Economics of a 2D Adventure

Thanks to The Grumpy Gamer (Ron Gilbert of Monkey Island fame), for his excellent look at The Economics of 2D Adventure Games. "First, this is only a thought experiment. This is not something I am planning on doing, or even have a huge interest in doing, so please don't feed the rumor mills. Second, this article contains gory and gruesome details about the games business and, in particular, marketing and distribution. If you'd rather remain blissfully oblivious to the horrors of what goes on behind the scenes, this is the place to stop reading. If you're one of those people that can't help but stare at a car accident, read on."

Comments

The first thing I noticed

[loopback_127001]

In the budget was this: Testing Subtotal: $30,000 In case anyone wants to ever wonder why the game industry releases consistently buggy, shitty product, there's your answer. Testing. ALL the testing for 1 year. $30k. Half the salary of a single developer. I would assume that's either for hiring a single real person at 30k to do the testing, or else to pay 30k to a contractor service for some amount of hours of testing. I think it's interesting, especially given that the stated numbers are from his experience in the industry. Perhaps in this specific case, with a known engine and no cutting-hedge technology, spending such a tiny amount of testing of the game could work out, if you also have the developers and everyone else playing the game / testing along the way as well. Overall, a really interesting breakdown of how things would work for even an extremely simple game idea, and how much money is involved.

Re:The first thing I noticed

[AltaMannen]

I don't think it was assumed testing is full time for the full time of the project.

Until you have something "playable" the programmers and designers can do all the testing and that is going to take a certain amount of time.

Also, going with the publisher approach may mean that they have an additional testing team that goes under "publisher overhead". Most titles today have way higher testing costs than $30k, but this is a low-budget project.

Re:The first thing I noticed

[TwistedSquare]

Though they did say they would be using an existing engine, which should reduce the amount of testing needed by quite a bit to my mind.

Not what I thought...

[Bluesman]

From the title, I thought the article was going to be about how you can easily rack up 250 rupies for the blue ring in Zelda by going to the money making game and hitting reset only when you lose.

Hey! Why don't they fund the new game that way?

other scenarios

[JackBuckley]

This is an interesting article, but the situation is quite hypothetical--the odds of someone trying this development model for a 2D point-and-click graphical adventure are slim. For real fans of this genre (who also might want to make a buck) it might be more interesting to relax some of the assumptions about part-time or hobbyist programming staff and the infeasibility of internet distribution (and/or even a shareware model). Developer/publishers like Spiderweb Software (makers of the Exile series, among other Ultima-type RPGs) help with the back-end stuff for small-time or hobbyist shareware developers. Similarly, sites like Home of the Underdogs promote and help sell "scratchware" games. The real question to me is, can a scratchware/shareware/late night after work development team make enough money to break even (given the real and opportunity costs of creating the game)?

Thought Experiments and Current Experience.

[Musenik]

First, Ron Gilbert deserves a lot praise for his explanation of the lost way of 2D games. I worked three years for Sierra Online, porting 10 titles to the Macintosh. He's right on. More recently, I've been working on a 2D adventure game that should go gold, next week.

Thank Mr. Gilbert for observing that there are many other routes than his traditional approach. But this is the computer game industry, and tradition applies mostly to last week. The route we've taken is to design a game specifically for the women segment of the downloadable audience. They are largely unfamiliar with adventure games. For that reason, we hope to stand out among the billion puzzle games.

Building 'The Witch's Yarn' cost, out of pocket, $10,000, including legal fees for the distribution agreement. That does not cover the principal developer's salary, but it did pay for the art, animation, proofreading, testing, sound engineering, and music licenses. Guerrilla developers can make real products (mac, pc, linux simultaenous) on real tight budgets. (the trick was to build a text adventure game that looks like a 2D adventure game - think comix)

Now, $10,000 is all one should spend to build a game for the downloadable market. The biggest game portals charge the most money to sell your game, even more than the retail channel! Fortunately, you don't have manufacturing costs. A good selling game, might earn a developer $100,000, but less than $50,000 is more likely.

Of course, who knows what'll be true next week.

I think he should rethink the "PC Game only" part

[Thag]

In particular, the Game Boy Advance is the #2 console, and would be both cost-effective to develop for and well-suited to a 2D adventure format.

You could easily do Monkey Island on it.

You're going to have to go through Nintendo, but you'll have to go through a distributor on the PC side too.

Jon Acheson