[Question] How to know how many people/time you approximately need for a game ?

Hello,

I'm a student and I'm lucky enough to have the possibility of having people joining me on my first attempt to create a game with a team, because we need to make projects every year and I feel like this is a good opportunity to try create something.
The game idea is not really big, it's 2D, it uses sprites, the mechanics are kind of simple but should have a lot of ramifications if everything goes fine.
I'm try to work on some kind of preproduction, trying to get things clear so that anyone joining me understands everything he needs to know. I tried to document myself about preproduction and I saw a lot of people saying that it's really important to know how much time you have and how many people you need.
In theory, I should have up to three years, part-time, for the development of the game, before I'm not in the school anymore. But I have no idea how to estimate the number of people I need and on what role.
Art is a big part of my game, not because I need it to be incredibly gorgeous but because there is a lot of different characters and places to draw, so I guess I would need most of the team to work on that, and I don't believe the game is extremely hard to code because it doesn't have much complexity, so one or two people to handle the coding should be enough if we can go for 2 or 3 years of development.
But, again, I don't know how to estimate these things and it would be really helpful if someone knows how to define those things, so that I can try to understand what i'm getting into and maybe change the scope of the game. I understand it's easy to get delusional when it comes to creating games, and I don't want to screw this opportunity to make something good, so I'll take anything you know about this.

Thanks a lot in advance for any of the answers, have a nice day !

 

I'm a lone dev. The game I've been working on has been in development for about 13 months. I plan to release in November. All other games I've built took me between 1-3 months.

I've built a crap game in 3 days and the customers perception was exactly that, a crap game. Also some LD game at some point in 2 days, which on the surface looked alright, but the code was a complete POS. It was designed poorly to fit the schedule, which I'll never do again because I disliked the experience.

//opinion
You shouldn't shackle yourself to a 3 years project for your first round. Imo, learning how to build games and learning how to polish games are 2 completely different things. When all the core functionalities are built and you keep going on the same project, you're learning how to polish, rather than how to build games.

Polishing takes a lot of time. The smallest details can be iterated on a hundred times to get the right feel. The marginal gains you get, as you work on the same project, are only diminishing once you enter the polishing phase.

There's much to learn in regards of polishing, but it's not the foundation of game development, it's the peak. You need a strong foundation before you climb.

Second point, I like to think that 95% of the game devs will, at some point in their career, get into a fight with motivation issues. They come to realize that game development is immensely more complex than they initially thought. Things take more time, aren't as good looking, aren't feeling right.

Basically, they come to the conclusion that they suck and doing things right is going to take a lot more time than expected. At least, I know I did. I'd hate for you to get this reality check halfway through a 3 year project.

Anyway, this is all coming from personal experience. Take it or leave it, I just felt inspired tonight!

You need experience to gauge this and no one else can do it for you because we don't have enough information.

Oh la la, what a wall of text I just wrote

 

I would perhaps suggest you learn the ins and outs of game dev first... Or shoot for something interesting and small.

A team of 5 people would be doing well if they finished their first small 2D title in 12 months, just a bit of perspective if people aren't hugely experienced.

Why not go in expecting and designing for very little but perhaps see where you all are at the end, you can always go back and add to it after it's finished.

 

Echoing what the others said, start small. It makes everything better. It will help you determine the scope of a larger project, and it is better to learn lessons on short throw away projects, than on a huge one you care about. You quite literally don't know what you don't know yet. Your first project is going to take way longer than you think, better to double the time of week long project than a 3 year one.

Also, get some experience under your belt before recruiting others. You might even consider joining others' projects before your own. If you haven't built a game yet, you aren't ready lead one. It's also worth bearing in mind that reputation means a lot in this industry. It's highly likely your first game won't get finished, let alone one that ambitious. Taking others along for that journey might not serve you well in the future.

Good luck.

 

Thanks a lot for the answers, these are really helpful.

Thankfully, the game idea I have can be scoped down by a lot and still keep its essence/main idea.
I already have several things set up for this year, so I will be working with other people anyways, because we need to do team projects, but I have several ideas on how this game can be narrowed down to its basic elements, it indeed sounds like a good idea to start with this.
Hopefully, by the end of the year, I will have learned a lot of things about game development, the people I will work with will probably get better at what they do aswell, and we'll see know how to work with each other.
I guess the goal for this year will be to get something simple, functional, that we can come back to the 2nd year and modify to start working on "the real thing". Also, probably understand the strengths and weaknesses of everyone to anticipate and scope down (or not) the plans for the second and third year. I guess that's the answer to my original question too.

This scenario sounds a lot less scary than what I originally pictured, I hope things will go well.
Thanks again, have a nice day !

 

That is a solid plan.