Cost of Creating a Game

[Freezeice04]

so diablo 2 costs 6-9mil???

Where are all the cost of making the game coming from? Can someone split up the price of making
the game like this :

Graphics artist : $ xxxxxxx
Music Composer : $ xxxxxxx
etc.

I really wanna know where the cost of making these games are coming from.

[greggman]

Well a typical game now a days has a team of around 100 people.  I think Uncharted 2 for example as 120 people. Deadspace has about the same.  Uncharted 2 took 2 years.  So, if the average person making Uncharted makes $100k a year that would be 120*100k*2+50% for overhead like rent, equipment, health insurance, employment taxes, etc. $36 million  If their average salary is only $80k a year then the budget is going to be 20% less or $28 million. 

I have no idea what the average salary is on the Uncharted team but you can look at Gamasutra to see average salaries.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23264

It takes that many people that long because there is so much work to do. The majority of those people are artists making the backgrounds and or cutscenes. Every plant, every rock, every temple brick, every tree, every wheel, every tire, every speedometer, every belt, every shirt, every pocket, every shoelace, etc, etc, etc all have to be created.

Diablo 2 was made a while ago so it used a less tech and therefore probably had less details and so the team was not as big. Also the levels are auto generated instead of hand made so that saved some time as well.

[Freezeice04]

hehe i wanna know where are the costs coming from : so if i wanted to hire a graphics designer, it would cost : "x amount" etc.

[greggman]

I depends on what you mean by "hire"

Do you want to hire them on contract for one specific piece of work? For an entire game? Forever?

Graph Designer falls under the category of artist.  According to that article I posted for you

Art & Animation: artists – averaging a $69,532 salary

So, if you wanted to hire them full time it would cost somewhere near $100k a year (you have to had more then their salary because of taxes, rent, equipment, insurance, etc...)

If you only need them for 1 month though, while it will be less, it generally will not be 1/12th because the kind of artist that works on short term contracts generally has to charge more to make it through between contracts.

Of course the world is a big place. You can find artist for cheaper and artists that are far more expensive. That number above is the average salary in the USA for a game artist.

[SurferGirl]

Hey Greggman-
I am a newbie, sort of.  I have a game I released in the mid nineties that is an evergreen kids product.  We still have all the original copyrights, source materials, etc. plus new ideas we want to take it to the next level for Playstation and maybe Wii.  I am very familiar with business plans, budgets, v.c.s all of that.  But I have been in mom mode for the last 10 years and I do not know where to find the basic information such as can you still buy a Sony Playstation Development Package, how much are they, or is it all on a game by game basis, etc.  Back then, start-up hardware-software only was a whopping $250K.  Can you point me to a website to begin the education process anew?  Exploring both Playstation and Wii. Yes I already have connections.  But I need to know more about the subject before calling anyone... everything changes.
I am getting the business plan together, we plan to take the games to prototype before handing over to whoever the distribution company will be, if not develop it wholly in-house.

[greggman]

http://www.warioworld.com/

http://www.scedev.net/

Sorry I don't have more info.