Ehhh that list of game dev costs seems really suspect; Star Citizen is only notable because they released dev costs when everyone else holds them tight to the chest. Personnel counts have ballooned in the era of motion capture and full voice acting; you’re often doing a whole lot more movie things like mocap, script writing, juggling a bunch of actors, etc. in a game than for a movie. AAA video games over the last 10 years typically have as much if not more budget than tentpole movies (and corresponding revenue draw).
Yes, but never at the level of detail that is being discussed here. You won't see the costs for the latest WoW expansion broken out in the R&D line items in Activision-Blizzard's financial statements.
"Personnel counts have ballooned in the era of motion capture and full voice acting; you’re often doing a whole lot more movie things like mocap, script writing, juggling a bunch of actors, etc. in a game than for a movie."
Are voice acting costs that huge?
It's not like video games have to shell out millions to get name-brand actors to star in their cut scenes. It's usually unknowns or has-beens who stoop to doing video game work. How expensive can that be?
From what I know, talent is usually cheap enough relative to the total cost of a game, it's the whole pipeline around integrating voice acting and motion capture into a game that's really expensive. In this[1] episode of that podcast they talk a bit about the costs around that. If you decide to do voice acting and motion capture you also have to adapt the whole game and writing around that decision, which balloons costs a lot since you've decided you want _that kind of game_.
[1]: https://youtu.be/cTejdjnf-jI with Mike Bithel dev of "Thomas was Alone", Troy Baker celebrity video game voice actor, Austin Wintory composer (Journey), Alanah Pearce writer
Not the good ones. There are definitely top-tier voice actors out there who command good salaries. The ones on fivr are for like, recording audio books or radio commercials.
However, even if you just adjusted all the other dev costs in that list by a factor of two or three - Star Citizen would still easily remain in the top five.
My point was mainly- Compare CIG's efforts to other studios that have spent hundreds, or even just tens of millions!
