CONSIDERING YOUR OPTIONAL COSTS
Programming, design, and art are your three necessary costs. Some might question whether design is completely necessary, preferring the scribbles-on-napkin or fast-iteration approach. Though there is some merit to this when dealing with simple apps, any well-developed, complex interactive app requires a great amount of design planning and forethought, or else you're taking huge risks with scope, budget, and time.
Audio Costs
Audio isn't always needed (for utility or business apps), and, fortunately, when it is, royalty-free libraries of sounds and songs are available on the Internet (search for “royalty free sounds” for a decent list). Reasons against this approach might be that the quality isn't always there, legal restrictions sometimes exist for particular sounds/songs, and it can be difficult/time-consuming to wade through all the muck on your way to finding a gem.
With that being said, some amazing, under-utilized audio engineers and composers are available for hire, and these people will create all your sounds from scratch, or know how to find them quickly and modify them to fit your needs.
Expect (non-VO) audio to range from $500 or so for a simple game with a few core sounds, to $5,000 or more for a full game. When VO work is required, audio costs can skyrocket. Sometimes it can be more than $10,000 for good talent per actor, again depending on what's needed and the type of talent you need.
Special Effects Costs
Special effects are considered to be any pre-rendered CGI you need for introductory movies or other story devices. These are usually anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute or longer (for full non-app games), and can get extremely expensive. Mostly, only games deal with this, and then only if they want a knock-out intro to the experience.
Shop around, because ranges can greatly vary. Special effects companies charge mostly by the time needed, how much concept/approval work is involved, overall quality desired, time required for delivery, and factor in their past portfolio as well. For example, for the exact same specification (60 seconds of CGI total, split in two 30-second movies at various times), you might get back quotes ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 or more from a triple-A studio, depending on from whom you get bids.
Aside from programming or potential marketing costs, CGI can be another top expense, so be sure your game/app needs it. Most apps won't be dealing with this, and, in fact, you can often get a lot of mileage by making use of your in-game engine for cut-scenes.
Shortening your required movie times can, of course, result in much lower bids. But don't be surprised if even a 10-second CGI quotes for more than you would think. On the flip side, sometimes the end result establishes your game/app as uniquely polished, and you shouldn't be dissuaded if this type of polish is what your app needs.
In the case of “Archetype,” the game had virtually no story (just a sci-fi theme) and only a pretty slick menu system for navigating into and out of the multiplayer gameplay. The development team felt the best way to bring something that made players more attached to the world, in addition to extra polish, was a short CGI intro story.
You might also be aware that audio (especially VO), in addition to CGI, can eat up a lot of memory (which is precious in apps for speedy initial download times). So, that may be a consideration as well. To save space, these things can be compressed a bit, but the tradeoff is that quality may suffer.
Localization for Foreign Markets
If you're planning on making your app available in other languages (see Chapter 5 for more details), which can often offer more visibility for your app in areas of less competition, the process rests partly with programming (for implementation), and partly with project management/production (for translation). The cost for programming should be included in your contract, and the cost for translation can actually be quite low, but time-intensive. It is worth noting that if your app is text-heavy, rendering your text in an actual font rather than images (for example, including graphic buttons with customized text in a game) can use less art resources and be easier to manage.
You can find many capable translators on Elance for any language, and their rates vary greatly, but are sometimes surprisingly low (such as $0.08 per word). Expect to pay in the range of $300 to $1,000 for a relatively small word count (less than 1,000 words) when translated into a few different languages, and upward of $5,000 to $10,000 or more for a larger game or app with thousands of words.
Don't forget, you'll not only need the game translated, but you'll need your App Store description and all update notes to be translated as well.
Quality Assurance/Testing
Even if your app has the best coders, there are bound to be bugs (errors), and lots of them, especially early on. QA (which entails methodically testing your app for bugs and crashes related to user experience, graphics, audio, text, gameplay, and performance) usually can be handled in-house by one or two people dedicated to the task (sometimes the project manager/producer). For general feedback and reporting of severe issues that are encountered, you can also include friends and family who play as much as you can get them to.
Occasionally, you'll want to outsource QA, but (typically) only for complex apps with many different user experiences, modes, or required hours of play. The more complex your app is, the greater the chances for crashes to occur (as shown in Figure 2-8), and those should be considered the bane of every app's road to good ratings.
FIGURE 2-8: Crash errors need to be completely eliminated prior to release
When you do need dedicated QA (for example, when porting to another device and testing all its features, or during a particularly large batch of new features being implemented), costs are usually not too much of a concern for the overall budget, and can be had for up to a few thousand dollars, depending on scope.
To give a sense of perspective, for a relatively large role-playing game to be released on multiple console platforms in addition to PC, quotes from dedicated full-service companies might surprise you. It can be hundreds of thousands of dollars for full testing during the few months prior to release. But, of course, that kind of testing would rarely be required for most apps.
The exception, however, would be if you're doing a social simulation game such as CapcomMobile's “Smurf's Village,” as shown in Figure 2-9. Many hours are spent on complex games such as this.
FIGURE 2-9: Titles like the popular “Smurf's Village” are high-budget, complex games that require significant QA
Public Relations and Marketing
The area of public relations and marketing is all about finding the right outlets to promote your app, and then establishing your brand in the eyes of the users as something they'd want to own/buy.
For “Archetype,” because it was a multiplayer game using dedicated servers, the Villain team needed to “stress test” the game to see how much load it could take before crashing, or before performance was inhibited. Because the team was building simultaneous localized versions in 12 languages in preparation for release, it was decided to release a few weeks early in a market with fewer potential users than the U.S. in order to gather player feedback and other data, then quickly address issues prior to the main launch. In this case, Villain went with the Portuguese market, but it could have easily been another. In the end, it helped for a more secure and polished launch with fewer complications.
With today's buzz and hype capable of being spread through social media channels faster than traditional outlets, concentrate your efforts there. Positive website exclusives and reviews are a given, as well as any Facebook and Twitter buzz. The goal will be to hopefully have earned enough hype when the app is launched to perhaps get Apple's attention (even if not right away), and get Apple to feature it as one of its Apps of the Week.
The “Archetype” team went solely with a post-release effort, although things were set up prior to release so that the hype was started and maintained in heavy doses beginning from the first day. Because of the release of the Portuguese version, a few popular iPhone sites like TouchArcade (www.toucharcade.com) caught on to the release early, and published an article or two as a preview to get the ball rolling. But the timing for that worked out in Villain's favor, because the buzz was fortunately generally positive, and helped fuel the hype and mystery for the U.S./global release.
What helped in the case of Villain's “Archetype” was having two unique features that hadn't been done yet, and appeared to be anxiously awaited by a segment of the hard-core action community — smooth five-versus-five team-based gameplay on 3G devices for a relatively low price, and a dedicated full-featured “Death Match” progression system that didn't involve micro-transactions, as one of Villain's competitors did. In other words, once you bought the game, you got a lot of value without needing to spend anything more in order to “keep up.” These two things, along with the positive buzz of “Archetype” having “come from nowhere” in particular, helped propel early reviews and word of mouth.
Though traditional game companies can spend millions, your marketing budget can be successful for as little as next to zero to $2,000, if you go the social media route externally, and then use extra money to build social features directly into your game/app (if possible) so that they keep paying dividends.
Advertising Costs
Advertising can mean anything from shooting/editing a movie to become “viral” on YouTube, through social media ad campaigns, to high-cost solutions such as exclusive daily/weekly ads on high-profile websites that are getting millions of views per day.
These days, it's almost a no-brainer not to go with print advertising, unless you have a huge excess in your budget. Print is still very expensive, and can't reach out to or convert nearly the amount of people any reasonable social media–driven or targeted web advertising plan can.
It's also a bit of a conundrum whether to spend a lot on one-off advertising (that is, ads that are there, and then gone), versus spending a proportionally equal amount of money adding viral social features directly into your app. If you don't plan to have any social outlets built-in (for example, posting scores on Facebook Walls, or otherwise sharing with friends), then paid advertising becomes more important to drive initial customers your way in hopes of converting them into paying customers.
If you decide to go this route, posting a feature ad on prominent websites for any length of time can cost upward of several thousand dollars for each.