Kinda depressing, considering how game developers are typically underpaid and overworked... But as long as people are willing to put up with it, it's going to continue.
And marketing people aren't?
I'm a game developer, and it depresses me how much undeserved hatred and contempt "suits" get form us "technical" guys. We work hard to make something, and they work hard to get it to the people. If you don't like the idea that games like GTAV should be advertised in order to get the money they deserve (and I think no one here disagrees that GTAV deserves it), you should be disappointed with the audience who wouldn't notice it if not for a marketing budget.
Let's just look at it logically; the budget dedicated to development determines the quality and quantity of what can be created. If you have a finite pool and < 50% is going to development and > 50% is going to marketing then logically you're going to get a lesser product than if you put say, 75% in development and 25% in marketing.
So yeah, that's sad. You don't even need to get into who works harder, etc.
Then imagine marketing submitted their budget independently. Their proposal included some high cost, unique advertising campaigns and totaled $150m.
Both got approved.
In most circumstances, budget is a finite resource that people fight for, and one person getting more means someone else getting less. But for a very successful company releasing pretty much the world's most successful game, maybe they just gave everyone what they wanted/needed and marketing's costs somehow were legitimately higher.
I agree it seems weird to have the split like that, but not all development efforts are cash deprived, and if it isn't then more money won't help much.
I'm not singling out Rockstar here, ALL huge companies have this kind of ridiculous split between development and marketing in today's world. It's just the sad reality of how business is done.
Another big-ticket budget item is clearly music licensing and celebrity involvement for major-character voice acting (like GTA:SA had Samuel L. Jackson in a major role for example and some old-school rap celebs for "radio moderator" talking).
(That is a massive painting on the side of a building, incase that isn't clear)
"Hype" definitely gets sales. It leads to people checking out the game/movie, paying attention when they otherwise might not have - it's a form of social proof.
$800m in sales, first day. How much of that was due to marketing? Who knows. But it looks pretty positive to me, and stunts like this are part of it. Almost certainly positive, IMO.
Sure, ROI is tough. But think about the wrong decision to not market and sales flops in the first 2-3 weeks. You can't make up that lost revenue from launch.
But to build awareness and convince more people to go out and buy it during the opening weeks, that's where a poster like this comes into play. Constant visible reminders of the release date turn a 500m release into an 800m release
According to sources that come up in Google (bureau of labor, indeed, glassdoor, salary.com) the average nation wide software engineer salary is close to that plus or minus $5K.
On HN it feels like nation wide game industry numbers are being compared to the salaries of the best engineers at the most successful Silicon Valley\SF tech companies. When you compare against top tier companies we're looking at a $20K+ jump. But if you start comparing against top tier game developers like Valve, Riot or Naughty Dog you get comparable results.
I know that salary surveys are understandably taken with a grain of salt on HN, but I feel like it's a better yardstick than the "common wisdom" that gets thrown around.
/go back to moving bits from one column to another.
[1]http://gamerant.com/activision-lawsuit-infinity-ward-salarie...
On the other hand, I don't think a very large portion of game development teams are engineers anymore. Not only are the tools much better, there is much more focus on other things like art, sound, marketing, design, etc...
It's a good point that the proportion of employees who are engineers is probably lower than in the past. I wonder how engineering vs art/music salaries compare.
Congratulations sir. You must not watch much TV. It's understandable if they have commercials on all the sports, but I don't even watch much sports and I feel like I've seen the GTA-V spot a hundred times.