your average F2P mobile game optimizes for is "fun"

Yeah, but that has known methods that are _relatively_ cheap to investigate

e.g. A/B testing

true

IMO games are just too expensive to produce

And that will have to change sooner or later

At least for the AAA open-world stuff

too expensive to produce, or are thrown too much money

AAA is bloated and full of itself

No, genuinely expensive

There's a lot of content that you might think is semi-automated

They are too focused on "Movie like experiences" and pushed graphics and shit like that

And it often is, but just...minimally

and high end graphics make production expensive.

how much of a AAA's budget ends up being put into graphics and ads?

tbh

graphics are nice but don't make a game fun

or interesting

I think the rule of thumb is that about half the budget goes to marketing

But that's also because when you try to do less you sink

and I wonder who is at fault for that *looks at gaming journalists who talked about the graphics of games before social justice became the new meme*

but AAA goes for graphics way too often

(broadly speaking)

AAA goes for graphics because you can't sell gameplay on commercials

Graphics itself isn't expensive per se

it is

you kidding?

graphics is one of the more expensive parts next to marketing

the man hours involved in that is ridiculous

in the last decade or so it hasnt been about raw improvements but rather software related improvements e.g. texture shader techniques etc etc instead of raw increase in polygons as it used to go