[casual_games] Sales, Exposure and Profitability

[Ben Lewis]

5 man months is incredibly fast for developing a game that can compete
on the portals. Though I didn't play any set-top box games in 2005, I'd
bet the bar for quality is much higher in 2007's download space.

If you look at the credits for most Top 10 games these days, Virtual
Villagers 2 probably had one of the smallest dev teams and they still
had 7+ people with multiple duties. Meanwhile, Fairy Godmother Tycoon
had 11 people on art alone (!!!).

When trying to nail an honest estimate for what it takes to make it on
the portals, play the games you see in Top 10 lists and look at the
Credits screen, then try to estimate how long it took and work up
possible costs. Postmortems are even better, and there's a good number
of them in the Casual Games Quarterly put out by the IGDA.

Slingo Quest postmortem:
http://www.igda.org/casual/quarterly/2_2/index.php?id=4

Cake Mania postmortem:
http://www.igda.org/casual/quarterly/2_1/index.php?id=2

Bookworm Adventures postmortem:
http://www.igda.org/casual/quarterly/2_2/index.php?id=2

Virtual Villagers 2 postmortem:
http://www.igda.org/casual/quarterly/2_3/index.php?id=6



Ben Lewis
Yatec Games
Marketing and Sales
(225)274-1550  Ext. 149
www.yatecgames.com 



-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Gorm Lai
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 3:33 PM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Sales, Exposure and Profitability

Hi Ben,

I actually meant 4 to 5 man months, by which I mean the equivalent of 1
man
for 5 months (more like 3 and half for programmers, and the rest for
artist). In my experience, this is approximately what was needed for a
polished friendly game on the OpenTV platform two to three years ago.

I am therefore surprised to hear that you think a 7+ man team is needed
for
a polished and fun modern game.

As for the costs in Denmark, I suspect they are the same as in the US.
However, I was assuming living standards for people in a start-up
willing to
live on not so much. Otherwise, as a computer scientist my normal income
expectations would range $6000 to $12000 depending on experience and job
description.

Cheers,
Gorm
--------------
IGDA Denmark Chapter Committee Member
Core Engine Programmer @ Deadline Games