for a typical title you work on, what's the breakdown for man hours for code vs sound vs graphics vs level/mission creation?

these are the numbers i get:

graphics: 25% - 50%

audio: 5% - 10% (more if you have a lot of voice acting)

levels/misisoins/other content: 0% - 5% - 10%

code: everything else

Don't forget PR and advertising. Getting your game noticed can be a lot of work in and of itself.

Don't forget PR and advertising. Getting your game noticed can be a lot of work in and of itself

tell me about it. for me it probably adds an additional 25% labor cost once the game is done.

The last few big games companies I was at had staff levels of (guessing from memory):

Sports: 10 code, 10 art/anim, 2 UI, 2 design, 1 audio.

Adventure: 12 code, 12 art/anim, 3 UI, 2 design, 3 level design, 1 audio, 3 concept art.

So it would be about half work time is programing and half work is content?

Yeah, I'd say that's a decent rule of thumb in many cases... though this would depend on the type of game, and the tech used.

In minecraft, the player is the main content creator, and the initial content is largely generated by code

Games with bigger, but repetitive content need less code and more content -- e.g. Skyrim dungeons or COD missions require some initial tech to be coded, but then an endless amount lot of content can be created that uses that same tech over and over. So I'd say they'd need more content creators than coders on average.

In a sports game, there is a lot of rules, AI, character/animation systems to be coded, but the content is repetetive -- the same body parts, the same animations can be re-used, and only a handful of "levels" (stadiums) need to be created, which are all essentially the same. So I'd say that they'd require slightly more coders than content creators.