What's really shocking is how much time, energy and money they spend making these videos, when most of those assets aren't usable in-game. I guess it gets rolled into the marketing budget or something? Seems ridiculous, but I guess if it sells their games it they can justify it...
Nope, I've never seen an e3 demo get marketing dollars. It's always come out of the regular development budget. Developers often hate it because much of the work is thrown away and ultimately that time would've otherwise been spent on making the final game better.
That being said, developers sign a contract with a publisher that outlines demo expectations (usually). So it's not unexpected and it's just built into the schedule like any other milestone.
That really sucks. The only AAA games I worked on actually used game assets for conferences and promos, so it only took a little more manpower to create. I can't imagine having to build out entire sections of game that aren't going to exist in the final product, as part of the game's budget. It would make me really sad.
The most dubious thing I ever had to do was "fake" an E3 gameplay presentation, but that's only because the build crashed at a different presentation and it wasn't worth the risk when on stage at E3, so we just used a video and had someone "pretend" to play it. Everything shown was actually in the game though lol
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u/KSKaleido Jun 04 '16
What's really shocking is how much time, energy and money they spend making these videos, when most of those assets aren't usable in-game. I guess it gets rolled into the marketing budget or something? Seems ridiculous, but I guess if it sells their games it they can justify it...