At a master class held in mid-October from the Higher School of Business Informatics of the HSE “Gaming industry: an inside look” Vyacheslav Utochkin, producer of the educational program “Management of Internet gaming projects” and author of the course “Operating game projects”, talked about how much it costs to make your own mobile and browser game and how much they earn the games have the largest developers. We present to your attention the full transcript of the speech from the master class.
Everyone who decides to start creating games almost immediately wonders how much it costs to make their own game? There is no definite answer to this question. It all depends on the scale of the project and your personal skills. Developing a game can cost almost zero rubles, or it can cost tens of millions of dollars.
As illustrations of different approaches and production scales, I will give specific examples of games of different “weight categories” created by developers whom I personally know.
Vsesam: mobile game
The costs are close to zero. You’re practically a genius. You create a mobile game and you can program, design, game design, promotion yourself. And everything that is generally required to create and run the game, you do yourself. An example of such a game is City 2048.
Small expenses even for such projects will still be required. For mobile games, you will definitely have to spend on developer accounts (AppStore – $99, GooglePlay – $25). And, most likely, you will still need to do some work on outsourcing. In particular, for City 2048, the author spent about 10 thousand rubles to buy music for the game.
So the cost of developing and promoting the game amounted to about 20 thousand rubles. At the exit, the author received more than 1.5 million installations and income twice the salary of a programmer.
But, of course, it is worth mentioning that luck played an important role here. The game became widespread due to the popularity of the logic game 2048 at that time. The similarity of the name gave a very large organic traffic to the game in question.
Partially by myself: browser
Another option is to do some of the work ourselves, and outsource a significant part of the work.
As an example, the browser game “Star Warrior” can be cited.
For this game, the team of authors performed all the work on game design, programming and operation (marketing, community, support).
All the graphics inside the game (game interfaces, website design, marketing materials) were outsourced and cost about 500 thousand rubles.
If you are making a serious product, then you should allocate adequate money for promotion. This is usually half of the entire project budget. For the Star Warrior game, the cost of promotion amounted to 300 thousand rubles.
If you are making a browser game or a large client game, the team should already be issued in the form of an individual entrepreneur or legal entity. For the game in question, the sole proprietor and all organizational aspects (registration, re-registration, deductions to the PF, etc.) cost about 100 thousand rubles.
Among other expenses, you can highlight the costs of the server, the purchase and support of domains, additional small outsourcing. In this example, the amount of additional costs amounted to 200 thousand rubles.
The output is 1.1 million rubles of expenses for a browser game that is running, running, and also pleases the authors and their audience.
All outsourcing: mobile
The USSR RPG project is being developed by Nikita Novokreschenov. Nikita is a 2014 graduate of the program “Management of Internet gaming projects”. Even at the training stage, he started making his own mobile game.
If you outsource everything, and you yourself carry out promotion and game design, then using the example of a USSRRPG game, you can estimate how much it may take to develop.
The expenses included the costs of developer accounts (7+ thousand rubles).
Programming cost 100 thousand rubles. Design – 25 thousand rubles. Promotion – 60 thousand rubles. Other minor expenses (music, domain, smartphone for tests) amounted to 8 thousand rubles.
Total: the costs approached the 200 thousand rubles mark.
Own studio
Let’s assume that you decided to approach the production of the game very professionally, attracted investments and made your own studio. Your own studio is a qualitatively more serious and large–scale approach to development, requiring fundamentally more serious financial injections.
As an example, I will give the expenses of a real game development studio of my friends. Expenses are given for one year. The studio is developing several mobile game projects and a cross-platform browser game.
The largest expense item is the wage fund (FOT). In a particular case, the annual FOT is 9 million rubles. The next significant expense item is office rent.
In the near Moscow region, expenses can be in the region of 1.5 million rubles per year. The organization of the workspace (furniture, appliances, licenses, etc.) may take another 2 million rubles a year. Other expenses (server equipment, maintaining a legal entity) will require about 0.5 million rubles per year.
With a serious approach, you need to immediately lay down high-quality marketing. In the example given, marketing costs an amount equivalent to all other expenses combined – 12 million rubles per year.
Learn more about the photo
The most interesting article is the cost of the FOT and the levels of remuneration for different specialists.
The studio in question employs about 25 people. It can be taken as a guideline for the composition of specialists and salary levels.
For a typical game development studio, you will need the following command:
- The manager is usually one of the investors or a hired specialist on interest and/or salary. Often this is a person who is given an investment. Usually, for small companies, the head is paid from 80 to 150 thousand rubles a month.
- The development of the game will require the efforts of several programmers. The team can consist of 2-5 game programmers (40-150 thousand rubles per month each), a system administrator (40-80 thousand rubles per month) and 1-2 web programmers (40-120 thousand rubles per month each).
- To create a game, designers and artists, 1-3 specialists (40-80 thousand rubles per month each) will be required. It is often advisable to outsource artists by managing them through one art director who is in the team.
- Often the head of a small studio is also a part-time game designer and a link with the investor, as well as provides general guidance. But this approach carries a lot of risks. A separate person in the team – specifically a game designer (40-110 thousand rubles per month) is required.
- To operate the game, prepare the audience for the release of the game, as well as to further promote the product, 1-2 marketing and PR specialists will be required (40-80 thousand rubles per month each), as well as a community manager (KM) and a game master (GM) (20-40 thousand rubles per month each).
There are also all sorts of excesses. Excesses should not be abused, but still many people sin. A personal secretary, a personal driver, a couple of screenwriters … often this leads to the fact that the studio is very hard to live.
How much can you earn on games
If you managed to organize a studio and release a game, then you will probably be interested in how much you can earn from games. As examples of successful gaming companies, consider some of the most characteristic representatives of the global gaming industry.
How much does King earn
The company was founded in 2003.
More than 1400 employees. The company has 200 games in total. And the most popular are the candy game and the soda game. Social networks and mobile games of the Saga series bring the greatest income. In 2014, revenue exceeded $2.2 billion, which is one of the best results among all gaming companies. In 2013, the company found its niche and took off.
How much does Activision Blizzard earn
For comparison, consider the company that recently bought King. We are talking about Activision Blizzard, which owns, respectively, the authors of Call of Duty and the authors of World of Warcaft. In 2014, revenue was $4.4 billion. As of February of this year, the number of employees was 6,690.
How much does Electronic Arts earn
Another oldest and largest company in the world is EA. The company was founded in 1982. In total, about 200 games have been released on all existing platforms. The most profitable projects: sports FIFA, NFL, NBA, UFC. Of the most famous, you can list: The Sims, Battlefield, Plants vs. Zombies.
The company has about 8,400 employees. And in 2014, the revenue was $4.5 billion.
How much does Supercell earn
Now consider a company that earns just three games. Founded in 2010. There were several games in the implementation, but some of them were closed, and only three games began to earn: ClashofClans, HayDay, BoomBeach.
Now Supercell has more than 150 employees and the company earned $1.6 billion from its games in 2014.
How much does Riot Games earn
And finally, let’s look at the company of just one game, Riot Games, which created one of the most earning online games – League of Legends. The company was founded in 2006, with more than 1000 employees. The company’s revenue in 2014 amounted to $1.3 billion.
At the same time, the company’s policy, as they position it themselves, is aimed at making the game not for the sake of money, but for the sake of the players.
Perhaps it is precisely in such a policy of the company that such an outstanding commercial success of the game lies.