Excluding the programmer, How much can it cost to produce a game for Amiga?
These costs may be:
1. Graphics copyrights or to have one free grahic designer (in Amiga currently impossible).
2. Sound copyrights .
3. Song for the background atsmomera copyrights.

After, the cost to make a proffesional game:
1. Box.
2. CD or diskette.
3. Manual.

And if you have much money:
1. Advertising in Amiga magzines, web sites, etc.

How much does all this cost?

And excluding the programming language, because C is free but there is one that its cost is 100 euros or 40 the update.

@Templario

Quote:

2. Sound copyrights 3. Song for the background atsmomera copyrights.

Can't comment on the other types of artwork, but music and sound effects for a game can be obtained quite cheaply if you use a "stock music" service such as Shockwave Sound (which, by the way, has a strong Amiga legacy because it is run by Bjorn Lynne aka Dr. Awesome of the Crusaders). I think they sell copyright to a piece of music for 30 dollars or so.

But of course, the disadvantage of stock music is that somebody else might use the same music in a different game - the same risk you run with stock photos as a graphics designer.

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@Templario

Friend Templario,

in case you are asking for yourself, you should also include the legal costs of protecting yourself from a few obscenity / pedophilia / necrophilia lawsuits.

:oD


MEGA RJM!

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@Trixie
For the sounds I remember that in the 90 there were CDs with sounds for make games, I never bought any.
For the music 30 dollars isn't much, because I though that copyrights were higher, although the song may appear in other games or movie.

@Templario

I would divide your question into three separate parts:

1. How much it costs to make physical copy
2. How much advertising costs
3. How much making the game costs.


1 and 2 are much more stable costs to answer.

1. To make a physical copy, of course depending if you want boxes etc. but nowadays quite many smaller CD press factories (the ones that dont actually press discs themselves, but actually send them to factories for them to be made), offer pretty decent looking burned CD-options, which are quite reasonably priced.

Using this option you would get Cd in typical Jewel Case, with Cd-label and cover papers for lets say around 2 Euros each, depending upon the amount you are going to make. But as example, making 100 copies like this, might well cost only 250 Euros + or - even quite much.

If you actually Press Cds, then the price is roughly 1 Euro per disc in small amounts (500 usually being the minimum, in games case perhaps 300 as that is minimum for Single Cds) and pricing rouhgly consists of 500 euro start cost (sort of making the mold of that Cd) + 30 euro Cent per pressed Cd and on top of that probably less than, but roughly 100 Euros to make 1 000 copies of cover papers and maybe 10 cents per jewel case.

Roughly this usually ends up around 1000 Euros in total.

So for small amounts, count maybe 2.50 Euro per copy, and for slightly more professional, press the Cd for roughly 1 000 Euros for 500 - 1 000 copies.



2. Advertising in Amiga market is pretty cheap. You can check a bit about Amiga Future Magazines pricing from here: https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/ads/

But to put it short, if you have 500 Euro budget for Amiga Market advertising, that is already a big budget basically and you should be able to advertise all around the Amiga world already so to say.


3. This is much more difficult question, since it depends upon your requirements.

There are lots of good free graphics even that you can use, and so is music and sound. So you could get it all for free basically, as long as you are restricting your things to what is available.

Main problem is basically in graphics, since on Sound and Music front you can in most cases find something suitable enough as long as you keep your demand low enough.

However, with Graphics it is more difficult, since if you dont use any GFX artist, then you are limited to what graphics you can find.

For example Point n Click adventure game is pretty much out of question.

2D top view Zelda/RPG game however is very much doable, except you have to take into consideration that you need to limit your story to the graphics. You might figure out an idea for an item, but if you dont have graphics to support it, you have to scratch it. Same with move, enemies, especially big bosses, you simply might not be able to make them due to lack of Graphics.


What comes to paying for GFX, you have to understand that it isnt so simple either. You could use free graphics and then hire someone to make the missing item, but that guy you hire needs to be someone who can make similar kind of graphic to fit the rest of the graphics, and that can be costy/difficult, unless you by purpose use simple general looking gfx that any gfx artist can make.

Basically excellent GFX costs maybe around 3 000 Euros a month salary.

There are however some possibilities to get this cost down significantly.

First is that you could ask him to not finish touch his picture. For basically those pro guys first version is already good enough for most people, and the extra touch can be left undone (not everyone is willing to do this).

Another way is that these people who make free graphics, they might also be willing to make gfx based upon wishes for some fixed price.

Especially those who make Graphics to sell them, they might sell some say, Western gfx package for 50 Euros, and then you can pay them for example 200 Euros for them to make some certain package, which means that you wouldnt be only one getting them, but anyone else will be allowed to buy it at later point for that usual 50 Euros, but the good thing in this is that you are getting exact graphics that you need, for a cheap price, although someone else might be using them too.

What comes to music, at least Eric Matyas: https://soundimage.org/

used to have this same kind of offer for music, that pay him, was it maybe 50 or 100 Euros, and he will make any song for you that you want, but which he will offer to anyone else as well.

Anyway, hope that info helps something.

@Bugala
Thank you for your help, the cost is almost that I though: minimum 3000 euros; although after recover that investment will be difficult or I'll make a very best game and different to free games.

@Templario Thats the problem. Everthing should be for free. And AAA quality of course.

@LarsB
This the reason why we haven't more games, 3000 euros or more is too money impossible to recover, not to get rich but neither to lose your money.

@LarsB

Quote:

Thats the problem. Everthing should be for free. And AAA quality of course.

I think that's expecting too much. AAA never came out and all we got was a feature list. Most people don't even seem to care for AGA quality and prefer ECS.

@Hypex I am not talking about the chipset :)

I ment the production quality. AAA is Premium.

Personally I dont not like to work with the original chipsets whatever. AOS4 is good and WinUAE/P96/CGX. There you can use usual GFX and Soundformats. You can use HD. When I today creating graphics with Corel Photopaint it feels more like Amiga than doing WinUAE. Its the feeling I have when I am producing something.

And you got have a budget like Templario said. You also have to invest time and love. Atm I cannot see both really to have paid out when Saimo for example creates his games or Templario. My own T`s Imbiss was not even listed here when I realeased it on Aminet. Sure. Its German only but that should not be a reason not to mention it.

Last edited by LarsB on 13-Nov-2020 at 09:39 PM.
Last edited by LarsB on 13-Nov-2020 at 05:01 PM.
Last edited by LarsB on 13-Nov-2020 at 05:00 PM.
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@Templario

It depends if like to sell games at loss, but let’s say you got free geometric shapes, and used synt waves generated frequency’s, a good thing to know is that colors can’t be copyrighted.

When it comes to box’s way not recycle, I bet you throw way lots boxes, all you need to do glue some paper on the outside.

As for manuals, way not recycle paper, most paper is only printed on one side, this allows use the backside, that has no print.

When it comes to Advertising, I suggest using spam bots, they free, spam irc channels, e-mail accounts and facebook, pages, and discord channels. Almost everyone else does it.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 13-Nov-2020 at 09:48 PM.

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@Templario

Recovering cost within the amiga market it pretty difficult as the market is too tiny.

But as you are a Hollywood fellow, try to benefit from the multy system support. Make it Android _and_ Amiga.
Problem though: On Android it's difficult to sell games in the traditional way (i.e. charging an amount and giving away a copy), but usually the game itself is free and you either pay for getting rid of advertisements or special features. The problem is: to market it that way you do need API access to googles pay services which - to my knowledge - is not possible with Hollywood. And if you charge without google involved you're as quick out of the play store as you say "gooooogle!" and won't even find any users/customers...

Difficult.

Targetting Windows is IMHO even worse as you don't have central repositories where the users may find you. I sometimes find it more difficult to find nice software for Windows than for Amiga, because of lack of information. I mean there are gazillions of Windows users out there and probanby way more (millions!) Windows programmers than members of the entire Amiga community and still you ususlly find the usual software. Dunno where a Joe Averge Windows programmer puts his/her binaries and get's users.

For my Hollywood stuff I get most downloads and users from the Amiga sphere - I guess because of two reasons: 1st - a general "thirst" for software by them and 2nd - because ppl know where to find new stuff. On Android it is only little and on Windows way less (still more than on OS X where I just recently was aked by some guy to provide an OS X version, probably it was the first time in about 5 years or so).

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@Templario

I'd recommend starting out with free to use game assets that don't restrict you from using them in commercial projects and stick to digital download release to begin with.

@Templario you can forget about recovering the costs in the Amiga land: the market is too small.

The major problem that I see is about the graphic assets. Sound samples can be easily "scaled down", but graphic requires A LOT of work because you need to use "pixel art" to fit the 32/64 (for ECS) or 256 (for AGA) fixed palette requirements.

RTG (15/16/24/32) is much better because you can recycle what you have made for PC/Mac/Android, but there are much less Amiga systems with graphic boards like that, and maybe they aren't powerful enough.