作者：Dodger

这是我从许多人那常听到的一个问题。所以我决定在此进行分析让所有人都能够了解到这一内容。

让我们开始吧。如果不去探究各种细节，我们便很难去解释这一问题，但以下是关于该问题的最简单的解释（但也还是很长）：

medium_goldbars(from ongamedesign）

让我们暂时忽视创造一款优秀游戏的难度，只是专注于将所有资产带进一款游戏中的成本。我们将假设你所尝试的一切都正常运转，你并未犯任何错误，并准时完成一切。

如果你是在洛杉矶或旧金山的一家开发工作室，那么光是维持运行就需要巨大的成本（游戏邦注：包括房租，保险，员工福利，电费，政府费用，银行利息等等）。但让我们忽视这些内容而假设这些并不需要你花钱。

通常情况下你需要努力寻找并尝试着让发行商愿意为你提供资金去制作游戏。在这段时间里，你不可能赚到钱，并且仍然需要支付每个月的账单（中间阶段你需要花更多钱去创造游戏，而最后阶段与一开始一样），让我们假设你并未花任何钱便完成了前期制作，接下来你需要做的便是进行昂贵的制作过程。

基于这种类型的开发交易，开发工作室每个月都将获得一笔固定费用去支付积极开发游戏的开发者们。但是你的公司却并不只是包含开发者，还有HR，IT，法务，QA，测试员（有时候），首席执行官，首席财务官，首席技术官等等，但是他们却并未计算在内。所以在这个例子中，让我们假设你们公司中只有开发者。

根据2011年《游戏开发者杂志》的薪资调查，四种最基本的开发角色——设计师，程序员，美术师/动画师，和音频师每年的平均薪资是81000千美元（或者每个月大约6750美元）。我们需要记住的是这一数字可能还未包括税收，社会保障税，或者收益扣除额（可能会再拿掉30%至40%）。

现在你需要明确的是有多少开发者在制作你的游戏。这取决于游戏的大小以及许多其它事宜。如今，创造一款大预算的AAA级游戏可能需要数百名参与者，但让我们以较小的游戏为例：我们大约有70名开发者（可能更多）积极参与《瑞奇与叮当2》的制作。

70名开发者平均每个人每月的薪资是6750美元，这样每个月就需要花费你472500美元。

创造一款这样的游戏需要花费多长时间？这取决于你创造的游戏类型。如今，创造一款高质量的AAA级游戏可能需要花费2至3年的时间，但我个人经历的较短时间是在创造《瑞奇与叮当3》时的9个多月。瞧，这样就需要花费你超过4250000美元将所有内容添加到游戏中！

假设你们公司正在创造的是一款并不昂贵的手机游戏或Facebook游戏。你可以与大约10个人的团队花3个月的时间（不算前期制作）去创造游戏。这就需要花费你20多万美元了！并且这些钱只是用于支付那些将内容整合到游戏中的员工。

你必须记住，就像我所提到的那样，这并不包括其它团队成员所引起的额外成本——如市场营销，客户支持，发行QA，认证，用户测试，包装，发行，服务器，IT，PR，人力资源，税收，政府费用，会计，法务，零售商/电子零售商成本等等（Gamestop或苹果还会收取30%的抽成）。

所有的这些事都能带来巨大的价值，所以是值得你花钱的——如此你便能够想象当你回到现实世界中时能够获得多有价值的东西，但这只能解释部分的内容。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why do games cost so much to make?

By Dodger

This was an FAQ I got from a lot of people, most recently from Youtuber Rebellion3112. My most recent attempt to explain it got so long that I thought it might just be better to post it here so that everyone can enjoy (and so in the future I can redirect people here and lazily continue lazing about).

Everyone thank Rebellion for sharing. (Thanks, Rebellion).

So let’s get started. It is REALLY hard to explain this without going into a ton of detail, but here’s how it works in the simplest possible explanation (and this is still really long):

Ignoring for a second how hard it is to make a good game, let’s just focus on how much it costs to make all the “things” (assets) that go into a game. We’ll assume that everything you try goes right the first time you try it, that you make no mistakes and get everything done precisely on time.

If you’re an average development studio in a place like Los Angeles or San Francisco, it costs a lot just to keep your doors open and your lights on (rent, insurance, employee benefits, power, government fees, bank interest, etc). But let’s ignore that and just assume that all costs $0.00 somehow.

Normally you have to look around for a while and try to get a publisher to pay you to make a game for them. During this time, you’re making no money and every month you’re still paying bills. But for now, let’s assume that somehow you already have a game deal, so you have $0.00 losses before you even start.

A note: the publisher has people working for them who cost money, too. For the sake of our example, let’s assume they don’t exist and cost $0.00.

So now you’ve got a deal with a publisher where they pay you a certain amount of money each month in exchange for you making a game for them. Usually, the amount you get changes every month (it costs more to make a game in the middle and at the end then it does at the very beginning), but let’s assume that somehow you’ve already done all that cheap pre-production work for $0.00 and all you have to do is the expensive production work.

Development deals of this type usually pay the development studio a generic amount of money per month for every employee that the developer has that is actively developing the game. Anyone your company has that isn’t a developer, like HR, IT, Lawyers, QA Testing (sometimes), CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, etc… don’t count in that amount that you get. So for the sake of this example, we’ll assume that every single person working at your company is a developer.

According to the 2011 Game Developer Magazine salary survey, the average salary for the four most basic development roles: Design, Programmers, Art/Animation, and Audio is about $81,000 per year (or about $6,750 a month). Remember also that this amount is probably including money the developer doesn’t get that goes to state and federal income taxes, social security taxes, or benefit deductions (which can take about 30%-40% of that number away).

Now you need to figure out how many developers it takes to make your game. This depends on how big your game is and a number of other things. These days, it can take hundreds of people to make a big-budget AAA title, but let’s take a smaller one: We had around 70 developers (probably more) actively working on Ratchet and Clank 2, so we’ll go with that number.

70 developers at the average of $6,750 each will cost you $472,500 per month that you’re making the game.

How long does it take to make this game of yours? That depends on the game you’re making. These days, it can take 2-3 years to make a AAA high-quality game, but the shortest time I’ve ever personally seen it done (factoring out pre-production) was about 9 months for Ratchet and Clank 3. Voila! It just cost you more than $4,250,000 to make all the things that go into your game!

Well what if we imagine that the game your company is making is an inexpensive phone game or a facebook game? You could make that with a team of maybe 10 people with 3 months (not counting pre-production time) if you’re really booking it. That’s more than $200,000! And remember, this is all JUST to pay your employees to make the things that go into your game.

Keep in mind that, as I already pointed out, this is not including any extra costs incurred besides those employees making things that go into your game — extra costs such as Marketing, Customer Support, Publisher QA, Certification, User Testing, Packaging, Shipping, Servers and IT, PR, Human Resources, Taxes, Government Fees, Accountants, Lawyers, Retailer/E-Retailer costs, and so forth (Gamestop or the Apple Store get about 30% of the sticker price).

All of these (and the countless other things I didn’t mention) bring a ton of value to the table, and are worth spending money on — so you can imagine how expensive things can get once you get out into the real world, but this might help explain a part of it.

So I hope that helps illustrate why games are so expensive. If you have any questions, just let me know in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.(source:ongamedesign)