Here's the thing...
I can save up to 75,000 dollars within a few years. I will use that money to create a video game.
How would the graphics be?
Can I realistically expect to create a Diabloish graphics game with that budget?
Thank you. I know I'm a newb.
I think you can reasonably expect to lose 75000 dollars. A budget alone does not make a game. You'll need some experience and know-how in order to spend the (very) small amount of money you have without it being a complete waste.
For reference, 75k USD would pay for one programmer for about half a year, at industry standard programmer salaries.
If you really want to make a game, spend the next few years learning to make games, then make some prototypes on your own or with friends. If you make something that strikes you and is fun, try to move forward with it. Maybe make your own art, or commission art (this will be expensive) or pitch the game to a publisher and see if you can get them to continue paying for development.
But don't just save up 75 thousand dollars and then light it on fire by trying to dive into the game industry with no experience. That's a bad idea.
Can I realistically expect to create a Diabloish graphics game with that budget?
Can I realistically expect to create a Diabloish graphics game with that budget?
No. You could probably make Super Mario Brothers (the first one) with that budget.
With the risk of sounding like a stupid troll...
Can I make a fairly complex RPG with 75,000 dollars even with such horrendous graphics, ASSUMING that I had talent and some experienced people to help me?
I'm really sorry for my extreme ignorance. I just need these questions answered. lol
I can save up to 75,000 dollars within a few years. I will use that money to create a video game.
How would the graphics be?
-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com
As a reference, Diablo 1 had a budget of $750K and Diablo 2 apparently had a budget of $9 mill.
Maybe a better rule of thumb is looking at the amount of work involved. Starting at the low end indie scale, you typically have 2-3 people working anything from half a year to several years. At the high end of the scale you have hundreds of people working up to 5 years. Google around, look at the various indie games being released and see what complexity seems to correspond to various development times. Then do the math, dividing up how many people can live how many months off your $75K, and you'll have something to compare with.
Torchlight, a modern low-budget Diablo-esque game, based in part on some opensource engines, was made by 25 people working 11 months.
If 3 people huddled together in a cheap apartment and lived off nothing but ramen, they could probably make some sort of RPG for that budget. A team doing it as a job? Not so much.
This might sound snarky, but it's not meant that way - until you know enough to make these things immediately obvious to you, you will only hurt yourself starting such a project. But hey, if your plan is to save money for a couple of years first, you have a lot of time to learn. Don't be discouraged, just find out what you're in for.
If you can program the game yourself then you could keep your budget under 75,000 if you buy single assets from the correct store.
There are a lot of shops selling 2D, 3D and sound assets, it just takes some bargain hunting and a bit of tweaking to get what you wan't
There are free resources also, you will just have to get use to the fact that other games could also have those resources.
Paying artist per asset instead of time could also save money, especially if thy make mistakes or you changed your mind.
Most artist also know what it's like to struggle and might over you a better deal, if you negotiate with them.
If you don't have any Programming skill you can use a gaming engine for most of the heavy lifting.
If you can program the game yourself then you could keep your budget under 75,000 if you buy single assets from the correct store.
There are a lot of shops selling 2D, 3D and sound assets, it just takes some bargain hunting and a bit of tweaking to get what you wan't
There are free resources also, you will just have to get use to the fact that other games could also have those resources.
Paying artist per asset instead of time could also save money, especially if thy make mistakes or you changed your mind.
Most artist also know what it's like to struggle and might over you a better deal, if you negotiate with them.
If you don't have any Programming skill you can use a gaming engine for most of the heavy lifting.
That would pretty much be my advice.
75k $ can get you a lot.... IF you can produce even more yourself. With that kind of budget, you will need to get your hands dirty. And I am not just talking about project management (even with a smallish project, that is normally a full time job), marketing and release management (if you plan to spend the 75k on the game itself, you will have to take care of that yourself too)...
I am talking about programming (which, AFAIK, usually is a little bit more expensive than buying stock art / getting art freelancers as Programmers have a much broader field in which they can work usually thus will not be forced to take on a job so often) and game design (I assume you wanted to do that yourself anyway. But be warned, take it lightly and your game will not be much fun. Take it serious, and its another fulltime job altogether).
If you have the skills and time (lets say multiple years if you are doing it alone), you have reasonable constraints (no AAA graphics, small to medium sized world, simple animations, and so on), your 75k $ might be enough to create a game you can be proud of.
Of course, to be really honest, before anyone can judge if your 75k will be enough, you need to give more exact specifications. "RPG with Diablolike Graphics" can be anything from a small single dungeon web game RPG with a very yimple battle system and crappy 2D isometric graphics, to a fully 3D pseudo-isometric AAA quality game with an expansive single player campaign of 100+ hours and a multiplayer mode.
75,000 doesn't go far in professional development, but as a hobbyist -- doing most of the work as a solo developer, or working with a small volunteer team -- it's a reasonable budget that you could probably stretch quite far.
You could buy Unity Pro for $1,500 and then get one of the numerous RPG starter kits from their asset store for around $100 or less (I found 3 within that price bracket with a quick search: 1 ($65), 2 ($30), or 3 ($70) and there are presumably more available) to save you some development effort. Obviously you would need to look at the feature sets, check out reviews and make sure what you were purchasing was suitable for your needs, but this is a reasonably cheap way to get a head-start on your development. You would obviously then also need to learn to use program using one of the languages supported by Unity (C#, UnityScript, or Boo) and to use the editor and your chosen starter kit.
You might then look into purchasing some royalty free stock models to start putting content into your game. These are "generic" models that you don't have exclusive rights to, so they might appear in other games and may need some tweaking to be suitable for your project. Sticking with the Unity Asset Store to look for a couple of examples, a quick search turns up Fantasy Horde - Enemies as a package of 10 assorted enemies you could use in your game for $100, and Fantasy Treasure Loot Kit which claims to have "298 treasure prefabs" for $45. I listed the normal prices for these items, but both packages are currently on sale for 65% off and 50% off respectively, so if you're patient and willing to do some research you can obviously save quite a bit of money. Looking for a couple more examples outside of the Unity Asset Store, we have the Frogames CS:Warriors and Commoners package available in the GDNet Marketplace, which offers a set of parts that can be assembled to make your own characters for $150, and at Gamedevmarket.net we can find a Male Mercenary model for $10.
That's quite a lot of graphics for your game for just $305. However, if you now go back and look through all of the linked models, you'll see that although they all look good, they're not all the same graphic style and might look odd if you put them together in the same game. You would need to spend more time searching for things that match well, or spend time adjusting them (this would mean investing time learning another skill, and possibly investing in some modelling software) to make the style match. You might also need to add animations specific to your game, and are likely to have to adjust things like scale and format of stock models.
It's also likely that you might want some characters or items made specifically for your game, which would involve hiring an artist -- this usually ends up quite a bit more expensive than using stock assets, but if you find a good artist and negotiate correctly should get you exactly what you want, and potentially (depending on the specifics of your negotiated agreement) gets you exclusive use of your assets.
Note that I'm not actually suggesting any of the above as the best approach for you -- I just thought it might be valuable to provide a worked example that shows what you could potentially pull together with a reasonably small amount of money -- buying all of the above would still leave you with a lot of work to be done and still plenty more assets before you had a good, complete game, but by looking through those links you now have an idea of the quality of assets you can get for certain prices.
Before you go out and purchase any of the above be sure to research alternatives -- I just grabbed the first promising links from search results to illustrate the possibility.
Is it possible to create an RPG with Diablo-like graphics on a $75,000 budget? Yes, absolutely -- assuming you're willing and able to do the necessary work, you're aiming for something of reasonable scope, you're willing to have non-exclusive rights to at least some of your assets and you go about things in the right way.
Will it be possible for you? We can't really tell you that.
Hope that helps! :)
- Jason Astle-Adams
