Let me introduce myself, I’m 28 years old, I work in IT (network & System) I’ve already done scripting in powershell and I like to play FPS. I don’t have any skills in game développement and would like to make a game like Escape From Tarkov ? (fps, loot, stuff, inventory, hideout, realistic, extraction, RPG, survival, detailed map)
with inter-server teleporters (example: on ARK you can teleport to another server with your equipment and dinosaurs)
with teleporters (like Valorant)
with a common auction house like on The Cycle Frontier
With skins (to be able to sell them on the steam market)
with vehicles (from the bicycle to the helicopter via the boat and the tank)
I would like to pay for services on Fiverr from people who will do this work for me and each on a different theme. What jobs will be needed ? Graphic designer ? 3D modeler ? Programmer / developer ?
Would separating tasks and individuals be a good method ? (example: Pay each person different for weapon animation, maps, items, effects, inventory etc)
Do I have the legal right to use the work of the sellers for commercial purposes ? Are they going to ask me for a percentage ? If so, how protect myself ?
If for example my game is almost finished but I have to send it to someone whose services I have paid to finalize something for me; how can i protect my work from theft ?
How do I know that the work he gave me is not someone else’s ?
Is it possible to program only the base of the game and later configure the following elements: Effect, Item, Graphics, Skins etc.
How long it will take to have something playable ?
What are the difficulties that I or the developers will encounter ?
Is it better to pay studios or pay independents ?
Have you considered first doing this for a MUCH smaller scale game to actually prove you can manage a team and release something and in general handle everything? Based on the extremely basic questions you are asking, you absolutely are not ready to manage a paid team to make a game of this scale currently. Also making a game of this scale using purely temporary members of staff sourced from fiverr etc, seems very unlikely also.
How much is the budget you have? Just to get this done assuming you have the skills and knowledge to sherpard this project, would be a minimum of $200,000, and that really is being extremely generous with how much you can get done for so little (and that is considered a small amount, for a game this size).
The fact you are asking “what roles are needed” really illustrates this fact. Sorry not trying to put a downer on your day, but I am trying to stop you wasting a lot of time including other peoples.
An elite team is not one where nobody knows each other, even if individual members are rockstars (and is fiver a place to find rockstars? I have no idea, but I’m guessing those sorts are working at studios that pay real money)
I think if you had a million dollars and you hired the best people you could find, and you are the project lead with no game dev experience; at the end of six months you’d have nothing worth showing and a lot wasted money.
I think you have to have the team first, and team building takes time, and people who are capable of creating a good team charge real money for their time. In other words, unless you have millions and extensive leadership/project management experience, I think it’s completely unrealistic expectation.
Build a few small games first The scope of this game idea is far too broad for a first project. By building and releasing some small projects, you will learn a lot about what it takes to release a game.
All of the games you listed were built by experienced teams with financial backing. It is not really practical to find people on Fiverr to build something of this scope.
For the scope of game outlined in this forum post, it would probably need multiple years of a large team of experienced developers working full time. Generally speaking, that would probably cost about $80k-$130k per employee times 50-200 employees times 3-5 years. So a guess would be somewhere between $10M to $100M.
A studio will have proper management and will understand what is involved in making a game. An individual will rely on you to direct them. Which if you don’t have any game development experience will be rough on both of you.
Funding. An IT professional makes good money but not that good. If you want to fund it solely yourself you’ll need to greatly limit your expectations, and if you want outside funding you’ll likely find it to be impossible unless you already have an established company. People invest in companies not ideas.
Battlestate Games, the company behind Escape from Tarkov, currently has 80 employees. While they likely didn’t start with that many they would have gained most of them shortly after funding and development was about five years. Simply put we’re talking tens of millions of dollars.
Thanks for your answers guys.
You must be laughing about people who came out of nowhere and want to compete with best games. And indeed you are right x)
How should I do if I want to make only the base of the game
2 map, 1 inventory, 50 items, 10 weapons
That I remove 90% of the complex elements and leave them for later (graphics, 3d object, etc)
The goal is not to make a copy of Tarkov but just an idea of the future.
On youtube I’ve seen games really well made by independents.
What about buying an already made fps project and having developers work on it ? Would that be a good idea ?
That doesn’t really change anything, because you’re chasing photorealism, and because photorealism is still expensive.
Amusingly, your list does not list any players or opponents
If you don’t believe people, you can contact a 3d modeling studio and ask them for a quote for a single character.
The only example I’m aware of is Bright Memory, and the creator admitted stealing assets.
It won’t be a good idea. A better idea is looking for a well-tested FPS kit asset and not someone else’s project. Because the project will have remnants of original ideas the author had, and you’ll be fighting those while trying to shoehorn them into your usecase. A kit will be at least made to be extensible.
Be aware that using ready-made models may result in them being recognizable. For example, I’ve seen several games on steam which use the same goblin as an enemy, then there’s low-poly character kit everybody is trying to use. Daz character models are also very recognizable.
Bright Memory has been touted as an example of a realistic game made by a tiny team or even one person. However, the creator later admitted that he used someone else’s model as a base without permission. Meaning he pirated the models and didn’t make them. That nulls his example of realistic game being made by one person, since he pirated content he used.
If you’re buying assets on unity asset store, you can use them for creation of “interactive media”, which includes videogames. You are not allowed to resell them, or sell modified version of those assets.
A single character model can have very high price (there are sources listing them at $5000 per character and even $80000), and there’s no point in investing into graphics when you don’t have a gameplay skeleton.
So a decent idea would be to make your gameplay first as low poly assets and then attempt to improve visuals.
In my opinion a photorealistic game can easily have six or seven figure budget. Meaning millions or tens of millions of USD. That’s why it would be better to aim at making something like Unturned first.
Regarding asset suggestions, I think there’s a separate forum for that, and I’m generally not the person to give advice regarding asset because I almost never buy anything from asset store.
My initial advice if you want to work on this no matter what:
Forget graphics! Buy a bigger Synty Studio pack on the store which contains characters and build your game with minimalistic, pre-made assets. Keep a list of assets you are using.
If you finished your game with that and you like the outcome, you can think about replacing the lowpoly assets with fancy, realistic ones and adjusting lighting, etc.
Do not spend more money than a couple hundred dollars in advance. A game like that is a huge undertaking, you probably won’t finish it.
Alternatively you can try to find a character artist that is just as interested in the project as you are. You don’t even need to rig and animate it yourself if you are comfortable using Mixamo.
I completely agree, but I think there is more nuance in a lot of cases.
Figuring out the art production pipeline is just as complex and important as figuring out the code architecture for a project. Of course, in both cases, you can make them as simple or as complicated as you need. But I think if you completely shove art off to the side, build an entire game, and then expect to just plug art in, you might end up having to redesign a lot of your game.
I think it’s good to do some pre-production experiments to figure out what sort of art you could expect to create, and how it might fit into the rest of the production pipeline. But yes, I 100% agree there is no benefit to making expensive, finished, high quality art before you have confirmed the game is viable.
I did not say that. There is no “just plug in”. I said build the game first and if it is playable enough, take care of the visuals and make changes as needed. But 99% chance that he won’t arrive to the point where he would change the graphics to realistic, doing it upfront is a giant waste of money.
Even that example is probably far too much scope for you at this point. Focus on building and releasing a very small first game yourself, and then focus on building a slightly larger game next. Repeat that process a bunch of times. Then consider expanding your team and trying to build slightly larger things.
Here is a thought exercise:
Doctors make decent money, so you might be interested in becoming a doctor. You look into it and realize doctors need years of intense education. What do you do? Do you enroll in medical school? Or do you try to start your own hospital? If you really want to become a doctor, you can enroll in medical school. If you don’t want to go to medical school, then you should not assume it would be easy to start a hospital.
If you want to learn how to build video games, then you can and should do that. But don’t try to start a game development company as an alternative to learning how to build games.
wow dude, we all want to make amazing complex games but you need to “hold your horses” if you want to be part of the devs team of one big game you need experience first, so, make something by your own, something very basic, but if you want to be just the “money guy” then you need a team and that team needs money to eat and stuffs, so, as a team or company you need experience in the industry. If you have so much money well go ahead look for great artist and coders but not on fiverr, that sound very mediocre hahaha xD
There is one guy who is making a game similar to scape from tarkov you can maybe put money on his table and be an inverstor, maybe that is your thing.
You can modify them and you can use modified version in the game you’re making. You are not allowed to sell modified version as asset (and not videogame) to other people. So, you can’t buy a character, add moustache, and sell it on asset store, for example.
The point of buying is to save money. Asset store seller usually will be selling products that cost thousands of usd to develop at a fraction of development cost.
