[casual_games] FAQ: Do casual games use writers?

[Kirby, Neil A (Neil)]

#### begin quoted message ###
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:17:54 -0800
From: "Audry Taylor" <talshannon at hotmail.com>
Subject: [casual_games] FAQ: Do casual games use writers?
To: casual_games at igda.org
Message-ID: <BAY102-F35B4515BDFD6465D9F0439CDEC0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

[snip]


How much money does it cost to make a casual game?

[snip]

Audry Taylor
Creative Director
Go! Comi
http://www.gocomi.com

#### end quoted message ###

At GDC 2005 in San Francisco, there was a presentation given one evening at the Apple Store where a guy went over how he did his downloadable game.  His budget was US $10,000 and he wound up spending $13,000 if memory serves.  I can't find the presentation in my paper notes and my laptop was having seizures or something that week (I lost a bunch of notes on sessions).  

Music:  How to get cheap but good music?  He contracted with some jazz artists who would do it cheap if he gave them prominent credit.  

Voice Talent:  His story dialog was text.  But when you met a character for the first time, voice talent would read that text for the first few lines.  The player's human brain would then "hear" the unread text in that same voice even though it was not read aloud.  This results in tremendous savings since there is far less usage of the talent, and what you get is less subject to change as the game evolves.

If anyone on the list could post a link to the session, I'd be grateful.  The game itself I think involved a yarn shop, a magic spinning wheel, and the title involved weaving a story or something like that.

---
Neil Kirby              +1.614.367.5524        Hope is not a strategy
Lucent Technologies     nak at lucent.com         Prayer is not a process
6100 E. Broad St.                              Tuning is not a plan
Columbus, OH 43213      USA                    Chaos does not scale