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[AppleMIX]

I literally read this one time: "Street Fighter IV could have been 2D if Capcom cared. It did't cost anything to make with cheap 3D graphics because the characters were already designed in SF2."

Jesus Christ.

 

[LumpOfCole]

I literally read this one time: "Street Fighter IV could have been 2D if Capcom cared. It did't cost anything to make with cheap 3D graphics because the characters were already designed in SF2."

That sounds like /v/ levels of trolling.

 

[muu]

I agree, although the downside is that getting those jobs is notably less reliable. That is, there are a good number of engineers who do not end up getting those 100k/year jobs. The good ones do, but not everyone.

One of the reasons so many people find medical school so appealing is that it's so safe (unless you fail out, of course). If you complete medical school, even with mediocre grades, you're very, very likely to land a job with a six figure salary. I already detailed the downsides, but that upside of safe, reliable and dependable job prospects is something that many people find very appealing.

Would depend on the major. You may not get 100K but you got to have seriously screwed things up to not be able to find a job as a EE or a ME. As an EE I've been laid off twice in my career but have had no problems finding equal or better paying jobs within a couple months. The folks that do have problems finding a gig are those that've invested in a house and are incapable of moving.

The problem is people like you, who totally deserve your bans, speaking like you know anything at all, refusing to believe that the people who work in that industry might actually know what they're talking about when they talk about how that industry works.

There is that problem of the internet fuckwad theory at work. "Anyone can program" so that game programmer shouldn't be making 50-100K. "Anyone can record in a studio" so they shouldn't be charging what amounts to $15/hr all things considered. "Anyone can do the work of a CEO" so they shouldn't be making those millions. It takes skill, dedication, and in many cases some dumb luck that's way beyond your control to get into gigs, but the huge number of folks that never made that effort refuse to hear it.

It also takes effort to read some of these discussions. Not much, but a little. You gotta expect a lot of people to not make that effort.

 

[Kai Dracon]

That sounds like /v/ levels of trolling.

Early days of SFIV, SRK forums.

Along with other people who demanded the soundtrack be replaced "in a patch", and someone who, in what I believe was sincerity, said: I'll start playing it again if they drop the ugly 3D and put sprites back in for the turbo version.

 

[beril]

Apparently you're banned, but I'll respond anyway.

It's not your fault. And I said the industry is largely to blame in an earlier post, by lying about budgets. And that Kickstarter and the mod scene has grossly distorted people's perceptions of what game development costs.

The problem with your analogy is that a doctor probably wouldn't try to tell a mechanic how terrible their estimates are, how they're bad managers and inefficient, and how there is clearly some ulterior motive at play. They would shop around and go with the guy that was the cheapest and seemed the most reliable.

A more apt analogy would be a panel of doctors yelling at GM because they don't understand how it can cost several billion dollars to design and manufacture a new model of car. And especially one they find so ugly!

That is basically what is happening here and in the comments of Joystiq, Kotaku, etc. and that's acceptable behavior, apparently, because it's the internet.

Complaining about stuff and critizising things you have no clue about isn't really unique to the internet; it's just a more public place to do it. Until you you entered the thread no one was yelling at you directly, and after you did I haven't really seen many do it, outside of the occational poster who just read the OP.

 

[Freakinchair]

All right, I'm gonna go through this one more time.

Before I start off, though, let me give you a little background. With the exception of Ravi himself, there is almost certainly no one on GAF who is more qualified to talk about voiceover in games. Not only am I literally a voice actor in Skullgirls (AND League of Legends, and several other games), but I run my small indie studio, which made a game with over 1,400 lines of fully voiced dialogue, certainly more than Bastion and likely more than most, if not all, indie games out there.

The question, of course, would immediately come up: how much did I spend on Sequence voiceovers? The answer is, truthfully, about $2,200, but this is an incredibly misleading number. Several...well, most...of the actors in Sequence were my friends, who worked for free. My friend Geoff, the audio engineer, mastered and edited over 1,400 lines *for free*. And of course, all the work I did...directing, picking takes, inserting into the game, modifying for time, and let's not forget, writing all the lines themselves...was unpaid. The studio was out of some guy's house; he charged me $40/hr, but it was mainly for the microphone. We recorded in a living room, for the most part. The quality wasn't horrible...I doubt many people were yelling at the screen...but from a professional standpoint, it was pretty rough.

I still feel bad about doing this, and I love my friends dearly for helping me. I had no choice; I couldn't pay more money, everything was out of pocket, I was a 23-year-old struggling to live in Los Angeles paying the bills via SAT/ACT/GRE tutoring. But *I can never do this again*. A professional studio, making a game that isn't just a project of passion but a proper, commercial endeavor that's meant to help support actual full-time jobs, *CANNOT JUST NOT PAY PEOPLE A FAIR WAGE*. It's insulting and, frankly, illegal. If EA told you to come in a do a shitton of work on Mirror's Edge 2, would you do it for free? No. You wouldn't. Your skills and time are worth money, and you expect to be compensated accordingly. In my next game, There Came an Echo, I've already paid the VOICEOVER STUDIO ALONE (Soundelux Design Music Group) over eight thousand dollars for their services, nearly $7,000 in SAG/AFTRA fees, and suffice to say, Wil Wheaton's acting isn't free either. I did this because this is what it costs, this is the price of entry, for the highest quality voiceover services in a game that absolutely requires those services to reach its highest potential.

Ravi (who I know personally, by the way, and is sacrificing a lot for himself and his team even with the 150k) isn't doing that. Ravi is making the best use of his money. He's hired Cristina Vee to direct...with whom I was hanging last night, by the way, and she was utterly appalled at this shit...who charges an utter pittance compared to hotshot Hollywood VO directors who wouldn't do any better a job, they're using an independent voiceover studio and a single sound engineer to run the whole setup, which is pretty shockingly professional for the cost. And I'm sure they have someone in-house doing all the editing, mastering, and placement for the VO lines, which is extremely time-consuming.

Two voice actors, a director, a sound engineer, studio costs, equipment costs, and a pretty massive workload back at the office...and you people are bitching about four thousand dollars? Honestly, fuck off. You have no idea what you're talking about, you want quality for pennies, you want people to work for free, or fucking pizza, or something. It's demeaning. I can't speak for animation...Noogy's got you covered on that...but I can speak for this.

I said DAMN

 

[mclem]

Keep doing what you're doing Ravi; I just somehow convinced my GF to throw another $30 by telling her she could sell the hat for double the profit in a few months.

Sticking a second, duplicate TF2 hat in at, say, the $75 level might be an interesting experiment

 

[Ravidrath]

Really appreciate RagingSpaniard and Feep dropping some science in here, BTW. We seem to be turning the tide, somewhat!

Sticking a second, duplicate TF2 hat in at, say, the $75 level might be an interesting experiment

We're investigating more TF2 hats and DotA2 items - Big Band hat and sax-back, Leviathan hook for Pudge and coiled Leviathan shield for someone else.

But I don't think we're going to charge for them, just use them as additional incentives for the $30 tier.

 

[Warm Machine]

Okay, then please do.

Orbitron: Revolution

Xbox 360

9 months of time total. Includes the two trailers which took a month each to do.
2 months at our office - $4800
Insurance - $2000
Office Supplies - $2000
Internet - $240
Sound/Voice - $2600
Music - $1600
Characters - $600
1 Month office time for extra content for a patch - $2400
Total Out of Pocket Expenses - $16240

If we were getting paid at $50k a year each - $83000 in our time.
Total Virtual Expenses - $99240

LTD 1 Year 3 months Xbox 360 Net Revenue - $3500

PC
2 Months of Office Space for Porting - $4800
LTD 1 Year Net Revenue - $700

This is why we will never do a PC game without Steam codes ever again. Imagine if there wasn't a 360 version.

Arcadecraft

Xbox 360
Total Time 11 Months
Office Space - $26400
Internet - $960
Office Expenses - $1600 to cover when our offices were broken into and xboxes and headphones were stolen.
Insurance - $2000
Sound - $2000
Music - Free by great friends.
Total Out of Pocket - $32960

If we were getting paid at $50k a year each - $91666 in our time.
Total Virtual Expenses - $124626

LTD 25 days of Net Revenue - $25200

Thankfully Arcadecraft is a minor hit. We will hopefully start being able to pay ourselves a tiny bit in a few weeks.

 

[NEO0MJ]

Yep, using other people's tech and not giving them credit. It's the dream, really.

You see, optimizing tools to cut the fat!

 

[darkblade77]

This is my new favorite thread. So much ignorance routed in just a few pages, including some of my own. And nearly a shortlist of people whose posts I usually look forward to reading, all weighing in on the same topic to boot!

I hope Patcher takes a really thorough look through it for that documentary. Hold nothing back.

 

[QisTopTier]

Really appreciate RagingSpaniard and Feep dropping some science in here, BTW. We seem to be turning the tide, somewhat!




We're investigating more TF2 hats and DotA2 items - Big Band hat and sax-back, Leviathan hook for Pudge and coiled Leviathan shield for someone else.

But I don't think we're going to charge for them, just use them as additional incentives for the $30 tier.

Donkey replacement in dota2 You know people would love it

 

[Lijik]

Really appreciate the posts from Ravidrath, Raging Spaniard, Noogy and Feep. You all have definitely turn an infuriatingly bad thread into an amazing one.

I even saw someone earlier compare making a character in Skullgirls shouldn't be much harder than customizing your own wrestler in a WWF game. It's nuts.

To be fair that person was being sarcastic, but in this thread the lines get blurred a lot

 

[Serrato]

It's sort of like when Bungie showed how they were bug-testing Halo 3, and the guy would just stand and jump 30 times on every place on the map because it could cause the game to crash. Like that whole process to me was just "wtf".

And as a QA tester, I'll add that:

Ya, you have to do that. Everywhere. on Every map. With every characters.

So now a fighting game? I never did one, but just to imagine one second just the shear mountain of work ONE more to a roster add, you might be surprised.

Just out of my head like that...

You might have to:

Try EVERY move of that new one against EVERY others characters.
Multiple times.
In a combo.
Why not depending of health percentage?
The position?
Is the enemy defending? Crouching? Already hitten?
What if you spam every move?
What if there hurtbox collision? Is there priority to set? (I don't know how that game work)
Does the hitbox work correctly? Against every move remember! EVERY.

And now repeat that on all stages.

And If there is multiple color skin, may god help the QA testers.


20'000$ for all that in a month? Seriously, I'm impressed.


(Oh and, Repeat all that for every build or patch the develloper do. Yep.)

 

[Dark Octave]

Again, this is why devs very rarely post openly on GAF.

GAF really likes to brag about how all these devs read it! But no one seems to understand why they don't post on it.

Maybe the devs would if they all weren't so lazy and publishers so greedy.

So glad there are people in here stomping out the ignorance.

 

[sonofasubmariner]

All right, I'm gonna go through this one more time.

Great post. I can easily see all of that costing way more than $4,000. This kind of ultra-breakdown is the sort of thing people (including me) need to see before voicing any sort of opinion on this matter. Yeah, it takes my company less than 100 bucks to do a voice-over for something, but that's using salaried employees for sound editing and mixing, non-professional talent, and zero direction. When you consider that LabZero is contracting professional talent, costs really shoot up.

For the record, I feel like a character's art is worth more than $150k alone.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

I even saw someone earlier compare making a character in Skullgirls shouldn't be much harder than customizing your own wrestler in a WWF game. It's nuts.

To be fair that person was being sarcastic, but in this thread the lines get blurred a lot

Yeah, that person was me. Now I feel kind of bad, as I had hoped that my previous participation in this thread would have made it clear that I was being ridiculously sarcastic there, but I guess I can't honestly expect people to keep track of that kind of stuff. Either way, let me assure you Noogy that I was in no way trying to be disparaging of the work of animators!

 

[-PXG-]

It brings a tear to my eye seeing dev GAF come out of the wood work and lay down the truth to those who don't know what the fuck they're taking about.

 

[Ravidrath]

I just realized who Noogy is...!

Interested in some animation work?

 

[-PXG-]

I just realized who Noogy is...!

Interested in some animation work?

Damn, lol

Noogy is not only a beast animator/ master of everything, but he's also incredibly nice and humble. It was an honor to meet the man who made such a great game, all by himself.

 

[Noogy]

You might have to:

Try EVERY move of that new one against EVERY others characters.
Multiple times.
In a combo.
Why not depending of health percentage?
The position?
Is the enemy defending? Crouching? Already hitten?

One interesting tidbit, going back to the CG vs hand drawn thing..

Think about something like Zangief's pile driver. The opponent has to be animated in a complicated spin that conforms to Zangief grapple.

In CG, you'd animate one character's rig, and depending on the setup, simply need to tweak a few bones and dimensions and automatically apply it to every character in the roster.

There's no such shortcut in traditional animation. You might be able to use a rough animation of the general anatomy, but otherwise you are literally animating every character to fit this one move. Skullgirls, being 2D, has this challenge.

Now, I doubt the team is crazy enough to give the new character a completely new form of grapple, because if they do, then that means they need to add a responding animation set for every other character already in the roster.

This was a big challenge in my game, since you can grab and throw nearly every enemy type. Granted I used a mix of traditional and segmented animation, but I couldn't simply reuse animation between creatures. In fact it's one reason I opted out of letting enemies grab the protagonist.

 

[galvatron]

And as a QA tester, I'll add that:

Ya, you have to do that. Everywhere. on Every map. With every characters.

So now a fighting game? I never did one, but just to imagine one second just the shear mountain of work ONE more to a roster add, you might be surprised.

Just out of my head like that...

You might have to:

Try EVERY move of that new one against EVERY others characters.
Multiple times.
In a combo.
Why not depending of health percentage?
The position?
Is the enemy defending? Crouching? Already hitten?
What if you spam every move?
What if there hurtbox collision? Is there priority to set? (I don't know how that game work)
Does the hitbox work correctly? Against every move remember! EVERY.

And now repeat that on all stages.

And If there is multiple color skin, may god help the QA testers.


20'000$ for all that in a month? Seriously, I'm impressed.


(Oh and, Repeat all that for every build or patch the develloper do. Yep.)

I was posting this in response to someone saying their friends felt cheated by MvC3 DLC, but I'll just drop it here:

Marvel and Skullgirls are the PERFECT example of how you could do DLC with incredible value for the user and developers. If they were to add a character now it gives you (50 choose 2) = 1225 teams disregarding team order times 27 taking into account combinations of assist types meaning 33,075 new teams...How could you NOT feel like it's worth $10 per character if you play the game at all seriously? What Skullgirls lacks in characters they make up in custom assists. I can't dismiss that much value without exploring a bit being a fighting game player...

Like you were saying--good luck testing that manually....

 

[Roto13]

And as a QA tester, I'll add that:

Ya, you have to do that. Everywhere. on Every map. With every characters.

So now a fighting game? I never did one, but just to imagine one second just the shear mountain of work ONE more to a roster add, you might be surprised.

Just out of my head like that...

You might have to:

Try EVERY move of that new one against EVERY others characters.
Multiple times.
In a combo.
Why not depending of health percentage?
The position?
Is the enemy defending? Crouching? Already hitten?
What if you spam every move?
What if there hurtbox collision? Is there priority to set? (I don't know how that game work)
Does the hitbox work correctly? Against every move remember! EVERY.

And now repeat that on all stages.

And If there is multiple color skin, may god help the QA testers.


20'000$ for all that in a month? Seriously, I'm impressed.


(Oh and, Repeat all that for every build or patch the develloper do. Yep.)

Yeah, QA is a much bigger deal than people seem to think. In the past when I've been hunting for jobs, I've had people say "Hey, you like games, here's a job as a game tester, why don't you apply?" and I said "Because I don't want to hate video games."

Also why that series The Tester makes me laugh and/or roll my eyes.

 

[Noogy]

I just realized who Noogy is...!

Interested in some animation work?

Haha, I love the stuff you guys are doing on Skullgirls, and actually met some of the artists (not sure they were animation leads or cleanup) last year at PAX. Yeah, we should talk. PM me!

BTW, did you know we share some voice talent? Kimlinh Tran, who did Ms. Fortune, also does a character in my game named Fidget!

 

[Lijik]

Damn, lol

Noogy is not only a beast animator/ master of everything, but he's also incredibly nice and humble. It was an honor to meet the man who made such a great game, all by himself.

He is. Ive been following him since his work on Jazz Jackrabbit 2's intro and its expansion pack. All around incredible guy with massive talent

 

[Feep]

Haha, I love the stuff you guys are doing on Skullgirls, and actually met some of the artists (not sure they were animation leads or cleanup) last year at PAX. Yeah, we should talk. PM me!

BTW, did you know we share some voice talent? Kimlinh Tran, who did Ms. Fortune, also does a character in my game named Fidget!

Not only that, but Edward Bosco and Lucien Dodge, who voice Eddie and Caleb in Sequence, are two of the lead characters in Dust: An Elysian Tail, as Ahrah and Dust!

 

[Haunted]

I for one can't wait to get Skullgirls on PC.

edit: and Dust

edit²: and There Came an Echo

 

[QisTopTier]

Obviously you guys shop from the same VA store

Spoiler

There is no such thing

Yep, small world And obvious reason why we want these vocal talents to receive the respect they deserve. It's hard work, and even I didn't completely appreciate what goes into good voice work before becoming a game developer.

A crap ton of retakes and stress to get it perfect along with sore throats

 

[Noogy]

Not only that, but Edward Bosco and Lucien Dodge, who voice Eddie and Caleb in Sequence, are two of the lead characters in Dust: An Elysian Tail, as Ahrah and Dust!

Yep, small world And obvious reason why we want these vocal talents to receive the respect they deserve. It's hard work, and even I didn't completely appreciate what goes into good voice work before becoming a game developer.

 

[Ravidrath]

BTW, did you know we share some voice talent? Kimlinh Tran, who did Ms. Fortune, also does a character in my game named Fidget!

Oh yeah, I heard that on the Evo stream when she was going nuts with Robo-Fortune.

She's pretty awesome - we're really lucky to be working with these VAs.

 

[VariantX]

I for one can't wait to get Skullgirls on PC.

edit: and Dust

edit²: and There Came an Echo

Hell yeah, as much as I love it on my 360, I absolutely backed it so I could get a PC version.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Ms. Fortune and Fidget are the same person?

Well I... well actually I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Sidenote: "We need more sheets around the mic" should become the new "tighten up the graphics on stage 3".

 

[dLMN8R]

So what, precisely, can a developer do to convince you that their production costs are reasonable? As far as I can tell you're giving them no recourse. The breakdown of costs in that manner is literally what accounting is: you separate the costs in to individual pieces so that the IRS can have a more accurate, transparent view of your business transactions. If that doesn't work for you, then what are developers supposed to do? Honest question. Generally speaking, the way people justify expenditures is by breaking them down in to individual components so you can transparently see where the money is going. It's as if you're saying "I personally cannot understand how these financials work, but it sounds stupid to me."

I've already said this before in this thread, but look -- I get that these figures are depressing, as there are real world consequences to the high cost of modern game development. It causes all sorts of problems for game developers, and the high costs are one of the reasons that so very many developers have gone under in the last 5 years.

It isn't pleasant to think about, I understand. But if you just don't want to think about it and refuse to account for the financials even though the developer is breaking down the costs for you, then you probably shouldn't be in this thread.

It a classic conspiratorial fallacy.

I saw the same thing in threads about Valve's layoffs. They simultaneously accused Gabe Newell of lying about this being a standard occurrence while also saying that Valve should be more "transparent" about things.


How do some people reconcile this cognitive dissonance? Distrusting the data they have while simultaneously asking for more information from the same sources?

Some people will never be satisfied until they hear what they hear, never accepting that the truth is plain, simple, and already in their face.

 

[TheFightingFish]

One interesting tidbit, going back to the CG vs hand drawn thing..

Think about something like Zangief's pile driver. The opponent has to be animated in a complicated spin that conforms to Zangief grapple.

.

It's actually interesting to look at how Capcom handled this back in the early RAM-constrained cartridge days. When spun by Zangief or hit by one of the other rolling throws they pretty much always used out of order (or reverse flipped) frames from the character's main "hit and slammed" animations that was used for knockdowns. Note the below where they just use part of Guile's normal standing hit animation flipped.

Also for getting hit by fire or electricity in the early games they used generic human models for all the characters, so even on the Blanka sprite sheet (as you can see below) he somehow magically turned in to a human and then was lit on fire when hit by a fireball.

Obviously none of this said to take away from the massive amount of work that SG is doing, just showing some of the shortcuts that had to be used in the old days.

 

[Nabs]

I for one can't wait to get Skullgirls on PC.

edit: and Dust

edit²: and There Came an Echo

Hell yeah. I don't usually go for Kickstarter/Indiegogo projects, but I jumped on Echo & Skullgirls as quickly as possible. Noogy has my support if he gets a chance to make the jump.

 

[Noogy]

Ms. Fortune and Fidget are the same person?

Well I... well actually I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

Sidenote: "We need more sheets around the mic" should become the new "tighten up the graphics on stage 3".

Yep, she's quite talented, and really fun to work with. Here's a more recent demo reel of hers, for pro and fan projects.

 

[dLMN8R]

The anecdotes provided by many developers in this thread have been excellent. I can provide my own anecdotes. Though I work for Microsoft, many of the harsh realities of software development are the same whether working on a team of 3, 30, 300, or 3,000 engineers.

Take something as simple as user interface. Often during a release I frequently see questions like "why didn't they just change this dialog box?"

But when actually building something in the real world, there are a billion things most never even think about:

-Does this break backwards compatibility?
-How does this change with localization into 60+ different languages?
-Do these UI changes correctly handle right-to-left languages? What about bidirectional languages? What about languages like German which are left-to-right but on average take up twice as much space as any other language?
-Windows is used by militaries and governments around the world, and Microsoft can be sued if it doesn't support accessibility. So do screen readers work? Magnifying tools? What about customized input tools for things like braille?
-Even if something could be implemented by a developer in a day or two, what would that dev *not* be working on during that time? What can be cut if something else is going to make it in? Who's going to test it to make sure it works right? Who's going to test for regressions to make sure it doesn't break something else?

Some things are even more unpredictable. Take for instance the recent Flu epidemic. Despite our best efforts, engineers at Microsoft still regular people susceptible to massive outbreaks as everyone else. If half the dev team is out at the same time, it can have massive repercussions on our ability to ship something at time, potentially leading to big features getting cut or release schedules getting changed. No matter how much you come in on the weekends or work long hours, some things can never be fully recovered from.



Anyway, the point I'm trying to describe is that software development is expensive. It's unpredictable, changes all the time, good work needs to get thrown away for countless legitimate reasons, people need to get paid well or you might be left with shoddy output, and on and on and on.

The fact that gamers expect game development to be done on shoestring budgets with the creators of their favorite entertainment barely scraping above the poverty line is just horribly cynical and depressing.

 

[A Pretty Panda]

I wish people actually read the article....

It was very informative, and maybe some of the worst posts in here wouldn't have been made if I dunno, they read the article the thread is about?

 

[hiro4]

Yeah, QA is a much bigger deal than people seem to think. In the past when I've been hunting for jobs, I've had people say "Hey, you like games, here's a job as a game tester, why don't you apply?" and I said "Because I don't want to hate video games."

Also why that series The Tester makes me laugh and/or roll my eyes.

Yeah QA testing isn't really a fun job. Spending 8 hours a day working at a game, not playing it, but working to find bugs how to reproduce them and if they got fixed check it.

And who knows maybe you get to work on an awesome game, but I guarantee you after 2 weeks of QA testing you won't be able to play that game once it has gone gold.

Funny thing about QA testing it isn't just gameplay or balancing. It is also about trying to find the limits of the game: can I make the game crash by spawning a bunch of objects/ items/ npcs?

And once you have done that: do it again for all the other languages the game supports. Also make sure the game is ready for submissions and abides by the TCR/ TRC / lot check requirements.

Localization is another fun story though. The amount of shit I have seen with just localizations is mind blowing. Worst part is you see the same bugs reappear every game. Thankfully you get better and quicker in fixing those bugs, but they still are a pain in the ass.

 

[QisTopTier]

I wish people actually read the article....

It was very informative, and maybe some of the worst posts in here wouldn't have been made if I dunno, they read the article the thread is about?

They read the title, that's the article right?

 

[Lijik]

Sidenote: "We need more sheets around the mic" should become the new "tighten up the graphics on stage 3".

You really could create an entire new game college commercial just using posts in this thread

*Open on a man in his early 20s sitting in an elaborate gaming chair. Joysticks and analog sticks are nonsensically protuding from every orfice of the chair. The man is waving his hands in the hair like a wizard over a fancy looking tablet on his desk*
*We cut to his monitor, and his motions are shown to be crafting mountains, valleys and filling in lakes*
*Suddenly another man bursts in*
"Dude! Steve is about ready to throw down all the game audio into our voice modulator! Can you help us put some bedsheets in the closet?"
"Sure thing but first let me finish this level"
*The first man makes a motion like he is throwing a pinch of salt into a dish, suddenly orcs are sprinkled into the level*
*a booming announcer voices over the footage*
"Are you ready for an efficient career in the world of interactive electronic video experiences?"

 

[beril]

I can tell you how much our indie games have cost in real dollars and in "virtual" dollars.

Just for fun, and to cheer up people depressed by high development costs I'll throw in the cost for Gunman Clive. Not to claim it's comparable at all to Skull Girls or some other games mentioned; it's a ridiculously small game and extremely cheaply made, but still well recieved.

For the original iOS/Android vesions I spent about four months. I had a fairly robust prototype before, but I'm hesistant to include that in the costs, since some of it was done years ago, but let's add one month, then another month for patching and doing the PC version.

So 6 months of very conservative living expenses ≈ $10k.
About 1500$ for hardware, (a couple of android devices, an iPad, a mac mini)

For the 3DS version there was maybe 10k in external costs (SDK, age ratings etc), and about 5 months between getting the SDK and the game passing lotcheck ≈ $8k (it wasn't really anywhere near 5 months of actual work, but I was very lazy during this period, and there were various waiting times)

total: <30k

 

[Cosmo Clock 21]

I wish people actually read the article....

It was very informative, and maybe some of the worst posts in here wouldn't have been made if I dunno, they read the article the thread is about?

bullshit, I'm a YouTube superstar *facerolls on keyboard, emits verbal diharrea*

 

[Servbot24]

total: <30k

Would you mind me asking how much it has brought in?

 

[demidar]

This thread should be renamed "Verbal Smackdown: The Thread"

 

[QisTopTier]

This thread should be renamed "Verbal Smackdown: The Thread"

I approve

 

[Dartastic]

Yeah QA testing isn't really a fun job. Spending 8 hours a day working at a game, not playing it, but working to find bugs how to reproduce them and if they got fixed check it.

And who knows maybe you get to work on an awesome game, but I guarantee you after 2 weeks of QA testing you won't be able to play that game once it has gone gold.

Funny thing about QA testing it isn't just gameplay or balancing. It is also about trying to find the limits of the game: can I make the game crash by spawning a bunch of objects/ items/ npcs?

And once you have done that: do it again for all the other languages the game supports. Also make sure the game is ready for submissions and abides by the TCR/ TRC / lot check requirements.

Now imagine that you're not even working on a decent project. Pretend you're working on let's say, Littlest Pet Shop.

...

Seriously though, there are a ton of posts in this thread that should be required reading for anyone who has any sort of interest in the business aspect of the games industry. Great job guys.

 

[toddhunter]

For the 3DS version there was maybe 10k in external costs (SDK, age ratings etc), and about 5 months between getting the SDK and the game passing lotcheck &#8776; $8k (it wasn't really anywhere near 5 months of actual work, but I was very lazy during this period, and there were various waiting times)

total: <30k

Thanks for sharing.

Were you able to work a normal job in that time or was it all dedicated to making the game?

 

[Ravidrath]

Game development can be inefficient and wasteful, but it's not like a huge percentage of resources get wasted.

Games are constantly changing and iterating, and often times that means that an asset that was created before is no longer useful or viable.

Sometimes it's just the result of trying to keep everyone on a large team informed - the artist that was working on something that was cut was sick that day, so missed the announcement, and comes back to work on it before someone catches it.

On one project I was on, we made 9 levels and cut two at alpha, because the artists couldn't crunch to finish them up. I think they didn't want to in this case, but some studios pay their artists overtime, and might have to make the same decision for financial reasons.


On Skullgirls, we made hundreds of animations and only 7 or so were wasted. Most of them were attacks that we thought we could make work but ultimately weren't able to. In the end, though, we were able to reuse some of those animations in Double: Parasoul's Luger, Peacock's Bionic Car, Cerebella's butt slam.

This is all because our art and design teams work really closely with each other to come up with the design and movesets before we create any assets at all. Then we keyframe the attacks we come up with to test and time them, and then use that to determine how many in-between frames we should create.

When Make relayed this to Seth Killian, he was absolutely floored by how little we threw away.

 

[beril]

Would you mind me asking how much it has brought in?

>100k before tax (though there's a lot of tax in Sweden), and the 3DS sales are still very strong

Thanks for sharing.

Were you able to work a normal job in that time or was it all dedicated to making the game?

No I've been a fulltime indiedev for about two years now, though my productiveness varies greatly.