How exactly does $300,000 dollars = Galactic War?

How we do it at work (not a game dev., C#), is by taking all the features and breaking them down into stories.

After that, we try to figure out what tasks needs to be in those stories and then how long we THINK a task takes.

Time x salary = total sum of x feature.

We use SC(R)UM as our process.

More about development, management and stuff lol, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)

Did a quick mental tally on what the retail store I work for lay out before profit and that number snowballed pretty quickly. Then I'm guessing there are other things than just salary, parts and generalized bills to worry about. Legal, marketing, VA salary, animation, stuff like that.

Which is why very few are being snappy back. We actually understand that we don't know much. Nobody ever tells us, after all. At best, small indies will detail what money went where, and big companies will give us vague answers of so and so percent of incredible amount of money to this group.

For the most part, we don't know the thinking of game devs, since we aren't one and haven't been one. Therefore we ask. If you don't have the time, dont wish to tell us, well nothing we can do obviously. If you did decide to answer though, I'd love to have it on a linkable website somewhere. You're still "indie" level in my eyes, but you're larger than most indies and filled up with long time industry pros so seeing where money went where for you would be pretty awesome.

Either way, most of us on this board trust you to use the money correctly after all. That's why we pledge the money after all

Games are rapidly approaching movie costs for production. Especially for triple AAA games.

Its why games like Space Marine (A geek favourite of mine, that though flawed, had crap loads of potential) won't get a sequel. They cost so much to make that if they are not smash hits then they are considered failures to be written off.

its also why you shouldn't expect games to get too much "Prettier" in terms of polygon count these days, it ends up just costing to damn much for the full working model of a character past a certain amount of man hours.

Its also why we are getting crap loads of sequels pumped out, they cost less than a brand new game from a concept and engine point of view and actually sell.

What really worries me is games going more like American prime time tv shows. Where it doesn't matter if its good, it has to be better/sell more than the other guys, otherwise it gets canned and something new is attempted because the impression is "People didn't like it".

I forgot my point. In fact I may have just rambled.

I think we've gotten to that level plenty of times before. I mean it's not top-tier Hollywood stuff, but certainly in the same ballpark as many more movies as far as AAA games go.

I'm a mod developer...

Additions such as stated are just hard work and some blood (from mashing the keyboard with your face every few minutes).

Can everyone stop mentioning the pricing! Everyone who comments seems to assume the initial Kickstarter goal is indicative of anything, and comment on "how much" it will cost to make any extra features. One sounds so silly saying, "I can see how initial development can cost 900k, but 300k for GW?" You don't know, I don't know.

It's not hard to find out that a certain game publisher made $1b profit from nearly $4.5b revenue in 2011, a statistic which alone suggests that spread over 13 game titles averages $230m per game.

It isn't even about computer game development costs! Kickstarter is exactly that, a kick start, not a final pricing, and the creators owe you nothing except your pledge. Please don't think that because you pledge $50 you are part of the financial decision making (let alone auditing!), and please, please, don't assume that a game such as this could be made with only 900k! It is just ludicrous and nonsensical.

Not happening. Even given your premise, which is really only true of EA and Activision (as much as I dislike Ubisoft, their games can be interestingly original), big publishers aren't the whole of the game industry. Independent stuff doesn't get on prime time TV, while we've already got a couple Kickstarted games on Steam and there's plenty more in the pipeline. The future's going to be pretty cool.

Just to put it in perspective GTA 4 was nearly 100million to make between dev , marketing, etc.

Also
Crysis - $22 million
Half-Life episodes - $12 million each
If i recall supcom had ~5-10m dollar budget, I wish i had a source for this. I remember Chris taylor talking about indie game development at GPG (video interview at some game dev conference) and that he was talking about how they were making games in the sub 15million budget range and calling them medium sized budgets.

I'm surprised 1.3m is buying as much as it is, I'm kind of wondering how much uber is or has available to kick in on this project.

People are expensive. Any project involving teams of talented people costs lots and lots of money.

Indeed. For a game of such scale, of such awesomeness, I'm positively surprised it's that low.

Of course, it isn't like 'well, we have $900000 now, we can work on a game - Oh wait, we have $899999, well, damn, not enough money then', but still.

I suppose they dont realise how much it cost to pay the wages for a entire team for a entire year and probably there will be more costs than just that (like T-shirts and other goodies for donating they arent free).

Just a idea but maybe you could post something about all the costs. Maybe then these kind of questions will be less common.

There was a recent interview where CT said it was 11,5 Million $.
I dont haved a link to it, though. Somewhere on the FAF-Forums might be one.

+1 for this idea

I totally believe that the money being asked for is the bare minimum here but as I am very interested I would like to see a rough list of where all the money goes simply for an educational purpose.

Most of the money goes to salaries, taxes and health insurance pretty much in that order.

Some in this thread have already done some basic calculations. Typical burdened man month costs in the game industry are 10-15k per month with Seattle being a fairly expensive city.

Yeah that is pretty normal in your industry. But I think it's a bit weird to put all your financial information on this forum. I mean the people complaining or mistrusting you for asking more money than needed obviously already donated their money right?

It would be the same as if you would give a homeless man ten bucks, and afterwards start asking questions like; "What are you going to do with the money?", "I think you don't need that much money I just gave you!", "Tell me how much money you get and spend everyday!". So my point is, you donated the money, and thereby you entrusted the person/company in the first place.

Neutrino, just focus on the game and brainstorm topics, I know you are a professional with years and years of experience with games, so I trust you and your team in creating the most badass RTS ever.

Cheers

why dont you move to arkansas or something like that? :mrgreen: :twisted:

Because Seattle is beautiful, and we've been having a nearly perfect summer this year while everyone else has been dying from the heat.

Not for another six days, they haven't. And I think the people complaining seem to be outnumbered by the people that are just honestly curious, going by what's been said in this thread.

Well, apart from the whole expense on man hours, there has to be something all those man hours are put on. Personally, I think we are just underestimating what they plan on doing with Galactic War.

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For example, what if it we can have a real-time galactic war. Anybody can join any planet, whether already captured, currently being contested, or not taken by anyone.

If they aren't taken by anyone, they might have to do something like capture a certain point to "own" the area.

If they are being contested, you can have as many people join in on the fray as they want, however unequal the field may end up being. This would lead to the question, do I join a planet where my side is losing the war to try and save them? Or do I go for the empty planet and get us some more ground? It would take strategy to a new level.

If it's already captured, the people that captured it still have their buildings/defenses/units on it, so you have to get in fast and break through their defenses before someone notices and comes in to stop the attack. I'm sure this won't be a problem to program as it can probably use a similar system as to how you attack another player's planet from your own in a normal game.

Of course, I'd also say that you can only go for systems near your captured ones, to prevent you from attacking absolutely any base you want. Also, you would obviously have some sort of indicator on the galaxy view showing the status of each planet.