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Budgeting and Scheduling Your Game The Budget Now that we've defined our project and scheduled it, budgeting should be an easy task, right? Well, actually you still have several decisions to make regarding a few factors, and you still have a good deal of research to do. Let's look at the factors that are involved in the budgeting of a game. Performance = the quality of the job to be done. Time = the amount of time needed to do the job. Scope = the extent of the work being done, or the size of the project. Cost = the overall resource that is needed to do the job. Please note that cost is not simply a final dollar figure. Performance + Time + Scope = Cost If, for example, you plan a Triple-A title (performance and scope) that you plan to take two years to develop (time) the cost will fall into a certain range. Changing any of these factors will effect at least one of the others, and will usually affect the cost. If, for instance, you decide to use fewer people and take four years to develop your game title assuming you will save money, then look at the big picture. Your costs actually go up in this scenario, as you have to pay for two more years of development overhead and expenses. This also applies to morale, cash flow, and other areas of the project. Think of the effect a four year long development cycle may have on an individual. Four years is generally too long to work on a game from all points, marketing, technology, and morale. You will lose people to boredom; your technology and the market will change so you will be faced with more delays and costs in trying to "develop on the fly." Likewise, if you try to do the title in half the time, costs will go up as well. In order to meet a deadline in half the time you will need to pay personnel extra money to do the game that much faster, or pay premiums for more qualified individuals to do the work on an accelerated schedule. Think of the effect an intense non-stop one year development schedule may have on a team. The stress of trying to do a two year job in one year may kill the project altogether. Obviously, this not to say that every project should take two years to complete these examples are simply to illustrate a point. An add-on pack may take six months to a year. A creative development team may in fact come up with a way to cut a two-year development cycle down. Using a licensed engine is an option that may cut six months or more off your schedule. When scheduling you will start to see sweet spots in the process, where you get the most optimal effect. Looking at other factors, we can see the same sweet spot pattern (a sweet spot actually being the peak of a bell curve of effectiveness). The peak of maximum effectiveness, that is, the point at which you begin to lose effectiveness if you go too far in either direction. An example being, hiring an inexperienced programmer for the job who may take longer to learn the tools and not work as fast, or hiring an overpowered, high priced, or even celebrity status programmer when he is not needed (figure).
Another example is buying the cheapest computer equipment to save money. If a game developer's computers all have small monitors, slower chips, and overall terrible performance and usability, then you are going to loose effectiveness in many ways and negate any savings made in the budget. Top performing computer equipment is one area that is a bit hard to overdo - in this industry at least. The better the equipment a game developer uses, the faster and better they can work. Systems that take a long time to render, crash a lot, or cause eyestrain cut down on production. You will end up wasting more time and money on repairs, lost data, upgrades, and employee breaks. It is still advisable to make sure the equipment or software is needed and will be used, but if it is buying the best often is the most economical decision. Statements of Performance This aspect of the proposal goes back to the importance of proper design, research, and product development. If you state in your proposal, "We will make the best 3D shooter ever!" this is a Statement of Performance. If this phrase is your goal and what guides the expectations of the team that has adopted it as the vision for the title, and you then move unconsciously into development without the tools, talent, knowledge, and know-how to make that statement of performance a reality, than you are doomed for frustration and failure. Making unattainable statements of performance unconsciously is what often happens to a great many start-ups and new developers. They fail before they even get started because they are unaware of the fact that the equation (Performance + Time + Scope = Cost) is in effect. As this equation makes itself apparent after the fact, they quickly become frustrated and stall in their efforts. Budget Research Researching a budget is not simply finding the cheapest possible solution. Once again, we return to the bell curve of effectiveness. The goal here is to weigh the choices and brainstorm new ones to get to the best solution for the problem. A few examples: Say you have several long cut scene movies in your game that are being produced by a 3D animator. The movies must be rendered on a computer frame by frame, which takes computer time to do. You are faced with a few decisions; Do you buy the extra, high end, computer system that can handle the rendering, budget time to render on all the computers overnight or on weekends, or maybe send your files to a company with a render farm (a large computer network specifically designed to render 3D animation) and pay the fee for no hassle rendering? Other options may also arise which may include redesigning the game to have reduced, or no cut scenes, or outsourcing the 3D animation completely. Another example: If you are developing a title that is not a cutting edge shooter, but requires a simple 3d walk through of an environment by the end user, do you write the code from the ground up or license an engine? This, like all budgetary questions, goes back to your game design and earlier research, and is affected by other factors. To make this decision you need to know your intended audience and the technology base they are using, and you need to look into the technology you are considering licensing (can it do the job? Is it well supported by the vendor and stable?) Finally, depending on whether you choose to write the code from the ground up or license the technology dramatically affects the programmer hiring decision. Does the programmer hired need to code an entire engine with complex AI and physics, or is the walk through a simple development task that requires a programmer with a different skill set? One of the largest wastes of time and money is to mindlessly go for the cheapest solution. When looking at two choices; A) getting inexperienced individuals to do a job because they will work for less money, or B) getting the experienced, reputable, and more expensive person, it is usually a safe bet that choice B will be the best choice. The more inexperienced individual will most likely take longer to do the job, may not do it as well, and could possibly ask for tools and money during the task that they did foresee needing. Writing Down the Numbers A game budget usually breaks down into two parts, 'one-time costs' and 'recurring costs'. One time costs are for equipment, software, certain contractors, and down payments. Recurring costs are salaries, taxes, insurance, and rents. Once you have defined the following, you can start the spreadsheet. The level of performance you wish to achieve (level of technology, art, licensed property) The amount of time you need based on market movement and other factors. The scope of the Project (Add on pack, demo, cutting edge game) And the cost (Artists, programmers, designers, computers, software, offices, etc.) Below is a sample budget spreadsheet based on a 24-month development cycle. The sample is not meant to represent any real type of game or development situation.
Warning! Employees and Personnel! You need to know whether your team members will be full time, part time, or freelance, what their salary and benefits will be, and other expenses not covered here. This is where you should have a good accountant help you determine the actual cost of having an employee. In America, after you pay your employee x amount of dollars, there are still many other expenses involved such as taxes, insurance, benefits, and other items. Having an employee will most likely may add up to be the largest portion of your budget. If you want more in-depth information on some of the topics covered in this article, you can consult my book, Designing 3D Games That Sell, published by Charles River Media. In that book I try to cover everything an aspiring game developer needs to know to develop a game that will "really" be published. Discuss this article in Gamasutra's discussion forum ________________________________________________________ |
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