Hello people.

I am looking to start pulling some money together and starting up my own game development team. I've already got a game design document ready, some concept art etc.
The question goes like this: What would be the ideal budget for creating a prototype that I could show to investors etc. and perhaps get some funding for further development?


Now the question is very "open" so to speak so I'm going to give you guys some facts to base your guess/ideas on.

I'm going to need approximately:
10 humanoid models. + animations
6 Entity models(monsters).+ animations
1 fully fledged enviroment(fairly big, I'm going to use the Unreal Engine)
and around 30-50 props.

The gameplay will be like a RPG but with additions and changes, basicly programming wise = RPG.

Music: Myself - I run on coffee = 0,0003 USD a day.

Concept art: already got it.

So that's basicly it, I really hope someone can shed some light on my issue here since I want to have some kind of "budget goal" to work towards.

Thanks in advance

Jens

That still doesn't tell us much.

1) We don't know anything about the gameplay you're trying to achieve, so we don't know if it is something 'easily' doable in the Unreal engine.
2) We don't know if you're going to see source code level access to the Unreal engine, which ramps up the price.
3) We don't know level of detail for any of the art assets you mentioned.
4) We don't know your environment needs.
5) We don't know if you're planning on hiring experienced guns or industry hopefuls.
6) What kinds of benefits (if any) would you be offering your staff?
7) What will be size and location of your office space?

That is just a start [wink]

Quote: Original post by JensKiil
What would be the ideal budget for creating a prototype that I could show to investors etc. and perhaps get some funding for further development?

Ideally: $0.
You can't figure out your budget based on numbers of assets. You figure it out by man-hours times cost. If the cost per man-hour is zero, then your budget is zero, and that'd be ideal.
You need to make games before you start a business. You won't get funding without a portfolio and experience and contacts. So make a portfolio, get experience, and thereby make contacts.

That's true and I might just sit down and claculate man hours etc. because I think I've realized you guys really can't answer my question "correctly" so to speak since you need ALL the details.

By the way, I have a business, I've been involved in game development for 5 years and I have contacts. I was just looking to see if there was an "ideal" indie budget. like 15k USD or something that most people start with when trying to create an indie game for bigfishgames, reflexivearacde or what not.
But apparently there's isn't.

Thank you both for your replies :)

Quote:
Ideally: $0.
You can't figure out your budget based on numbers of assets. You figure it out by man-hours times cost. If the cost per man-hour is zero, then your budget is zero, and that'd be ideal.
You need to make games before you start a business. You won't get funding without a portfolio and experience and contacts. So make a portfolio, get experience, and thereby make contacts.

__________________________________________________________________________

1) I don't know either but as I said, think of it as a RPG, gameplay wise.

2) I have to buy access to get the source code for unreal engine to create a RPG?

3) I'd like high quality, that's why I'm going to pay.

4) Hmm true, but that is under consideration so we'll just consider that a blind spot for now.

5) Experienced guns only.

6) Something for their portfolio and money for their work.

7) I'm not going to start up like that. I'm going to hire people from around the globe as freelancers to do the work I can't do by myself. Finish up a prototype and show it to investors etc. and see if they think the idea has a potential.

__________________________________________________________________________

Quote: Original post by zer0wolf
That still doesn't tell us much.

1) We don't know anything about the gameplay you're trying to achieve, so we don't know if it is something 'easily' doable in the Unreal engine.
2) We don't know if you're going to see source code level access to the Unreal engine, which ramps up the price.
3) We don't know level of detail for any of the art assets you mentioned.
4) We don't know your environment needs.
5) We don't know if you're planning on hiring experienced guns or industry hopefuls.
6) What kinds of benefits (if any) would you be offering your staff?
7) What will be size and location of your office space?

That is just a start [wink]

Answer: Good idea.
Question: That's true and I might just sit down and claculate man hours etc.

Answer: But you said you're thinking of doing an RPG! So the answer is "to do an RPG, budget several million dollars."
Question: I was just looking to see if there was an "ideal" indie budget. like 15k USD or something that most people start with when trying to create an indie game for bigfishgames, reflexivearacde or what not.

Answer 2: No, you can get another engine, like Unity, for less. Do more research and you may find something free, depending on the license.
Question: 2) I have to buy access to get the source code for unreal engine to create a RPG?

Answer 5: Okay, well, those are expensive, you know, right?
Question: 5) Experienced guns only.

Answer 6: But they don't need anything for their portfolios.
Question: 6) Something for their portfolio and money for their work.

Answer 7: Then I hope you have a lot of money.
Question: 7) I'm not going to start up like that. I'm going to hire people from around the globe as freelancers to do the work I can't do by myself.

Answer: This is a frequently discussed topic here on this forum. You might want to read older posts (the forum offers the ability to view topics older than 30 or 60 days), and I've also written numerous columns for guys like you. Go to http://www.igda.org/games-game-archives and scroll down through the titles.
Question: Finish up a prototype and show it to investors etc. and see if they think the idea has a potential.

Quote: Original post by JensKiil
I was just looking to see if there was an "ideal" indie budget. like 15k USD or something.....

Multiply that by 10 for starters. There was a thread over at http://forums.indiegamer.com/ recently about the budgets for HOG (hidden Object Games) that were being released on the big portals and the consensus was that the budgets were in the region of US$150k. However that is just one genre of game and you might be able to do it cheaper depending on location, size of game, your teams skill and a host of other factors. You really need to sit down and work it out yourself as only you know the size of game and cost of your staff etc.

For an RPG the cost would be totally different due to the different assets needed and the time to develop. The only way to guestimate is to identify what other game out there is close to your title in scale/quality and then look at the credits to see how many people they had. Then do the math using your costs and those staff numbers (plus costs for licensing tech and any equipment).

An approach that might be useful for people who have budget concerns is to put together the initial storyboards and prototypes using not only placeholder art but also placeholder everything else, even engine. Maybe especially engine, since each additional "feature" an engine is capable of can lead to a temptation to increase the scope of the project to "take advantage of" the "exciting new possibilities" the additional capabilities incite in the imaginations of the developers.

For example I began prototyping using the original Dungeons and Dragons ruleset back in 1973 or so even though that ruleset's combat system did not even distinguish between weapons. (The price list did, and the encumbrance system did, but the lack of any difference in damage led players less interested in roleplay, more interested in bang for buck to ignore heavy expensive two handed swords in favour of lightweight cheap daggers they could do exactly the same type and amount of damage with at the same speed (damage per turn).)

There are free storyboarding tools such as The Battle for Wesnoth that one can use to delineate storylines and work them up into story-graphs (in the maths sense of a delineation of paths between nodes; the alternate timelines available by making different choices at decision points - temporal nexus/nexuses).

By putting aside cinematography until after I get a working game up and running I on the one hand don't waste a lot of time coding for an engine that isn't yet quite ready for use in my project and on the other hand do waste a lot of time being distracted by fads that sweep by from time to time as each decade passes and another decade comes along.

By planning to use free open source components I might well make it easier and thus more likely that my end product will encounter competition but on the other hand I get to hand test the state of development each of "my" many teams are at as I go along, and to have many excellent teams working for years and years and years upon subsystems of "my" project. "For me", but also for smaller goals of their own, since most components are able to stand alone in some way, not dependent upon the completion of my project in order to meet the goals of the team working on the subsystem / component.

So think carefully about how ambitious you want to be. Finding ways to make small parts or modules or components the overall project will ultimately need in ways that let each such part be of some independent use in the meantime while you work on other parts can really help stretch one's budget / increase the scope of what a given budget might be able to achieve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_programmer#Compensation

You're talking $50k/yr for anyone with a degree, $100k/yr for people with a couple of titles under their belts already.

I really do hope you've got some money saved up. Programming isn't like playing a guitar or making a 3D model, where minor mistakes are okay and a lack of quality can be covered up. It's not something you learn enough to impress people with in only a few months of practicing a couple of hours a day. It's something that takes years of practicing a few hours a day. If you're hiring experienced freelancers, this is where the majority of your money will be spent (besides maybe licensing fees for the Unreal engine). If you hire someone who's never written his own program before, your game will be a mess. You're being too ambitious.

How long will it take to make? Are we talking one guy working full-time for a month? That's going to be 75-90% of the total costs, I imagine.

Looking at programmer salaries isn't to relevant because you won't be employing someone. You can get a decent coder freelance at $50/hr which would work out ballpark $7-10k/month.

Quote: Original post by JDX_John
How long will it take to make? Are we talking one guy working full-time for a month?

This is an RPG, being built on an FPS engine. Being an RPG automatically pushes you into the long-haul category, and adapting the engine is going to take even more time.

Quote: Looking at programmer salaries isn't to relevant because you won't be employing someone. You can get a decent coder freelance at $50/hr

How isn't it relevant? Figuring a fairly normal, 40 hour work-week, $50/hour *is* $100,000/year.