Game Budget/Havok
Author
Why do games cost so much? I honestly don't understand why games need million-dollar budgets. I mean besides paying salaries, do the games THEMSELVES cost much? Ive never spent a Dime game design at all and im doing fine.
second question:
I recently saw Havoc is free.. How come I never see any indie games using it? How hard is it to use? are any of you using it?
I will admit... I do mumble the same question "Why do games cost so much?" when I hold a copy of a new release. But if you take a look at it from a distance their is a lot of money that goes into developing these games.
You touched on one point with the salaries already. Games these days have hundreds of people working on them. From the game designers to the coders... from the concept art to the sound. There is a lot of work going into these games. Then you factor in overhead on top of that... These multi-million dollar games are not produced in a couple months, but rahter have multi-year timelines that they work on. Then you have marketing, packaging, legal work, testing and I am sure I could keep going on with the list.
You touched on one point with the salaries already. Games these days have hundreds of people working on them. From the game designers to the coders... from the concept art to the sound. There is a lot of work going into these games. Then you factor in overhead on top of that... These multi-million dollar games are not produced in a couple months, but rahter have multi-year timelines that they work on. Then you have marketing, packaging, legal work, testing and I am sure I could keep going on with the list.
Quote:Original post by barouqeanxiety
I mean besides paying salaries, do the games THEMSELVES cost much?
Well obviously if you exclude the millions of dollars in salaries then games don't need million dollar budgets.... but then all those games like GTA and Tomb Raider, Sims, FIFA etc which require large teams wouldn't get made.
Then on top of that there is the marketing cost. You can't spend millions of dollars on making a game and then not bother to tell anyone about it. Marketing costs as much as the development (plus all the publishers other costs)... hence multi-million dollar costs to make a game.
As Obscure pointed out, besides salaries you have to pay for marketing, which is a huge one. You also pay for rent and utilities for the building(s) that you employees work in, you pay for crunch food when your employees stay late (if you're a decent employers), you pay for the hardware that your people are developing on, you pay for the software that your developers are using. These costs just add up and up and up.
Author
so it seems like the largest cost is indeed employee salaries. The reason I asked is besides not having hundreds of people at my disposal if i was going to take some sort of blow in game dev by now having millions of dollars to throw in it XD thank you for all your good replies.
Salaries are always the major part of the cost. That's one reason why studios have no good reason not to tempt the best programmers with dual-monitor top-spec PCs and Aeron chairs... those costs are miniscule in comparison.
Say it takes 10 coders and 10 artists 2 years to make a game. Say artists get $50K per year and coders get $80K. That works out at $(80+50)*1000*10*2 = $2.6 million. Bang, millions of dollars, and we haven't got a producer or a managing director or an IT guy, and we're not even paying high salaries.
Say it takes 10 coders and 10 artists 2 years to make a game. Say artists get $50K per year and coders get $80K. That works out at $(80+50)*1000*10*2 = $2.6 million. Bang, millions of dollars, and we haven't got a producer or a managing director or an IT guy, and we're not even paying high salaries.
Author
I see, I understand now, this was a topic that always bothered me. Thanks for all your help.
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