Hi, in terms of setting up a small game studio(30-40 staff), what kind of network infrastructure is required? Like, what sort of equipments(such as cable, server, software) are needed and how much will they approximately cost?

I'd imagine a lot of money like 200,000 USD. I just got that by doing 40 employees * 3000 USD workstations + 30K in version control and backup and small webserver and furniture and routers. Then the software with all the licenses especially 3D software and VS2010 team version or something would rack up some cost and a fiber line to the building. That would probably be the bare minimum which are overshadowed by run-time costs of 30 to 40 employees. (40 * 45000 USD = 1.8 mil).

Honestly I don't see how a starting company could begin like that without being crushed by growing too large too fast. Starting smaller seems more ideal.

A 1-year development title priced at 50 dollars would need to sell like 50K copies to break even for the next game and a 1 year development time can be rather unrealistic given current game development times.

For a more accurate cost analysis if you had the room layout and employee numbers and actual positions then it would be easier. Saying you need 10 copies of maya for 10 artists and 10 copies of photoshop and your 7 programmers need copies of VS and everyone needs an office chair and a workstation suited for their position. I guess if you took the time you could calculate this out fairly easily without taking hidden costs into account.

$80,000 to $160,000 - 40 PCs
$5,000 to $100,000 - At least one high-capacity server (internet proxy, email, file-storage, source-control, intranet, build-server...)
$250 - 500m CAT5 cabling
$250 - 8 5-port Ethernet hubs
$300 - 1 10-port Ethernet switch
$x000 - ISP subscription

I think people are vastly overstating the cost of PCs here. You can get a decent desktop for < £1k

For servers you'd probably only be looking at around £20k max. You can get a decent server (2x Quad Xeons, 12GB RAM, 1.5TB disk) for about £5-6k, including OS, redundant PSU, remote management card, rails etc etc. You could also look at virtualising your servers, meaning you just buy one or two big boxes and then pay for OS licensing. The above server would do this no problem.

Server rack, tape backup, UPS, KVM add another few grand

For networking just get a couple of decent 24 port switches, not these little 4 port things. Get Cisco if you don't mind spending a couple of grand, or HP Procurve if you are on a budget. Preferably have gigabit links, at least for the server(s). Your router/firewall will cost a few hundred to a few grand depending on how good you want it to be

You also need to think about your phones and PABX, I don't know how much they cost

After that its licensing and salary as Sirisian says, which will dwarf your infrastructure costs

It depends on how well you want to treat your staff. You can buy "decent" PCs for a grand, or you can buy top-of-the line stuff for $3,000 - $4,000. You'll want two monitors each for your developers and artists, and the bigger the better. Particularly for your artists, you don't want cheap TN-panel LCDs, so they could end up being fairly expensive.

Of course, you can buy the cheapest everything if you don't have a choice, but in general, the cost of equipment is pretty small compared to the cost of salary, rent and all the other stuff you'll be paying on a monthly basis, so I don't see why you would want to cheap-out.

Don't forget you'll also have to buy furniture for everybody. That's 40 desks, 40 swivel chairs, as well as telephones, divider walls (depending on your office layout), bookshelves, drawers, conference tables, perhaps a projector and conference telephone system for your conference room, cupboards, a coffee machine, and all that other stuff.

You can keep your startup costs relatively low by buying 2nd hand or end-of-life servers.

I have an IBM eServer 226 server (2x Xeon 3.20Ghz, 4Gb RAM) which is needing an upgrade and to increase the RAID capacity but only set me back £600.

Admin staff don't need fancy PC's. Order some Dell Vostro's or something for about £3-400.

Developers/Artists will need RAM and a good graphics card.

As has been said before, the licensing and personnel costs are going to be your biggest issue.

You also don't need a particularly fancy internet connection. Unless you'll be running multiplayer game servers in the office as well.

Cat5E cabling is also cheap as chips, I'd suggest not skimping on a switch though. Definitely get a good 48-port cisco or a couple of 24-ports. Again, if the budget is really tight you find 2nd hand ones of these. If your switch fails, all IT in your office will stop working effectively so it's definitely somewhere to spend the money.

Backup tapes and UPS for the server are a must, but you probably don't need to worry about redundant servers/file servers at this stage. Ensure that the server has a RAID-5 array set up to handle all your data to maximise it's redundancy.

A decent server will be able to run Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2007, IIS 7.0 and your Source Control software without any problems. Be careful with Exchange though as it has a tendancy to eat resources like there's no tomorrow.

You might be better off installing something like VMWare ESXi 4.0 onto the server and then having a couple of virtual machines. That way you can control exactly what resources your Exchange Server has access to.

Quote: Original post by AndyEsser
As has been said before, the licensing and personnel costs are going to be your biggest issue.

Equipment, office supplies, and software licenses are a big initial cost followed by a smaller maintenance cost.

One year of salaries is going to be 10x the cost of those supplies the first year, and 50x the cost of those supplies in subsequent years.

Not mentioned above are costs like electricity (quite a lot of money), telephony, high bandwidth internet connections, facilities, and other business utilities. These will cost about the same per month as several employees.