Recently, I've been reading a bunch of articles here on the escapist talking about the way that a lot of gaming studios operating, and throughout all of these articles there has been one common strain: the huge budget.
Inevitably, the big budget always come with a lot of strings attached, with failure even more punishing to the investors. the way of the future, perhaps, is to go back to a model where small studios with very agile teams create small but lean projects, focusing on maximizing their resources on the most important portions of the game.
So this is where I started thinking, what are examples of games that you can remember which were developed on a modest budget but was met with critical acclaim? What do you think is a modest but realistic budget for game development in our current day environment? (Maybe not hard numbers, but how would you go about evaluating this?)
But also, what are some of big trade offs for the smaller budget?
I've been mulling over these questions myself, but unfortunately being someone who is not that well versed in industry lore, most of my thoughts are speculative at best. Keep in mind, I'm just thinking outloud here and by no means do I consider my numbers OR the assumptions I make about them accurate. This is all just me trying to generate some conversation.
what are examples of games that you can remember which were developed on a modest budget but was met with critical acclaim?
The first thing that came to mind was Cave Story, a game that was developed by ONE man with apparently almost no budget. This is basically also proof that someone with enough talent, skill, and a crap ton of patience can eventually crank out a winner. Unfortunately, not all of us are Pixel-level designers with that kind of dedication. I wonder if we can categorize a lot of the earlier games prior to the playstation era to fall under the same category. But still....
What do you think is a modest but realistic budget for game development in our current day environment?
Now, this is where I have a hard time coming up with a good answer, since a lot of this is subjected to the scope of the project. Given that the average dev will probably run easily 45000 to 60000 though, we probably are looking at a minimum of 300K a year for a modestly sized team (5 person, wooo), throw on 100K for equipment, 25K a year for the work space, add 30% of the whole thing for administrative fees, we're looking easily 500K+ without even trying. We haven't even touched distribution costs.
Inevitably, the big budget always come with a lot of strings attached, with failure even more punishing to the investors. the way of the future, perhaps, is to go back to a model where small studios with very agile teams create small but lean projects, focusing on maximizing their resources on the most important portions of the game.
So this is where I started thinking, what are examples of games that you can remember which were developed on a modest budget but was met with critical acclaim? What do you think is a modest but realistic budget for game development in our current day environment? (Maybe not hard numbers, but how would you go about evaluating this?)
But also, what are some of big trade offs for the smaller budget?
I've been mulling over these questions myself, but unfortunately being someone who is not that well versed in industry lore, most of my thoughts are speculative at best. Keep in mind, I'm just thinking outloud here and by no means do I consider my numbers OR the assumptions I make about them accurate. This is all just me trying to generate some conversation.
what are examples of games that you can remember which were developed on a modest budget but was met with critical acclaim?
The first thing that came to mind was Cave Story, a game that was developed by ONE man with apparently almost no budget. This is basically also proof that someone with enough talent, skill, and a crap ton of patience can eventually crank out a winner. Unfortunately, not all of us are Pixel-level designers with that kind of dedication. I wonder if we can categorize a lot of the earlier games prior to the playstation era to fall under the same category. But still....
What do you think is a modest but realistic budget for game development in our current day environment?
Now, this is where I have a hard time coming up with a good answer, since a lot of this is subjected to the scope of the project. Given that the average dev will probably run easily 45000 to 60000 though, we probably are looking at a minimum of 300K a year for a modestly sized team (5 person, wooo), throw on 100K for equipment, 25K a year for the work space, add 30% of the whole thing for administrative fees, we're looking easily 500K+ without even trying. We haven't even touched distribution costs.
