How long does it take to complete a game? Please read

Hi everyone I'm new to the forums and I would like your input. I recently quit my job and decided to focus everyday of the next few months to making a game. I actually quit my job of 5 years to pursue this so it's not just an idea that I barely came up with I am 100% serious and dedicated. I have never made a game before and barely have a little experience with coding. This is the product of life getting in the way but now I have the time I need to fully dedicate myself to this. So give me your honest answer. Roughly how long will it take someone who still has to a lot to learn about unity and coding, who is a 1 man team, who knows nothing on modeling characters ( might have to pay someone to do this for me ), but that is willing to invest 14 hrs a day to make a game? Any other advice is welcome. I would also like to know how much money it costs to make this happen? I have no idea what goes into releasing a game so any info on additional charges is welcome. Last but not least I would like to develop for the Wii U so any info on how one goes about this is especially welcome. Thanks in advance to anyone who answers my questions.

 

My 2 cents.
Some of your questions have books written on them. May I suggest some books by Jeannie Novak?
*Dumps a pile of books on your desk*

Your best bet it to work on small projects that will make it out the door. Look at what sells. Unity supports the XBOX, and PS3, IOS, and Android. Try to develop for those. Its hard to develop for the Wii U, there is a lot of publishing costs for that platform you probably don't have. The fastest buck is to try to make a successful cross-platform freemium game (Facebook, Google Chrome, Android, IOS). That still takes alot of money to do it right. Its easier and cheaper to start-up on the Mobile market.

Also look to see if there are government grants for making video games in your area, if there isn't, move to an area that does.

If you're programming, you can release a game that doesn't sell and still find a job if it has some cool features. If you haven't started making money in 3 months find a day job, unless you're living in your parent's basement.

You need to network, and if you're making a game on your own you need to read books on game development, you need to understand the restrictions of the platform you're publishing on. For example Civilization for PC needs a total rework for the PS3. Thats $$$,$$$$,$$$. You're unknown so you'll need to take that into consideration, you don't have fans to advertise for you!

Finally get other people to play your alpha releases, most of the programmers I worked with made some small projects, they never let anyone else play it until it was ready to publish. They missed out on valuable feedback on the gameplay.

I would not recommend spending 14 hours on making a game. You need to spend time on marketing, learning and life. You ought to become active in a game dev forum.

 

I'd guess somewhere between a week and a century...it's not really possible to answer because it depends on you and what game you're doing. As for the Wii U, as far as I know it still requires being a registered Nintendo developer, though there seem to be signs that they may be easing up on some of the requirements for that (such as having a physical office building).

--Eric

 

Well I can give you my experience. I came from an IT, web development background, without any real hardcore programming background. Spent a couple months learning Corona and Lua, then switched over to Unity at the beginning of this year. Spent the last 4 months working on the project in my sig. I'm hoping to release it on for IOS in another couple of months. I've been working on it almost full time, I'm also in college full-time so I cant put 14 hrs a day in

My advice, consider starting with a 2d game and try and keep it simple, but fun. Take advantage of the asset store! I've bought many valuable assets on there that have saved me tonnnns of time. 2d Toolkit, Pool Manager, Audio Toolkit, etc... Good luck!

 

I hope they do remove that from the requirements, as its stupid for people to have to rent a place out just for themselves. I assume the only real reason they do this is too double check that your 100% legit and serous?

 

You should be happy to hear that they repealed that requirement. One of the representatives for the indie market has confirmed that they are making many changes to accommodate the indie and that they were not great at handling indie games in the past.

 

I guess it could take you a few years -- see gasketball or a few days if you come up with a great new concept -- slender, but probably six months to get something decent. Your game should also have some kind of unique selling point so you can try and get the bloggers interested something to set it apart from the same game they played 100 times before.

 

yea I'm 100% sure they removed that requirement and they have been getting more attention from indie devs because they've gotten a lot friendlier. I really only want to develop for wiiU because I like the possibilities the controller offers. I studied a lot today and I'm gonna study a lot tomorrow and the day after and so on until I complete my task I just basically want all the help I can get. Im not doing the character modeling but I am doing everything else.

 

My current game is about a month out from release (via a publisher) and has taken 3 years of hobby development on the side of a professional game-related job for a core team of three.

If I were to have worked on it full time I'd say it's a couple of months of work, but it doesn't really work like that as if I'd done it that way I'd have had a really different result.

I have in the past made games in days, though I wouldn't say they were of commercial release quality. A local studio working exclusively on iOS games concentrates on releasing one every two months, with one-point-five experienced developers working on them. Another local indie group has just released a game they've been working on under similar circumstances to my own which has taken them about two years. It's not uncommon for well-financed large titles to take near a decade (look up L.A. Noire).

So it's really an un-answerable question. But, typically, for something of commercial release quality you're looking at at least two to three "man-months" of effort, probably from experienced developers.

 

Yay! I might look into it later on.

~lanDog

 

@op i really think you would have been better off keeping your job and just messing around in game development part time making a basic game.. then once you have done that maybe think about making somithng a bit bigger but still not quitting your day job lol..

Tho i guess you could be rich so money is not an issue.. if thats the case then start with the very basics anyway adn try and teach yourself as much as possible..

How long does it take to make a game..? thats impossible to say.. you could make a pong style game in a few hours maybe but other games can take years and years.

Good luck.

 

[/QUOTE]
To be honest, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Though I did assume they're in some position where that wasn't as crazy as it sounds, ie: not dependant on the income from that job, as is suggested by their willingness to pay for modelling work.

 

Want some keys to success?
* Build MANY projects, not one.
* Finish a project every 8-16 weeks.
* Simplify EVERYTHING. No networking, no 3D, etc...
* Use the asset store
* Make your app JUICY

There ya go. My first project was 9 weeks, then 4 months, then 8 weeks, then 2 weeks, and this morning, I just submitted a brand new one! Apple will get to it in a week, but it took me 14 weeks to develop. Between projects, I deliberately practice my skills - that's 7 days a week, for those keeping count. My wife does the art, and I have a couple friends in CA that help me from time to time.

The bad news - your products will suck and not earn much $$, for a long, long time. You've no prior experience and no training, and you're competing with millions of developers around the world. And, there's good news too: with each product you FINISH, your odds go up. So, finish lots of little products and get them out so you can learn from your failures. Repeat.

Good luck,
Gigi.

 

You can make a very simple game in a short period of time. Watch this lecture on how they take a simple breakout clone and make it awesome by adding juice.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016487/Juice-It-or-Lose

 

You CAN make a game in < 48hrs (ludum dare) but to make a triple A game like "The Last Of Us" it would likely take 3 years with a team of like 200 people.
my game "Kingdom Hunter" will likely be finished in 3 - 5yrs.

 

I challenge you Tyler. Mark a date on your calendar, 12 weeks from now and finish a game by that date. Any topic, any genre. Use what you have or start fresh. Quality is irrelevant. The only rule is you must finish it! Done this way, even a terrible product will raise your skills dramatically. And when you return, your true love, Kingdom Hunter, will be 5x better for it.

The science? Creating something to show to others will push you into deliberate practice (ie. practicing things almost beyond your ability). And some writers call this "Bullets, then Canonballs" (by Jim Collins of Great By Choice), or "Ooching" (by Chip Heath and Dan Heath of Decisive).

Gigi.

 

I've been trying both bullets and cannonballs and a fair bit of ooching this week. I think it was that dodgy mutton vindaloo I had on Monday.

 

Genre?
AAA or simple angry bird type game?
How deep you know of all of those processes involved in game development minus character modelling?
Required time heavily depends on it.

For example a shadow of colossus clone might need one year,on the other hand game like god of war might need multiple years multiply dozens of you.

Do you have roughly basic idea of all those phases in game development?
I think this might help you.
Exporting to some specific platform matters a little now.Don't worry about this part. Gone are the days when you had created a PC game and turned towards MIPS assembly to fit your engine for ps2 exporting. Unity will take care of this.

First release some pc mobile game,have some cash. knock on wario world and hit apply. take some time to get verified.If they ignore you,apply again. get the devkit and get free unity3d pro license. click on file>export>wii or wiiu>submission method..........blah blah .wad has been sent to devkit!!simple isn't it?

 

I have to agree with this, despite being on the tail end of a 3 year project of my own. During that project I did stop and take time to do a couple of micro-projects, and I also completed a huge number of projects in my professional work.

After two years of development on the main project I scrapped it, started again keeping nothing but art assets, rebuilt it entirely in less than a year, made it better in every way. (It's now in the process of being published, by the way, having got a publisher's attention at the first public appearance of the upgraded game.) Those time frames should be taken with a grain of salt, because it's a hobby project on the side of a full time job with the team spending really fluctuating amounts of time on it. But the general idea is that spending some time building up experience with finished projects can cut more time off a large project than you take to do it, and give you a better product in the end.

Also, longer projects are less fun. Our game was playable within 7 days of the project starting 3 years ago. The vast majority of the work since then has essentially been polish, with the exceptions of an unfinished level editor and support for additional platforms. It's more fun to be working on different projects every few months than to slog away at the same thing for years.

And if you don't have much experience you really don't have any basis to design a game that you'll still want to build in 5 years, even without considering project fatigue. As you get more projects under your belt your approach to design will evolve. And if you start with a multi-year project right off the bat you're forcing yourself to live with decisions made based on minimal prior experience for the entire duration.

 

Hmmm...I might have to take up this challenge.

 

I think maybe you went out on a limb a bit early if you don't have much or any experience with Unity or coding or graphics stuff.. there IS a learning curve and it may take you quite a while to get to where you are really productive on a serious project. Probably you should look at using as many third party asset store tools and content as possible to speed this up for you, and maybe a visual scripting extension.