Hey, so basically im really interested in the making of a game and want to know any information regarding the process.

1. I would love to know how the number of developers affect the dev time of a game. I know this also depeds on the complexity, budget, genre etc. (what else)

2. what genres take the longest ? (my thoughts are 3D based games, MMOs, first person shooters)

3. what makes a game complex? By that I mean what are the most complex features? (mechanics, designe, story?) what am I missing ?

4. how much does it cost to make a mobile game, indie game, AAA game? and where does the most money flow into?

5. what are known gameplay loops? and wich ones are the most addictive?

6. when is someone a experienced game developer? How do i know if she/he is any good? How should a team look like for a mobile, indie or AAA game or in general for developing any game?

Ty for taking the time to read/answer. Any help for any question above would help me alot. I hope you have a great day and keep on building.

Is this a school assignment?

I'm interested to know what school/instructor thinks it's a good idea to have students spam forums.

fleabay said:
Is this a school assignment?

Sure reads like it, all right. Hopefully the professor will answer all those questions.

Sounds like a serious question to me.

@fleabay nope just want to learn something

@Tom Sloper just want to know something about game dev.

It sounds like homework because the answers are valuable to study yourself, but near-worthless as a result.

But since you are declaring that they really aren't homework:

1. The relationship is complex. As you wrote, it depends on the complexity of the project. In simple terms, you can estimate projects and their budget in FTE Years, or number of years for full-time employment. A 100 FTE project with 50 full-time workers will take two years. A 100 FTE project with 20 workers will take 5 years. A 1 FTE hobby project with an individual hobby developer may take 5 years. But in practice work isn't directly transferrable, it depends a lot on the person doing it. As a parallel, you can say it takes about 100 people to construct a new house, but it's stupid to hire 100 electricians and assume that your house will be built just because electricians are involved in building them. You'll need to dig in to comparing projects, read post mortems, and look at games credits to get more than that.

2. It's the project, not the genre. Go read project post-mortems, both successes and failures.

3. Why is work hard? Why is research and novel development hard? No matter how brilliant you are, it is difficult to predict how long it will take to invent something. Project managers do a tremendous amount of work to minimize risk and work complexity, but it is never eliminated. Go read project post-mortems for more.

4. It takes what it takes. AAA games are the only ones with a realistic answer, since AAA has a meaning of the highest budget premium games. For those, expect a main development budget of at least $0.1B dollars and potentially double or triple that, and about the same in marketing, and about the same in other costs. Less than that may be big, high quality games, but aren't going to be today's AAA.

5. Google it, but these really are bad questions.

6A. When they have done it for a while.

6B. You don't. You can compare results to other people's results, but it must be taken with a grain of salt as everyone's skill set is unique. Two people given the exact same task will come up with different results, given a task someone may even struggle and fail while still being an amazing developer. How do you think you would compare a gameplay programmer's skill, a graphics programmer's skill, a network programmer's skill, and a tool programmer's skill? What do you think would happen if you tossed the jobs around, gave a graphics programmer the network programmer's tasks, gave the tool programmer the networking tasks, etc? Those are also great research topics for anyone hoping to manage technical workers.

6C. It should have the skill sets you need. If you have a team of 10 people but all ten are amazing graphics programmers your game is going to suck.

The answers may sound rough or not what you'd like, but I'm quite serious when I write that the value to questions like those is not the answer, it is the benefit of researching it yourself and the things you learn along the way. That's why they are really good academic questions. Those answers should be enough for search terms to dig deeper.

@askerion , are you taking any courses in game development? If so, you will get better answers from your professor than by posting so many questions in a forum like this. Also, you'll get better answers on a forum if you ask the right way. Before asking your questions here, did you try to find an answer yourself, by searching the archives of the forum where you're posting, or by searching the Web, or by reading a book or an FAQ? I don't think so. You would probably have mentioned it if you had. Show that you're not a lazy asker by doing your homework first and demonstrating it in your post. Also, asking one question at a time will get you better responses than a laundry list of hard-to-answer questions all in one thread.

Why do you ask your question #1? Simple curiosity is not a good reason. What is it you're really trying to find out? You are asking this question so you can apply the answer to some other question you're dealing with. What is the real question? What is it you're really trying to figure out?

Your guess as to the answer to question #2 is fine. Why do you think you need to know more about this one?

Your question #3 is weird, a question that takes a LOT more time and work to answer than to ask.

You can find clues as to your question #4 in the Business And Law forum. Go check it out.

Your question #5 sounds like a student question. Which textbook are you using, and why do you need to ask this, if you're not a student?

Your question #6 is weird. From what point of view are you asking this? What is it you really need to know? Maybe if you are more forthcoming with your reason for asking, we'll be better able to understand what it is you really need to know. Are you contemplating a startup or an amateur team, is that it?

@undefined ty very much. I just wanted a start to my research on the topic. Sry for asking but you guys don’t need to be pissed. I clearly don‘t know anything about game dev so I had to find a start. which way is better than asking people that know a lot about game dev? currently watching a lot of gdc to educate myself and the process involved in developing. wish you the best and thank you again for helping.

I see frob and I were writing responses at the same time.

frob said:
these really are bad questions.

Yes. There ARE such things as bad questions. Don't listen believe those who tell you otherwise. Most of askerion's questions were either red herrings (trying to find out something, and asking something else to try to get there) or they were borne out of a student assignment.