Hi Unity members, I was wondering how much money does it take to make a professional game with high poly cars,gun,buildings,etc.
Thanks Beau-The-Winner
Free if you have the time/are a multitasking genius.
$0 =>
Made my day 
It takes as much as the professional artists and programmers charge per month that you hire for the job, multiplied with the months and years that they need to finish the baby. Plus a few bucks more for all the other small things like marketing for example. Or software / any other licenses. Or insurances. Or … .
Besides that, it heavily depends of what kind of game you want to make. A simple one trick flash game that can be played in a spare minute and done in two weeks will surely not cost this much money than a game that needs a staff of 100 people and three or four years of development. And it depends of what kind of people you hire. Cheap students, or graduated professionals.
Have a look at kickstarter, have a look for a similar game, and what budget the folks there are trying to reach so that their development is paid.
I always hate it when my care is re-prossesed. 
Never gamble your life on game dev , . Never put everything on the line .
It sounds a bit romantic to risk it all on an idea , but in reality its stupid( double stupid if you have kids )
I always like how everyone thinks of their own work as free. Does no one around here put any value on their own time? At the very very least, even for the most unskilled person, you have to consider that the time invested could be spent flipping burgers.
Sometimes, yes my time has value.
Gamedevelopment for me is a hobby at this point. I cannot pretend to be very good at it, but i like doing it. So no, the time i spend in game development is “free time”. On the other hand you cannot expect someone to work tight schedules and deadlines when it is for free (it’s still a hobby…)
Really, developing a game is something that can get very very very expensive very quickly. Be smart, do a lot of stuff yourself. Dont set a very hard deadline if you just start out ( it wont work to want to finish a game in a month when you still need to learn programming). Also, just spend little bits you feel comfortable spending (like some art assets or a nice script package)
Before you know it you have a feel for gamedevelopment and can think about releasing a small game. Maybe do some collaboration or listing yourself for small paid tasks.
If i have to put a price on making a professional AAA game. well over $2.000.000
Not AAA here, but if it can give some estimates :
Kinetic Damage costed 50000$ on licenses, hardware, and various stuff.
Not including the man hours of work, but it took 4 years at an average 9 hours / 7d p. week (one person).
Which would bring it roughly to an estimate of : 400.000 $
But the topic here is developing a professional game. Lets face it, you’re not going to be able to make a professional quality title in your spare time as a hobby. Its going to have to be your fulltime job which means you’re paying yourself.
Multiply that estimate by 20 and you’re in the right ballpark for what it takes to develop a AAA title for the current generation (XBOX360 / PS3). Then double or tripple that total to get the final cost after marketing is included.
Damn.
You need to sell a lot copies to make that back O.O
Yup :>
But the good part is that I managed to always keep the project debt-free, thanks to money savings, having a dayjob in parallel (for the first 2 years), etc.
I do owe some money, but the amount is ridiculous compared to the total cost. It will be covered even with a dayjob in a few monthes.
That was a rollercoaster ride though, with lots of sacrifices on the health and social side.
Money or health … chose your currency for budgetting your game 
I really wish you a successful launch. You deserve it with such a dedication.
Thanks a lot, NiPoCo
Anyway, sorry guys if I derailed a bit, just wanted to output a concrete production cost for an indie fighting game.
Keep in mind that this price could go way higher if it has been 2D animation. Plus insert a roughly 20% rise for “normal work hours”, as here I spent way more hours than normal.
In the end this should help to evaluate the average price of an indie fighting game (not AAA), around 500.000$.
For an AAA one, with more fighters (let’s say 20 instead of 8), more levels (~12 instead of 8), top tier level graphics, this should be around 1.5M$ - 2M$.
(personal, broad estimate, of course)
This
If you want to work hard enough and learn a bunch of different software It could be free except the price of setting yourself up with all the programs you would need
It really depends what you want to achieve as to how much money you’ll need. If you’re starting out like so many people you probably have next to no budget, like me, so you have to get creative with how you use your time and what you focus on and what scope of game you can expect to accomplish in a reasonable timeframe. I think it makes sense to build up your success over time, ie reinvest in yourself/company as to begin to sell your first small games.
It sounds to be sometimes that a number of people here are already making a tidy income from normal day jobs, in the 50-150,000/yr range, and seem to have much more to throw around on getting a game going, hiring an artist, buying music etc… an envious position. You don’t necessarily need any money to make money but for a bigger project it’s probably essential that you’re not starting with nothing.
without wanting to go too much into my personal life, i can say i have unlimited amount of time (short of death) and buying things is a pain in the ass, and id say professionlly, youd need a lot of money, but with a lot of time, you can do quite well. you just need alot of time, that isnt costing you anything
I think he lost his sanity sometime a couple of years ago, but that’s helping him!
Get a small group together, work nights at mcdonalds and work days on the game rent out an appartment and in a few years you might be done.
Depends on if you mean a proffesional indie game, or a proffesional company game.
Indie Games considered proffesional where the creators made a fancy bit of money:
SuperMeatBoy
Fez
Braid
Proffesional Recent games that were made:
Call of Duty BO2
Halo 4
Assassins Creed 3
And a few others
Indie game status just takes a small work force that is dedicated, proffesional status takes Near MultiMillionaire to produce as a starter.
cost of a game = cost of logistic (location, hardware, food, etc) + cost of tools (game engine, 3d software, etc) + cost of workers (salary of artist, programmers, musicians, etc) + cost of publishing plataforms (apple store, steam, etc) + cost of marketing (facebook, google ads, etc.).