{"id":3736,"date":"2016-01-25T10:37:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T10:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=3736"},"modified":"2016-01-25T10:37:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T10:37:00","slug":"a-video-game-budget-breakdown-gratuitous-space-battles-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2016\/01\/25\/a-video-game-budget-breakdown-gratuitous-space-battles-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A video game budget breakdown: Gratuitous Space Battles 2."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Indie developers, especially ones working on their first game are always very interested to know how much stuff costs, and whether they should spend more money on X or Y. It can be a bit intimidating and scary when you have no idea what you are doing and its your first game. To try and help with this, I thought I&#8217;d release some data about the last full game I shipped as the developer, which was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gratuitousspacebattles2.com\">Gratuitous Space Battles 2<\/a>. For those who aren&#8217;t aware, its a top-down 2D space strategy game with more lasers and particles than you can shake a stick at, and it looks like this:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Image4.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3739\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3739\" src=\"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Image4-550x344.jpg\" alt=\"Image4\" width=\"550\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Image4-550x344.jpg 550w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Image4-768x480.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Image4-1024x640.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Image4-317x198.jpg 317w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Image4.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Or in video form like this:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GowasouFWRs?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, here is a pie chart breakdown of the cost (EXCLUDING MY CODING TIME) for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gratuitousspacebattles2.com\">Gratuitous Space Battles 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b1.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3738\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3738\" src=\"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b1-550x483.png\" alt=\"b1\" width=\"550\" height=\"483\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b1-550x483.png 550w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b1-768x675.png 768w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b1-317x279.png 317w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b1.png 899w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And for those who hate marketing, here is the same chart but without any:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b2.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3737\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3737\" src=\"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b2-550x534.png\" alt=\"b2\" width=\"550\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b2-550x534.png 550w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b2-768x745.png 768w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b2-317x308.png 317w, https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/b2.png 814w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Obviously you have to strongly remain aware that there was a LOT of coding time by me which I have not included here, because obviously as the owner of the company its hard to work out how much I should value my own time at. Regardless of this, maybe some people find this useful;. If you want more insight into why the costs are the way they are, you probably <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gratuitousspacebattles2.com\">need to check out the game<\/a>. GSB2 is a VERY GUI and visual-effects intense game. It has a lot of very complex GUI elements, and thats why its such a big chunk of the cost. It also has very good dramatic music. If you are making a 3D game, costs might be different. If you are working on mobile or ipad, again it might be different. This was a hardcore PC strategy game designed for huge monitors and hardcore players. How does this budget breakdown compare with yours? Share in the comments :D<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indie developers, especially ones working on their first game are always very interested to know how much stuff costs, and whether they should spend more money on X or Y. It can be a bit intimidating and scary when you have no idea what you are doing and its your first game. To try and<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-right\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Continue Reading&#8230; A video game budget breakdown: Gratuitous Space Battles 2.<\/span><a class=\"btn btn-secondary continue-reading\" href=\"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2016\/01\/25\/a-video-game-budget-breakdown-gratuitous-space-battles-2\/\">Continue Reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,105,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-gratuitous-space-battles","category-gsb2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3736"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3742,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}