Total Cost Of Publishing One Indie Game: $50K

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Honestly, I had no idea that it was this expensive to put out an indie game. :eek:

Even cheap titles often take thousands if not tens of thousands of person-hours to get through development and publication. "Runner2 cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $700,000 to develop. Around 12% of that went into publication, localization and QA. Our publication costs were a little higher, but that's pretty close to normal." Tyrone's figures for Binding of Isaac: Rebirth were pretty close at 500,000 and 10%, but those aren't quite final.
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Seems like for small games the biggest expense is that of man-hours to do it. If you're someone who's a single man indie developer that cost is something that you can write off though, sure you like to eat and pay your bills but if you want to put the project on hold while you work at a day job that is a possibility it just slows the game development down to a crawl.
 
Way too many indi games out there that just plain suck I think some of them are just done for college credits like FORCED was programed on Campus.

Trying to be the next Zuckerburg.
 
Kinsaras said:
This article was kind of eye opening for me too.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5974557/shovel-knight-sales-broke
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The Shovel Knight developers went completely broke March 1st and had to borrow money from family members to finish the game for release on June 26th during the Steam Summer Sale. They break down their budget, sales, and how the Shovel Knight community is playing their game in a series of blog posts. They leave no stone unturned in revealing their numbers!

First blog post about development costs and release sales.
Second blog post about Nintendo and Steam sales with analysis of player data collected so far.

I want to find out what happens to the 130,000 people that have the game on their wishlist. Are they waiting for a Steam Sale? Will they ever buy it?
 
Comixbooks said:
Way too many indi games out there that just plain suck I think some of them are just done for college credits like FORCED was programed on Campus.

Trying to be the next Zuckerburg.
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I find that many of the Indie games that seem to suck, but had great ideas, were games that ran out of money during development. Of course some games are just bad, but I'm not talking about those. Your wife and children have to eat and they need a shelter to stay in. So you release early and hope that the game play shines above the bugs.

The Shovel Knight team had to release their game with free stretch content patches in mind. It has 5 -6 hours of basic content and 30 or so of "hidden secrets" to find. They have a roadmap for free content so those that may have found everything today, will have a reason to play it later to beat the new areas. I wish more Indie developers could find extra funding to finish their games rather than release early and the game gets trash talked into oblivion.
 
Comixbooks said:
Way too many indi games out there that just plain suck I think some of them are just done for college credits like FORCED was programed on Campus.

Trying to be the next Zuckerburg.
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No edit button. :( I also wanted to say that these guys are entrepreneurs. So yes, they are trying to make a name for themselves and make a viable business. You have to take chances in life to achieve your goals. Otherwise you're not living life; you're just existing.
 
Frankly I'm not surprised that it takes 50k to localize and release an indie game for most of the major regions. Releasing games, even small ones mostly worldwide is a major undertaking that requires significant capital expenditures in stuff like QA and various bureaucratic measures with game boards all along the way. If you're doing this solo then assuming you don't drop out with luck you turn into Phil Fish of Fez fame. For a lot of people their dreams will be crushed and their wallets dry, that's just how it is at this point in time.

I'm not sure how a balance is going to be found between prohibitive barriers to entry and a venue turning into a shovelware repository. It might take technology and thinking that is beyond our level in 2014.
 
I just want a decent tower defense game for my phone that's easy to play but hard to master.

There was an old flash game called Gem Tower Defense that was great. I loved it. I could beat it, but it took time, and I constantly worked to get higher scores. It was great to waste time.

I've tried five different games on my phone that were simple to program, but just didn't work for me. I didn't like them. Three are almost impossible to beat, while the other two are too easily beat. They're either frustrating or boring.

A tower defense game isn't hard to do. A single person could program one in a few weekends during their off time. Balancing it is a bit harder, but still quite doable for a single person. It doesn't have to be big budget.

Yes, making a complex game does take time and money, but games don't have to be complex.
 
dgingeri said:
I just want a decent tower defense game for my phone that's easy to play but hard to master.

There was an old flash game called Gem Tower Defense that was great. I loved it. I could beat it, but it took time, and I constantly worked to get higher scores. It was great to waste time.

I've tried five different games on my phone that were simple to program, but just didn't work for me. I didn't like them. Three are almost impossible to beat, while the other two are too easily beat. They're either frustrating or boring.

A tower defense game isn't hard to do. A single person could program one in a few weekends during their off time. Balancing it is a bit harder, but still quite doable for a single person. It doesn't have to be big budget.

Yes, making a complex game does take time and money, but games don't have to be complex.
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This, But instead, all that is out there is shovel-ware that has no game balance and is impossibly hard, with the only way to advance pay2win. It's insanely frustrating. I'd pay more up-front, just to have an actual GAME, not some kind of digital panhandler constantly hitting me up for money.
 
dgingeri said:
I just want a decent tower defense game for my phone that's easy to play but hard to master.

There was an old flash game called Gem Tower Defense that was great. I loved it. I could beat it, but it took time, and I constantly worked to get higher scores. It was great to waste time.

I've tried five different games on my phone that were simple to program, but just didn't work for me. I didn't like them. Three are almost impossible to beat, while the other two are too easily beat. They're either frustrating or boring.

A tower defense game isn't hard to do. A single person could program one in a few weekends during their off time. Balancing it is a bit harder, but still quite doable for a single person. It doesn't have to be big budget.

Yes, making a complex game does take time and money, but games don't have to be complex.
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if one can be made in 50 - 100 hours or so then why don't you make money and sell it?
 
cageymaru said:
I find that many of the Indie games that seem to suck, but had great ideas, were games that ran out of money during development. Of course some games are just bad, but I'm not talking about those. Your wife and children have to eat and they need a shelter to stay in. So you release early and hope that the game play shines above the bugs.

The Shovel Knight team had to release their game with free stretch content patches in mind. It has 5 -6 hours of basic content and 30 or so of "hidden secrets" to find. They have a roadmap for free content so those that may have found everything today, will have a reason to play it later to beat the new areas. I wish more Indie developers could find extra funding to finish their games rather than release early and the game gets trash talked into oblivion.
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What bugs me is how much big developers get a pass for doing something like this, while the smaller indie developers don't have this benefit. It should be the opposite FFS.
 
cageymaru said:
I want to find out what happens to the 130,000 people that have the game on their wishlist. Are they waiting for a Steam Sale? Will they ever buy it?
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Well they should! It's an excellent game! It's better than the games it tries to emulate, and goes beyond just being nostalgic. It introduces some modern ideas, while still pulling off the retro feel. It's also got a great sense of humor, cool upgrades and exploration mechanics, lot's of optional things as well. When I go back and play some of my old favorites (while many still hold up great to this day) some do not hold up that well. Shovel Knight actually addresses many of the things that don't hold up well from the old games. The sound track is very cool too. I bought it, and listen to it quite a bit. I hope people just buy it at full price. It's worth more than that even.

I will definitely check out the linked articles too. This game really deserves to make the devs some $$. :cool:
 
Ya the man hours calculations are bull shit. Did Bill Gates and Steve Jobs talk about adding up all their man hours in the garages and calculating how much it cost to start MS and Apple? Your time is worth shit if you don't have anything else to do with it. For many game start ups and indies this was time those guys would have otherwise spent watching football or jerking around on reddit. And it is not in any way a significant barrier to stop you from publishing a game because it doesn't really cost you anything unless you pay out. A real costs is when you don't have any option and you have to pay it out upfront. This is more common if you are trying to manufacture something and you lack the facilities or skills to do it yourself. You might really need 100k to get a first run or it will never happen. But calculating and owner of a businesses man hours by any measure is stupid, the guy who mows your lawn doesn't say OMG I lost money because I charged this guy $20 to mow the lawn and I worked for 2 hours and I pay myself $15 / hour. Oh man I lost $10 on that deal. lol no he can only calculate what his costs were and then after he receives the money determine his profit.

That is like having someone who goes to college try to add up their expense of what their time was worth and say well my college cost me 400K because I had 200K in loans and I think I was worth 50k per year.
 
dgingeri said:
I just want a decent tower defense game for my phone that's easy to play but hard to master.

There was an old flash game called Gem Tower Defense that was great. I loved it. I could beat it, but it took time, and I constantly worked to get higher scores. It was great to waste time.

I've tried five different games on my phone that were simple to program, but just didn't work for me. I didn't like them. Three are almost impossible to beat, while the other two are too easily beat. They're either frustrating or boring.

A tower defense game isn't hard to do. A single person could program one in a few weekends during their off time. Balancing it is a bit harder, but still quite doable for a single person. It doesn't have to be big budget.

Yes, making a complex game does take time and money, but games don't have to be complex.
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Just making the graphics would take much longer than a few weekends of off time, so how would one have time to create the game with a negative amount of time leftover?
 
People who have successful games that were ported to console complain about the costs of porting games to consoles?

Wow this is silly. The article itself says it costs very little to publish games for PC.
 
TheCAD said:
People who have successful games that were ported to console complain about the costs of porting games to consoles?

Wow this is silly. The article itself says it costs very little to publish games for PC.
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In cases like this, they should just publish on the PC first, and then pay the fees/licenses/certification for the consoles with the early PC revenue.
 
Anyone who starts a company ignoring man hours and paying themselves first is doomed to fail. You have to pay rent and put food on the plates, unless you are independently wealthy.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Seems like for small games the biggest expense is that of man-hours to do it. If you're someone who's a single man indie developer that cost is something that you can write off though, sure you like to eat and pay your bills but if you want to put the project on hold while you work at a day job that is a possibility it just slows the game development down to a crawl.
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This. Think of their salary. Even if they don't make much (~$65K average for the studio), with 15 people, that can add up. Add in licensing fees for software, contracting/licensing (music, trailers, ect.), voice acting trips and hardware.
 
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