One you finished the artwork and logic how long on average doe it take you or your team to finish a game? Curious because I got a quote from an American company saying it would take them 30 to 45 days. We built the very same game in 4 days. Our team worked from 8 am to 11pm but we got it done.
The time required depends on the game & the technology to be used. As for the quote you received from the company, they would have considered the cost of creating supporting documentation, flexible architecture & testing etc...
In general, quality requires iteration. You might be able to complete something simple in 4 days, but is it really as polished and balanced as it could be? Personally, I don't think I've worked on a project shorter than 6 months, but then, I've never worked on a project with a very small scope.
So you did exceptionally long days so lets says 4 people x 8 days = 32 days. Now if the company put 2 people on it as part of their jobs you could easily see how it could take over a month. The amount of time take will always vary depending on gameplay, graphics, QA, scope and so on. There is no magic number. Companies will also quote times based on their availability. For example I am getting some studio stuff installed at work and they said 2 weeks while is actually only going to take them a day and half but it took that long to organise workers and parts.
Is this sarcasm? Most of my games take a week or so, working 3-4 hours a day. If it is going to take too much longer I don't like to risk it, because the life of a game seems so short.
We started thinking it would take 6 months. Scope changed dramatically, constant technology changes etc. We honestly don't think we can make enough money to justify a 5 year development life but the fact we worked in our spare time and kept our overheads low means that there is little risk. We just hope somebody enjoys it. Anyway my point is, dev time can vary. My favourite thing to tell people when they ask how long it takes to do something is "How long is a piece of string?"
A lot of great games can be built in a few days. The big problem seems to be getting the first rush of traffic to get your first game off the ground. Once you round that corner you are half ways there.
I'm curious too. Is that one of those games : https://itunes.apple.com/artist/lajo-cymbalski/id928335364 ? Or on another account ? And how many people ?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=1stSPIN https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/lajo-cymbalski/id928335364
Here is the link again. https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=1stSPIN https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/lajo-cymbalski/id928335364 We have 4 people working from 8 am to 11pm++ We have 10 games up and working on the 11th and 12th now
Which one is the one you had quoted. Someone could easily make one of those games in a week in general so it doesn't surprise me. I guess you are going for volume over quality.
we are just three guys working evenings and weekends, time is not a consideration for us, our only metrics for "definition of done" is our vision of scope polish and quality.
Nice way to put it. When I was an artist in Canada people used to ask me how long did it take to make a painting. tat has relationship to how good the painting is. You can finish a painting in 30 minutes and it is better than the one you spent a month on. I feel the most important thing is that your are have the time of your life making your game.
Our games tend to take about 8-12 months to get to launch, and then generally get actively supported on an ongoing basis for a further 3-24 months.