"It takes nothing to produce a hot game. You merely need somebody with a computer, a good idea, and the ability to make a game. Making a game is not rocket science."
Actually. Making a game that makes money IS rocket science (or at least as close as it can get to it).
Making a game is sort of like making music. It's so much fun, people do it for free. It's not a big deal if you have a few dozen programmers making some roguelike. If you have 10k college sophomores making games, chances are pretty good one of them will be pretty fun, and take off. The key here is, they would do it anyway. there is not free carwashing service because someone likes washing cars. there are however tons of free games, because making games is fun.
The majority of games are created by large teams of highly talented and well paid individuals. There are certain types of games that could be created by a single college sophomore or a teeny tiny team. Most games can not. A team size of 20 is considered quite small.
Both your statement and the link's author's is incredibly wrong and incredibly insulting.
M2 research says it's $10m to do a AAA title on a single platform, whereas it's 5k-20k to do a mobile title[1].
TUAW's figures show that there are approximately 42,000 iOS titles produced, which dwarfs the 18,000 console titles that have been produced in all of history [2]. So as for backing up the claim "the majority of games are created by large teams of highly talented and well-paid individuals" it's simply wrong--very wrong.
Now if we're normalizing per dollar (that is, considering how much industry $ are going to triple-AAA vs appstore crap, instead of number of titles), the argument is overwhelmingly in favor of the AAA titles, even when considering only the latest generation of console titles--about $60b to $40m, by my back-of-the-napkin arbitrary-cutoff estimate.
But that's exactly what jbri said [3] and an argument you rejected [4].
In general, the etiquette here is that if you're having an argument about facts, you bring facts to the table, and you don't respond by calling the other person "insulting" or "incredibly wrong", especially when you quote no sources and the available evidence contradicts your position. These types of replies add nothing to the discussion.
I'd say M2 research is way off the mark for the estimate of cost for a mobile title.
Let's take the $5K cost and break it down.
A competent young programmer, making $80K/year, would be paid $5K in 3.3 weeks.
However, games don't just need programmers, they also require art, so let's take $1K to pay for the artist's time. That leaves us with only 2.6 weeks of the programmer's time. Let's also say that we have a game designer who we pay $1K. That leaves us with only 2 weeks of the programmer's time.
Having been a professional mobile game developer for 7 years, I've never seen a game take only 3 people and only 2 weeks. The minimum, in my experience, is about 2 months and around 5 people, or roughly $60K, for a very simplistic game. I'd even venture to say that it is impossible to create a quality finished product in 2 weeks.
Uh, some of the best games I've ever played (and I'm a long time gamer ex-Blizzard programmer) were on Kongregate, built by a single developer (or sometimes an artist and a programmer). Honestly, it's really really expensive and difficult to build a cutting-edge FPS or MMO, but "great games" don't always fit the FPS or MMO mold.
I think forrestthewoods is pointing out that making games, even social games, is hard.
Sure it's possible for one person to develop a successful social game. But how many of those people can develop two successful social games? 5? 10+? The only name that comes to my mind is Zynga.
It's only a problem if Zynga chooses to purchase other people's winning games at huge rates. You can't throw half a billion at every kid who writes a successful game and expect in-app cash upgrades to offset it. Making a successful game is hard, but at the scale of the market, there will always be another kid next month with an unexpected hit on his hands.
Zynga can make it work either by continuing to develop successful games on their own, or by backing down from Instagram silly money on their buyout offers. But they can't make it work by pretending to be the gateway middleman for a distribution network they simply don't own.
That's the issue though. Zynga's whole business model depends on this being false: "Sure it's possible for one person to develop a successful social game." One dedicated guy can soak up some ridiculously large fraction of their 2015 revenue if you believe your own statement is true. Because the popular fall 2015 game will be by That One Guy Studios and not Zynga.
Also, i meant 2 dozen programmers each making their own roguelike, like Toady One. Not dozens working on a single game. you should get graphics for a 3 million/year burn rate.
I'd like to point you to Ludum Dare, where 1402 games were made in a weekend (just in the most recent LD), all by small teams or individuals (myself included).
These may (or may not) be the quality that you would expect, but to say that people don't like to build games for fun, and that some would be fun and possibly take off, couldn't be more wrong.
I think it doesn't matter how hard it is. The barrier to entry is very low, and the social game market is already crowded and extremely competitive. You're going to have a varied number of people releasing hits, so the point is that you can't possibly buy out every shop that gets lucky with a hit, nor should you.
I completely agree that it's a lot harder than the author makes it sound – but is the comparison apt in at least one way?
Namely – most rocket science out there requires the work of a reasonably large number of contributors to actually produce a working, reliable end-product... whereas a winning game really can be made by a small number of people (or even one person) who either have the right stroke of genius, luck or skill to pull it all together.
That, of course, doesn't mean it's easy, but instead it means that the law of large numbers comes into play and more winning games will be produced because it takes fewer people/resources to make a gaming company than a rocket company. Ergo, gaming is an industry that is inherently much more difficult in which to establish a defensible competitive advantage.
Or, maybe the author really is just minimizing it all to make their point...
Actually. Making a game that makes money IS rocket science (or at least as close as it can get to it).