How long to make game? How many people?

[Etcher Squared Games]

Sadly I still only have 1 game under my belt.
But I've got some ideas in my head, but it got me wondering.

How long does it take a lot of you to make a game?
How many people do you usually have on your team to make a game?
(Please, DO NOT include any games used for competitions, just games you've casually made).

My first game, which can be completed in 30 seconds, took me about 4 total weeks from idea to script to compiled EXE.Ã,  Man hours...I'd say about 20-30 spread out among those 4 weeks.Ã,  And I've only got myself.Ã,  I don't have anyone to do music or drawing for me.
And I'd say drawing took a lot of the time since it was hard for me to coordinate any kind of animations.

So, what's the workload like for everyone?

[[Cameron]]

For both the games i'm working on i had a fairly small work load as concept writer. Although this meant i had to organise musicians and artists and make sure they work. For Knightsbridge Chronicles the time it has taken to make was increased because of various artists deciding to drop out and me having to find new ones. Now I have a stable artist things are progressing smoothly. 4 people working on the game. So far its taken 6 months and i expect it will take another number of months. That answer your questions?

[BMF-Inc]

well, although I have never finished a game quite yet (but I just came into the community 1 month ago..and have been working pretty hard) I believe really that the time it takes for someone to make a game relies heavily on their dedication, and on how much attention they want to put on the specific aspects of the game. I know that my game will take some time, mostly because it will be just me working on it...and that a lot of my time is spent on the details of the world sorrounding my character...the game itself will be quite short, but will be full of life and a fervor for bringing the player into the atmosphere. That will take time.

With multiple people, you may not get things done faster...at times others can hinder your work by procrastinating, or by not being on the same wave length in terms of style and understanding of what you want to achieve. It takes a lot of time in terms of forming a team that fits your style and takes even more time to coordinate their efforts into a cohesive group...but like I said, the more time you put into these things, the better your game is going to turn out.....at least I hope so

[Ponch]

Well, I guess it depends on the size of the game. The Armageddon Eclair took me about six months to do whereas something smaller like The Prick Who Came In From the Cold took only a week and a half. Something really short like Don't Jerk the Trigger of Love took a single weekend. My magnum opus, The Forever Friday has been in production for over a year now.

I do all the writing and coding myself and split the art duties with Kelly. The music is mostly comprised of MIDIs I found on the net so that saves time. Personally, other than using playtesters, I don't think having a team of people speeds the work up very much.

Way back in the olden days, I made games with other people and it seemed like half the time we were struggling to keep everyone on task. Since no one is getting paid, it becomes a low priority in your life when things like kids or school demand attention. So one week you're giving the project 100% but your partner may be having personal problems. Next week, you're tangled up in other commitments and your partner is wondering when you're going to get back on track now that he has his affairs sorted out.

Personally, I find it easier to just be an "Army of One". It may take longer to get a game finished, but somehow it seems less stressful. And since it's really just a labor of love, that seems to be the most important thing to me. When I finish the game, I don't want to be so sick of it that I never play it.

Just my two cents.

-Ponch

[Kinoko]

Cirque de zale took me 3 months of pretty solid work, almost every day.  It was my first game, so scripting probably wouldn't take me so long to do now, and I'd say it had fairly average graphics that took an average amount of time to do.

[fovmester]

Frank the Farmhand part 1 took me about one year. But then I didn't work continously with it. If you don't count the months I didn't work on it then it took me about 10 months. But then I did it all by myself, and I had to learn the script-language, learn to draw backgrounds in a suitable way and learn to do soundeffects and music. Part 2 is bigger and better but it'll still take me about 10 months of effective work to finish.

Note: These are pretty big games, and I put at least ten hours of work into every background and five hours into every animationsequence. A smaller game with less time put into graphics could probably be finished in a month or two.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

LSL2 Point and CLick took me about... oh, 4 months? Five? I forget. But I had it easy. The game and the graphics were already there for the taking, and the music I took off the net.

[Haddas]

I once made a game in 1½ hour. I'll post it here when i get home from school. Don't expect much though, it's crappy

[Gilbert]

Hey, 1.5 hour is not a short time, don't you know there're hour games?

* Gilbot V7000a is reminded of the status of his games and cries.

[qptain Nemo]

Well, you may find it interesting: Legend of Kyrandia 2 was made in 6 months.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It's not exactly the best game I ever played, either. SOme puzzles were plain rubbish, and the overall voice actor was the crappiest I've ever heard.

[qptain Nemo]

Sorry, I don't agree at all.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

No worries. But I AM curious - what do you disagree with? The puzzles? The voice acting? Not being exatcly the best game you've ever played?

[Etcher Squared Games]

So, most of you that have multiple people working on a game.  Is it mostly friends you have living close to you or friends you have on here?

I've not yet begun to search around here, but I'm finding friends and family just aren't willing to put in the time to  help me make a game like I want to.

[Kinoko]

Not me o_O I did it all myself. I think the majority of people make games by themselves, don't they?

Also, I -adore- Kyrandia.

[Gilbert]

* Gilbot V7000a adores Kyrandia too.

I understand why people would hate Hand of Fate, but that's just personal opinions. In my opinion it was great (better than Malcolm's Revenge at least, it's still funny though).

[InCreator]

Major time goes under:

* character animations
* background drawing
* assembling whole game (linking up all resources in AGS with scriptwork)

Of course, music/sound making, dialogs, etc take much time too.

There's no way that a game - i mean a game, can be done in less than a month. Even with a large team.
But there's not that big difference between 4 and 10 room game, or similar length changes: the month goes anyway, if the basis is made, adding extra rooms/puzzles/characters/etc will go faster.

Team shouldn't be too big. About 2 or 3 artists, each doing their own thing (one for BGs, one for characters, one for other things, such as GUIs). Otherwise, when many artists do same thing, styles  collapse and outcome is rarely anything good or harmonic.

This is absolutely different for music, as long musicians are all at about same level of skills-experience. Different styles make game often more interesting.

So, hard work lies in graphics and coding. The planned quality of game and it's look will depend on how much people and time will be put into these two.