Costs involved with making games
Publishing- Steam Greenlight has a one-time cost of £80 to publish your game on it. For XboxLive, there is a one-off payment of £4,100 to put it on the marketplace.
The Apple Developer Program has an annual fee of £80, whereas the Apple Developer Enterprise Program costs £243 per year. Apple take around 30% of all revenue accrued from the games developed and published, if the game is priced beforehand. If the game is free, then Apple take no royalties.
Google Play Developer costs £20 per year. If the game is free they do not take any royalties. If the game is priced then they take 30% of royalties.
Hardware
PS4 Dev kit cost £1995, however a xbox dev kit is £400. An Xbox 360 costs £190. An Xbox One costs £430. A PS3 costs £150. A PS4 costs £250. A good gaming PC will cost approximately.
Promotional Website
£8 a year for the URL and £8 a month.
Software
Unreal engine is a free software but when it comes to selling has a 5% royalty fee after you start to make $3000 per game per quarter. Unity is a subscription based software that you pay for monthly. But they don't take any royalties as you pay the monthly subscription. CRYENGINE is £45 a month but is completely royalty free. Gamemaker is a free piece of software and doesn’t state that it takes any royalties so therefore can’t take any when it comes to selling a game. Maya costs £170 a month and as they take a monthly fee they don’t take royalties.
Ratings Board
For PEGI ratings, there is a fee of £422 per game per platform. Other regions and rating boards will have different fees.
If the game cost more than$250,000 dollars the fee would be $4,000 dollars, if the cost of development was less than $250,000 dollars the fee would be$800.
IP Property and Copyright Protection
If you create something brand new then you automatically have copyright of it. To apply for a trademark it is currently £170.
References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamemaker/comments/3pwwyc/question_what_is_the_revenue_share_to_yoyo_if_you/Self Financing:
This is where you company makes enough money to fund yourself so you don't need any outside loans or other sources of money.
Bank Loans:
Most people that start up will not have the money to make a game by self funding and have to find other ways to get money such as a bank loan. A bank loan is over a set period usually of 3, 5 or 10 years. The interest you have to pay will rise and decrease depending on the amount of time and money you are requesting. if you wanted a lot of money over a large amount of time then the interest would be more than a small amount of money over little time. If you don't pay the loan back then
Indie Funding:
Indie fund is an organisation that provides funding for indie developers and the aim of the organisation is the encourage the next generation of indie developers. This is an alternative to a bank loan and would have less repercussions.
Crowd Funding:
Crowd Funding is an alternative way to finance a project which isn't as risky as a bank loan, with websites like indiegogo and kickstarter people will see a trailer and you explaining what the game is about and this can also create some fans while it is still in development as well as money. A good incentive for people to fund is by offering out a beta for people to play if they donate, this will give you feedback on what people think of the game. It usually involves a lot of people funding little amounts to create a large amount of money.
Grants:
Grants are often received from a big company/government an example is Epic Games, who give out Unreal Dev Grants which is a grant ranging from $5,000 - $50,000. There are no repercussions in a grant as you don't have to pay anything back, in the case of an Unreal Dev Grant Epic games doesn't have any restrictions with how the money is spent and you are still the owner of the IP.
Time Constraints:
Not everyone can work all hours you need them to, so you have about 5 days of 8 hours of work a week, this needs to be taken into consideration when planning for a deadline. Some software is OS exclusive software so whichever you choose windows, Macintosh or Linux there will be some programs that aren't on that system this forces you to rent/ buy new computers which can take time and money. When working to a deadline you also need to take into consideration that you need licenses the be cleared before you can work on things, if you dont have the right to work on a game then you could waste time and money. So you need to plan when to apply for licenses and the expected waiting time until you get permission.
Personnel: Depending on the size of the game, you will need a team/teams to create it. With big AAA there would be multiple teams which are divided into their role; Programmer, Artist, QA, Marketing etc. When planning to make a game then you also need to take into consideration the amount of people that you can afford, you cant hire too many people if you are not going to be able to pay them all in 1 year. You also need to take a good look at their CV to decide if they have enough experience.
Materials:
In games design when planning and bringing ideas to life is essential, to do this you will need things like card and paper. These things are fairly cheap but need to be taken into consideration. There are plenty of places to get free assets like sound and photos. FreeSound.org and opengameart.org are great places to look. If you anything that is not made by you then you need to make sure that they are under the creative commons else you could be facing copyright claims. Which is the last thing you need when making a game.
Contributors:
Some games require actors for the cutscenes they will put actors in morph suit with white blass on them an eample of this is in the NBA series they use the actual basketball player to get their shots perfect. The other kind of actors is voice actors an example of voice actors being used is in the iOS app my singing monsters. The monesters sing so they hired proffessionals to make different soudn that the monsters could make.
Intellectual property rights and licenses:
https://www.gov.uk/intellectual-property-an-overview/what-ip-is
If you have the intellectual rights to something be it the name of a product/brand, an invention of yours or just something that you have wrote/produced. Then you own that piece of work and no one can copy that from you else that you infringe the copyright/trademark law. The property has to be physical; if you have the idea for a hit game and someone else makes it then it isn't your intellectual property, you have to have made the game (or parts of it ) or have written the plan in depth for the game. You can also buy intellectual rights from someone to take over that certain product. If you are employed then most likely you do not own the rights to anything you make but if your contract specifically states then you will own it then you do own that product.
Consumer Protection:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_protection
Consumer protection protects the consumers from things such as false advertisement, in the game industry this could be the company advertising an amazing level with spaceships and big battle in a 3d arena but then when it comes out it is a 2d platformed. This is an extremely drastic case which wouldn't happen but it gets the point across. A recent game that came out was No Mans Sky where as a lawsuit was being thought about it never happened as Hello Games got away with saying that there would be multiplayer and there wasn't. This is one case where this law was practised in the real world.
Age Ratings:
http://www.askaboutgames.com/age-rating-info/
PEGI is the sole system for new console and PC games. The ratings from given by PEGI are 3, 7, 12, 16, 18, in the UK PEGI ratings over 12 are enforcable meaning that they can refuse to supply people under the age rating for the game, PEGI is the official age rating in europe. You need to get your game rated in age before you can sell it as you dont want a young gamer to see some graphic scenes in certain games.
Marketing and Advertising laws:
https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/overview
All marketing and advertising must be:
- an accurate description of the product or service
- legal
- decent
- truthful
- honest
- socially responsible (not encouraging illegal, unsafe or anti-social behaviour)
There are 2 codes of advertising which are CAP non-broadcast code and the CAP broadcast code. The non broadcast code covers all non broadcast advertising such as print and telesales, and the broadcast covers all broadcasts such as TV and Radio. Three specifications included in the non broadcast code are not to advertise to children, advertise politics and offend anyone. The broadcast code asks that businesses are accurate and accurate about their product.
Data Protection and Privacy:
https://www.gov.uk/data-protection/the-data-protection-act
Data protection regulates how companies use your personal information, it asks that the information is used:
- used fairly and lawfully
- used for limited, specifically stated purposes
- used in a way that is adequate, relevant and not excessive
- accurate
- kept for no longer than is absolutely necessary
- handled according to people’s data protection rights
- kept safe and secure
- not transferred outside the European Economic Area without adequate protection
Gambling:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-government-policy-gambling-regulation/2010-to-2015-government-policy-gambling-regulation
The gambling act 2005 regulates how gambling should be done in great britain, covering things such as bingo, casinos and arcade machines. it ensures that gambling is:
- crime-free
- fair and open
- and that children and vulnerable adults are protected
Health and Safety:
Every business should have a health and safety policy to protect their employees, a health and safety policy usually makes it so there are training programs in place to make sure the employees are using equipment the right way. But if an employee does use something wrong that they have been trained in and got injured then the company is not at fault and doesn't have to pay for any damages. There should also be things like allocated staff that are first aid trained and know what to do if something is to go wrong.
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