The Iceberg Economics of Game Development - Part 4
Unless you are building a single player, offline game with premium monetization on just the PC platform, the cost to design and build the core gameplay is just the tip of the iceberg.
Catch Up
If you’re looking for the other parts, here are the links!
Intro
Part 3 of this article series filled in the second five of the fifteen areas beyond the core gameplay artifacts of client, server, and persistent storage. Now we'll address the last five. Also, the headline graphic is no longer mysterious. 🙂
The usual disclaimer: the systems listed here are drawn from conversations with colleagues and from my personal experience. These must be incomplete and your suggested additions are solicited.
So let's finish enumerating All The Thingstm! These next five delve into all the issues and tasks that need attention for the team and the game to function well, or that ignoring could land you in hot water.
Sales, Brand, and Marketing
The team needs to reach players to promote new content, to win back players whose attention is elsewhere, to advertise upcoming events and item sales and discounts, and to manage the game's brand. Creating game content, like skins, emotes, sound packs, etc., is very costly. For example, a single premium skin can cost tens of thousands of dollars in labor. A single shippable map (level, loadable environment) can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, even using outsourcing.
You'll need these systems so that players see what is available for purchase. The item store supporting a successful game will become large and crowded, and the average player isn't going to troll through the store on a daily basis just to find something they want to buy. You'll need systems that can tell the players what is there, how much discount the player is getting, and how long the sale will last.
Integration with and use of these systems is too often an afterthought, but if your game is a hit and you don't have them, you will be leaving a lot of money on the table.
In-client opt-in email gathering
External mass email systems
External marketing campaign systems
Push notification systems
In-game sales campaign tools (integrated with item stores)
Cinematic services
Human Resources
Human resources (HR) is responsible for all things worker-related. That includes recruiting, vetting, selecting, hiring, onboarding, training, promoting, and paying (and when necessary, firing) employees and independent contractors.
HR plays a key role in developing, reinforcing and changing the culture of an organization. Pay scales, performance management, training and development, recruitment and onboarding and reinforcing the values of the business are all essential elements covered by HR.
HR's role also covers improving employee performance, which makes the overall company function better and achieve more. To be more general, HR services include anything related to managing and developing employees within the organization.
Recruiting, hiring, retention
Employee engagement
Performance management
Compensation and benefits
Development and training
Risk management
Audits and legal compliance
Data Privacy Laws
Data privacy laws are playing a game of catchup with technology. The game industry, like social media, includes minors who need special care. Things have moved faster in Europe than in North America, but there are many regulations that need to be respected.
The degree that these affect your team can depend on the intended or actual demographics of your player base. If you are not targeting minors then some of these regulations may or do not apply. Here is a list that must be respected by the operation of all data handling, account creation, store, and advertising systems (to name a few).
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA)
California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (ADCA)
Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA)
United Kingdom Children's Code
United Kingdom Data Protection Act 2018
United Kingdom Online Safety Act 2023
General Legal Concerns
Games are no different than other media -- copyrights are a thing, and so are contracts. That means managing the requirements of any open source code or tools your team wants to use. There are of course contracts with outsourcers, dealing with closed source licenses, e.g., for your digital content creation tools, plugins for your team management software and code editors, as well as build management and speedup infrastructure.
Then there are video game content ratings all around the world -- get one wrong and you'll not be able to ship in that region/country until it is corrected.
I'll also toss in generative AI and copyright concerns because it is too soon to know what's happening there, but it will happen.
Publicly available code and art copyright
Open source software licenses
Closed source software licenses
Outsourcing contracts
Intellectual property collisions (e.g., unconscious influences for art and naming)
Generative AI and copyright
Worldwide video game content ratings
Personally Identifiable Information governance
Esoteric Systems
There are other issues that don't fall into a non-indy environment. I think of them as esoteric, advanced, or unlikely topics.
A bespoke PC game/content delivery and launching application. These can make direct messaging to your player base much simpler than only going through a walled garden PC system (Epic or STEAM launcher).
Shipping anything in China requires nontrivial work for both delivery via partners (a legal requirement) as well as content restrictions driven by cultural factors (e.g., no bones, blood, religion, or mentioning sensitive topics).
If you are building a new game as an independent developer then you don't need to worry about publisher specific backend or launcher systems, like NCSoft, Blizzard BattleNet, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft Connect (formerly UPlay), or GOG GALAXY (formerly Good Old Games).
Streaming services like Microsoft xCloud, Amazon Luna, Google Stadia, Sony PS Now, and Nvidia's GeForce Now require significant integration work. They are waning in popularity but could resurge in the future if some difficult problems are solved.
Outro
When the team is approaching deadlines, there is often a concern that the "fun" isn't fun enough yet. Or there is an emotional lure of "just another month of creative expression will make this game an even bigger hit" is strong, and hard to resist.
The reality is that there is never unlimited flexibility in your ship date, because money, and the game still needs additional systems to launch and run. Too often the result is critical delays in integrating the systems required for a healthy, long-lived game.
We have enumerated 127 tools, systems, or concerns that go beyond the bare minimum. Some are needed during development but can be done without at a prototype stage, but for most games you need some or many of these.
It is common to see game development efforts and costs described by the staffing requirements for disciplines like art, engineering, quality assurance, and design. But the cost of launching and running a live game is not proportional to the number of disciplines or people needed.
Our minds gravitate to the fun parts. But unless you are working on a single player, offline game for the PC platform with a premium monetization model, then designing and building the core game is just the tip of an iceberg of complexity and cost.
If we want to succeed then we must have clarity on how much iceberg we actually need.