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£12,000… all it takes to create a casual game
Jun 18th 2008 at 13:40 by Tim Ingham
The bosses of FunOrb owner Jagex and casual network SPILL Group have put a price on what it takes to develop a top-selling online casual game – and it's less than you might think.
Speaking to a crowd of games industry execs at the GameHorizon Conference in Newcastle this morning, Jagex CEO Geoff Iddison said that the firm's average development cost per game has been less than $25,000 (£12,800).
Jagex, which is best known for its self-developed MMO Runescape, owns popular casual portal FunOrb. The site has previously only featured Jagex's own titles, but Iddison added that the firm may now be ready to take on board third-party developers.
"If somebody came up with a good game for FunOrb and one that would be good for our infrastructure, we’d certainly talk about it," he said.
"We launched FunOrb with a low budget, adding games every two weeks. The cost per game is less that $25,000. That's bearing in mind that we’ve got [development] infrastructure already in place and that it depends on [whether it's a] single or multiplayer game."
Simon Usiskin, portal manager of SPILL Group – which owns a network of sites including GirlsGoGames.com – backed up Ibbison's estimation.
SPILL Group has two offices in Holand and Poland, and develops its casual titles out of its studio in Shanghai, China.
"In terms of the Flash games we make out of China – obviously bearing in mind we had to buy the studio first – our cost per game is also around that level," he said.
"The difficulty comes when you look at some of the Advergames [for major companies]. Guys at Sky in the UK made Gillette's game, for which they paid upwards of £150,000.
"We've got 80 guys in China producing one game a week, compared to Gilette who possibly paid over the odds, but now have a truly amazing game with millions of players every day."
Greg
Jun 18th 2008 | 15:12
congrats for the guys at Jagex, it's great advertising for them, but what lies beneath this? Shall we now send the info to CasualGaming like "We will make a game for 100$?" If it is an industry shouldn't we rather play fair within it and stop doing the bargaining? There are some cheap and crappy games and the end of this. So, who's with me? :)
gamesnostradamus
Jun 18th 2008 | 15:23
Gimme a break....both if them aren't factoring in the fully burdened cost of running a studio. Also these are Flash games...a fully developed downloadable game would cost much more than this. If you want to see a site where it costs NOTHING to have teh games developed look at www.yoyogames.com...it's the world's largest user generated games site.
BushDoctor
Jun 18th 2008 | 17:41
The article is misleading.
1 : They are developing in china.
2.: They are developing small content games in flash.
So, if we would like to say the truth its sounds like this : its 25K USD to develop a flash based online casual game if you make this game in china with limited content.
Danny R
Jun 18th 2008 | 18:26
... which have both been the background of top-selling online games, no? I cannot believe it's this cheap. I've been involved in core games my whole working life - recently switching over the DS and full game downloads on PC. When I see how much these guys are spending (both companies are pretty big deals in casual online, as far as I can tell), it makes me feel a little ashamed at the numbers I've seen spent on absolute failures.
Don M
Jun 20th 2008 | 16:09
I think this would be a problem and not something to be trumpeted. Although 80 guys in China can produce a game a week (I would hate to be those guys), I'm worried that the market is going to be flooded with crappy Flash games. I mean, most of them NOW aren't very good. I suppose you could say it already is. But going forward, development costs should be going up to produce quality flash games under quality work conditions. Because either those guys don't sleep or go to the bathroom, or those are simple, uninteresting flash games.
Tom
Aug 15th 2008 | 12:48
I'm with you Greg!
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