What is the minimum, average, and maximum amount of USD that is reasonable to spend for a game to make it?
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All I pay for is the minimum BC monthly subscription, and I can make all my games without issues.
Of course, it’s possible to do it without spending a single penny, but then you can’t do audio, or badges, or anything else really.
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Your question is a little vague. Are you asking how much revenue, on average, a game makes? Or how much of a budget, on average, is needed to make a game?
I assume the latter, and the answer isn’t easy. You can make a game on Roblox without spending a dime. There is an endless amount of resources, assets, etc that you can use in your projects. You can also spend thousands making a game, it all depends on your approach and your goals.
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i personally spend £0.00 which equates to roughly 0.00 USD on my games. depends on whether you make assets yourself, purchase them, or commission someone to make them for you. again, teams can come into it. whether they work voluntarily or whether they are paid (and how much). there’s many factors to consider
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One of my games cost $0.00. Another one is not even released yet and is going to be close to $1000. It’s not a simple question to answer, and definitely can’t tell you an average or maximum.
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For a good game that you want to become popular, you are going to need to purchase assets unless you can create everything yourself. Assets may include audio, graphics, scripting, modeling, textures, and marketing. You need to purchase this stuff unless you want to get copyrighted, that or make it yourself. Or have permission to use the owners stuff.
Audio can be cheap or expensive. For game sounds and music you can go out and have somebody make it for you and pay them, or you can purchase them off websites. I have a subscription to AudioJungle which is $33 a month, and I can download as many songs and audio effects as I want and I keep the rights to them forever… for that project. You could also just pay per audio effect.
Graphics can be somewhat costly depending on what you’re needing. Logos, thumbnails, game icons, icons in the game such as money, will be needed. You may also need graphics for say you have a shop in your game called “Squigly Fish” and you want the shop to look good, you may pay for a logo for that shop. You can go about purchasing graphics professionally or take people from roblox. (I just pay people on roblox with robux.) The prices can range a lot from a few hundred roblox to 100k+ for extremely good graphics. (GFX)
Scripting. If you can’t script, you will need to pay somebody to do that. Most scripters won’t work for free, and the ones that do are most likely not that good. Scripters are in higher demand than anything else since scripts put the game together. I myself, would not work for a builder unless it’s extremely well paid. Depending on the game, scripting can cost you 100k-500k+ or $200-$2k+ USD. It’s important to know that when it comes to scripting you really get what you pay for. Theres scripting thats secure, and efficient then there is bad scripting that is inefficient and un-secure. They may do the same thing, but one is a lot worse than the other and a non-scripter will not be able to tell the difference.
If you don’t have enough money to pay for everything you should learn how to do it yourself. (You can try to find people to collab with but that’s difficult to do without money.)
In the end how much a game costs to make depends on what you can, and what you can’t do yourself. Lot’s of people start with $0, and make a game alone then they have enough money to start another project and pay people.
Finally, marketing. You gotta get your game out there somehow. You can pay for robux ads 10k-100K+ for that. You can also find influencers like youtubers to do videos on your game which could be free or cost you depending on the youtuber.
HOLy That was much longer than I thought.
Average is lower than this but honestly this is the average for people that pay for quality games. The max is this because I see people post stuff like $2k USD a month to work on this game and they’re hiring multiple people so It makes sense I guess. Miniumum = $0, Average = $500-$1000, Max = $10000.
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As previously said, it’s highly defendant on the scope and depth of the project you intend to make.
Take a quick look on the front page, there are games who’ve taken months and possibly even years, while others in a matter of days or weeks.
There are a lot of variables you need to take into account, are you looking for certain skills to be on the team? are you looking to commission builders, scripters, graphic designers and/or composers? Every one has a price based off level of quality and speed of development.
If your job is nothing but be the project manager, and are looking to hire developers, sign contracts and have hourly and/or per asset requirements.
All that being said, Roblox is a very VERY different development environment than any other engine or platform.
I know some developers take on commissions so that they earn the robux to pay for their own game’s development, which in this case your currency is time and not USD
If done right, (and this is VERY RARE to happen as its super hard to accomplish) you can have a project from start to finish without spending a single cent, or a single Robux. You would most likely need to split profits, have a very strong backing by your community and Roblox Youtubers and Twitch Streamers, hype it up on Twitter and well a lot of other creative ways you can go about it.
There are even companies who can get you a full development team, work with you on how to best create your game for and ensure your players have fun, come back to play more, and have the game be very profitable.
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Budget, sorry for being unclear.
It’s alright, I recommend editing the OP and the title of the post to make this more clear for everyone else who wants to give advice. Now, you can spend 0$ or tens of thousands of dollars on your game it’s really your choice and your own capabilities. It’s a per-case type deal and depends on what you are looking for as well.
There is no “average” for this and it really ranges on the type of game, the individual’s abilities and etc… it’s a very complicated process and there is no guarantee or average for profit either.
TL;DR It’s on a per-case bases on what is needed for the game, so there is no real average, min or max on any of it.
In my own case, I’ve spent thousands on dollars in commissions for different things but this is my own individual case for my game.
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I mean if you want a small game with around 20 concurrent players it could be under 35 bucks if your looking for a larger game like 500 concurrent players usually 300 USD.
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This isn’t really a factor that can be truly measured, mostly because everyone’s game is different. Someone might be making a game they slap together without spending a dime, and another person might spend tens of thousands on the game.
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Yeah, I’ve been thinking and my preference would be to hire a lot of devs to make the game come out sooner but with the highest quality possible. So I wouldn’t mind paying multiple people really.
Awesome thing about Roblox is you can have a $0 budget since they provide almost all of the core tools and services for free (data management, licensing, assets, plugins, social features, networking tools, etc).
Want to make an FPS? Cool, do it. Farming game? Cool, do it. Want to make a massively multiplayer EVO simulator with complicated galaxies and reactive AI ship battles? Cool, do it.
If you see Roblox as a financial investment instead of a time investment you’re looking at it the wrong way.
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To add to that, studios, on the other hand, usually pay their developers, whether it be by robux or straight USD, but yeah, Roblox is something you sink time, not money into.
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Find a scripter to collaborate with and start with a minimum of 55K ($500). If you both contribute thats $250 each.
Spend 5-10K the first day and see what your retention is like the next day. If it’s good, keep spending.
I’ve seen people spend 5K on ads and earn 10K+ the next on small projects.
So if your game is decent, it will be worth it.
EDIT: Never pay anyone a commission, do not team up with more than 2 people, and pay percentages. It’s more worth it to have a team in the long run.
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Well the never team up with more then 2 people needs some more explaining to be done because a game still has to commission GFX Artists and UI Designers and Translators although they would count as a part of the team.
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I read somewhere that Vesteria spent 600k dollars to make the game and rent office space as well as hire others and pay back investors.
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GFX is incredibly easily. Especially because ROBLOX really favors simple cartoon logos. Adopt Me used a TON of freestock images for their game.
And seriously, if they spent 600K USD to make Vesteria, I just don’t see why they would. I’m working on a project right now that is much larger, and it’s only me, another scripter, and a builder.
No money has been paid to anyone yet.
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If you have 600k to spend, you’re probably either:
- Incredibly successful already on the platform (in which case, good work) OR the more likely option:
- You and your team is getting actual real life investors with money to spend, which may or may not be a bad thing.
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Yeah that’s one thing I enjoy about Roblox honestly, pretty much everything is free. I just want to pay my devs and I don’t exactly have a set price on how much to pay them for a long term game.