Great game but 1.6 million development costs?

[Put Dispenser Here!]

Hey guys,

I bought this game in the recent steam sale and had lots pf fun playing it!
It was the first time i ever got into contact with Shaowrun, so I can't tell whether they transfered the books well, or not.

I''ve read that they got 1.6 million USD through kickstarter, but I wonder how they have spent the money. Don't get me wrong, like I've stated before, this is a fun game, but it is very short, graphics are functional but not very impressive, no special effects ( for example use of magic etc.), no vocalisation, no substantial soundtrack.

I have no clue about games development, but somehow i feel that some of that money hasn't been spent efficiently.

[daviddesjardins1]

Sometime, game like shadowrun return do COST!! Thequality of the music within the game, getting the rights of the game( permision from the owner), getting new computer.. and the list can go on and on!

Maybe you could ask them! you never know what kind of answer they might give:)

[PanicButton]

Originally posted by Super Mario World Domination:

I have no clue about games development

Neither do we. It's a good game, and that's all that matters. I don't care if it cost $1.60 or $1,600,000

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by Super Mario World Domination:

Great game but 1.6 million development costs?

Everything seems easy when you don't know how to do it.

[Sol]

1.2 mil was probably the cost to lease the Shadowrun licenses from Microsoft. Then each programmer probably has a salary upward of 60k a year. 10 programmers with different specialties at 60k a year = 600k. How much was that license again?

[SpecOp Clergy]

I suspect the devs have an ambitious plan for the new title. HBS is a small studio with more than one project underway (Necropolis, and their board game / app hybrid title), so I suspect they are unable to self-fund an ambitious project. It's their business, so I trust that they know what they are doing, especially seeing how great the two previous SR games proved to be. More power to them!

[sarah]

1.6 does not go far these days. Maybe if we were talking early 90's, but even back then there were some games that cose 20+ million in development. GTA 5's development was somewhere around 130 million I think.

[RClovesShadowrun]

They didn't have close to that much for development. Manufacturing physical rewards from the Kickstarter plus picking/packing and shipping services easily took a 1/3rd of that funding. Plus the Shadowrun licensing from Microsoft, plus ~10% for the Kickstarter and Amazon Financial fees (Amazon handled the credit card/payment transactions)... I doubt they had $1mil to make the game, if that...and in doing so, they were parallel developing the editor, the dev team provided customer support directly for all 36,000+ backers, and they built out a wiki & more. Also, as part of the Kickstarter, they brought in the original music composers of the 16-bit Genesis/SNES Shadowrun console games. Plus they still had to make Dragonfall as part of the Kickstarter too. So yeah, that Kickstarter money didn't go far, and they likely reinvested SRR sales in to Dragonfall based on how much improvement it showed (and by then they had a lot less physical rewards customer service to do and could focus on the game). And, none of this includes a marketing/advertising budget.

[Comrade]

Originally posted by RClovesShadowrun:

They didn't have close to that much for development. Manufacturing physical rewards from the Kickstarter plus picking/packing and shipping services easily took a 1/3rd of that funding. Plus the Shadowrun licensing from Microsoft, plus ~10% for the Kickstarter and Amazon Financial fees (Amazon handled the credit card/payment transactions)... I doubt they had $1mil to make the game, if that...and in doing so, they were parallel developing the editor, the dev team provided customer support directly for all 36,000+ backers, and they built out a wiki & more. Also, as part of the Kickstarter, they brought in the original music composers of the 16-bit Genesis/SNES Shadowrun console games. Plus they still had to make Dragonfall as part of the Kickstarter too. So yeah, that Kickstarter money didn't go far, and they likely reinvested SRR sales in to Dragonfall based on how much improvement it showed (and by then they had a lot less physical rewards customer service to do and could focus on the game). And, none of this includes a marketing/advertising budget.

Awesome post, I think that the ignorant among us would do well to digest its content before dissing the studio. Thanks HBS for a great game :)

PS I use the term 'ignorant' not as an insult but to describe lack of knowledge. There is no guilt in ignorance :P

[Snorkel]

Originally posted by sarah:

1.6 does not go far these days. Maybe if we were talking early 90's, but even back then there were some games that cose 20+ million in development. GTA 5's development was somewhere around 130 million I think.

Yeah. I've read a lot of threads like this, and it makes me wish that some small indie studios could actually release their budget as an example of all the studio's costs over the lifecycle of a game development.

Doing some quick maths and estimates, I find it easy to believe that they were actually very efficient to make such a game on this budget. For an average indie dev studio there's salary/wages for their dev team, then there's other staff like secretary, accountant, lawyer, commercial cleaners. There's rent for the premises, purchase and upkeep of equipment, electricity bills. Possible licensing fees for software, tools, assets, IP etc. Hire of specialists such as the music composer. PR and advertising costs....

There's a LOT more than just paying a few guys for 6 months.

[brassring39]

Wow the fanboy's to this game are out in force. To me this game, with no real loot or inv is MEH. I would never buy anything from them again, also would not even play it for FREE. The game is a linear reload save game piece of ♥♥♥♥.

[Quoth the Raven]

Um, don't forget that the kickstarter backers also got Dragonfall for free.

So, for me as a Backer, it was a pretty good deal. I will back the next game too, I guess, there will be an announcement soon on Kickstarter.

I enjoyed Shadowrun Returns, but I also played it only after a couple of months, when a lot of the kinks had been ironed out. Dragonfall is far better, while the base game is the same, pretty much everything has improved, hacking has been expanded, drones & summoning, spells, ...

But while decent mechanics are nice, I really play games for the story. Returns had a good story, it was kinda like reading a book. Linear without many options. But still good. Dragonfall allows you to make "real" choices, that really changes the outcome. Even for the team.

[Winters]

Originally posted by sarah:

1.6 does not go far these days. Maybe if we were talking early 90's, but even back then there were some games that cose 20+ million in development. GTA 5's development was somewhere around 130 million I think.

Yeah, but money doesn't equal quality, GTA 5 proved that.

[nephilimnexus]

140,000 pizzas @ $10 each
120,000 liters of Mountain Dew @ $1.5 each
1,100 bags of weed @ $100 each
4 new computer rigs at $2500 each
___________________________________
$1.6 million

[Moderator Abuse]

Originally posted by Soloeus:

1.2 mil was probably the cost to lease the Shadowrun licenses from Microsoft. Then each programmer probably has a salary upward of 60k a year. 10 programmers with different specialties at 60k a year = 600k. How much was that license again?

The license fees would be absurd the IP is split up depending on what media you're going to distribute and if there's a mix that's a hell of a cost.

[MonkeyLungs]

Originally posted by nephilimnexus:

140,000 pizzas @ $10 each
120,000 liters of Mountain Dew @ $1.5 each
1,100 bags of weed @ $100 each
4 new computer rigs at $2500 each
___________________________________
$1.6 million

You might have to adjust down for the bags of weed. They operate out of Seattle, wouldn't they just have a grow room in basement or something?