Guys, I was wondering if anyone here has made a videogame? Specifically, an open world video game that allows you to interact with your environment, NPC's, and preferably other characters.
I was wondering how much this would cost to design something like a phone ap game that was an MMO, allowed you to congregate and chat with other players, and essentially interact with your environment? As of now, there really isn't any "quest" like content or story. The game I would like to make would be more of an interaction tool for game content and other players.
Just curious to know how difficult this would be and if I was to hire someone, how much would it cost? I do have some money to throw at this project so I'm curious to know if I should pursue the talent to make since I've never made a game before. I can do pretty much all the artwork and 3D modeling, just not any coding or phone ap stuff.
>pic unrelated
>>517441
Yes, it's gonna be expensive, due to the sheer amount of the project. Making a finish software is already a hard-tasking job.
First - programmers side:
For a 2d non-mmo game a single good programmer should be enough. Move on to 3d and with an available engine a single godtier or two good programmers should be enough to make a game like portal. Moving to a 3d mmo with a large open-world. Of course a single programmer could do it, but not in any reasonable time, you'd need more, you'd need(even if they have an available engine), one for the server, one for the mechanics, one for the ui, one for the player-interaction(chat servers, friend lists, etc), one for the visualization things(even though most engines have a render pipeline, you need to optimize for an mmo, because you're expecting a mass of players with different devices, so you need to optimize for the majority), of course you need a software architect to "block-out" as 3d modellers say the code layout, classes and interactions between objects and such, you also need a project manager, so that the project doesn't become a ball of tangled shit. Depending on how optimized and high-quality of code you want you can hire different tiers of programmers, but you can't cheap out on the architect and server/client guys, software architects are one of the highest paying software development jobs and the server/client guy needs to be a very good programmer depending on how much people you assume are going to play your game, you can cheap out on the others, or hire people that can work with your engine of choice, but are not top-notch programmers.
Programming jobs usually are 3-5 times a country's average job. So if you are in the USA, by a crude estimate you're gonna need:
Software architect - 100k, client/server coder - 80k-100k, manager - 60k-80k, four other code monkeys - 50k-80k. Basically anything between 440k and 660k yearly for at least 6 months to an year, but you gotta prepare for a minimum year.
>>517455
Cont.
Second - graphical side.
This is debatable and very variable, but I'd say an estimated cost for a game like Rose online, you know cartoony, artsy not very realistic and not very high-poly models(you said a mobile game). 3 modellers and 1 ui/concept artist. You know the prices here.
And finally a sound designer and a musician. You can buy the soundtrack from a producer/musician for a price, but you need a sound designer, usually 1.5-3 times the average wave of any country.
For the game you are describing, one or two good programmers could do it, but your description is not very thorough. Is there fighting, what is it, is it an rpg, fps, is it just a social game. Have you thought about servers, you need to rent servers, how many people would play it, your programmer needs to know how many people at any given time would play it, if he needs to build the infrastructure so that it's expandable, how much bytes for a packet, in what timeframe will the server recalculate.
>>517441
What about using things like Atavism MMO Creator or Rpg maker.
Even the simplest video game requires a lot of $$$ because it takes ages to develop and you need specialized people.
>>517507
no, this simply isnt true. Learn unreal / unity, you have all the tools you need to produce something.
>>517508
Yes, and would you do that for free?
>>517508
spoken like a true amateur
>>517507
Not true at all, since you're saying "simplest video game".
Made two complete simple games before, required almost zero cost.
>>517671
>Made two complete simple games before, required almost zero cost.
Catherine, any proof?
>>517441
I think the biggest/most expensive part of a video game are the graphics(Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, ...).
I think you could have done GTA V with the budget of a billion dollar - without graphics.
The most expensive part of this game is its gigantic open world
Hi, my question is related to the topic so I'll post it in this thread instead of shitting up the board.
I am a programmer. If I have a nearly-completed game that needs 3d models, textures and simple animation, what are my options for paying for this?
I want a fairly simple art style: no high res textures, and no high detailed models. For example it can be something that looks like this https://youtu.be/hltcmGAW0Kg?t=4m28s but with more polys and slightly more detailed textures I guess. As long as it looks good I'm open to any kind of style.
The game has a lot of organic monsters. They need idle animations, and very short and simple animations for attacks. An attack animation should only last like 0.5 seconds so it has to be super quick and simple.
The game has many environments (ruins, cave, swamp, etc)
Other things that it needs is equipment models for the player's equipment, spell effects (mostly nothing fancy), lighting, ambience related stuff like mist, gas. And there's flowing water in the game, with waterfalls, which worries me a lot. I wouldn't mind if the water was very simplified though. A river could be a transparent blue plane if it fits the art style, though there's still the matter of it going into a waterfall.
1. Is it realistic for 1 person to be able to produce these assets in a reasonable time frame (6 months)? If not, how many people?
2. This is a hobby project so I want to spend as little as possible, and by that I mean 0$ ideally. How open are artists to doing work for a percentage of the sales profits?
