What game genres are you asking about? If you're talking about Frogger or Tetris clones, then no, they don't need much money. If you're talking about a AAA FPS title, or a AAA MMPOG then they do need large budgets for artwork, development, licensing and infrastructure.

One of the more successful (IMO) indie games is Minions of Mirth (http://www.prairiegames.com). It was developed by one person. The clincher her was that he has a lot of game industry experience, financial backing, the Torque engine (proven product but no flames please) and Python for rapid scripting.

It can be done, but it all depends on the genre and quality you're looking for.

Wasn't the first Max Payne written by like 3 people?

Quote: Original post by smitty1276
Wasn't the first Max Payne written by like 3 people?

No. http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/max-payne/credits.

Actually, the only thing a game costs is time. (Tools are usually only a fraction of the total cost, even for an indie game.) Time to learn the skills you need to build a game engine. Time to learn the tools you need to use to create good code quickly. Time to learn the tools you need to construct and animate graphics.

And then there's the time you need to practice these skills and hone them and refine them until you can belt out great content quickly enough to make it worthwhile. (Creating one brilliant 2D sprite per week isn't much use if you want to get your game out before you die.)

And then there's sound design, music composition and production.

And then there's design, marketing and -- in some cases -- writing.

It's a long list. I know: I've done it. (But then, I was making games at a time when 3D graphics were still shiny and new and mostly drawn with Gouraud-shaded triangles.)


The reason budgets are so high is fundamentally because technology has moved on so much without a corresponding improvement in the tools of the trade. (I have ranted about this ad nauseam, so I'll skip it here.) The time it takes to master each aspect of the gamedev process has increased by at least an order of magnitude. I was able to build platform games for the Atari ST using nothing more than HiSoft's DevPac assembler IDE, an Atari STFM and a copy of OCP Art Studio for the sprites.

I've recently decided to return to the fold, but the sheer complexity of the tools I have to use is astonishing. NOTHING has changed. Yes, we have things like "autocomplete" now, but we're still stuck in the 1970s. I wasted a couple of weeks getting to grips with Popcap's freebie middleware. I made some progress, but it was taking me so long -- their library is poorly documented -- that I've jumped ship to BlitzMAX. Yes, it's BASIC, but so what? It does everything I need it to do. It's cross-platform. It lets me make use of OpenGL or DirectX at will. In short, gets the effing job done quickly and efficiently.

I've had to pony up for the closest package I can find to OCP Art Studio: "ProMotion". (And I'll still need to hire a graphics artist eventually. I'm just too rusty; it's been 12 years after all, most of which were spent as a graphic designer and writer.)

But my first new game in 12 years won't be an MMORPGRTSOMGWTF. (Can't stand the bloody things anyway.) It will be a casual game title. Simple, addictive (I hope) and -- above all -- cheap to make. I'm paying for its development out of my own pocket. The budget finally topped three figures last week, and most of that was "ProMotion". (The rest went on a BlitzMAX license.)

So no, it doesn't take tons of money to make games. But it does take a lot more _time_ than it used to. And that is what the big guns are spending all that money on. It's a lot quicker to simply hire the knowledge you need than it is to plough through the twenty-foot stack of books, training videos and blood, sweat and tears yourself.

Quote: Original post by ktuluorion
Yes, but what I am saying is that *YOU* are the lead developer, therefore you don't need a salary. You're just working off of your other job funds, or your savings.

Sure. No cost whatsoever, except your own time, if you're going to make a game all by yourself. So what's stopping you? Go ahead, do it.

But for a mainstream game, involving one or more teams of professionals, that's going to compete against the likes of Kingdom Hearts, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, and Half-Life 2, those games cost a lot to make. You see the difference between a one-man effort and a triple-A title, don't you? Read http://www.sloperama.com/advice/finances.htm for a more thorough understanding of the costs involved.

Mostly, when people are talking about $$$$ for games they're talking about AAA quality games. Unless you are a genius jack-of-all-trades, it's really tough to make a AAA game without a lot of money.

Are you an expert in: graphics, ai, networking, sound?
Can you make: 3D models, textures, normal-maps, animation?
Can you direct camera angles and dialog for cut-scenes?
Can you compose music and create kickass sound effects?
Can you use particle tools to create stunning VFX?
Can you design fun and cohesive gameplay mechanics such that the levels in the game are consistent and make sense to the player?

Can you find an expert in each of those disciplines that's willing to work for free?

On a AAA title each one of those questions is fulfilled by having ~5+ people. For a skilled person in each of those disciplines you're looking at high 5-digit salaries and sometimes 6-digit ones.

Now, certainly, you can make a game without the best people and with little or no money. Will it be a AAA title that stands up to Half-Life2, Halo, Assassins Creed or the PS3 Metal Gear? No.

With less experienced people you need more time, and generally you won't be able to create the same level of quality (engine won't be as fast, models won't look as good, etc).

Now there's absolutely no reason you can't make something innovative and fun as hell on close to zero cash. It's just that to sell millions of titles these days you need an amazing amount of content and a pretty crazy engine; that stuff ain't cheap to create.

-me

There is an astronomical difference between the few-person-hobby game and the EA-sanctioned big game.

The biggest difference, and also the reason for the cost difference, is the sheer volume of data for the professional AAA games.

I'm going to give some real numbers to chew on.

The development code and assets for my current title total just over 41GB when pulling everything fresh from perforce. That gets run though the tool chain on a build farm so it fits on a DVD. Compressing the assets -- a complete rebuild for all four platforms -- takes roughly five days of processing power on the build farm, more or less. It takes just over a day with five quick server-class machines, so adjust it however you want to figure out the total build time.

Compare that with homebrew/indie development.

We have about 20 people in the office who have an informal indie games group. Several of us have profitable side ventures and others just have lots of good ideas they want to talk about. Although I don't know about all of them, for the ones that I do know, the total size of assets is a few megabytes. One group with three people over almost a year is getting up to around 100MB with art and sound in source assets, although these are people who like to make compact assets to begin with. If they weren't already professionals who use their work tools after hours, I'm sure they would be four or five times that size.

So that's three experienced, AAA-project workers reaching up to around 100MB of source assets for a game in several months at a few hours per week. That doesn't cost a lot other than time. Coming up with multiple gigabytes of data is a lot more work with a lot more people, meaning it costs a lot more money.

Quote: Original post by dpadam450
Was just searching for number of people on dev teams for some games:

(Shrunk for brevity)
...
Tales of Symphonia, a group of 17 people
...
Tekken 5, a group of 12 people
...
Xenosaga: Episode III - Also Sprach Zarathustra, a group of 10 people
...

Theres more to development than the programmers. Consider the designers, management, content creators (artists, level designers, musicians, etc) and that team of 10 Xenosaga programmers turns into a very large team!

Yeah. Also, what difference does it make how many programmers (or even total developers) were on the team of some professional commercial title? Even if you ignore the operating overhead for a title and just look at the salary -- you're talking the 50k range, plus or minus a few depending on experience and location, etc(*). Even without factoring in what you have to pay for this guy's benefits and overhead, that's still "tons of $$$" for most individuals.

So the number of people on the team should not be taken as evidence you can make such games "cheaply," as was originally implied by the posts about developer headcount.

(*) Although lets be realistic, a developer with enough talent and responsibility to pull that off needs to be making much more than 50.

Quote: Original post by dpadam450
>Guitar hero 1 and 2
-Wow, if they needed more than 3 programmers for this game (unless of a small dev time), then I don't know.
-Same engine from 1 and 2
-70.00 game, we all know that controller is only worth like 1.00, hell I even thought about making death metal hero for pc secretly to show I could do it.

Licensing fees for popular songs == $$$

Controller costs per unit is probably relative cheap yes. But you have to pay for the initial design, prototyping, fabrication, yadda, yadda. It adds up.