IT Dev Hours for New Game?

[MaroonBells]

Question: how many development hours would it take (estimate) to build a game like Age of Wonders 2 if you were to do it from scratch, excluding the initial design?

200 hours? 2,000? 5,000?

And what type of server capacity would be required to allow for 5,000 concurrent users?

[YardGnome]

A shitload... How many people are on your development team?

I just poked around a bit, it seems the team that developed that game took about 2 years of development time. It also looks like they had about 15 developers. As far as the time spent on the game during that period you could only guess... Many developers work upwards of 100 Hours a week during "Crunch Time" which can last more than a year in some cases...

Server capacity for 5G users? BTW, I'm not all that familiar with this game. Is it real time like warcraft or turn based like civilization? Turn based would use a whole helluva lot less bandwidth, and would in turn be much cheaper...

[MySavior]

25 req/sec per dual xeon 2.4GHz server w/ 2GB RAM. And you suffer diminishing returns with each added server. So.. at least 200, but better more. 400. But thats requests per sec, so go figure.

[MaroonBells]

A shitload... How many people are on your development team?

I just poked around a bit, it seems the team that developed that game took about 2 years of development time. It also looks like they had about 15 developers. As far as the time spent on the game during that period you could only guess... Many developers work upwards of 100 Hours a week during "Crunch Time" which can last more than a year in some cases...

Server capacity for 5G users? BTW, I'm not all that familiar with this game. Is it real time like warcraft or turn based like civilization? Turn based would use a whole helluva lot less bandwidth, and would in turn be much cheaper...

damn that's a lot. i am not specifically interested in the game but more in the development cost for interactive e-learning tools which allow for more "gaming" type of interaction for high school students versus the dull textbooks or webservices that they currently use. so requirements would be less.

so in your review they used (with average hours of 60 per week and hourly rate of $75): 15FTE*60HRS*45WKS*$75*2YRS = $6.1M

if they price it at $25 each, they need to sell 243K copies just to pay back the development, that seems rather high but i am not the expert...

thanks for your feedback, definately helpful!

[MaroonBells]

25 req/sec per dual xeon 2.4GHz server w/ 2GB RAM. And you suffer diminishing returns with each added server. So.. at least 200, but better more. 400. But thats requests per sec, so go figure.

so what would 400 cost me?
cheers,

[YardGnome]

damn that's a lot. i am not specifically interested in the game but more in the development cost for interactive e-learning tools which allow for more "gaming" type of interaction for high school students versus the dull textbooks or webservices that they currently use. so requirements would be less.

so in your review they used (with average hours of 60 per week and hourly rate of $75): 15FTE*60HRS*45WKS*$75*2YRS = $6.1M

if they price it at $25 each, they need to sell 243K copies just to pay back the development, that seems rather high but i am not the expert...

thanks for your feedback, definately helpful!

You don't neccesarily need to develop something like that from the ground up. You could most certainly design a web site using director or something like that. Development time and costs would be cut substantially if you investigated a route like that. If you did it from the ground up you would need to design the level development tools, application server etc from scratch. With Director the bulk of that work has been done for you already.

It's a bit more expensive than director, but you can also lease an engine from another company that may suit your needs. This accomplishes much the same thing in that much of the baseline development work has been completed already.

[MaroonBells]

You don't neccesarily need to develop something like that from the ground up. You could most certainly design a web site using director or something like that. Development time and costs would be cut substantially if you investigated a route like that. If you did it from the ground up you would need to design the level development tools, application server etc from scratch. With Director the bulk of that work has been done for you already.

It's a bit more expensive than director, but you can also lease an engine from another company that may suit your needs. This accomplishes much the same thing in that much of the baseline development work has been completed already.

you are refering to macromedia director?
cheers,

[YardGnome]

you are refering to macromedia director?
cheers,

Yes, Macromedia Director.

[CoHo]

For flash based games your concurrent users wont be the same as an online gaming environment, or real-time strategy game.

With flash based games you think in terms of bandwidth, with rts/online games you have to account for much more.

If you want 5,000 concurrent users playing FLASH games then aim for something like 20gigs of bandwidth a month. Then again, releasing this as a CD to be loaded on the users computer (since you are talking about high school interactive learning) would reduce the bandwidth, and CDs cost pennies for bulk.

Development changes as well when you are dealing with the flash market vs online gaming. With the flash market you need to build say 25 core games and then it is just a matter of modifying those core games (tetris, breakout, memory, scrabble, etc) for each additional lesson.

So yeah, I would sell it out cheap to flash developers looking for some portfolio piece, say $250 per core game, make about 50 or 100 of them so your initial cost would be something like $25,000. Burn a few thousand CDs at 0.10 a CD and send them to the highschools.

But I think this market is already cornered

[MaroonBells]

For flash based games your concurrent users wont be the same as an online gaming environment, or real-time strategy game.

With flash based games you think in terms of bandwidth, with rts/online games you have to account for much more.

If you want 5,000 concurrent users playing FLASH games then aim for something like 20gigs of bandwidth a month. Then again, releasing this as a CD to be loaded on the users computer (since you are talking about high school interactive learning) would reduce the bandwidth, and CDs cost pennies for bulk.

Development changes as well when you are dealing with the flash market vs online gaming. With the flash market you need to build say 25 core games and then it is just a matter of modifying those core games (tetris, breakout, memory, scrabble, etc) for each additional lesson.

So yeah, I would sell it out cheap to flash developers looking for some portfolio piece, say $250 per core game, make about 50 or 100 of them so your initial cost would be something like $25,000. Burn a few thousand CDs at 0.10 a CD and send them to the highschools.

But I think this market is already cornered

These numbers seem more feasible. Mind that I do not intend to corner any part of the gaming market, just that current social studies' material for high schools is sooo lame that I would like to spice it up. if you are familiar with any e-learning providers in that segment, please share.
cheers,