What Does a Mobile Game Cost to Build These Days?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by andrew80, Jul 10, 2013.

  1. andrew80

    andrew80 New Member

    Jul 10, 2013
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    Hi all,

    How much do games cost to build? Yeh, i'm sure that's a "how long is a piece of string" question but i'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the average cost of creating a nicely polished mobile game?

    Based on my own experience I get the feeling that 50K+ is a number that wouldn't shock too many people...

    A
     
  2. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    Wellington
    Pretty hard for us to create a game under the US$250k mark these days given the amount of content, features, and iteration we go through to get something to market at the quality we want it to (and at the quality the market is demanding).

    That means our average is somewhere above that.
     
  3. ThreeCubes

    ThreeCubes Well-Known Member

    Oct 13, 2012
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    It's quite hard do really tell how much a game costs as a lot of developers do the work themselves. When its your own time it's hard to quantify. If your outsourcing or hiring staff for every aspect of the game you could be talking 100s of k but if you doing the work yourself it might be 10k.
     
  4. Emeric

    Emeric Well-Known Member

    Oct 21, 2010
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    Agree with PikPok. 200k$-300k$ seems to be a nice fork of "big enough to be competitive" and "too risky to be breakeven".

    For example, if you have a very strong and equilibrate core team of 3 people:
    - 1 artist
    - 1 programmer
    - 1 designer who also does art or programming
    + additional whatever (not full time), like audio, anim, UI, writing, PR
    That makes something like 4 fulltime salaries (say 70k/y) + studio cost (say 10%) + QA/Loc/PR stuff like going to PAX or whatever, you pretty fast reach the 300k within 10 months.
     
  5. raekess

    raekess Well-Known Member

    Feb 3, 2013
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    Product Manager
    Lafayette, CO
    I couldn't estimate...

    I agree with what's been said above, but I can give you some solid numbers as far as outlay is concerned.

    Unity - $4,200
    Unity Addins - $200
    Website incl. incidentals - $200
    Test Devices - $500
    Sound - $2,000

    That's what... $7,100?

    What is unidentifiable is our time. We're a two man team that's handling art, programming, testing, marketing, web building, client interaction, production, design, financials, etc., etc., etc.

    When I was employed, I was easily adding an additional 20-30 hours on top of my 40+ hour week. My boyfriend did the same. Our salaries alone, based on our last paying positions, would already top $90k, not including overtime hours, benefits, costs of our personal laptops and phones and tablets that we use.

    A really rough estimate for the past 6 months of work easily top 102k, and does not include any marketing funds.
     
  6. SteveAtBoxcat

    SteveAtBoxcat Well-Known Member

    Sep 13, 2012
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    Los Angeles

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