According to this article, the PC game based on the Left Behind series of books cost $27 million in development and marketing. It was buggy, came with spyware (which the company evidently hoped would help them recoup some of the cost), and ended up being boycotted by many of the Christian groups it was marketed to (but that’s beside the point).
$27 million seems like an awful lot for a video game—that’s a film budget! Not to mention that this particular game was targeted at a pretty small subset of the game-playing population.
I’ve done some cursory on-line searching, but can’t find much about video game development budgets. This Slate article says that an average PS2 game cost $8 million, and an average PS3 game will cost $15-20 million, plus $10 million in marketing. That seems pretty high to me. This says the most expensive game ever cost $20 million. But I can’t find any stats broken down by platform or target market.
I believe there are some Dopers who are in the video game business, and others who are around it or who follow it closely. How much does it typically cost to produce a video game? Is $27 million typical? Is it typical for this type of project? Or is it high to the point that one might reasonably suspect company officers of skimming some off the top?
I don’t have any trouble believing those numbers. From the credits on the games I’ve played recently, it looks like there are on average 15-20 developers and testers per game. On average, they probably make over $80000 a year; even if you can squeeze the game out in a year (which is a ridiculously low turn around), that’s at least $1.6 million right there. Add in the licensing costs for whatever engine you’re using, whatever licensing you have to do for the console’s SDK, the salaries of all other staff (some of whom probably outearn the technical folks), the marketing costs, and yeah, $8 million sounds about right.
Developing a major video game can easily be comparable to making a movie in production and cost. You need to consider not just the programmers, but the art department (which will include 3D artists, animators, foley artists for game sounds, etc), actors for any live video or voices included, and writers for the game’s storyboard and script. Then there are the legal fees, logistics, people to man the help lines, continues support for patches and updates over the life of the game. It’s pretty huge.
On the other side of the scale, my wife and I have created a game company and have a budget of $30,000 for our first game. We’re making heavy use of freely available open-source code wherever we can, have a completely unpaid volunteer staff, and really aren’t aiming high-end on graphics or effects. So it can be done cheaply, although what we expect to produce will be less like a mainstream video and more like an amateur production released on YouTube
For a high-profile major release these days you’re usually looking at a development budget over $10 million, and possibly over $20 million. MMORPGs can go even higher.
For a minor game you’re looking at $1 million to $10 million.
Budget titles can cost between $100,000 and a $1 million.
Teams on a major game can range in size from 50 to 100+. Once you factor in overhead and benefits each team member probably costs about $100,000 a year. A typical development cycle is 18 to 24 months. It adds up.
Now if a studio is smart they don’t fully staff for the full development cycle. The first six month or a year can be preproduction with a small core team laying out the foundations and doing proof-of-concept. Then you bring on all the bodies to do the heavy lifting.
Note that the figure quoted in the OP is both development and MARKETING. The marketing budget for a big game is often higher than the development budget. So the actual cost of creating the Left Behind game might have been closer to $15 million. That’s still a bit high for a PC-only release. I suspect they were counting on leveraging the huge popularity of the franchise to sell to non-traditional consumers. Looks like they figured wrong.
There’s nothing in those figures to suggest there’s anything shady going on. It’s possible to blow ridiculously large amounts of money in the game business, particularly if you change course in the middle of production or don’t have an experienced team.