• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The exact cost, and breakdown of adding a character to Skullgirls (150k.)

Jac_Solar

Member
This is regarding Skullgirls. The developers want 150,000$ to make a new character, and they are hoping to introduce some bug fixes and balance tweaks.

$48,000: Staff Salaries - 8 people for 10 weeks

$30,000: Animation and Clean-up Contracting

$4,000: Voice recording

$2,000: Hit-box Contracting

$5,000: Audio Implementation Contracting

$20,000: QA Testing

$10,000: 1st Party Certification

$10,500: IndieGoGo and Payment Processing Fees

$20,500: Manufacturing and Shipping Physical Perks

http://kotaku.com/5986592/it-will-b...s-to-add-one-new-character-to-a-fighting-game

That is extreme. But what do the 8 people mentioned in the staff salary do for the 10 week period, since animation, voice recording, hit box, qa, etc. is outsourced?

And 20,000$ for QA for a character sounds like a lot -- what exactly does this process involve?

5,000$ for audio for a single character also sounds like a lot. As well as 10,000 for 1st party certification.

I'm not trying to imply that they are lying, or something like that, just that I do not understand the game industry.

EDIT: Check out a video on their art process;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFW2alyANL4

Here's a video of their art process.
 
This is regarding Skullgirls. The developers want 150.000$ to make a new character, and they are hoping to introduce some bug fixes and balance tweaks.



http://kotaku.com/5986592/it-will-b...s-to-add-one-new-character-to-a-fighting-game

That is extreme. But what do the 8 people mentioned in the staff salary do for the 10 week period, since animation, voice recording, hit box, qa, etc. is outsourced?

And 20.000$ for QA for a character sounds like a lot -- what exactly does this process involve?

5,000$ for audio for a single character also sounds like a lot. As well as 10,000 for 1st party certification.

I'm not trying to imply that they are lying, or something like that, just that I do not understand the game industry.

Sounds like you don't understand development costs in general.
 

Artanisix

Member
I imagine the staff salary goes towards the actual design of the fighter (both the art and how the character plays).
 

grandjedi6

Master of the Google Search
This is regarding Skullgirls. The developers want 150.000$ to make a new character, and they are hoping to introduce some bug fixes and balance tweaks.



http://kotaku.com/5986592/it-will-b...s-to-add-one-new-character-to-a-fighting-game

That is extreme. But what do the 8 people mentioned in the staff salary do for the 10 week period, since animation, voice recording, hit box, qa, etc. is outsourced?

And 20.000$ for QA for a character sounds like a lot -- what exactly does this process involve?

5,000$ for audio for a single character also sounds like a lot. As well as 10,000 for 1st party certification.

I'm not trying to imply that they are lying, or something like that, just that I do not understand the game industry.
Sounds realistic to me. There's a reason video games cost tens of millions of dollars.
 
That is extreme. But what do the 8 people mentioned in the staff salary do for the 10 week period, since animation, voice recording, hit box, qa, etc. is outsourced?

And 20.000$ for QA for a character sounds like a lot -- what exactly does this process involve?

5,000$ for audio for a single character also sounds like a lot. As well as 10,000 for 1st party certification.

I'm not trying to imply that they are lying, or something like that, just that I do not understand the game industry.

Hah, I'm sure they'd agree that $10K for the 1st party cert is a lot. Nothing they can do about it though.

Stop and take a minute to think about that $48K for staff salary. That's $600 a week per person. Does that really sound like a lot to you?

Also, just because some work is being outsourced, doesn't mean everything is being outsourced. The game would likely have terrible focus or direction if everything they did was outsourced.
 
IIIRC only the transition frames for animations are outsourced; the key frames are done in-house. And there's programming work to be done for the engine.
 

zoukka

Member
I take this is all the costs including when they make new DLC and release it.

Bacause 3200 manhours creating one 2D character that is not even finalized is overkill.
 

shuri

Banned
Money down the drain for a game nobody cares or will ever care about.

It's just the sad truth. It's a nice, well intended project; I guess; but the general creepy animu because lets be honest, the character design makes it look like the entire game is a side project for one of those creepy hentai books makes it impossible to sell to the general public. The entire game has that mugen project feel :(

Indie fighting games are always welcome, but this title is so incredibly niche!
 

Mesoian

Member
This is regarding Skullgirls. The developers want 150.000$ to make a new character, and they are hoping to introduce some bug fixes and balance tweaks.



http://kotaku.com/5986592/it-will-b...s-to-add-one-new-character-to-a-fighting-game

That is extreme. But what do the 8 people mentioned in the staff salary do for the 10 week period, since animation, voice recording, hit box, qa, etc. is outsourced?

And 20.000$ for QA for a character sounds like a lot -- what exactly does this process involve?

5,000$ for audio for a single character also sounds like a lot. As well as 10,000 for 1st party certification.

I'm not trying to imply that they are lying, or something like that, just that I do not understand the game industry.

Sounds right to me. This is DLC pricing so that QA and cert cost is gonna be right up there. And people gotta eat, it's not like this dev studio is doing anything else right now.

Cost of business. The game is doing well in japan though, so they may be able to afford it without use of a kickstarter. Time will tell.

Money down the drain for a game nobody cares or will ever care about.

It's just the sad truth. It's a nice, well intended project; I guess; but the general creepy animu because lets be honest, the character design makes it look like the entire game is a side project for one of those creepy hentai books makes it impossible to sell to the general public. The entire game feels like a mugen project

He said not knowing that it was the number 1 PSN game in japan last week...

It's fine if you don't like the artstyle, towrite the game off because of it is stupid. it's a VERY good fighting game.

God, you sound like those kids who didn't even want to consider playing "Dust: An Elysian Tale" because, "OH GOD IT'LL MAKE ME FURRY!"
 
Money down the drain for a game nobody cares or will ever care about.

It's just the sad truth. It's a nice, well intended project; I guess; but the general creepy animu because lets be honest, the character design makes it look like the entire game is a side project for one of those creepy hentai books makes it impossible to sell to the general public. The entire game has that mugen project feel :(

Indie fighting games are always welcome, but this title is so incredibly niche!
Raised 75k for breast cancer research and is currently #1 on Japanese PSN... I think reality disagrees with you.
 

Gold_Loot

Member
5k for a voice acting session? Shit, just grab Julie from the reception desk and have her grunt into the Mic for 20 minutes .
 
Money down the drain for a game nobody cares or will ever care about.

It's just the sad truth. It's a nice, well intended project; I guess; but the general creepy animu because lets be honest, the character design makes it look like the entire game is a side project for one of those creepy hentai books makes it impossible to sell to the general public. The entire game has that mugen project feel :(

Indie fighting games are always welcome, but this title is so incredibly niche!

Fuckin' A man. Right on.
 

mr. puppy

Banned
Money down the drain for a game nobody cares or will ever care about.

It's just the sad truth. It's a nice, well intended project; I guess; but the general creepy animu because lets be honest, the character design makes it look like the entire game is a side project for one of those creepy hentai books makes it impossible to sell to the general public. The entire game has that mugen project feel :(

Indie fighting games are always welcome, but this title is so incredibly niche!

not only that, but the animation is straight up newgrounds flash awful. like contact is made from a fist, the character jumps to some weird face, and there is an awkward delay and slowdown throughout the entire game for these animations.
 

RetroDLC

Foundations of Burden
As a game audio developer, $5k for implementation figures about right for a 4 to 6 week contract in the US. This could also include the booking, production and directing of the VO recording. $20k for QA is a reasonable figure for testing the update if it includes localisation (US, Europe, Asia and maybe Russia).
 

Risette

A Good Citizen
not only that, but the animation is straight up newgrounds flash awful. like contact is made from a fist, the character jumps to some weird face, and there is an awkward delay and slowdown throughout the entire game for these animations.
lol what

Skullgirls has a questionable artstyle, but the animation is fucking tops.
 

Artanisix

Member
It's fine if you don't like the artstyle, towrite the game off because of it is stupid. it's a VERY good fighting game.

God, you sound like those kids who didn't even want to consider playing "Dust: An Elysian Tale" because, "OH GOD IT'LL MAKE ME FURRY!"

I honestly wish Skullgirls had a less boob-flinging chibi animu art style to it. Never played the game but I feel embarrassed just looking at the characters.
 

Mesoian

Member
not only that, but the animation is straight up newgrounds flash awful. like contact is made from a fist, the character jumps to some weird face, and there is an awkward delay and slowdown throughout the entire game for these animations.

PFFT what? Did you even see the finished product?
 

Chev

Member
Hitbox contracting sounds like something you can automate?
At 2000$ it's cheaper than paying a programmer to automate it and doing all the tests to ensure the automated process works correctly. Plus you do need human intervention anyway because no automated process will give you hitboxes that result in good gameplay (look at the hitboxes for fighting games and you'll see they don't necessarily look like anything intuitive underneath, simply because balance and priority changes can make them deviate from the character silhouette quite a bit), so it is unclear if automating it would really be a good long-term choice.

And 20.000$ for QA for a character sounds like a lot -- what exactly does this process involve?
Basically testing the character and tweaking timing and hitboxes until the character is fun to play and balanced against all the others.
 

VariantX

Member
Not surprised that its expensive for just one character to get done. Each char has maybe 1100-1200+ frames of animation on average.
 

grandjedi6

Master of the Google Search
$20,500: Manufacturing and Shipping Physical Perks

Its going to be DLC so why do you need shipping and Manufacturing?

Well if you actually bothered to read the article in question you would have realized they're (basically) kickstarting it through indiegogo and thus have reward tiers.

But apparently reading the OP is too hard!
 

Mesoian

Member
I'm just suprised they have to out source the hit boxes.

Well, I think by "outsourcing" they mean bringing people in who were originally on the team, but left/were cut out by the company restructuring. This developer has a really odd history. The more I read up on it, the more I'm surprised the game was finished at all.
 

RetroDLC

Foundations of Burden
Reading some of the replies in this thread just hurts my head. It's rare for a developer to plot out their production costs in public, now people are complaining it's too much for a indie developer to ask for. People wanting to work in the games industry should be paying close attention to information like this.
 

Malajax

Member
From what Seth Killian and other game industry devs have said: $150k is absurdly cheap for a fighting game character.

Let's not forget that this is an indie studio that doesn't have the massive resources that Capcom, Namco, or Netherrealm have access to. I'm sure that even $150k is the bare minimum that it takes. So I'm all in!
 

Dachande

Member
Jesus Christ, this fucking thread.

Guess what guys: games are expensive to make. And Skullgirls is known for being able to do it on the cheap.

From what Seth Killian and other game industry devs have said: $150k is absurdly cheap for a fighting game character.

Apparently, Seth Killian said that they spend more than $150k on a single DLC character costume for SF4. So yeah, $150k for an entire character is not outrageous.
 

mclem

Member
From what Seth Killian and other game industry devs have said: $150k is absurdly cheap for a fighting game character.

This. The salaries are *remarkably* low. 6k per person per ten weeks works out at about $30k for a given person over a year, which, well, I was pretty much earning that when I was at my most junior as a programmer - and I felt I was woefully underpaid then. That said, as a small indie, I can understand their employees doing it more out of passion than for remuneration.

I wonder if it's factoring in staff overheads (a basic rule of thumb is that the non-salary costs of employing someone actually roughly equals their salary). If that's the case, the salaries are, uh, even more remarkably low. I guess not, though.
 
Game dev is expensive. They were super passonate during their drives for breast cancer research, and the recent popularity in japan should hopefully keep them going. I rarely play fighters myself, but I'm thinking of pitching into this if i can get a pc version out of it.

edit: anybody have a link for the actual page. Kotaku, who reported on the story, doesn't even provide a link. I normally don't care for these things but come on!
 

Zoe

Member
A fifth of the costs just for putting it on indiegogo. Wish I had thought of that business model.
 

Mikhal

Member
hey when is that PC version supposed to be coming out?
I think it's supposed to come out this year. Marvelous will be publishing it. They're aiming to add lobbies and probably whatever they can get funded from this campaign into it. They're also looking into a Mac version using Cider and the Steam version will come out with TF2 hats.

More info can be found about the PC version and the 2nd DLC character stretch goal (a male character that plays like a "better" Q from 3rd Strike) here: http://shoryuken.com/2013/02/22/big...-further-details-discussed-at-salty-cupcakes/
 

Tizoc

Member
Will contribute to a kickstarter I recall they were planning for later this month, would've been happy to pay for both the kickstarter and for when Squiggly gets released on US PSN.
 
Looks reasonable. What's the manufacturing for exactly?

since its a kickstarter, they gotta offer goodies for reward tiers. I presume thats a baseline for shipping those out. I remember the Idle Thumbs guys commenting on how shipping/making the goodies was where nearly most of their money went to
 
This. The salaries are *remarkably* low. 6k per person per ten weeks works out at about $30k for a given person over a year, which, well, I was pretty much earning that when I was at my most junior as a programmer - and I felt I was woefully underpaid then. That said, as a small indie, I can understand their employees doing it more out of passion than for remuneration.

I wonder if it's factoring in staff overheads (a basic rule of thumb is that the non-salary costs of employing someone actually roughly equals their salary). If that's the case, the salaries are, uh, even more remarkably low. I guess not, though.

I was thinking the same thing.
If they are calculating total development costs, the overhead should be included. They have to be paid as well.
So I guess these guys work their asses of for something in the range of $300 a week.
 

Quackula

Member
I was thinking the same thing.
If they are calculating total development costs, the overhead should be included. They have to be paid as well.
So I guess these guys work their asses of for something in the range of $300 a week.

So they're basically making a tad less than I do to work on this game, and I work retail. Damn.
 
not only that, but the animation is straight up newgrounds flash awful. like contact is made from a fist, the character jumps to some weird face, and there is an awkward delay and slowdown throughout the entire game for these animations.

:lol, between comments like this and stuff you'll see browsing Joystiq I just have to smh.

I honestly wish Skullgirls had a less boob-flinging chibi animu art style to it. Never played the game but I feel embarrassed just looking at the characters.

I highly encourage you try out the demo, may not be your cup of tea at the end of the day but if you're into team based fighting games there's not much to lose.

Will contribute to a kickstarter I recall they were planning for later this month, would've been happy to pay for both the kickstarter and for when Squiggly gets released on US PSN.

The IndieGoGo starts in just a few hours actually, thread should be up around the same time I would think.

So they're basically making a tad less than I do to work on this game, and I work retail. Damn.

Yeah, they're taking some pretty significant pay cuts in order to make this happen.
 
Top Bottom