[game_edu] Resource division for games

[Dan Carreker]

Well, okay I get your point but it still seems of very limited use.  Fallout 3 is a game that was in production over 4 years and easily 250 people plus outsourcing (more if you include Interplay's production before they sold it.)  Portal was a 10  person teamthat finished  in little over two years.
 
If you average them together, does it really give you any basis to make generalized comments about?  I think some division, even if done by monetary cost, size of team, or production time would be more usefull.  Such as "games with production costs under $1 million"  tend to utilize 50% of resources on programming, where as games over $5 million spend about 35% of their budget on programming."  Theses numbers are, of course, entirely made up, and there may be too much a variation even after classified this way for the numbers to be useful, but you get the idea.
 
Just my thoughts

--- On Thu, 2/5/09, Mark Baldwin <mark at baldwinconsulting.org> wrote:


From: Mark Baldwin <mark at baldwinconsulting.org>
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Resource division for games
To: "'IGDA Game Education Listserv'" <game_edu at igda.org>
Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 4:19 PM


Actually, I think generalizing has a great deal of value.  It doesn't tell
you the specifics about any single project but it does tell you a lot about
the nature of entertainment software and the creation process.   Consider
the two possible comparative cases:

Case 1 (my current approximation for games):
Management    10%
Design    20%
Programming    25%
Art/sound    40%
Testing     5%

Case 2 (which might apply to software like Quicken or Word):
Management    5%
Design    5%
Programming    75%
Art/sound    5%
Testing    10%

The first case implies a great deal of the resources go into the creative
(art and design).  That even the creative might be the most important part
of games. The second case if it was true about games implies most of the
resources go into software engineering, and engineering is the most
important aspect of games.   Consider what each case if generally true ABOUT
GAMES might mean for education, game ludology, game software engineering or
even games management.  Certainly, approximations and rough estimates have
errors, but if we want to look at the big picture, we have to have these
types of approximations.

I would suggest that understanding the mix of components that goes into
games can be a powerful insight into the huge difference between tool
software and entertainment software.  

Mark 
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Mark Lewis Baldwin
Baldwin Consulting
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Golden, CO 80401
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303-408-3727 (m)
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