>>229311
From what I've heard?
* Marketing, executives, and celebrities are the biggest money-hogs of an entire game budget. VAs don't even really cost that much relative to how much celebs do.
* IP licenses for music and characters can cost a lot if they're not yours. Especially if it's mainstream music, and trying to work with any other company's characters can come with some insane strings attached if not costs.
* Rights to use specific game marketplaces can cost a shitton for companies to use. Before publishers let any indie studio publish what they want, I remember Phil Fish bitching about how much money (like at least 30 grand) he had to spend to get Fez Published on xbox 360 marketplace. But the again, Fish is a hackjob who basically backstabbed the team he used to work with, so he got what he deserved.
* Motion Capture : if you're ACTUALLY using a proper MoCap system, instead of using recorded-video references and animating based on those. MoCap require expensive equipment and dedicated stunt teams, each which have costs... Of course this is assuming they want to actually shell out shekels for it.
* Outsourcing almost everything. Legit. Anything that isn't engine programming is likely to be outsourced or developed in entirely different states or even continents. (example: Mick Gordon is Australian, DooM and Bethesda are American companies.)
* Busywork for mandatory staff : Crash Team Racing got framecapped because there's so much shit in the scene that the player doesn't see, but it still exists, fully-modelled, normal-mapped and rednered in the backgrounds. This was there because the model team got done faster, so they had to give them busywork or something like that... I don't remember exactly if it's true or not.
But yeah. AAA games have their priorities skewed as fuck.
>>229294
>>229297
>>229300
>>229301
It's not even golem vs kike shit. It's Grifter vs Grifter. Actual Golems are the terminally-online mods on communication platforms, and the useful idiots who unironically-believe that AAA-devs can do no wrong.