Digital Distribution Costs, How much does it cost to make a game?

Playing games online is so fun. Earlier, people used to have very minimal choices of games to play on the Internet. But as the gaming world on the web expanded and more and more people started to develop an interest in gaming, it provided the game developers with a golden opportunity to expand their business as well. Since gaming became a trend, game developers around the globe have started to develop a large number of games. The game development has increased to such a scale that almost tens of news games are launched on a daily basis. Also, it is not just about providing people with choices of various games to play, bettingnews88 wrote about why video games are getting more expensive and there’s one more obvious reason why game developers try so hard to develop new games – profits. The fact that to make profits, you need to invest is not unknown. So while playing a game, has this question ever occurred to you –  How much does it cost to make a game? In this article, let’s try to answer this question.

The range of costing

Let us give you a brief idea of the range of the cost to make a game before we move on to the brief details. So it takes somewhere between $0 and $265 million.

Yup, that’s a wide range. This doesn’t really answer the question, does it? Let’s get into the details now. The games can be divided into three categories on the basis of the costing they require:

1. Indie Game: A game that is developed by an individual is called an indie game. You can figure out yourself that if it is a game developed by an individual, its cost would be comparatively less than other games.
2. AAA game: These are the games requiring a large amount of funding. AAA games are developed by major publishers. FIFA and Battlefield titles are examples of AAA games.
3. Triple ‘i’ game: Games that lie somewhere between Indie games and AAA games are called Triple ‘i’ games. Accordingly, their funding is less than AAA games but still more than that of Indie games.

Different costs that are incurred

1. Designing: Designing a game is the most crucial phase of the game development process. It is the design of the game that is majorly responsible for attracting gamers as well as investors to your game. The design cost of a game depends on whether you decide to design it in 2D or 3D. 
2. Networking: This is something that a lot of people don’t know about, but networking, setting the protocols, and developing a framework that makes it possible for a game to work on the Internet is not an easy task and hence requires a significant amount of funding. 
3. Development: The actual technical development part of the game enters here. The development cost of a game depends on the complexity of the game. The higher the number of variables and levels of a game, the higher would be its cost.
4. Promotion: Apart from the development phase, once a game is developed, costs need to be incurred on its promotional activities to make sure that all the work done on its development pays off. 

It is very difficult to specify the exact amount. The cost of developing the game can be quite high. Many different factors determine the cost. Expect another similar cost to be added for marketing and promotion. Game development is a complex process that involves many experts, requires time and effort and of course money.