Ever wonder what a game development budget looks like?

[RainDreamer]

http://kotaku.com/what-a-video-game-budget-looks-like-1729412796?utm_expid=66866090-52.r5txldOmRkqnbJxnyozIeA.0&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.google.ca%2F

And that is just an indie dev budget. You can check the link above to the kotaku article, or here for the dev blog of Thimbleweed that has the above image as part of their blog about their budget.

Making games are so very, very expensive...

[NovaSilisko]

Making [certain types of] games [can be] very, very expensive [depending strongly on various factors]

I have applied some corrections.

[Camacha]

This looks like an awful lot of money for anyone in regular employment, but to most people running a business and/or employing people, numbers like these do not look that big. Yes, 25k dollar is a lot of money, but if you actually have to pay salaries, that evaporates very quickly. Most people do not realize that what gets put into their bank account as employee is, in a lot of countries, only a portion of what the employer actually pays in insurances and other governmental fees. I know that around here, the factor is a little under 2 (about 1,6-1,7). So if you earn 2000 dollar a month, you costs your employer 3400 dollar. Your income tax still gets deducted from that 2000 dollar. That is without any housing or operational costs, so giving you an office, electricity and a computer to work with will add another fair sum of costs to the equation.

I have applied some corrections.

Pretty much all (modern) games are expensive to make. A main reason for that is that people are expensive. Of course, you could do much of it in your own spare time, on your own hardware in your own home, but that just hides the costs. All those things still cost money (or something roughly equivalent).

[RainDreamer]

Well, I think at least I now understand why some kickstarter dev ask for the kind of money they usually ask, and the amount of things they can actually do with it.

[nightingale]

From the linked article:

First up are the people. Gary and I are working for peanuts (honey roasted). Neither of us can afford to work for free for 18 months and we're making about a quarter of what we could get with "real jobs" but we do need to eat and pay rent.

Everyone else is working below what they could get, but I do think it's important to pay people. I don't feel getting people to work for free ever works out and usually ends badly (and friendships) or you "get what you pay for." The reality is that when someone works for you for free, you aren't their top priority. They may say you are, they may want you to be, but you rarely are and you end up dealing with missed deadlines and hastily done work.

And that is why I scratch the game development itch with modding. The fact that "getting people to work for free" is even a consideration is astounding. No, I'll stay with my current job that puts food on the table, thank you very much.

[Cydonian Monk]

Wow. Making [certain types of] games is waaaaay cheaper than normal software development. Any idea what part of the world these numbers are for?

[steve_v]

Ahh, yeah... obviously dependent on which part of the world this is from, but that's not a particularly large budget for software development. Employees do need to eat and all that.

[RainDreamer]

I mean, yeah, looking at it from a project manager/ business owner perspective, this looks normal. But from the perspective of a gamer, it is quite eye opening.

Not often the people who enjoy the end product really get to know why some crowd funded dev ask for like a million bucks and take years to make a game.

[Camacha]

From the linked article:

And that is why I scratch the game development itch with modding. The fact that "getting people to work for free" is even a consideration is astounding. No, I'll stay with my current job that puts food on the table, thank you very much.

This sounds like people that are trying to fund their hobbies, not like people actually running a business. If you rely on underpaying yourself, but especially your people, the ship has already starting sinking.

Do not get me wrong, sometimes you need to suck it up and pour your passion into something that barely pays the rent if you believe that is what you need to do, but the attitude quoted here does not seem a healthy one in the long run.

Employees do need to eat and all that.

More importantly, employees need to be happy to produce quality. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. If those monkeys are unhappy to boot, nothing good can come of it.