I have been thinking about this for a while and I don't understand how the cost of making a stand-alone game (not MMO) can exceed $500,000 assuming you aren't licensing an expensive engine. Can someone please tell me where exactly the huge expenses come from? The only huge expense I can think of is labour and with a team of 10 skilled people I think you can make an excellent 3D game with excellent graphics. Apart from labour the only other expense I can think of is licensing some libraries and software e.g. FMOD for sound (but one can use OpenAL which is free) and 3DS Max, character studio and photoshop. Don't include marketing costs or rent. Long story short: What are the HUGE expenses that make a game cost millions of $$$?

Labour is the most expensive part of game development. Here's some information about the last two projects I worked on (wages are purely estimates and not indicative of actual amounts):

1) Kuju Railsimulator - development time about 3 years. Internal team size peaked about 25 people. Also had extensive use of outsourcing. 25x3x$50k = $3.75million. Add in outsourcing as well. Project used modified in-house engine and PhysX physics engine.

2) Heavenly Sword - development time about 3 years. Internal team size peaked around 50. 50x3x$50k = $7.5million. Project used an evolution of existing game engine.

That's just wages. Don't forget to add hardware costs, software licensing, office space, utility costs (electricity etc) and anything else needed to run a development and the costs quickly increase.

Skizz

P.S. I didn't work on either project for the entire duration of the project, I just did some freelance work.

Thanks!.
It seems like I was thinking in the right direction, labour takes up most of the budget.
Can you break down the labour for me i.e. xxx number of programmers, xxx number of animators, xxx number of artists, etc? You could include an average annual pay if you want.
I guess developing a game in a place where labour is cheaper is a huge advantage. I am a programmer and I developed a 3D game engine (www.sinc-studios.com), and 30K/year is good with me.

It's very hard to breakdown the labour as it really depends on the needs of the game being developed. Some games require more level designers, some require more artists and so on. However, a large game would break down like this:

Programming  Tools: Asset pipeline, editors, etc  Engine: rendering, physics, audio, etc  Game: AI, script system, etcArt  Modelers  Texture artists  AnimatorsContent  Level designers  Scripters  AudioInternal QA  Testers

In addition to the above, you'd need a lead for each 3-5 developers and a head for each department plus a producer. Assuming an average of 4 developers for each category gives you a total of 54 people. Then you have to add in administrive overheads (you need to pay them!) which could bring it up 60. For a really large project, you could easily double the art and content teams.

It's important to remember that you don't need everyone listed above for the entire duration of the project. The tools and engine developers tend to be required early on with the art coming on next followed by the content creators and finally the QA team. This is where good use of freelancers can really help. Most small to medium developers (i.e. not EA) only do one project at a time and so need to bring people on short term.

Skizz

Thanks alot skizz.

You can also just look at the credits for triple-A games. The credits will give you an idea of how many people are involved, and a general idea of what their jobs are.
What the credits won't tell you is how many months each person actually worked on the game.
Take what you've already been told above, and add this: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/finances.htm

Most of the costs in game development goes into the art pipeline. That means creation / editing of all the models, textures, etc. but also all the tools engineering. As the game is crafted, content is constantly edited and adjusted for the desired experience curve, mood, look, story, levels, etc. Tier-1 studios will go through several gameplay refinements iterations until they think the game is up to their standard of perfection. It`s not unusual to learn of a game project had been restarted almost from scratch because it didn`t meet expectations (there are ludicrous exceptions like Duke Nukem Forever...).

In a meeting today, a lead engineer on Ubisoft`s Assassin`s Creed mentionned the engineering costs split between making the production tools and making the game itself was about 50/50, with the hope of leveraging the production tools for future sequels and other titles. That gives you an idea on how engineering resources are spent at a tier-1 studio for a new AAA franchise.

As a rule of thumb, the average man-month cost is about US$10K (includes fringe benefits & operational costs). Look at Gamasutra for post-mortems and you`ll sometimes get a few stats about the game development such as the number of developers / artists, amount of time it took to produce it, etc. Just do the math. You`ll see that costs climb quickly.

-cb

Quote: Original post by Skizz
Labour is the most expensive part of game development. Here's some information about the last two projects I worked on (wages are purely estimates and not indicative of actual amounts):

1) Kuju Railsimulator - development time about 3 years. Internal team size peaked about 25 people. Also had extensive use of outsourcing. 25x3x$50k = $3.75million. Add in outsourcing as well. Project used modified in-house engine and PhysX physics engine.

2) Heavenly Sword - development time about 3 years. Internal team size peaked around 50. 50x3x$50k = $7.5million. Project used an evolution of existing game engine.

That's just wages. Don't forget to add hardware costs, software licensing, office space, utility costs (electricity etc) and anything else needed to run a development and the costs quickly increase.

Skizz

P.S. I didn't work on either project for the entire duration of the project, I just did some freelance work.

Wow thats good to know, I was a little worried when my project assignment was hovering around $4million, and thats for everything ;)


Thanks heaps for the info;

-KK

I checked out Quake 3 Arena and the credits say something like:
"ID Software is:" ...then followed by the list of people. In total they are about 11. I compared this to Need for Speed Underground which had about 70. I'm thinking that probably ID outsources their artwork, sounds and animation, can that be true? Even if it is, Need for Speed Underground had about 10 (or more) programmers while quake has 2. I know Carmack is a Guru in programming games so can 1 skilled programmer replace 3 or more medium skilled programmers? I know the type of game and tools that a studio has affects the number of staff.

Quote: Original post by miminawewe
I'm thinking that probably ID outsources their artwork, sounds and animation, can that be true?

Yes, it can be true that you're thinking that.
What exactly is the question you have for us?