Cost of game development and promotion
If we got a dime every time a client asked about the cost of developing a game, we’d have to rent a separate office for chests full of gold. That’s why it’s worth talking more about the sensitive topic of finances.
The process of mobile game development is a set of activities to create a picture and sound, write code and test the performance of all elements. Game creation and price is influenced by the variety, complexity and other factors. Mobile apps are different from AAA games, and so are their costs. For example, it costs only $500 to create Flappy Birds, then GTA $265 million. These figures are based on the following expenditure items:
- Development. Salary for the development team.
- Software and data. Software licenses, databases and other information.
- Intellectual Property. Rights to the game series, characters, music and images.
- Promotion. ASO and SEO optimization, advertising campaigns and marketing strategy.
But let’s go over everything in order.
Who and how much is paid in game development
The cost of developer services depends in part on their location. When outsourcing creation to Asia or Latin America, expect an average quality of work with a low price. Whereas developers from the US will charge twice as much for their services, doing a top notch job. The combination of quality workmanship and competitive prices is found in Europe, namely in Ukraine. Ukrainian developers have gained a reputation for high quality programmers and designers.
Having decided on the performers and the size and requirements of the project, a team is formed. To create a simple game on android, a couple of developers are enough and the cost of the process will be lower, whereas for a AAA game you will have to hire a whole company or studio.
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The development team and its members
- Game Designer. Responsible for realizing the idea, developing the game content and rules. He’s like a movie director or a software creation manager. In mobile game development, responsibilities are shared among team members. For serious AAA games with AR or VR, you’ll need an experienced designer or even a team (level designer, lead designer, etc).
- Backend programmers. Creating a game on popular engines like Unreal or Unity3D requires programmers writing in C ++ or C #. If the game is not going to be on a standalone engine, you need the services of programmers who specialize in creating games for iOS, Android, PS4 or web developers. For games that involve interaction between users as well as centralized data storage, server specialists will be needed.
- Animators and graphic designers. Graphics come in 2D, 3D, interface, and new types are appearing all the time. You’ll have to involve designers who work with different types of graphics to get the right result. Some projects need a 2D graphic designer and a couple of specialists to create icons and interface, while others require a 3D modeler, then the cost of design development is higher.
A separate role is given to animators. The specialization of 2D and 3D animation is different, because the subspecies have different nature and features.
The creation of special effects is handled by a VFX specialist called a multimedia animator or artist. He has skills as an animator as well as an artist. 3D projects need a technical designer to write shaders, tweak textures and display on graphics cards.
When developing small mobile games, a single designer can handle these tasks. Whereas for a game with its own world, you’ll need 2 to 10 graphic and animation designers.
- Sound Design Specialists. Mobile, computer and video games are created with sound in the background that is rarely thought about. It can be taken ready-made from the sound bank either for free or for money. The cost of paid options ranges near $500. Ambitious projects often decide to create their own sounds and soundtrack. It stands out from the competition and captures players.
Game testing
It is worth saying about testers separately, because testing is an important part of the life cycle of computer game development. QA engineers check:
- functionality;
- regression;
- safety;
- performance.
Testers are responsible for ensuring that users get the product they expect, bug-free and compliant.
A common mistake is thinking that the role of a tester can be performed by a project manager, a coder or the customer himself. However, through such an approach comes the risk of spending thousands of dollars to develop a game that won’t run on an older version of Android, which is used by 30% of users. It will turn out that level 48 is impossible to complete because you can’t defeat the boss due to a texture bug or an incorrect BoxCollider. Or set up monetization to then contemplate how experienced gamers bypass it, leaving no opportunity for revenue.
Read about the 6 most common mistakes startupers make here.
Game promotion
Before you spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to develop a game, you should consider that no one will know about this game. So preparing a marketing fund to let people know about the game is a mandatory part of the plan. Newcomers often assume that a game will promote itself, whereas the sharks of the game business easily spend a marketing budget that may even exceed the cost of design development.
Marketers and seoshniks are busy promoting the mobile game on the Apple Store and Google Play using ASO tools. Whereas for video and computer games are promoted not only in Steam, and use SEO tools in the territory of YouTube, Instagram, Telegram and other resources.
Rising costs of game development
How long does it take to make a game? One development takes a month and another drags on for years. You can only find out the cost of creating a game in Ukraine by summarizing the team’s expenses, including software, content rights and devices used for testing. An Android game with minimal features would cost around $500, and a PS quest up to $300 million.
For small projects, one programmer and a jack-of-all-trades designer who knows animation and modeling are enough. As the demands of the game increase, so does the team, and costs go up. What is it that affects the most?
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Factors influencing the cost of the game
- Team Type. Creating an android game can be done by a single freelance programmer, and some people even do it on their own. Whereas the AAA project requires equivalent labor. For an average video game it’s three programmers and a manager, while for a serious RPG you need 5 people and your own office, or the option of an already ready-made team.
- Game Design. Team size is also correlated with game design. For a small game, the customer, manager, and coder talk about the level, game mechanics, and character appearance in words. Whereas a complex project needs a specialized game designer, proper documentation, and other tools to keep the team on track.
- Tool development. Visual storytelling and simple mobile games are being developed on off-the-shelf engines. For more complex variants, you need to tangibly modify the engine or even write your own, from scratch. For a single project, writing code will take 2 months, whereas it takes a year to build your own engine.
- Service Integration. To integrate a single plugin with a mobile platform, it takes half an hour. Whereas it takes at least a day to connect three plugins. Moreover, some plugins are incompatible with each other and it takes weeks or even months to solve this problem.
- Quality and quantity of graphics. A lot of graphics have to be constantly optimized and compressed. It’s also about quality. For high quality graphics, you have to use sophisticated optimization techniques on the chosen platform. This requires much more time and effort than the simplistic approaches used for mobile game development.
- Server Scaling. Basic functionality is provided by a server or an off-the-shelf solution like GameSpark or PhotonNetwork. Other cases require a separate user server and a scaling option.
- More code means more programmers. The more code that is written to create the game, the more complex it becomes. Also, it takes more time to maintain code during computer game development. Build, analytics, optimization and testing systems – this is taken into account when introducing a new set of changes.
- Quality control and assembly systems. A small project can be manually compiled, run and tested. Whereas the complexity of testing grows proportionally with the growth of the project. You have to create systems to streamline the deployment of server, libraries, containers, and programs. Automated testing adds complexity and cost to the project.
- Number of platforms. Although Unity3D is a cross-platform engine, when working on code that is based on Unity3D, it’s worth keeping other platforms in mind. Sometimes you have to maintain a single code base by making changes that are not related to the new platform to an older version of the code.
Here, to give you an example, are 15 popular games and the price of game development.
| Name of the game | Functional units | Cost, $ |
| Flappy bird | 1 | 300 |
| 2048 | 2500 | |
| Agar.io | May | 8000 |
| Clicker Heroes | 50 | 60000 |
| Subway Surfers | 50 | 50000 |
| Soccer Stars | 100 | 300000 |
| Angry Birds Rio | 500 | 100000 |
| Match | 3600 | 100000 |
| Poker Room | 900 | 200 000 |
| HearthStone | 1000 | 300000 |
| Hay Day | 2000 | 500000 |
| PokemonGo | 3000 | 650000 |
| Clash of Clans | 10000 | 12000000 |
| Call of Duty: Modern Warfare | 20000 | 50000000 |
| GTA V | 100000 | 265000000 |
How do you estimate the cost of game development and promotion at KOLORO?
During the meeting with the client, KOLORO analysts calculate the cost of development based on our experience with similar projects. When the client’s expectations are clearly formulated and approved, a detailed estimate is formed and the price is specified. In any case it is necessary to order a separate consultation in Koloro on game development and promotion.
The evaluation occurs depending on the actions and perceptions of the customer:
- A clear vision of the project. The client came in with a completed business strategy, design and marketing budget plan. If the design does not need to be finalized, you can find out the exact cost of the mobile game development service.
- Lack of design and functional description. The customer represents the target audience and knows the genre of the game. Pre-project analytics and prototyping are conducted before evaluating such a project. Based on the results of the analysis, the cost is known with a margin of error of 10-15%.
- Sample description. If the client has no idea of the target audience and no proven business hypotheses, only the first stage of work – prototyping and pre-design analytics – is evaluated. Only after this stage does the evaluation take place and you can order the creation of a VR, AR, AAA or mobile game in Coloro. To this, only a rough estimate of large blocks is possible.
The final cost of the project contains details of customer requirements, analytics, design, engineering, design, code writing, testing, promotion and project management. The release is not the end of work on the game, it’s just the beginning. KOLORO team will do everything possible for a pleasant and fruitful cooperation.
