It is incredibly the scale of blockbuster games. Big big budgets.

They have sizeable sound departments too.... maybe something I should think about! Ha. Except I mostly try to avoid the post side of things. Not my thing for now.

Btw, the guy is italian, not spanish. The Economics of the Audiovisual Industry - Financing TV, Film and Web. Mario La Torre.

Yes, I get the notion, read the original article you posted and a $100k game would be something around 30mb or less of code by the metrics of the author. It don't get even near something like "papers please". But now we have state funding for filmmaking arround $1mi and the state funding for games can, maybe, go that route in the near future.

But need to put it in context here, there's very little ways to compete with anything majors/netflix, even with state funding (that majors/netflix also have plenty assess) in filmmaking. So there's a lot of commercial failures already in the local film making industry, not talking about the cultural value of things here. Sure when some majors/oligarchy stealing public funding money with cultural projects they make sure to get more money with sales and lock out anything else, but it's very very unlikely to have sustainable return with filmmaking to the point of private funding more projects when you're not that guys. Sure it's not that different in a lot of countries. And it means there are some people focused and/or expertized/educated in creating cultural value and original ideas, because it is what's left. SO, talking about games. There already are clusters of education in coding (explored as international qualified labour reserves). Very sure the good developers get scoped by corporations (know some people already) but film making isn't the most prolific way to pay the bills as well, don't know why people have that hype, but some people do. The point is the workforce is present local.

To clarify the sub 100K games being a way to go, actually the funding policies in effect are destined to projects that start at $100.000 and goes up to $400.000 for development, that can be paired with state or private funding to marketing and other things also. It's very new, no one knows what route it will take in the future. What I'm trying to understand is if there's a potential market for that kind of games as anything from start-up like projects (knights of pen and paper), cult products (papers please) or even art-something (dear esther). And the $100.000 mark is a good reference because it is the most probable funding for a starting company or developer witch is trying to make a good original idea at the moment here.

The point about "if there's a market" is that with that kind of funding, the games would hit the market with much things unfinished. It's nothing uncommon of games today to be released that way, and trying to remember some small games that get some buzz, a lot is still unfinished but they are fine (hammerfall, nidhogg 1, they even released the 2). So IF there's a viable market and it possible to have some results with first game, and even some commercial performance with second, third game, it would be really a better scenario than that of film making here today.

Surely no public or private funding for any audiovisual segment will get near even close to the "$10mi+ rising and to get worse" mark that are primary USA games. But hope if some success is viable, there will be a pulling to better funding of games. So thinking about all that things and trying to figure out some paths and how they fit in the big picture. Geting out of filmmaking university that year, will need search funding for projects and all that things. Need to understand what kind of market it is.

Well, what I mean by "cultural value" is that there's some things that make like a lot of money like transformers and there's things that don't make that money because of whatever but are very important for cultural reasons and others as well. By statistics of revenue you can put the vast majority of national films here.

I don't think it's the same easy thing to make a underfunded cultural product (film, game, whatever) outside of an economic cartel get the same revenue performance as blockbusters. There's need to some differentiation, it's not the same thing as it being crap, artistic and cultural expression don't have direct relation with market functioning. To put it simple, the worst shit like alien cars grinding each others, with 20000 points of exhibition and a very big budget to marketing will perform very well compared to all local cinematography combined in terms of market revenue alone, but let's not downplay the significance of a local cinematography for culture, identity, autonomy, even information. And lot of audience see these films in an non-commercial context and well of release dates. I'm pretty sure some public investment in culture in EU have to do with state reasons, not with market revenue.

Really, I don't think the funding mechanisms are in good shape now or have a good implementation, there's a lot of room for distortions, hope that it get's better with time, most probably will get worse and shut down. They put the best funding on majors etc. There's a lot of corporations using big money, including government money, and giving little excuse for anything. So seems like the existence of public policies that effectively put some air to small creators and developers, even if they are not in good shape, is better than effectively nothing. AND if will be paired with policies that foment local distribution chain in a way accessible to those small creators etc, it would be better (already in that path in the TV segment).

Well, was not trying to make a cult of free market or nothing like that before, the local policies are neolib by design, just that. Really appreciate the marxists.org articles, but I don't think it immediately resolves the question of producing cultural things that I (we) don't own the means of produce neither distributing it to people that I don't own the means to distribute in the context present. And not doing so would mean alien cars grinding shit all the way. Or that Narcos shit of Netflix, appropriating local identity to promote a fascist state. There's a lot of room to get worst.

So, the segment of the graph that shows a minor tendency between $100k and $1KK meybe indicates some channel to distribute things that can actually be produced somewhat independently and it's relatively new. I imply this graph reflects games market viability some way, or it's just money burning if not.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev

And as people won't pay for this without being told by gunman "cultural value" is something that must match wish of people who fund this project. Btw I really like national films, it is easy to check here. And protection of local cinema market has clear value, but it is all very temporary.

I think you're associating what I'm saying with things totally alien to what is being said. Surely you could have paired "don't make money because whatever" with whats come next in the text "20000 points of exhibition and a very big budget" but instead you pull some sort of flaneur chauvinist character out of another place. I have the oposite vision, as any gunman I have ever seen is the P&A budget of some products, include films from majors. Or all the cinemas with cheap ticket closing because some thug strategy of disruption of local markets enforced by plexes and majors. BTW, majors can collect public money that they otherwise would steal and send abroad, they can use it as tax exemption to make films, so they can use our own taxpayers money to chose what we should see. All that after having forced almost all neighborhood cinemas out of market. I don't think corporate have that vision of free will of yours. If you look at data from P&A you will see there's no cultural gunman argument plausible, just lots of money makes to monopoly and exclusion. But you quoted about P&A earlier so you already know that. And I think measures to prevent or mitigate aggression from these monopolies AND associated local oligarchies to the cultural autonomy of people should be put in place, include by the means of public funding mechanisms. It's not free reign to make "art shit", will talk about that below. Maybe it's too third-world reality here, but I grown up in that context and have witnessed good policies and bad policies in that context, yes it's all temporary and comes from a lot of social tension, things change and start being exploited or steam is released and policies are put out of effect. The temporary effectiveness doesn't mean it should not be implemented.

Can you show me "significance of a local cinematography for culture, identity, autonomy"? As for most thing I checked I do not see any. Except, as I said, very bad excuses of spent money.

Now it is really very strange to read that, as cultural expression as a people and as an individual seems to be one basic thing. But, yes, I can give you some examples. You can see "Martírio" (2016) that gives awareness to the struggle of Guarani people and denounces the genocide in course here or "Era o Hotel Cambridge" (2016) that portraits working class squatting building in São Paulo, these people would not be seen if not by a mention in the news otherwise; I can read an article here that talk about 20 national movies produced in 2016 that would not exist otherwise without public funding. Sometime in the past when a infamous president put all policies for cinema out of effect we had 2 films a year and one year with none. And I think it's important to people to have the possibility to make movies even if they are not from a colonialist country, to see their own land in movies and other cultural works, to see people like their own there, to see their own problems and questions. To question or prosecute someone IF makes use of mechanisms destined to guarantee that important rights in bad faith. Otherwise we talking abstraction, one cannot make these things we talking about nothing. And I don't see any media corp worried about our talk.

I can say even more. Most of films made for funding and art purposes can be actually much worse for normal people from simple view of their own interests. Because all that they are doing is mirroring wishes of funders (who are, surprise - direct enemy of most people in economical term)

I think what you say apply to any film, game, etc. Films are public effort to make public culture, there's no way to make a hermit film or game, it's not like I'm going to the mountain make a painting. Films need funding. Founders wish things. The best thing a private founder will want is simple money. But maybe they want to fuck up all your life if it could make him make more money. And a private founder don't gives a damn about heritage, minorities, social problems, etc. Just, about, money. Now we can talk about public funding vs private funding. It's pretty clear private funding is money appropriated that someone very little concerned with people can use to make any shit. In opposite, public funding have a clear set of policies that need to be public available, need to be of public concern, can be influenced by public means, include legal means and even the worst implementation needs to function that way. I'm not saying government is over concerned with people, just I don't see any way private funding gives people any power and it's a lot more obscure and no way to intervene. So if someone is to say government is incompetent with public health budget, it's not feasible to assume it should shut down all public health services and fuck up, so they would charge $0.05 less on each dollar note and we can happily die without care.

To be precise, the public mechanisms I'm referencing don't patronize anything. It's not free money, the government becomes a stakeholder, you have to demonstrate you're addressing audience, you will market the product when it's finished, you will repay the public fund until it break even, the public fund will still receive a share after break even. Your project becomes of public interest, your budget becomes accessible online to any person to audit. It's nothing less, in reality it's more, than the scrutiny to have a project private backed. It's not even close to perfect, but, if you go private funding they just drop any shit they want in the monopolized market they enforce, with tons of ads, don't give excuse to anyone, take their money and steal as much as they can.

So, can you point something better? We talking about making movies or games this year. Fell free to say if you think it's futile. We should start talking about specific actual things.

If you do it one time not understanding how it works and where it leads it can be one thing. But keeping doing it and understanding it is called opportunism.

And here I just really need clarification, because I don't see your point, as that kind of critic point must be accompanied of who should make movies and how or, alternatively, on a society point of view (if we can say that) how to solve the question of making movies and games.

Back to rising costs - good article

Q1 of 2015 saw a record 128 electronic projects raise at least $100K each on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Reaching $100K is often considered a successful campaign, and many think that the founders can take this money to a factory and just get the stuff made. The 4 out of 5 hardware campaigns that don’t manage to ship in time show that most teams still underestimate the DFM (Design For Manufacturing) process

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kickstarter-prototype-production-100k-enough-keesjan-engelen/