How much do video games cost to make?
How much should you budget for your indie game?
How much money should you save before going full indie?
We get these types of question a lot!
For any aspiring game developer out there, it's important to not just know how much it
can cost to make all sorts of games, but also where these costs come from and how budgets
for creating games are decided upon.
That's why we took a look at what it cost to make a game.
Today we are going to look at 5 real world examples of video game production budgets.
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In order to figure out how much it costs to make games, considering the wide array of
games that are out there, we looked into examples from several different games from different
studios.
Each has different styles, budgets, and retail costs.
We hope this list will help all of you up and coming devs to know when the time is right
to start pursuing that passion project you've been pining to pick up.
Cultist Simulator, produced by the British Indie Studio Weather Factory, is a card-game
simulator revolving around an incredibly deep lore surrounding the Eldritch mythos, sunken
cities and features a nostalgic roarin' twenties aesthetic.
The Lovecraftian, loving couple behind Weather Factory, Alexis Kennedy and Lottie Bevan,
embarked on their mission to create narrative-heavy games in 2017 and have already made this multiple
award-winning cult hit.
Although it appears complex, the development team spent way more time honing the story
threads that weave the intricate mechanics of the game into its incredibly fun final
form, than they did lacing together overly complex strings of code.
According to a blog post released by Alexis Kennedy himself, in service of supplying all
you curious devs with straightforward answers to your questions about "what it costs to
make an indie game", the estimated production budget for Cultist Simulator was £134,760.00.
Here’s a quick breakdown: Alexis and Lottie estimated that their internal
costs for staffing themselves would be £63,500.
Freelancers for UI, Art, Music, and SFX: £22,300.
Licences, Software and Hardware: £6,000.
Marketing: £15,000.
Operations and Legal: £5,500.
And finally a “pessimistic contingency” on the final total to account for anything
they may have missed, bringing their grand total to £134,760.00
So how did the development team do against their expense budget?
They were almost spot on, with a total cost of £131,515.
As of February 2019, Cultist Simulator, which retailed for $19.99 on Steam, had sold roughly
105,000 units.
In terms of platforms, the majority, at 88% of the share of these units, were sold through
Steam, followed by Humble, then GOG, and finally Itch.
This lead to a gross revenue of £1.76 million!
After accounting for all the costs of operation and the cuts taken by platforms, their partners,
and taxes, Weather Factory definitely still came out way ahead, and Cultist Simulator
was a clear financial success.
Their blog post isn’t just about the numbers though.
It includes a wealth of information and is a must-read for any dev thinking about starting
their own studio.
We’ll have a link to it in the description.
Another Kickstarter success story, Shovel Knight, is a side-scrolling 2D adventure game
reminiscent of NES-era pixel art action-platformers like Mega Man and Ducktales.
Created by Yacht Club games, and since expanded upon in multiple versions available on a variety
of platforms, the game wasn't originally a sure bet.
The game raised over $328,000 through its Kickstarter and PayPal donation campaigns
in 2013.
That sounds like a lot, right?
Well, after paying taxes and Kickstarter fees, that large sounding number didn't turn out
to be so big, especially considering that a team of six people were being employed to
develop the game.
The team actually had to operate in a very lean way given their budget.
There's a common metric that professional game development producers use to define staffing
costs - and that is the "man month” rate.
, This metric is the monthly cost of employing a staff member.
Based on the 2 year development timeline projected for Shovel Knight, a six person team would
need 144 staff months of capacity.
At a fairly conservative cost of $10,000 a staff month, a simple calculation shows that
this project would need $1.44 million dollars to cover staffing costs alone!
Yacht Club Games made up for this budget gap by asking their dev team members to go without
pay for a portion of development.
Thankfully, Shovel Knight became an immediate success and sold over 75,000 copies in its
first week.
It then exceeded the expected lifetime goal set by the team of 150,000 units within its
first month on the market, selling roughly 180,000 units.
Fast forward to today and Shovel Knight has released on 12 platforms and sold over 2.5
million copies!
He has had over 25 appearances and cameos in other games, including Smash Brothers!
And there’s even going to be a Shovel Knight board game!
Shovel Knight is an indie legend and the dev team’s days of working with tight budgets
are long gone.
Alright, let’s talk AAA development budgets.
We're taking a look at the wildly popular, massive global hit, Destiny.
Developed by Bungie, Destiny is an online multiplayer FPS combined with elements of
a sci-fi RPG.
During the development and pre-release period following the game's announcement, there was
a lot of buzz going around that the game would have one of the largest budgets any game had
ever had.
This was because Bungie had made a deal with the then newly-merged Activision Blizzard
for them to work as Destiny's publisher.Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, had controversially
stated in May of 2014 that Destiny's overall budget would be a whopping $500 million.
Bungie's COO tried to soften those statements, alluding that the $500 million figure was
far greater than the actual budget for the development of the game.
A statement was made that “For marketing you'd have to ask Activision people, but for
development costs, not anything close to $500 million.
I think that speaks a lot more to the long-term investment that we're making in the future
of the product.”
Bungie’s Eric Osborne added “We’re pouring everything it takes into Destiny to ensure
it meets our fans' expectations, and our own,” and “Activision is, too.
But the budget for Destiny, including associated marketing costs and pizza Wednesdays, is nowhere
near 500 million dollars.”
So how much did they spend?
Well, the LA Times, has a copy of the Bungie / Activision contracts on their website where
it says that they’ve allotted $140 million for development and marketing.
This is much less than the original assessment but was it the final cost?
Nothing has been said publicly to confirm on deny this number.
This at least this gives us a glimpse into the 9 figure budgets that are commonplace
with AAA publishers.
Fast forward to January 2019, Destiny and Destiny 2 have been hugely successful, with
over 50 million copies being sold, expansions included.
However, in that same month, Bungie announced that they had decided to part ways with Activision,
and self-publish Destiny going forward.
Where the Water Tastes like Wine is definitely a very unique game, particularly in this list.
This title unfortunately did not make a huge amount of money and it did not make back its
development budget.
When you look at a game like Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, the striking and unique
art style jumps out at you right away.
Usually, games like this will attract some sort of cult following based on its visuals
alone.
The game moved some units, but suffered from a host of issues coming from a first time
solo-developer making a game.
In an article on Medium, the project lead on Where the Water Tastes like Wine, Johnnemann
Nordhagen detailed his experience with the game, it's critical response, and it's financial
performance.
It took Nordhagen 4 years total to make this game, and he had ended up spending $114,000
out of his own pocket to pay for many of the contractors involved.
The game had received many accolades and lots of media coverage early on in its development,
which lead Nordhagen,to believe that this was a sign that the game would surely do well.
Knowing now that these signs are not guarantees of financial success, Nordhagen doesn't seem
disheartened or broken over failing to break even financially.
Like a true indie, he seems to have a positive outlook on the development and values the
lessons he learned from the experience.
Where the Water Tastes like Wine should be taken as a cautionary tale to aspiring devs
that sometimes games just don't make much money.
However, the love and passion for the project can sometimes be even more rewarding than
a paycheck.
Before we get to the final entry on our list, it's time for another inspiring Ask GameDev
Community Member Game of the Week!
This week's game is Must Dash Amigos by miniBeast Game Studios.
Must Dash Amigos is a top-down, battle racer, party game.
Inspired by games like Mario Kart, Overcooked, and Toybox Turbos, the devs wanted to create
a local multiplayer racing game.
The title was made in Unity by a team of two, Ben & Anthony, who worked during evenings
and weekends since 2015.
Must Dash Amigos is now available on Steam.
Brigador is an isometric, real-time tactical mech game that was the brainchild of the Indie
studio Stellar Jockeys.
The game took 5 years for the team to develop completely from scratch.
It runs on an entirely original custom engine and was made with the goal of being a truly
unique experience.
This example will be a little bit different than the rest on this list, because instead
of the cost of development, the developers chose to talk about their opportunity cost
instead.
If you haven’t heard the term “opportunity cost” before, it is defined as “the loss
of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen”.
For example, if you choose to quit your day job, and go “full indie”, the money that
you would have earned had you kept your day job, is your opportunity cost.
But why would a dev talk about their opportunity cost?
What sparked it?
The answer is forum comments.
On the Brigador Steam forum, some users pointed out that $20 was too high of a price for the
game.
One user commented “$15 is perfect for this game.”
while another said “£10 sounds about right”.
To explain why they thought the game should cost $20, the devs talked about what they
sacrificed to release the game:
The team spent 5 years working on Brigador, with most of those 5 years being full-time,
working 6-7 days a week, and 8+ hours a day.
There were 4 team members in total and they funded the project entirely out of pocket.
After platform fees and taxes (which the team calculated would be roughly 50%), without
factoring in expenses, at a $20 price tag, the team would have to sell 25,000 copies
to compensate themselves at minimum wage.
With expenses factored in, and to give themselves a reasonable living, they’d have to sell
roughly 50,000 copies.
So let’s work with that last number: 50,000 copies:
50,000 copies at $20 would yield $1,000,000 After platform fees and taxes they would be
at $500,000 $500,000 would give the team what they thought
was a reasonable wage, and cover all development expenses.
Mind you this would have had them each making less than $12.5/hour for the last 5 years,
so it is not an extravagant living wage.
If you’re planning your own gamedev budget, you would be hard pressed to find talent to
work for that much, let alone for 5 years.
At the end of the day though, Brigador did well enough to enable the devs to make a 2nd
game!
It was also followed up by an extended edition, Brigador: Up-Armored Deluxe.
The sequel, Brigador Killers, is set to launch in 2020!
For more Ask Gamedev on how to plan a development project, check out this recent video.
Or alternatively watch this video on the most sought after gamedev roles.