DMS 231

Indie Games: Cost of Development

By Trent Cobb Yacht Club Games The indie developer of Shovel Knight (2014). They raised $311,502 on kickstarter and $17,180 from paypal donations, which gave them a budget of $328,682. They had a team of 6 and while making the game went 5 months without pay.

"It was a difficult period, where some of us were awkwardly standing in front of cashiers having our credit cards declined, drawing from any possible savings, and borrowing money from our friends and family"

Sold 75,000 copies the first week of release and 180,000 copies the first month, sales split on Wii U, 3DS and PC. YCG Estimated Budget

Traditional method for estimating a budget $10,000 per month per employee, which accounts for salary plus expenses like rent and electricity

Yacht Club Games had to cut the per-person budget in half, which meant each of its employees would take home about $30,000 per year before taxes Planning Make a Schedule 1. What must be done?

2. Who will do it?

3. What resources are needed to do the job?

4. When must it be done? Total: $53K/mo 3D Artist Animators $3K Game Designers $1.5K $3K Tech Support Level Designers $10K $3.5K 2D Artists Employees Voice Actors $1.5K $2K Marketer Story Writer $5K $1.5K Programmer Software Audio Engineer $7k Engineer $5K * numbers are estimated* $10K Marketing 101 Product: it’s imperative that you have a clear grasp of exactly what your product is and what makes it unique before you can successfully market it.

Price: Price determinations will impact profit margins, supply, demand and marketing strategy.

Promotion: Promotion includes elements like: advertising, public relations, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing and more.

Place: It’s critical then, to evaluate what the ideal locations are to convert potential clients into actual clients. Resources Modeling Software

Blender Autodesk - Maya Adobe Creative Cloud

Free Free for Students $10/mo - $50/mo 3D modeling Full product $3,675 Students $20/mo Animation $125/mo 3D modeling 3D modeling Video Editing Animation Image Editing Design Software

Gimp Piskel

Free Free Image Editing 2D art design Audio Software

Audacity Bosca Ceoil

Free Free Sound Editing Music Creator Choose a Game Engine

Gamemaker Studio 2 Unity 3D (free) Unreal Engine 4 (free) (free) You are required to Pay a 5% royalty on Pay $100 - $400 to upgrade to pro after that amount after the export to platforms you make $100K per first $3000 per game year with Unity. Unity is per calendar quarter. royalty free. Unity Pro

*Not Limited to the 3 shown above* $125/mo. Cost Computer: $400/unit Game Engine per Computer: $0 - $125/mo Modeling Software per Computer: $0 - $125/mo Internet: $ 35 - $100/mo Domain: $10/mo Office rental: $1500 - 5,000/mo Per employee: $3,000/mo Equipment(sound,camera): $300 Utilities: $500 - $1000/mo

Total: (1 unit)$700 + $5,045/mo (1 unit)$700 + $9,760/mo

* numbers are estimated* Funding Indiegogo (nono) “Indiegogo does incentivize creators to hit their goals by adding a penalty for projects that fall short. If you reach your goal, Indiegogo takes a 4% cut; if you don’t, the fee jumps to 9 %.”

80% of Indiegogo projects fail to raise more than a quarter of their goal KickStarter Success

Star Citizen by Cloud Imperium A Hat in Time by Gear for Coda Quest: A 3D Learning Games Corporation Breakfast Adventure Game by Edcoda

$2.1M / $500K goal $296,360 / $30K goal $26,068 / $7K goal

“If your project is successfully funded, the following fees will be collected from your funding total: Kickstarter's 5% fee, and payment processing fees (between 3% and 5%). If funding isn't successful, there are no fees.” KickStarter Fails

Izle by Area Effects The Legendary Quest of Epic Coda Quest: A 3D Learning Adventure by WingHelm Adventure Game by Edcoda Productions $18,961 / $90K goal $3,006 / $35K goal $467 / $40K goal

44% of Kickstarter projects meet their funding goals KickStarter ● Darkest Dungeon by Red Hook Studios - $313,337 / $75,000

● Shantae: Half-Genie Hero by Wayforward - $776,084 / $400,000

● Mighty No. 9 by comcept USA, LLC - $3,845,170/ $900,000 + $186,380Paypal

● Ashes of Creation by Intrepid Studios, Inc.- $3,271,809/ $750,000

● Elite: Dangerous by Frontier Developments - £1,578,316 ~ $2,114,564

● Divinity: Original Sin 2 by Larian Studios LLC - $2,032,434 / $500, 000

$100K - $140k safe range Recommendations Publishing

itch.io is an open marketplace The aim of Indie DB is to connect Millions of gamers, let's players, for independent digital independent developers of games and indie developers visit Game creators with a focus on with players, from the day they Jolt each month to get their indie independent video games. It’s start developing their game to the gaming fix, and to explore over a platform that enables day they release it. On Indie DB we 70,000 games. anyone to sell the content give developers control of the site, they've created. As a seller allowing them to share details and you’re in charge of how it’s behind the scenes insight about the done: you set the price, you games they are creating, in the form run sales, and you design your of news, images, videos and pages. downloads. Steam Steam cuts out all of those middle men and only take 30% giving the developers 70%. a fee of just $100 for developers to publish their games on Steam. “$100.00 fee for each product you wish to distribute on Steam. This fee is not refundable, but will be recoupable in the payment made after your product has at least $1,000.00 Adjusted Gross Revenue for Steam Store and in-app purchases. Payment of revenue from sales and repayment of fee may be withheld if deposit payment is charged-back, refunded, or otherwise identified as fraudulent.” Patreon Transfer fees - US creators receiving payment via Stripe - $0.25 fee for every deposit. - US creators receiving payment via PayPal - 1% of the amount transferred capped at $20 USD per deposit - International creators receiving payment via PayPal - 1% of the amount transferred capped at $20 USD per deposit - International creators receive global bank deposit via Payoneer - $3 transfer fee per deposit Amazon Lumberyard Networking

The IGDA is a U.S. based non-profit professional association that exists as a global network of collaborative projects and communities comprised of individuals from all fields of game development Budget Breakdown

Performance = the quality of the job to be done.

Time = the amount of time needed to do the job.

Scope = the extent of the work being done, or the size of the project.

Cost = the overall resource that is needed to do the job.

Performance + Time + Scope = Cost Sources https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/124674/Opinion_Indie_Project_Budgets.php Yacht Club Games Article http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-08-06-shovel-knight-devs-break-down-costs-sales Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/ Autodesk https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/autodesk-for-games#getstarted Blender https://www.blender.org/ Itch.io https://itch.io/ Indiedb http://www.indiedb.com/ http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-your-company-pays-to-rent-office-space-2015-05-27 Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ http://www.ossvirginia.com/en/2OSSOfficevs1000SqFttraditional.aspx GameJolt https://gamejolt.com/ Sources Bosca Ceoil http://boscaceoil.net/ Steam https://partner.steamgames.com/steamdirect Job Skills http://creativeskillset.org/creative_industries/games/job_roles UnrealEngine4 https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/general-discussion/71829-a-new-ue4-user-need-help-getting-clari ty-about-royalty-fee IGDA https://www.igda.org/ GDC http://www.gdconf.com/