I'm absolutely new to game design, in the past I've tried to do some Unity tutorials unfortunately time is being an issue to me, but I always wanted to create some different games and revive some stuff I used to play a long time ago.

People always say Unity is the way to go and I very much believe it since I see so many games being released through it every now and then. So this part is pretty much solved, that is the software I'm going to use.

The main issue is how much time do I need to practice, how much time do I need to spend until I feel it's time to go ram and make something that works and can be released.

I prefer using the mobile platform and working with very simple games, nothing with twinsticks or screen buttons, something on the matters of Hyper Casual, Incremental, Arcade, etc games. Very simple stuff.

Also, how much money does it take to hire a very small team of 2-3 persons? (which I believe is enough) And can I hire an actual studio to create my game on demand?

Enlighten me oh wise people of game developing.

Roughly a small mobile game costs around +/-$160 000 to produce, this cost also includes wages.

So if you are a person with no skills, none what so ever, works on the game they can do +/-$15 000 of work a year. A team of 4 untrained team members can make a small indie game in 3 years.

A member working at a professional level is worth +/- $70 000 a year. Meaning 2 professionals can basically publish a small game in a years time.

These values are based on averages from salaries but have proven to be very-very accurate estimates of game development time and costs.

23 minutes ago, Saka said:

The main issue is how much time do I need to practice

The average time to be a professional at new skill is 3-4 years. You don't need to be professional at anything but it will help a lot.

Study have shown that most solo indie developers take 12 years to make their first successful game; starting with no skills. These 12 years are filled with practice and will often see the release of a few unsuccessful games.

How long it will take you, no one can say for sure, every person is different. It took me 13 years to release my own successful game, but before that I was already making successful games for other developers; it took 6 years of practice before I made a game for a client.

32 minutes ago, Saka said:

Also, how much money does it take to hire a very small team of 2-3 persons?

Minimum wadge is +/- $8 USD; but it depends what country you are hiring from. +/- $15 000 a year.

Professionals are more expensive but also rare, people who trained for years often find work even before they have finished studying and are highly in demand. When just starting out you will probably be looking more for freelancers than actual team members. Because if you are training to be a developer you will still have to pay your staff, even if the project halted because of your inexperience.

The way I work is I hire people per-job instead of building a team. For example if I would hire a person to proof read my game text and edit it, I hire a composer for sound effects and music as needed etc. I also buy and edit assets from asset stores; editing them is very important to match the game. This way you can get a lot of different content for your game for much cheaper than hiring someone for years.

The only downside is that you will make some bad purchases and if you don't know editing the content will be inconsistent.

2 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

The way I work is I hire people per-job instead of building a team. For example if I would hire a person to proof read my game text and edit it, I hire a composer for sound effects and music as needed etc.

This is a very good strategy as you will only pay for what you need and not the upkeep of maintaining a full team for (x) years until project completion.

@Saka the only advice I can give you as Scouting Ninja already provided very good information is that you don't bother hiring at team at this stage. If you have no experience in game development, and no experience seeing a full game being made from start to finish you will burn through money extremely fast. I would give yourself a few years working with other teams to get a feel for what is actually required to create a game, including the business side. Even then I would still give it much longer if you plan to go commercial...

If you have a lot of money on hand then you can always hire an agency to oversee the development, but expect to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a game done depending on what you want.

I don't know what type of games you're aiming to make, but it might be better to just pick up C# and Unity then find free assets to get started. Then slowly acquire like minded people if possible to work together on a game, or join an existing project.

Best of luck!

I agree with the responses above, but I'm going to try answering a different part of the question.

Hyper casual games are VERY simple - often single screen or with very basic levels, very plain/simple graphics, and only a few basic game mechanics.  Putting aside the design and just looking at the programming and assets, experienced developers could probably put one together within a couple of days.  "Putting aside the design" can be misleading though, as a successful game will likely take lots of testing, tweaking, balancing, and even prototyping and completely scrapping ideas that turn out not to be fun.  On the plus side, this type of game is very achievable, so you've set a goal that you can definitely meet with some effort.

Starting from scratch, if you put in plenty of effort and dedicate time to it consistently you can probably produce a game in this style within a couple of months at most.  Producing a good game that might be successful will likely take longer - most people's first games aren't as polished and fun as those they make with a bit more experience, and then you're competing in a saturated marketplace where most games don't succeed or only have very modest success.  The overwhelming majority of successful hyper-casual titles are released by publishers, so you would probably want to find and work with one.

I would recommend:

1. Get Unity (as that's what you've chosen - Game Maker Studio is also a popular option that would be very capable of these sort of games, and there are other options) and start learning with the tutorials provided on the website.  Google for some beginner tutorials elsewhere if you need more - personally I don't really like learning coding from video, but there are some beginner lessons on YouTube that are very popular.  Learn to get an image on screen, and to move it around with user input.  From there, learn to make a Flappy Bird clone.  Don't try to release this clone, there are a million out there, and it's just for learning purposes.
2. Come up with some ideas for hyper-casual gameplay, and set about trying to make them with Unity.  Don't worry about art to start with, just use basic shapes you can make yourself like squares and circles, or if you want something that looks a little nicer search for free assets.  Google for tutorials or ask for help if you get stuck on anything or don't know how to do some specific thing.  You probably want to make at least 5-6 different little games, and then play them, get your friends to play them, etc.
3. Pick only the most fun idea, and polish it.  Find a successful hyper casual game that's similar, and compare to yours.  What is it doing better than yours?  You don't want to copy the other game, but you want something to compare your quality.  This is when you want to find art, sound, etc. - probably by purchasing and editing it rather than recruiting someone.
4. Pitch to a publisher.  This is a whole topic of it's own, so don't worry about it until you've learned the basics.

Hope that helps give some direction.

15 hours ago, jbadams said:

Hope that helps give some direction.

That helped a lot. Thank you very much!

17 hours ago, Rutin said:

If you have a lot of money on hand

That won't be the case, maybe I have an investor but I don't feel he'll put a lot of money in it if he doesn't feel it's a solid investment, thanks for the advise.

20 hours ago, Scouting Ninja said:

Roughly a small mobile game costs around +/-$160 000 to produce

That doesn't sound what I was imagining at all. It's way too much money I think, thanks for the reply!

On 8/27/2018 at 6:46 AM, Saka said:

The main issue is how much time do I need to practice, how much time do I need to spend until I feel it's time to go ram and make something that works and can be released.

This largely depends on yourself. Malmcolm Gladwells said it takes 10,000 hours to master one thing, but it also depends on how these 10,000 hours are spent as well. 

I'd say, don't do only practices. Do the actual work. Personally I think no matter how much you practice, it won't make you confident. You need to get your hand dirty with the real thing. What I mean is don't just write design/design document, try implementing the design and see if it works. Show it off to people, and get some feedback.

45 minutes ago, mr_tawan said:

Malmcolm Gladwells said it takes 10,000 hours to master one thing

You also don't necessarily need to master development to release a game.

Not to mention the 10,000 hours claim isn't generally considered correct - it does give a good guideline that you need a lot of practice to learn any topic in depth though.

For a game to look professional (which is important to attract users), the content creation and art side are at least as important as the technical side and require skills and experience that are, in my humble opinion, even harder and more time-consuming to acquire.

I've been programming a lot of years now but I am terrible at art and if I was serious about tackling a professional game project I would be more concerned about the cost/availability of people who could create content than the development side. Modern tools can make the technical side far easier but there are no real shortcuts on the creative side.

13 hours ago, Saka said:

That doesn't sound what I was imagining at all. It's way too much money I think, thanks for the reply!

It's pretty accurate if you're talking about professional quality. 

If you're ok with non-professional quality, you can make the same game yourself for <$100, but you also won't be able to make any money off of it. 

If you're interested in doing this as a business, I would highly recommend NOT trying to start a business until you have a lot of first hand practical experience. It's the same for any industry. You shouldn't open a Cafe without ever having managed one. You shouldn't start a lawn mowing company if you've never started a lawn mower. You shouldn't start a space rocket launch company if you've never worked for an engineering firm. The exception is if you have so much money that you can hire experts in those fields. 

If you're starting any of these business, this isn't a lot of money. $160k buys you two average game developers for a year (the average salary is $80k) - that's the minimum you should consider for professionally developing a simple game. If you're starting a lawn mowing business, $50k will buy you an existing franchise. To open a Cafe, you'll probably want about $150k of capital as well. To start a space rocket company, a billion dollars should do!

You're really putting the horse before the cart here. Don't think up a money making scheme simply because you find it interesting, and then figure out how to make it work. Trying to learn a skill, trying to master a skill, and trying to exploit a skill for profit are all three completely different things. If you try to do all three at once, you'll fail all three. 

If you're interested in a career in any skill, start at the start and chart a course. There's no shortcut to the end of your career before you've even started the learning phase. 

The (non scientific) rule of thumb for learning any skill is 10k hours of practice. Working full time, that's about 5 years. That's a 3/4 year degree and a few years of entry level work in the field. You should expect to be an intermediate game developer after doing that. 

Making a simple game as a learning exercise is free. You don't need investment yet. You need practice and experience. 

There's no rush to try to make games for profit, and IMHO trying to chase profits at this stage will only hurt your efforts to learn. 

It's worth noting that all $ numbers mentioned above assume USA salaries. You can hire programmers outside of the USA for less money, even a lot less depending on the region.