Author: by Staff

Australian indie developers Voxel Agents (Train Conductor) reveal that running even a modest-sized indie studio requires a lot more effort and cost than they had anticipated at the outset. This information comes as part of an extensive Gamasutra feature which serves as a restrospective of the studio's first year in operation. Simon Joslin, one of the co-founders of the studio, shared these two graphs; one which showed the tasks the team expected to be handling, and one showing the actual responsibilities required of the team throughout the first year of the studio's operation. While they're obviously, to an extent, tongue-in-cheek, it does illustrate the disparity between developer expectations and actual requirements:

Joslin also asserts that "if we had paid ourselves market rates, the first year of running The Voxel Agents would have cost a mind blowing $229,850!" He also revealed that the studio cost $27,789 in the first year in expenses. (Note that while these numbers are in Australian dollars, they exchange almost 1:1 with U.S. dollars as of this writing.) For more details on the studio's first year, including the failure of its first project and the factors that lead to the success of the next two, read the feature -- live now on Gamasutra.