As per title, may i know how much it cost to develop a game similar like Clash of Clan, Friendly fire?

Actually i have an game idea in my mind, first inspire by Friendly Fire and followed by Clash of Clan. I know it's quite impossible to do it my self, but to satisfy my curiosity, i would like to know how much it cost to develop this kind of game, from head to toe. And it should be compatible with android, ios and also can play on web.

How many developers do you have in mind?

How many artists?

How many game designers?

What is your time-frame?

... and many other questions to be answered before anyone can give you an answer to "How much does it cost to make XYZ?".

I'm not trying to mock you here, I'm just pointing out that your initial question is extremely difficult to answer without more information. If you're lucky then the developers of Clash of Clans or Friendly Fire can get on here and give you a value, but that would still be completely meaningless without a breakdown of resources/time etc.

Ah... sound like i got to be a multimillionaire in order to publish my desire game.

Ah... sound like i got to be a multimillionaire in order to publish my desire game.

Or you just need a good business plan to get investors to foot the bill.

I might say that it could be done for quite a bit less then $1m. I was the tech lead on a top 10 iOS game for my company and there is no way it cost $1m to make. Probably in the range of $300-$350k. Granted the art in Clash of Clans is better then ours which is going to help drive up the price a fair amount.

Ah... sound like i got to be a multimillionaire in order to publish my desire game.

Or you just need a good business plan to get investors to foot the bill.

I might say that it could be done for quite a bit less then $1m. I was the tech lead on a top 10 iOS game for my company and there is no way it cost $1m to make. Probably in the range of $300-$350k. Granted the art in Clash of Clans is better then ours which is going to help drive up the price a fair amount.

I got zero knowledge about programming, illustration. Like many other gamer, we always have some idea which inspired on abc game and hoping some one will invest their money and whoala, this game get famous.

But the fact is, no one will invest on you, like tom said in his web, most of the publisher or developer already have their very own idea or plan. So in order to hope and wait some one will invest their money in, i prefer to find some way out to earn that particular amount. But if there is any investor are willing to invest their money on gamer idea, i will definitely give it a shot.

I got zero knowledge about programming, illustration. Like many other gamer, we always have some idea which inspired on abc game and hoping some one will invest their money and whoala, this game get famous.

(Not having looked at the target game, but just speaking of game development in general...)

Most people also have no experience in game, UI, or sound design, music, game production, tech or art direction, IT, QA, HR management, etc. Good personnel to fill these needs (and several more, for higher-end titles) should be added to the budget just to facilitate development.

If we hope to do anything more than simply get something made, we'll also need to cover market research, PR, advertizing, distribution, business law, etc.

A handful of acquaintances making something on the side for fun is one thing. But when we turn it into a commercial project in which we hope to pay expenses, and maybe even profit, we have to somehow account for at least all of the above. These are some of the reasons it's tough to arrive at an actual budget.

It's probably much, much cheaper for an established group whose just succeeded on all fronts with a similar title, to make a given game than it would be for a business speculator to put together the same project from scratch to get the same result. Figures based on the former are likely to woefully underestimate the latter, in both time and expense.

This is one of the reasons it's tough to get savvy investors interested.

I disagree with all of the above estimates - largely because they haven't taken into account the real cost of maintaining the kind of server infrastructure required to run a free to play game like Clash of Clans effectively. Non-free to play games, or ones with just in app purchases may not incur the same kind of overheads, so can be cheaper.

One quote I've been given is that it can cost $1 per player, per day to run your server infrastructure, tracking your player's habits and building up a database of their behaviour. I'm inclined to believe that it can be done more cheaply, but I don't think this number is unreasonable. If you have ~200k players, your monthly bill is going to start running well into the millions. You'll need the cash at bank to run your game for at least a few months after launch or you'll fail to get out of the gate.

If you're expecting said 200k players, you'll need a cool $16.8 million just to run your infrastructure for the initial three months.

In order to be successful, you'll need to hire people to analyse the data you're gathering, so you'll want a statistician (data analyst) and a player psychologist at the minimum - both of these are expensive people to have. Building and maintaining the software for your infrastructure will require someone with extensive networking, security and database experience, the kind of people you'll be competing against banks and other high paying industries to retain.

You'll of course also need developers and administrative support to handle the actual game development, as others have mentioned above.

Realistically, I would estimate your initial investment prior to shipping your game will probably in the order of $20-25 million.