4 years ago
How is this a gamepack?
Seriously, how is one new career that's 90 percent buy mode a gamepack? It's insulting at this point. We've shown that they can add careers in stuff pack, and good ones at that. The ghost hunter f...
"logion;c-17898929" wrote:"muzickmage;c-17898919" wrote:"AmeliaTodd;c-17898918" wrote:"muzickmage;c-17898914" wrote:"AmeliaTodd;c-17898912" wrote:"muzickmage;c-17898905" wrote:
And being that they are all going to be payed for a 40 hour week anyway regardless, I can't see budget being a major factor either. Unless of course they all work part time... on call when needed.
A budget is an estimation of revenue and expenses over a specified future period of time. It doesn't matter if someone works part time, on contract or in house. The budget is budget and it's the most important thing in producing anything. Budget exist so that the revenue can be estimated. You may have the most grandiose plans and best people on work, but if the budget says that only x amount of people can be employed for x amount of time then that's it, going over budget can make the project unprofitable and in general exceeding budget is a problem for the company (or a person funding the project). Budget dictates the production framework and scope.
I can see "budget" being a major deciding factor for team size. How many people will the budget allow the company to employ. But for the people who are employed through this budget decision, I can't see the budget playing much of a part on their 40 hour week. They either work there or they don't. And if they do, then they will be given a paycheque regardless of what they put together for Friday's meeting.
Resources are are not only the man power it's also the hours put into it. Let me put it this way, if by Friday meeting they don't meet the allocated deadline (that also ties with the budget allocated to the project) they very likely to loose their jobs. Companies don't pay for people checking in their 40 hours of work, they pay for have something to sell, there are deadlines and yearly profits to be considered. I really find your understanding of it really confusing because that's not how things are in this (or any) business really.
As for budget being worked into revenue vs expenses.... that's a ridiculous argument in today's distributive market. 30 years ago that argument could be taken more seriously when considering that the company would also need to account for packaging, shipping cost, and of course storage and inventory expenses.
But today, they pay someone a couple thousand dollars to create a piece of code, which sits on a computer, and allows for an unlimited stream of downloads for (if you're in canada) $29.99 CAD. I don't see the profit margin being that much of a problem.
And again, either they are programmers, or they are not. Either they can do it, or they can't. "Time" isn't that much of an issue.
A budget decides what goes into a pack and the budget finances the people working on it. The people working on a pack are working on different areas of the pack, and are made up of a bunch of different people. So when Maxis sells you a game pack, that's how much they were able to make with the amount of money, time and people they had available. That's how much that was allocated to it.
So that's why I find it odd that we are starting to see huge differences in the amount of content in packs, Maxis should already have people, money and time available that work on different areas in the pack, like we have seen in previous game packs. They have people available that could have made a world for the Dream Home Decorator for example, but they probably got assigned to work on something else, and I don't think that was modular furniture or the career. I guess it could be possible but I find it kinda odd to tell someone who have worked on worlds in previous packs to go work on a modular sofa or a freelancer career, you would want people that have worked on sofas or careers instead.