How many hours does an average game take

Team6Labs

What are the time frames for getting a game developed in hours including graphics, sound, etc. How long would a quality game take? How much time do you work on your games?

Thanks

IsabelleK

Few months, with average 60 hours each week.

SlickZero

Depends. Some games can take a week, some can take a year. @tshirtbooth was cranking out a game a month for this entire year as a personal goal.

On average, the 3 games I have, took about 3 months each, but this latest, I have been working on since January. I'm a procrastinator at times, and probably could have gotten this game out in 3 months, but I'm trying to get better, and trying to make quality games that are worth playing more than once. So here I am 9 months into it.

I work on graphics all the way through production, even up to the day I submit. Music and sounds take less than 1 day for me, with an occasional sound effect addition along the way here and there. Game mechanics takes about a week for the main functions. And minor scripting (things like navigation) also goes on up until the day it's submitted, sometimes.

It's different for everybody. We all do things differently.

POM

A good game takes a lot of time to make, mostly about 3-5 months, but it can even reach a full year of development .
But not hours, far away from it.
I work on my current project for 13 months now.

Good luck!
Roy.

jonmulcahy

I finished my first game in 6 weeks. That's about the fastest. I had one that took a year.

quantumsheep

This might be of interest:

http://slim.chrishecker.com/index.php?title=Please_Finish_Your_Game&redirect=no

The main thrust of the article/talk is that games *should* take time to fully explore the game mechanic being used.

They guy even sites someone who makes games very quickly and produces a lot of cool 'experiments' but argues that he'd like to see the ideas expanded upon rather than just thrown up on the web as minimalist explorations.

It's worth a look.

QS :D

dmilinovichiii

I've made one game that took me only a few days when I had a stroke of inspiration although I made the app free and it was more of something for the Entertainment category. The game I'm currently working on has been in progress for almost 7 months and I would say that I'm only about two thirds done with it. It could easily take until late November.

So I would say that your average game probably takes from 3 weeks to 6 months. Some will go longer and some will be shorter, but that is my best guess at an average.

TechNoir

I spend 3-4 Months,, that is the best I can do.. at least 25% of the time could be spent polishing the finished game..

goliath

As the comments said above, it all depends. If you farm some of the work out (either the programming, music, art etc) it may help speed the process up a bit. There are also a TON of different templates/full games you can purchase that will help you big time as well.

imGua

at 1h 1m 30s

DeadlySeriousMedia

ABE has been in dev for about 8 weeks. It's almost done, maybe a week out. I work 5 days a week, 2 hours a day.

In total I expect ABE to be no more than 100 hours of total dev time, or 2.5 work weeks.

I find it more productive to work short time spans because all the distraction in life really get my brain solving issues I run into in the game development, artwork changes, or game mechanics. I usually store the ideas in my head until I decide they are keepers. Then when I get back to work I jot them in my notebook.