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[jlr1001]

ARG Development: Vital Statistics

[Jas0n]

development time for a grassroots game is definitely something that's going to vary for numerous reasons, and I don't think you'd be able to set a baseline - other than don't start developing the day before you intend to launch.

I've run two grassroots games of different success levels and conclusions... and both had a differing level of development.

My first game was a small game that I intended primarily for friends and it was fun, but it's something that I developed on the fly by myself. The game ended up imploding for various reasons... part because the majority of the players stopped playing after I goofed on storyline and scared the players away... and part because I overworked myself.

My second game had a decent development team, story writers... graphics, video, html and puzzle development. The game did really well in the eyes of the players and some of the community. We had about 2 months development time on the game and we were constantly developing/evolving during the run period of the game...

My next game's in development - we've got a good group of developers and some more that we're looking on bringing in. We've been at it a few months and got several more to go before we launch. We've got a few specifics we need to iron out before we get to a launch date as far as technical aspects and ... digging money out of our limited budgets to get some real world goodies

My thing as a small grass-roots developer is ensuring that you've got a team of individuals that have enough skill in the areas you need focused on for your particular game... be it html coding, graphics design, etc etc etc... that you are able to develop and evolve as the game is being rolled out to players. If you're not able to do some things on the fly, then you'll have issues and major issues.

So while you can't really set a baseline, you can set some guidelines:

1. Plan your game thoroughly (what to do if such and such happens, etc).
2. Get the right people on board
3. Be abe to evolve with the game
4. Understand the time required

[FLmutant]

I fear there won't be much of an answer in simple averages: this is similar to motion pictures (where the range is just so huge that which portion you choose to measure ends up defining the measurement more than the real data.) Happy to help though, using a relatively "broad net" in terms of what is an ARG, for what it's worth.

"Freakylinks" for Fox Television was about 3 months in pre-development and it ran for over 8 months before the television show debuted (so 14 months total duration?) Commercial, complex.

"Nothing So Strange" was ours for ourselves: the online experience played out for 2 years, but was in fact part of the process of making the feature film (so how much pre-development was the film versus the online experience?) Independent, complex.

"More to See / Legend of the Sacred Urns" for Sharp was about 2 months of development (but the ad agency already had stuff in motion: we came in a couple of weeks before the shot the television spots) and ran for about 3 months I think? Commercial, moderately complex.

"Art of the Heist" for Audi had longer pre-production (nearly 6 months) and ran for about 3 months. Commercial, complex.

"Who is Benjamin Stove" for GM was hillarious ... 1 month pre-dev, 2.5 months live. Worked, but we all feared we had taken mission impossible there for a while. Commercial, not particularly complex.

"Eldritch Errors" is us for us again. About a year in concept and 2 months in pre-dev, we're on month 8 of the run now (in a run measured hopefully in years.) Indie, complex.

So no two projects are the same. I always treat time and budget as somewhat replaceable (as so much of the effort involved is "creative sweat equity") -- and that mix helps tell you what stories you should try to tell and which are too complex. "Art of the Heist" had 12 times more budget than "Nothing So Strange", but NSS also shot a full feature film. Conversely, "Heist" did things that we had to be more sneaky and subversive to accomplish.

I'm also mixing indie and commercial in the above, I know, when really the biggest difference is if you're getting paid for sure or not and who owns the intellectual property when it is done (neither of which have anything to do with the planning process.) Jas0n's advice is exactly the same I preach to fellow storytellers and commercial clients (3 & 4 seem to be the ones that trip up people the most spectacularly.)

[Jas0n]

for clarification on #4... when I say time involved, I mean the daily hours you spend combing through things and not the months in development

[FLmutant]

[FLmutant]

Re: ARG Development: Vital Statistics

[jlr1001]

Awesome. Thanks for both your double posts and the informative post at Schmeldritch. When I wrote, "required to run," I was thinking about the budget on paper, which could either be seen as the number going into the game or the amount you should be willing and able to spend before even taking on the task of developing the game.

As you point out, unforeseen operating expenses can creep up... but if things have been properly planned I'd have to imagine that those "emergency" expenditures wouldn't take you grossly over budget.

[Jas0n]

with regards to the budget from a grassroots perspective.. it various on the type of game. You could do a game with absolutely no budget what-so-ever if you do not include "labor" and stuff you already own.

1. Finding a good means of deploying information through the various free social sites to include blogs and youtube (if you already own a video camera)

2. Free e-mail through gmail or other means

3. Free phone calls if you happen to have a plan through your phone company cell or otherwise to allow nationwide phone calls for free.

4. Free live drops if you live in a decent sized city and have stuff that doesn't cost you money ... well if you consider your gas costs as something you would have used anyway.

5. Various free softwares to help with development from video to image to website manipulation.

Typically for me I'd like to have a website so I'd find a budget friendly host - I've used 1and1 before for about $9/mo including the domain fee.

Mailing stuff to players costs postage, so if you're wanting to mail stuff out you'll have to consider that. Probably a max of 50 things for a small grassroots game, so about $25 for postage.

Buying stuff to mail or drop - that's going to vary tremendously depending on what you're going to give them.

I'd say that if you get enough volunteers to donate their time to developing the game, you could easily create a grassroots game for under $300. If you don't have the stuff you need, like I'm in the market for a good camcorder now (looking at the Canon HV20 which is about $1000), or if you need to pay someone to put together some flash or video or whatnot [even a live event]- then you can get much more expensive.

FLMutant can correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think that the largest expense for game creation for the big guys comes from labor and as a grassroots game you SHOULD be getting free labor lol.

[FLmutant]

[Will 2.0]

Well I've PM'd two games, the other I don't really count as I was just a character and puzzle maker.

My first game ran for from July to early October with very little pre-planning, a HUGE misconception on my part at the time.

During August I was asked to write a story and do interaction with another game, it ended up with just me doing it and it dropped as well. Pre-planning was about 2 weeks.

This new project that I'm working on will fix that. Will be planning for at least two months and will have a small budget. The others had none.

[Varin]

If I remember correctly, Orbital Colony had nearly two years development time. Of course, those two years were not filled with 40 hours of ARG work per week. It was a training project that was meant to be educational and fun (ha!) and our only goal was really to provide a fun diversion for UFers. (heh, needless to say, we were taken a bit by surprise when we were included in an article in PCGamer).

The game lasted about three months and cost almost nothing (around $100?). I think our biggest expenses were domain name registration and postage. Everything else was donated or volunteer work. We had over 1000 signups for the game with no paid advertising, but this was back when you were lucky if one ARG was happening at a time.

[labfly]

sammeeeees took me like a year and half to develop. i worked full-time while planning it for a year or so .. and then went to part-time when i ramped up to launch it (like 3 months) and i stayed on as part-time while i ran the game from end of september 06 to mid december 06. (but honestly i barely worked - i basically spent all my time at work writing character emails and such) so, i wouldn't plan on working or going to school while running an arg. i think i spent about 1000 total for t-shirts, props, food for actors.. etc. maybe more. my brain's fuzzy today. my actors worked for free. i used free everything. i used myspace, blogger, gabcast, yahoo, youtube, earthcam.. i'm sure there are other free things i used - can't remember. me. i worked for free. i worked around the clock for free. i had a couple friends who gave me an amazing amount of support (helped with mailings, phone calls, errands, take out.. etc.) for free. it was truly a labor of arg love.