Price range of a Gaming Studio

Steampoweredman483

Hey guys, 

I'm trying to do research on budgeting for video games, and one of the things I'm trying to figure out is how much does it cost to rent a AAA studio. 

Thanks. 

Kel-Shaded

The same amount it costs to lease office space of any kind, depends on square footage and location.
Walk up to the window of a commercial letting agents in your city and take a pic of the ads.

MagicSugar

Steampoweredman483 said:is how much does it cost to rent a AAA studio. 

Thanks. 

At least $4-5 million...a month, 300-400 workers.  And that's just for a startup.

More info?  Just search for bankupt gamedev studios in the last 5 years.

PyrZern

....... You mean you want to rent the office ??  Equipment ??
Or an actual professional working AAA studio ? ... What does that even mean... like, pay them money to work for you ?? Is that even possible ?

Kel-Shaded

Possible and common,
As a third party publisher

JacqueChoi

Work for hire is pretty common.

You'll get a huge degree of variance, based on team size, experience, and work portfolio, location.

A couple in Montreal i know of are Behaviour, and NVizzio (formerly Funcom) who have the benefit of the Quebec tax subsidies and can underbid by quite a lot.

You can get in contact with their GM's if you want a price.

0xffff

The AAA team I work on of around 100 people I have heard quoted as costing about £0.5mil per month in operating costs. What it would cost to hire would be a fair bit more I guess.

Kevin Albers

My WildAssGuess is  8 to 15k dollars/month per developer. Less if the definition of 'AAA' team is taken pretty loosely.  So maybe a range of 200k/month for 25 person team of non-super-heroes to a couple of million dollars/month or more for a bigass modern team with a good reputation and some nice hits behind them. Note that making a game includes other costs, such potentially gigantic amounts for an outsource budget, and a marketing budget equal to the entire budget of developing the actual game (of course, those costs are not part of the 'renting a studio' cost, as you put it).

RyanB

0xffff said:

The AAA team I work on of around 100 people I have heard quoted as costing about £0.5mil per month in operating costs. What it would cost to hire would be a fair bit more I guess.

From 2004, but still relevant:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130450/the_end_game_how_top_developers_.php

Value of the Development Team

Another way to determine a developer's value is by assigning a minimum value to their employees. Using current industry multipliers, a developer's employees are often valued at $100,000-$150,000 each (although one developer told us that $200,000 was a fair price). The reasoning behind this is fairly straightforward: If a publisher were to hire, train, and retain an equally effective employee, how much money would they have to spend to do so? $100-$150K per employee is a fair assessment.

EA's Jerry Bowerman provided a simple explanation, "What does it cost you to recruit, train, and make productive an employee? It's not hard to get a floor value of $100,000 per employee."

 

Frankie

I think Kevin Albers is about right, I heard 10k to 15k GBP per person per month being good value a few years ago

Steampoweredman483

Oh wow, thanks guys for the info ::pleased: I'm doing a research paper for class, so i'm trying to get an accurate info starting with at least a 100 people. 

I'll take your advices, and go from there.