Anyone else wondering how HL2 cost Valve $40 million to make?

J

Jiffra

Guest
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love HL2, and I realize how meticulously crafted it is, but I still fail to see how this game cost $40 million to make. Most high profile games cost no more $10 million to make (including the latest GTA game, and that game has loads of content). How did HL2 manage to cost 4x that much with the content it currently has? It's basically just a 20 hour single player game that comes with a graphically updated 5 year old multiplayer game. I know of many games with longer play hours than that that have cost significantly less to produce.

Hmmm... maybe this is another fib on Valve's part?
 
The Long development time, the salaries, the licensing, equipment, facility rentals, new HQ, software, steam...
 
7 Years in the making, new engine, shock engine license.

EDIT: I think it's more of a long time, for such a short game.
 
Money isn't hard to spend, especialy if you have alot of it.
 
lets see:

New reasearch on facial animation, something never done at the time of development: A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY

Building a top of the line engine from SCRATCH: A whole lot of money

Trip to Europe for entire dev team: A lot of money

Paying all these people to work 20 hour days for 7 years: A lot of money

Paying to always have top of the line equipment to work on: Alot of money

Paying to have office space: Alot of money



Seriously, it's ALOT of money, but they did alot of things never before done when they started, physics and facial animation back in 2000 was unheard of, and they were doing it.
 
My guesses:

- 6 years of salaries to 80 people
- While most hasn't been spent on the game, it has been on the engine, and Steam.
- 15 Gbps of bandwidth probably doesn't come cheap.
 
They didn't have to develop a completely new game engine for games like GTA3 san andreas. It already existed. It probobly took loads of research and development to develop source.

Developing the content is one thing. If you don't have a good engine to run it, your content doesn't mean anything. I guarantee you the software developers who coded source make a lot more money than the artists who made the content...
 
A2597 said:
lets see:

New reasearch on facial animation, something never done at the time of development: A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY

Building a top of the line engine from SCRATCH: A whole lot of money

Trip to Europe for entire dev team: A lot of money

Paying all these people to work 20 hour days for 7 years: A lot of money

Paying to always have top of the line equipment to work on: Alot of money

Paying to have office space: Alot of money
Click to expand...

playing through Half Life 2 and seeing what they've been doing for the last 7 years.... : Priceless
 
And then all that time-temporal stretch research they had to do in order to make Summer 2004 involve november as well. plus all the special-adepted almanacks.
 
I think the same thing when I see films that cost a fortune. They say things like "Everything we were going to make the spaceship land it would've cost 2 million dollars" and stuff like that.

But the cost was worth it for Half-Life 2. They'll have made it back already, probably.
 
But its to short ! It took me 1 month to finish Half Life !
 
2 words 'ignorant bastard', would you work for peanuts? these people are the programming elite, they aint on no minimum wage!??
 
tommy1987 said:
2 words 'ignorant bastard', would you work for peanuts? these people are the programming elite, they aint on no minimum wage!??
Click to expand...
That's a bit harsh.
 
How did HL2 manage to cost 4x that much with the content it currently has?
Click to expand...
They made and re-made the game over and over and over. You just play the final version.
 
tommy1987 said:
2 words 'ignorant bastard', would you work for peanuts? these people are the programming elite, they aint on no minimum wage!??
Click to expand...

The money is in the publishing, perhaps steam earns valve a bit more in that respect. The competition to get into the games industry is massive so why would they need to pay a lot of money when theres hundreds of people out there wanting to do it for free/cheap?

Im sure they do alright but im sure they arnt earning a fortune, read this:

http://www.gametutorials.com/Articles/GameIndustryCareer.htm

"I was surprised by what I found upon finding out how much people make in the game industry. Believe it or not, but you more likely to make more money programming outside of the game industry, and probably working less hours too. Visual Basic database programmers make more than someone writing a 3D engine. You want to know why? It’s because people get paid more to do the jobs that no one else wants to do. No offense to database programmers, but that’s how it works."

good read..

Edit: misunderstanding, but still may be interesting to some..
 
Adrien C said:
But its to short ! It took me 1 month to finish Half Life !
Click to expand...

Half-life 2 is MUCH longer then half-life 1..that's a fact..

Maybe you were worse in playing fps games back when you played hl1.

I played hl1 recently again, and again, it's MUCH shorter.
 
Xenome said:
Half-life 2 is MUCH longer then half-life 1..that's a fact..

Maybe you were worse in playing fps games back when you played hl1.

I played hl1 recently again, and again, it's MUCH shorter.
Click to expand...
What? I'm sorry but that's just wrong! Half-life is very very long, Half-life 2 is slightly above average in length.
 
By my estimations, we're talking 20,000,000 bare minimum for salaries for 6 years alone.

Simultaneous international release of a product to thousands of distributers would cost millions as well. Frankly, the figure they give seems kinda low to me.
 
AJ Rimmer said:
What? I'm sorry but that's just wrong! Half-life is very very long, Half-life 2 is slightly above average in length.
Click to expand...

no, half-life 2 is defintly longer then the original Half-Life.
 
hl1 was longer hands down.
i wraped hl2 in 2 days and no i didnt rush.
hl 1 took me a week n a half.
 
replay HL1 then

it CAN be finished in an hour if you use map exploits, I'd say 10-15 hours playing it as it was ment to be played. And taking your sweet time in some places.

Shoot, In one hour I was finished with PowerUp! (The long trainride section)
 
Valve has a LOT of employees to pay, and they've been paying them for years. That really eats into your budget.
 
SenorDingDong said:
no, half-life 2 is defintly longer then the original Half-Life.
Click to expand...
No it's not! Half-life is longer than most fps today, HL2 is standard length.
 
there is a vid of a guy finishing it in 39 mins, he used shit lot of exploits, and lots of skywalking, a cs leet and a bunny hopper
 
ktimekiller said:
there is a vid of a guy finishing it in 39 mins, he used shit lot of exploits, and lots of skywalking, a cs leet and a bunny hopper
Click to expand...
I thought the record was still 45 minutes?
 
Adrien C said:
But its to short ! It took me 1 month to finish Half Life !
Click to expand...

That's because HL1 was actually difficult....it took me about 3 months to beat (and I even cheated) but that's when I was new to PC gaming (it had been all about console gaming, half life got me into pc games)

HL2 took me 2 days to beat
 
As others said, when money isn't as much of an issue (Valve's HL1 earnings and Gabe's personal stake in the company) you can spend more loose than otherwise, and you often do. Budgets are often things that cause some of the major limitations tech wise in games.
 
$40 million and they couldn't include a manual to explain the weapons secondary fire and you opponents in the game.

If Valve continues to not include manuals, I bought my last game from them.
 
otter said:
If Valve continues to not include manuals, I bought my last game from them.
Click to expand...

LOL, if they don't include manuals you won't buy a game, how funny.
 
I can't remember what developers conference it was but John Carmack stated a couple of years ago that he won't be surprised if alot of games will require $100 million budgets within 5 years time.

$100 million for games 5 years from now? Suddenly $40 million for HL2 doesn't seem to unrealistic now does it?
 
Ok first of it's a no brainer as to why none of the weapons or characters were explained to us as players in a manual.... Because we are meant to know exactly everything Gordon knows, and if Gordon doesn't know it then we shouldn't know it either. If we enter the game knowing what the combine pulse rifle is and how the secondary fire works, then suddenly "we know what he knows" falls to pieces. That being said, the book "raising the bar" does seem to go a long way to breaking it, merely by naming the mortar-synths, crab-synths and the advisor. You don't get the same "what the f*** is THAT?" feeling if you already know it's name and have seen a picture of it.

Also, HL1 is far shorter if you know what to do. One major feature in HL1 that was used in several places was puzzles that couldn't be simply shot to pieces. The 3 worm things that listened for sound come to mind here. You couldn't destroy them unless you got REALLY brave and started sneaking around them, despite knowing that you'd die instantly if you were busted. I was stuck for weeks on this part, simply because I didn't have the guts to move forward. The many hours I spent in the control room staring at it, and throwing nades at it, then reloading and repeating, all add the to time it took me to finish the game. Gargs had the same effect. Also HL1 features a lot of multiple paths to the same destination, (ie parallel corridors everywhere), which a lot of people wasted time exploring. HL2 is completely linear (which I don't like), and it removed creatures like the Hydra that most likely couldn't of been simply shot to death.
 
most of the money was put into building source. didnt gabe say in the final hours at gamespot, that in the final push they were doing 3 hours of game content per month for $1 million? thats pretty damn good.
 
I know why it cost $40,000,000...

$5,000,000 to develop
$35,000,000 to feed gabe.

pwnt
 
pay 80 people 100k for 5 years and u have your $40m. of course that doesnt include all other costs, but a good example of how $40m could easily go to salaries alone.

i would have thought it have cost much more than $40m
 
Remember that when we played HL1, most of us wre youngsters who just reached then teenages. Our brains have matured now (well, some of them anyways), and things are solved easier.

And by playing other FPS' games through the past 6 years, we've developed an instinct for where to go and how to solve things.
But then again, Half-Life 2 doesn't really let you go anywhere else than where you're supposed to go.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
From Warren Spector to Arkane Studios: Half-Life 2's cancelled Ravenholm episode
Replies
2
Views
10K
Clan Wolf 2
Clan Wolf 2
Omnomnick
Anyone Found The News Yet? (27th October 2015) - ValveTime News Round-Up
Replies
2
Views
5K
[steve]
S
-smash-
Using Unity at Valve - Vision Summit 2016
Replies
5
Views
6K
Ennui
Ennui
Omnomnick
Valve Announces Source 2 + Steam Link [GDC 2015]
2
Replies
67
Views
37K
Skyace65
S
-smash-
Valve and The Road to GDC 2015
Replies
10
Views
44K
Engineer123
E
Back
Top