2d browser RPG

[deimos]

Hello,

 

I am an independent comics publisher and I will publish my first project this year. I wish for marketing reasons to make a browser rpg set in the world of the comic.

 

Therefore I am looking for a development company to undertake the project.

 

A few questions I have are:

 

What is the spectrum of a 2D RPG budget?

Of the budget how much of it is the art's percentage?

What is the time frame?

How long does the writing of the story take before the programming starts?

 

Thank you in advance!

 

Deimos

 

PS: my email is [email protected] for anyone wishing to discuss this in detail

[a_bertrand]

Hi,

Art in a graphical game takes a lot of time and effort and therefore a good part of the budget too, but a share of the project is hard to guess without really knowing if you can re-use an existing engine, or if you need to have it done from scratch and how the game will be made (web, client / server, single user, etc).

The spectrum can start with a very low budget and slowly grow from it, however that's difficult if you don't do all by yourself. So if you want to hire a developer (a professional one) think between 40'000$ to 120'000$ per year, and for an artist count between 60'000$ to 120'000$ per year. That is if you take western developers. If you want for Indian or Chinese people, you may get cheaper price but collaboration can be harder and therefore take more time to reach what you want. Added to the salaries you need to plan marketing budget, software and if you plan to offer online experience server hosting. So, if you really want to start a full business with a couple of people and the budget to make some advert you would need about 500'000$ min. Now if you plan to do it in the Indy way (like we all do it here), you can start with as low as 0$ and create your stuff on your own PC, then find a cheap hosting for about 60$ per year. Marketing you will need to think if you want to invest in it or not at that point it will cost anyhow time if you don't want to spend money.

Timeframe depends on the quantity of things you want to do. So if you take a pre-made engine, change just the art and create the story, a game could be done in about 6-12 months. If you need to code things then add like 12-24 more months to it. If you want to make it from scratch it may take 5-10 years.

Story should be known BEFORE coding anything or at least a good chunk of it so it is known what kind of features you require. Basically based on the storyline you create a requirement list and based on that you check if you can use an pre-made engine or if you need to code more less everything.

If you go for an outsourced company which takes over all that work for you, then you should ask multiple companies how much it would cost, and how long it will take. But be sure to check what those company did before giving away your money...

[deimos]

Thank you very much for the detailed response. As I sure don't have 5-10 years (much less $500k...) I should look for an option other than a full rpg that can be delivered within 6 months.

I asked a company and they told me the budget for an rpg is $6k+

[a_bertrand]

Well, 6 months is a VERY short time, and unless you need to just code your quests within an existing engine and replace the art with something you have already ready on the side, I doubt it is doable.

Now speaking about 6K I can tell you that this is a very very small budget and considering that if you ask a company to create just an home page with a couple of of sub-pages for you with a unique look you are looking for a 3K job I doubt with 6K you will get anywhere far beside a very small flash game.

From my own experience in the game development field, I can tell you that you don't do much in this time laps and with this budget. For my NEaB game it took me 5Y at let's say 50% (or maybe 80%) of my time, and I started about 1 year ago with the development of the second game and I'm by far not finished with it.

So what you should come with is not only the story line but also what kind of features the game should offer, and then we can discuss more precisely about the time and budget, but again don't trust those companies which are way too cheap.

BTW if you click the chat icon on top of the forum pages, you will end up in our chat and that can speed up discussions.

[deimos]

Honestly I was surprised too by the budget they suggested.

I have an idea for an alternative that may be doable.

5 years right?! That must be something you should be proud of and very rewarding to see completed!!

[a_bertrand]

So after a chat discussion with deimos, he want a PvP turn based online battle between players and side mini-games for training the avatars. All that in flash.

I would evaluate it as the following:

A mini game may costs between 2 and 6 weeks to develop, but for simplicity I choose 3 weeks time.

The main PvP battle may requires alone between 8 and 16 weeks to be developed (with server and client).

So if we count about 5 mini games it would be:

min: 3*5 + 8 => 23 weeks => nearly 6 months full time but this is the min time I would think of with 5 mini (really mini) games.

Now... by checking the price of a flash developer (http://www.indeed.com/salary/Flash-Developer.html) it is about 81K per year which means 40k for the salary of the developer without any art (graphics or sound).

On the other side, you can hire people for as low as 15$ per hour (Indian people mainly) with an unknown quality of work (http://www.odesk.com/contractors/title/Flash+Development?vt_cmp=buyers_lowltv&vt_adg=flash_development&vt_src=google&vt_med=text&vt_kw=flash%20development&gclid=CODN_s62jKcCFQEOfAodp2VDdg&_redirected) which would be about 14K$ for this task.

[deimos]

Thank you so much a_bertrand for the tremendous help and insight! You have been informative and precise!