Rising Cost for Developers

#1 I'm not done yet (far from it), and its just in Torque2D, but given that I'm working on dontated hardware, deving under linux, and using free wifi (aren't i just the cheapskate), my total cost is the engine. That is, of course, assuming that my time is worthless :)

#2 It's hard to quantify, as I only count the amount of actual money I put into the game - not the amount of time that wasn't charged. Only counting money that exited my wallet specifically for the title, I put less than $1000 into Void War. This doesn't include the cost of tools or other one-time costs, which can be amortized over time.

The major cost for a developer is PEOPLE. Same thing for an indie. I got some great help for really cheap, but it's easy to spend thousands and thousands on content. Beyond that, the next biggest expense is usually on office space - but as an indie, if you are literally working out of the garage / basement / bedroom for your whole team in a "virtual" office, then that gets really cheap. The Internet is your office.

Licensed content and tools might be tied for your next expense. Sound effects, content packs, music, whatever. If the license is pretty open (buy once, use as much as you want), then you can amortize those costs over multiple titles. You can spend several thousand on tools (for example, every programmer has to have a copy of Torque, you may need license of a major modeling package like Lightwave for each of your modelers, you need a compiler like Visual Studio, etc.) There are a lot of open-source (or shareware / independent!) solutions out there that can really drop the cost of tools, if you are willing to take the potential hit to productivity.

The cost of putting together your company as a legal entity to release your game involves a small cost (or a major one, depending on how you form it).

Once you get beyond development, you can incur some really significant expenses marketing and selling your game. You'll need a website, an e-commerce solution, and some kind of marketing budget. Joe Lieberman, who specializes in marketing independent games, once explained to me about marketing budgets: "I can do a LOT with a little, but I can't do much with nothing." The whole, "If you build it, they will come" thing only applies to mystic cornfields in nostalgic baseball fantasy movies.

I wrote an article for gamedev.net that was kind of a chronicle of trying to build a game with no budget (and in only 40 hours, and starting from SCRATCH - pretty much a 'start at rock bottom where NOBODY should have to start to see how much you can do with nothing at all' story). Check it out for ideas.

You can also limit the scope of your game to limit the budget. The single biggest cost is time - especially if you are paying people to do your programming, art, music, etc. Creating a TETRIS or BEJEWELLED type game is going to be a couple orders of magnitude cheaper than a more content-rich game like an RPG. I like to hold Orbz up as an example of a really good 3D indie game in terms of scope. The game is simple, doesn't require complex animations or human-like figures, so they got to put their budget into fanciful levels and variations on a simple game theme.

Anyway - long story short - if you stick to free / cheap tools, keep it a one-man project, spend very little on advertising, and "donate" your time, you can put together and release a game very, very cheaply - a few hundred dollars. You won't have anything resembling the scope or production values of a major, triple-A game - and nothing resembling the sales of the same - but does that matter?

#3 I am doing it on a govt disability pension. That gives me 200 bucks a month development money. Not enough to buy
3ds max or go to the IGDC. But with GG tools being priced right I can buy stuff like constructor and packs.

#4 @ Jay - Enjoyed your article on gamedev.net =)

#5 Thanks!

It was a fun experience and fun to write about. I just hope its useful to people.

#6 The article was good. Very interesting.