9 hours ago, Hodgman said:Tech startups in the US typically budget $10k per staff member, per month.
$10K was a good number a decade back. For the groups I've been working with over the past several years most have bumped the value to $15k. The math is slightly harder, instead of adding a zero you add the zero then add half again.
The costs of games has gone up through all of the industry's history. These days for PC and console games: Hobby games and "indie" (for some meanings of the term) have shoestring budgets. The "shovelware" style retail boxed games are often around $1M to $5M for development. Mainstream games are in the $10M-$50M range. AAA games and MMOs start around $100M.
Nearly all games and concepts (including this discussion) have bigger ideas than budget.
