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Non game developers consistently underestimate the cost of making a game but not all games cost $100,000. A better metric would be man hours or man months since

Non game developers consistently underestimate the cost of making a game but not all games cost $100,000. A better metric would be man hours or man months since not all areas of the world garner US/Europe scale wages. Fruit Ninja certainly cost less than Angry Birds and made a healthy profit (allegedly). I agree with the article that the money/time gets you to the point where you can polish the game. Angry birds is not the most innovative game but it's level of polish and crucially it's approachability certainly took half of the budget to create. As an indie it's hard to step back and fund that level of consistency but it needs to be done.

zizee 15y ago
Non game developers consistently underestimate the cost of making a game Agreed, though I reckon polish in general is hard to estimate: http://jamespmcgrath.com/polish-takes-a-lot-of-time/ http://jamespmcgrath.com/polish-takes-a-lot-of-time/ Apologies for the (almost) shameless self plug.
- robfitz 15y ago
  I think the distinction is that you can learn a lot about a problem-centric business (e.g. typical lean startup) from an unpolished version, whereas the article's author is claiming that games are unique in that you must polish BEFORE you learn, which makes the first leap much more expensive.
  - zizee 15y ago
    Agreed. I was more responding to the parent comment (than the article) re: the difficulty in estimating the time to polish software. You (and the article) are absolutely correct. An unpolished productivity app can still deliver value if the output is complete, i.e. the majority of the value comes from the output, not the experience of using the product. Whereas games are all about the experience, so unpolished game is not going to provide the value.
stonemetal 15y ago
The guy who made Gratuitous space battles keeps a blog, and from what I remember he contracted out the art for less than 10 grand and sunk over a year into development. We could claim it took 100K or more to make but I definitely agree man hours is the more important metric.
- mikeklaas 15y ago
  A year of a dev's time is probably worth at least 90k.

zizee 15y ago

Non game developers consistently underestimate the cost of making a game Agreed, though I reckon polish in general is hard to estimate: http://jamespmcgrath.com/polish-takes-a-lot-of-time/ http://jamespmcgrath.com/polish-takes-a-lot-of-time/ Apologies for the (almost) shameless self plug.

robfitz 15y ago
I think the distinction is that you can learn a lot about a problem-centric business (e.g. typical lean startup) from an unpolished version, whereas the article's author is claiming that games are unique in that you must polish BEFORE you learn, which makes the first leap much more expensive.
- zizee 15y ago
  Agreed. I was more responding to the parent comment (than the article) re: the difficulty in estimating the time to polish software. You (and the article) are absolutely correct. An unpolished productivity app can still deliver value if the output is complete, i.e. the majority of the value comes from the output, not the experience of using the product. Whereas games are all about the experience, so unpolished game is not going to provide the value.

stonemetal 15y ago

The guy who made Gratuitous space battles keeps a blog, and from what I remember he contracted out the art for less than 10 grand and sunk over a year into development. We could claim it took 100K or more to make but I definitely agree man hours is the more important metric.

mikeklaas 15y ago
A year of a dev's time is probably worth at least 90k.