Let’s dive in…
Take a Risk and Outsource Overseas
Labor rates for experienced designers or developers in regions like China or India are significantly lower than in Western countries. For as little as $15/hour for a freelancer or around $30/hour for a small studio, you can outsource your production and save significantly.
However, there are caveats: communication quality may be inconsistent, and the initial product may not meet expectations without significant investments in time and oversight. As Matt Conheady, Workinman Executive Producer and former Global Outsourcing Manager, says, “Managing the abundance of risks tends to negate a lot of the savings.” You’ll often need to double efforts in direction and management for overseas teams and prepare for longer timelines, as the first beta version likely won’t match your vision, and when that happens your whole model gets thrown out of whack.
Outsourcing to developing regions can be an option if budget is the primary concern, but it carries a fair amount of risk.
Overseas Game Development Outsourcing Pros and Cons
Pros
- Low Cost: Ideal for low-budget projects if the risks and management challenges are manageable.
- Scalability: Good for large-scale, repetitive work like creating textures, sound effects, or QA.
- Localization: Great for region-specific localization needs (e.g., a Chinese team for a China-targeted game).
- Unique Talent: Sometimes, overseas markets are the only source of specific artistic styles, technical abilities, and local-market expertise.
Cons
- Language Barrier: Misunderstandings in communication, documents, or specifications can lead to errors. It will happen.
- Cultural Barrier: Local references may be missed or misinterpreted, impacting game design, quality, and in-game copy.
- Industry Knowledge Gaps: In countries where gaming is less mainstream, knowledge gaps may mean longer explanations for game mechanics.
- Time Zones: Different zones often slow down feedback loops, requiring overnight or even longer wait times.
- Security and IP Risks: There’s a real risk of ideas or technology being replicated locally.
- Limited Legal Recourse: If something goes wrong, legal options may be limited and cost-prohibitive.
Choose a Reliable and Cost-Conscious Development Studio
Not outsourcing overseas? Domestic costs vary as well. A Unity app developed by a San Francisco studio may cost around 22% more than one from a New York-based studio, with further savings possible from agencies outside major urban centers.
Tips:
- Seek a developer with longevity and a track record of repeat clients—this indicates loyalty, consistent or improving quality, and good value.
- Look for proactive communication. A studio that responds quickly and a team who checks in regularly to minimize cost-inflating surprises.
- Ensure transparency. A good developer should provide itemized pricing and advise against low ROI items.
Use AI to Reduce Costs?
Generative AI technology has advanced rapidly in a short time. While generative AI tools offer potential cost savings in game development, relying heavily on them can compromise creative integrity, dilute unique brand identity, and introduce potential legal and ethical challenges. AI-generated content often lacks the originality and emotional resonance that experienced game designers bring to a project, which is essential for creating memorable and impactful games.
The Problem with AI for Production
AI training datasets are generally broad and not tailored to specific brand guidelines or intellectual property needs, which can result in generic or potentially derivative content that may not align with a studio’s or brand’s standards. For production, AI’s unpredictability makes precise control and iteration difficult, increasing the likelihood of revisions that can negate anticipated savings. For instance, while AI can generate character art in a standing or T-pose, its ability to recreate consistent additional poses (required in games) is limited. Each new expression, pose, or perspective often changes the character’s appearance, and manually fixing these inconsistencies can be more time-consuming than creating assets from scratch.
Another production challenge with AI-generated assets is that they are often not immediately production-ready. They may lack transparency, animation compatibility, in-game design, or the flexibility for easy revision.
Using AI Responsibly
In its current state, AI has specific uses that can provide cost savings with minimal risk. As of 2024, AI is commonly used in the following areas:
- Creative inspiration, layout guidance, and general reference: Generative AI images are often used to inspire creative directions early on when conceptualizing game components and visual styles.
- Upscaling: AI upscaling enhances asset resolution and detail, greatly accelerating game remasters and ports to modern platforms. This use is relatively low-risk and low-cost, though it does require human oversight.
- Proofreading: Some large language models (LLMs) excel in conducting preliminary checks on scripts and other texts. While not perfect, running documents through AI for spelling and grammar review provides valuable insight, potentially avoiding costly fixes later on.
- Voice generation: Although AI-synthesized voices lack perfect tonality and may not follow nuanced direction, they are suitable for certain games, with quality constantly improving. Many AI voice services offer licensed dialog from various talents at a fraction of the cost of live actors. However, control over tone and pronunciation remains limited, making it best suited for less dramatic projects, such as educational or corporate games and activities.
- Programming assistants: Tools like GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer, and Codeium integrate into developers’ coding environments, suggesting code based on context, much like Google’s autocomplete. These tools boost productivity by referencing information, answering codebase questions, and troubleshooting bugs. While these generative tools are useful, developers should carefully review suggestions before implementation.
Legal Issues with AI
Legal risks also arise if generative models inadvertently reproduce copyrighted content from their training data, which could lead to costly disputes. While AI can be a useful supplement, it should not replace the specialized, human-driven creative processes essential for producing high-quality, original games.
Stay in the Loop and Provide Prompt Feedback
Weekly check-ins help keep development on track, allowing you to clarify any potential misunderstandings early on. Quick feedback on art and build iterations also prevents the team from progressing too far down paths that might need revision.
If you’re providing content (like branding, style guides, or voice assets), prioritize it to maintain momentum.
Use a Multi-Platform Developer
Develop once and publish across platforms. Engines like Unity allow you to develop a single-source app for multiple devices, reducing costs considerably. If you’re targeting youth on mobile, focus on tablets or phones to save on development and testing time. If developing for web, make sure they use a well-established and reliable game engine, such as Phaser, which will perform well on a variety of browsers and devices.
Plan Early and Plan Properly
We often consider a well-constructed Game Design Document (GDD) as an essential cost-saving tool. The GDD acts as a comprehensive blueprint that details gameplay mechanics, art style, user interface, storylines, and technical requirements. By solidifying these elements early on, a GDD significantly reduces the risk of costly scope changes, rework, and miscommunication, enabling smoother, faster development cycles.
- Clear Communication: A GDD provides a central reference for the entire development team, stakeholders, and Quality Assurance Testers, ensuring alignment across all departments (art, programming, audio, etc.). Clear documentation minimizes misunderstandings and the need for misdirection resulting clarifying meetings, which can add up in costs and greatly impact the schedule.
- Reduces Iteration Costs: Without a GDD, creative and technical changes often occur mid-development, leading to increased iteration and testing cycles. By outlining gameplay mechanics, core features, and design specifications, a GDD provides a roadmap that allows the team to avoid extensive reworks, keeping development on schedule and within budget. Iteration can happen, on paper, within the GDD. Putting the GDD through several sets of eyes, and soliciting knowledgeable input on key mechanics and design as this phase can greatly reduce the costs of development.
- Streamlines Decision-Making: With a structured GDD, stakeholders can make faster, more informed decisions by having all information on game mechanics and features upfront. This proactive approach helps prevent late-stage additions or revisions, which are some of the costliest changes in development.
- Budgeting and Resource Allocation: A thorough GDD breaks down game elements, making it easier to assign resources and estimate time requirements accurately. This breakdown helps set realistic budget estimates and minimizes overages by giving developers a clear scope of what each phase requires.
- Facilitates External Collaboration: When outsourcing or bringing in external collaborators, such as a QA or support team, a detailed GDD is invaluable for onboarding. It allows contractors or partners to understand the project scope quickly and stay aligned with the creative vision, reducing the risk of quality issues that can drive up costs.
Ultimately, a GDD allows teams to approach game development with a focused, well-organized plan. It not only cuts costs by reducing miscommunication and rework but also enhances the overall quality and cohesion of the final product by keeping everyone on the same page from the start.
Be Smart About Scope
Game complexity directly affects cost. Be mindful of UI elements, character mechanics, level numbers, and game modes, as all these add up in testing time and production.
Focus on the MVP
In most cases, reducing development costs will most likely mean reducing scope. When taking this approach, consider the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) your game can exist as at launch. The MVP should be the base essentials needed to: attract and engage new users; maintain a reasonable playerbase; meet minimum monetization or business goals. Everything else can be moved to the backlog for a future update.
A good exercise for prioritizing what features and content in your MVP or first release is to create a large bulleted list of all the features you imagine. Use nested bullets to add sub-features/sections and drill even deeper to to add additional features in content that go under those sections. Then highlight what you absolutely must have, and mark those that could be put off into the future. The more high-level bullets you highlight, generally, the more it’s going to cost. To keep that in check, think of each section as a module…
Think Modularly
Modular design helps simplify updates and maintenance, allowing for incremental upgrades and new features without reworking the entire game. Modules can be thought of as semi or entirely independent features, easily isolated from the rest. A multiplier or puzzle mode; a statistics page, in-game chat, or player customizations could all be considered independent modules each with its own design phase and release date. These are features that can be developed later on and updated in general isolation from the rest, helping you to group major scope items separately.
Procedural Design
In some cases, procedural level design or other types of automated content generation could be a cost savings. It’s always worth exploring early on if a procedural system, which does have increased costs to initially develop, will yield long-term savings. While there are risks that content generated procedurally could become repetitive, lack meaning, and result in a duller experience, in several cases it can add a lot of variety and spontaneity in games, while expanding the replay value.
Keep Art in Check
Choose an economical art style and lock in a style guide early. Minimalist designs are widely accepted and cost-effective. While styles like pixel art and vectors are typically cheaper, it really boils down to the level of detail that goes into each asset and its animation. Spending time to qualify an economical art style up front can save a ton in production costs for the life of the product.
Is 3D art needed, or will a most cost-effective 2.5/2D approach work?
Crowdsource Quality Assurance
QA is essential, and while professional testing services are ideal, public beta testing offers a cost-effective alternative. Public testers provide varied scenarios and helpful feedback, potentially alerting you to gameplay issues and bug fixes.
Consider Fast and Affordable Reusables
If you’re developing a standard game type (like Match-3 games, puzzles, platformers, shooters), seek out a developer who has a vast library and tons of experiences creating a variety of game engines and mechanics. Often these can be easily repurposed and modified for the fraction of the cost of starting anew.
Talk With Your Studio and Address Cost Concerns
We’re committed to delivering exceptional, affordable game development. With transparency, proactive solutions, and a focus on aligning with your business goals, we make sure your project comes to life in the best way possible. —Reach out today to discuss your next game or app development project and how we can help.
