How much money do i need to make a game such as age of empire?

Question

please tell me how much money needed..tell me things like...do i need to sign any contract? must i hire graphic expert?..and please let me know more if possible..i need to know..

Kid L

Answer 1

all I know is that you need to have a hard working staff that excel in programing and are really good with graphics it takes a long time to make games trust me I know.

Answer 2

Current development costs of games of that nature probably somewhere in the millions, also development time varries depending on the team you hire, anywhere from a year or two up to 5-10 years.

Answer 3

This depends how much of it you can do yourself. I've always wanted to make a Real Time Strategy game like the classic age of empires myself but I don't have the programming skills or really even the graphic development skills to do so. Coding the game shouldn't cost you anything except time. Lots and lots and lots and lots of time. Graphic development applications will cost you a bit, I don't really know what game designers use, if it's something off the shelf like photoshop or if it's something custom. Fortunately you wouldn't need the HUGELY expensive 3d graphics programs that other genres of game require. It'd be pretty unlikely that sort of a game would cost millions.

Unless you want to spend some 3-8 years making the game entirely by yourself from scratch I think most of your costs would go to hiring people. Then there's distribution so that people actually know about your game. Fortunately there are homemade game making communities who will gladly test out your game for you which will also take out the cost of quality assurance testing. If they like it, it will spread and you could get people in the community who will help you on other projects. I don't know how much it would cost who you would need to speak to or anyhting about conventional distribution of physical media at games shops.

Considering it will have considerably lower budgets than proffessionally made games the first game should probably be thought of as an investment because people probably won't want to buy it from you and it's unlikely that with the resources at your disposal you'll create something on a par with proffessional studio quality. Good news about it is though that what will cost you the most is probably just time. Software applications could be quite a considerable initial outlay, though you could maybe download the ones you need on the sly. Also you've chosen a nice small scale variety of game to produce that will (relatively) less complex to make than others.

Video game companies are also looking through homebrew communties and holding competitions for amateur game makers to scout new talent. Competition winners get jobs, and development kits and investments for projects.

The other avenue is to try to make your own small scale stuido which really will cost you lots of money and will still only be small. This is difficult to do, but should be done more often because the small indy companies make some of the funnest games.

I guess to answer your question it'd probably cost a few thousand to make a complete functioning RTS game minus the usual costs of proffessional development. Not being a game designer though I'm a bit nervous about that figure. I don't know how much the software would cost but at least some of the applications will be pricy.

EDIT:Oh forgot to say those are online communities. They really work out and the quality is getting better and better. There is a game which in fact is actually being sold now and turning in some money called mount and blade developed entirely by users and no game companies involved. This game is fully 3d and lots of fun and very high quality and being updated and checked for glitches all the time and constantly has new modes of gameplay and new maps and new content added with each update.

Answer 4

unless you plan on making it all yourself or are part of an open source project on the net it's gunna cost you a lot!

Answer 5

Mmm. Probably something like 50-100k And unless you want to do the graphics yourself, then yes. It takes like years to make a game with a group of like.. 20 people. With one person.. sheesh.

Answer 6

To make that kinda game from scratch.. I would say 500,000$. You would need a whole team of developers as well as graphical engineers. You would need computers and many more things..

Answer 7

it depends on what game your making  

Answer 8

Dude, r u serious, AOTE SUCKS. Only spend money if it's free. (Go figure.) My cousin had it in utah, and... retarded.

Answer 9

$55.00

Answer 10

nothing, try to convince a rich guy that your idea works and see if he will fund it. if it doesn't work it will be him that goes bankrupt, not you :D