if u want to make a game like street fighter (in 3d mode).how budget shall u want ?

Depends on the quality. If you want to do a game of the same high quality then anything from $2-4 million. A big team worked on SF and if you have an equally large team it will be expensive.

When you look at a game like that it does not appear to be much work but when you look at exactly how much detail there is and how everything works you see that there is a lot of work, which takes time and costs money.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

Ah, budgets.

There''s no cut and dried answer. As "Obscure" mentioned, it depends on the quality - both of the product and of the workers.

Let me take an extremely conservative approach to costs...

First, let''s assume the game will take 2 years - slightly less if you''re doing a sequel, but not much.

If you''re working in an office, figure at least $1000 a month for a small, rectangular office that will be cramped, regardless of where you are (and that''s very conservative). Add in about $500 for utilities and probably $200 per month for business line phones. Ooh, let''s not forget business license, underwriting, etc. Let''s say $20,000 per year or $40,000 for th e project (assuming no raises, no flying in for interviews, no business lunches, no flying to talk to publishers, no long-distance calls, no internet costs, no web site, etc). We''ll also figure that the owners are also either programmers or artists.

Let''s figure 3 animators, 2 modelers that do their own texturing, 1 effects artist (because if you want decent effects it''s a full-time job) and 1 background artists. Assuming they''re being paid, that, probably $40-70,000 per year depending on area and experience (I''m assuming you don''t have any "star" artists that make buckets). So 6 artists, at a cost of $240 - $420,000 for 1 year or $480-$840,000 for the 2 year cycle. That''s without health benefits of course.

Each artist will need a computer (honestly, you can get a MAYA-ready good machine for $1000) + 3D commercial package ($4,000) and Photoshop ($600) or $6,000 + $24,000 + $3,600 = $33,600. Those would last for the entire 2 years. Of course, that leaves off a lot of extras, including plug-ins and graphic tablets and light boxes and paper and blue pencils, etc.

You''ll need at least two programmers, to handle interface and animation controls and special effects and collision and AI and menu control (notice I didn''t even mention anything about menu artist) and sound programming. With 2, they''d have to be pretty smart. Less smart if you''re using an existing engine, but still not dummies. Let''s assume some small experience, so (conservatively and depending on region) $55,000 each or $110,000 per year for salary - a total of $220,000 for the project(without health benefits).

They''ll need the same kind of computers, possibly with the 3D art tool (to test things) as well as Visual Studio ...around $15,000 for equipment. That assumes they use SourceSafe and don''t need any profilers or debuggers or books or chalkboards, etc.


You''ll need someone to do the sound effects and (at least two!!) people to do voices - unless you''ve got experience with recording, you''ll have to pay for experience that doens''t have the voices sounding like crap. You can contract all this out for around $20-30,000 unless you want "name" voices.

So, _at a bare minimum_ for a 2 year project you''d need at least

$40,000 bare-bones office costs in a very cheap area
$480,000 salary for 6 very understanding yet talented artists
$33,600 equipment for those overworked artists
$220,000 salary for 2 crazy, but (hopefully) talented programmers
$15,000 equipment for the lunatics programming the game.
$20,000 sounds

i.e $808,000

With that cost, you''d be marginal in terms of game quality and the employees would be pretty antsy (and exhausted) by project end. Plus, if you don''t have really good people, you''d be hosed. You can do it for less, but probably not unless (a) you have a reputation or (b) you have a _very_ stellar group of talented friends.

And that''s to do it on the PC. Console work requires around $100,000 - 200,000 more, minimum and you can''t really do much until a publisher accepts the concept.

And, of course, we''re talking bare-bones and _just_ development with no producer, receptionist, mail service, web page, design or dialog or script writing or QA at all (a very bad idea for a developer to have NO QA). And, of course, nothing to do with the publishing side. The publisher, aside from QA, will spend anywhere from 1.5 to 4x the development cost to market a game. Plus they must hold back a certain amount of revenue for returns, which might not happen for up to 90 days normally. Plus they often have to bribe...er...pay! the stores to advertise or carry a title.

DT