Faizaan's Work

World of Warcraft

Primary Data

Since World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004 there wasn't as much social media used to promote the game as there is these days. In an interview with Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment he said "We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch, once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We're glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone."

Secondary data

The ratings that World of Warcraft received at released was very positive, the average score on metacritic is 93 and shares great scores across several rating sites. Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m., over 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. These two record-breaking numbers made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history. Within a single day, all original 40+ World of Warcraft servers were filled to capacity, and by the end of the weekend, more than 40 additional servers were deployed to meet the rapidly growing player base, as the number of new accounts and concurrent users continued to grow.


Target Audience

World of Warcraft was created for the new people to MMO's and for those who wanted to play MMO's but didn't have 9-12 hours a day to spend. When WoW was launched every Major MMO out was a huge time taker that majority of people did not have the time to play. Aside from this the target audience for World of Warcraft is pretty much anyone that is able to play a computer, the easy going questing or the intense raiding can appeal to everyone.

Market Audience

At the time WoW had several competitors one of the major ones being Guild Wars 2 which is very similar to WoW in many ways it has general questing and dungeon like encounters. Some of the advertisements for World of Warcraft were very odd, for example In China there was an advert in which Blizzard had a crossover advert with CocaCola in which both a man and women morph into an orc and fight over skimpy clothing, when she defeats him she is rewarded with a chest full of Coke. WoW was promoted heavily in China due to the vast amount of people living there, it simply means that it will be marketed to more people in the range of the target audience.

Production Research

World of Warcraft was released to every computer that is able to download the battle.net launcher and buy WoW, the entire idea behind WoW is to make it as readily available to as many people as possible. World of Warcraft has always been a subscription based payment system and then a full price for each new expansion. To play the game it is around £10 a month and roughly £35 for an expansion at release, it has always been this way and probably always will. Apparently to originally create World of Warcraft it took $200 million dollars for upkeep and development of the game, which took roughly 4 years to complete.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/world-of-warcraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EONagej8Bu8

Undertale

Primary Data

Undertale owes a lot of its success to YouTube, as the game was picked up by many major Youtubers and the hype for it only grew from there on. They didn't use many traditional questionnaires but instead used the FAQs on Kickstarter, one of the questions asked was how long the game would be and the developer replied with 2 - 4 hours.

Secondary Data

Undertale got very good reviews all round receiving an average score of 92 on metacritic and 10/10 on IGN, with people saying "The biggest surprise of 2015, a unique masterpiece.". The game currently has roughly 2,491,632 ± 45,214 owners according to steam. These numbers are incredibly high for a simple indie game that came out just over a year ago in September 2015.

Audience Research

The target audience for Undertale is quite difficult to see as it feels like the game is targeted towards everybody however the story behind it is quite dark and the gameplay can actually be very difficult and so I would place the target audience in the age range of 15 to 30. It clearly wasn't targeted at a certain gender as the main character you play as 'Frisk' is gender neutral. 

Market Audience

Apart from being advertised on Kickstarter the main way that people were informed about this game was from YouTube the some of the major Youtubers picked up the game and it basically blew up overnight. Toby Fox the developer didn't really have a choice to advertise it here however it was probably the best things that could have happened to the game. There are competitors in the form of general indie games but none of the ones I've seen really hold a candle to Undertale.

Production Research

Since release Undertale has cost £9.99 which personally I feel is a very reasonable price for this great game. The game was originally being kickstarted and had a modest goal of $5,000. The campaign however raised over ten times this amount mainly due to one aspect of the game, the fact that you don't have to fight the enemies in order to defeat them. The final amount was $51,124 with 2398 backers. The game was released on steam and so is readily available to anyone with this software installed.

http://steamspy.com/app/391540
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1002143342/undertale

Borderlands 2

Primary Research

Borderlands designer Randy Pitchford, when asked about if the game would offend people he replied, "I'm talking about if a design feels outlandish. If somebody can look at something and go 'that's coll because it's wild and different', then there's value to it, and if it's not the obvious thing then that's why it's producing that result, and makes it more valuable because its rare, it's exceptional." The developers of Borderlands 2 held a social media campaign for the game on Behance, they released a new promotional image each day in the weeks running up to the games release.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/776864/Borderlands-2-Social-Media-Campaign


Secondary Research

The game was critically acclaimed by almost all sources, averaging a score of 90 on meta critic and a 9/10 on IGN, with a lot of the sources praising the games sense of humour, World structure and RPG systems. The game has around 30 hours of gameplay and has quite a lot of replayability. The current price for Borderlands 2 is $19.99 however the price at release was roughly $40. The game was released on September 17th 2012 and currently has roughly  7,287,019 ± 76,845 owners according the steam.


Audience Research

The game is stated to be targeted at an age range of 25 - 39 year olds I think that the main buyers of the game would range from 18 - 25 year olds due to the cell-shaded graphics and over the top violence. The majority of people that play Borderlands 2 are male, this is also shown from the over sexualise characters. I believe that Borderlands 2 is made for the A,B,C1 this includes people that have the money to spend on games however I don't think the game was made with a social class in mind due to the fact that the game doesn't take itself very seriously.


Market Research

One of the major competitors for Borderlands is Battleborn, this is mainly due to the wacky characters with different abilities and weapons considering the game modes are nothing alike. Both games however see you shooting stuff with a wide variety of odd weapons. The game was actually advertised in a slightly different way, in addition to the usual TV advertisements a four issue comic was released detailing how the four main protagonists came together in the first place.


Production Research

The game was obviously released on steam and in major stores quite globally, this is in order to get the game out to as many people as possible. According to an interview with one of the developers for Borderlands 2 the game cost roughly $30 - $35 million dollars to make.



http://uk.ign.com/games/borderlands-2/pc-94190
http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth

Primary Research

The developer Edward McMillan said in an interview that the game is so odd hes unsure why people find it appealing "But I don't think many people see the themes in that way. I mean, what's so appealing about a naked abused child crying on shit? I guess the real appeal is the fact that you can play it endlessly." Personally the reason i play the second game is because i enjoyed the first one so much, the advertisement for The Binding of Isaac Rebirth I actually find quite disturbing, as you can see ion the link below.
http://toucharcade.com/2016/11/01/binding-of-isaac-beta-testers/

Secondary Research

The ratings that The Binding of Isaac received were pretty great all round, receiving an average score of 86 on metacritic and a score of 9 on IGN. The game costs $14.99 and about $10 - $15 for the DLC. It was released on November 4th 2014 has currently sold 1,789,248 ± 37,858 according to steam.

Audience Research

According to multiple sources The Binding of Isaac wasn't made with a specific target audience in mind however the game is rated for mature audiences so the game definitely not aimed at children. The story behind the game is actually based on a story form the bible and some of the aspects of the game can be quite gruesome, for example an item that you can pick up makes Isaac appear to have a wire coat hanger sticking through his head. For this reason I think that it is targeted towards ages 15 - 25.

Market Research

One of the major competitors for the Binding of Isaac is Enter the Gungeon, a very similar game on multiple levels. Both games have different characters that you can play as and see you moving from room to room fighting enemies and picking up items. Each game also has bosses that you have to fight at the end of the level. The Binding of Isaac was advertised in a very strange way, the advert was a fully animated version of Isaac running into various enemies with gameplay weaved in between.

Production Research

The main place the game was released was on steam, I don't think any hard copies of the game exist, however the game is also available on the Xbox and PlayStation store. I can't find how much the game cost to develop however due to it being an indie developer I imagine that the budget wasn't as much.

Unit 13 - Understanding the Game Industry - Contracts of Employment

Unit 13 - Understanding the Game Industry - Contracts of Employment

Contracts

Contracts are an agreement between two parties, in the game industry this is quite often the developers and the publishers. These are usually a written contract that require a signature to make the contract legally binding. There is a lot of important information that is often included in contracts, this includes benefits that you may receive with the company you work for, Inventions that you may have during your time working for the company, a confidentiality agreement and a non-compete depending on if you are high enough withing the company. Some of the benefits available are simple ones like the amount that you are to be paid or any bonus pay. Health insurances could also be included and occasionally a pension plan. There is normally one clause within the contract that states anything you create within your time working at the company automatically becomes property of the company, for example if you create the idea for a game whilst working at EA, the idea would belong to them even if they don't plan on using it. The confidentiality agreement is where the employee must agree not to share any of the companies secrets, this is mainly due to the fact that they dont want anybody to find out about anything the company may have in the works, especially a competing company, the penalties for doing so are also included. Higher level employees like executives are bound to know more about the company so to stop them from giving other companies the current information they sign a non-complete saying that they aren't allowed to work for another company for a certain amount of time.

The development agreement is a type of contract that includes the terms of a development deal, this will include several things, one of the first is the Whereas, this basically says that a publishing company and a development company will work together to make one product which is the published by the publishing company. The terms are what the developers have to work with, for example the money that the publishers will pay the developers and the amount of time that they will have to complete the game. There is also the matter of ownership of the game, in the contract it is decided if the the game(or IP if based on licensed IP) belongs to the development company or the publishing company. It is occasionally split between them, for example the publishers might own the game whereas the developers might own the code for the game. Warranties are are something that both the publishers and developers have to agree to in order not to get the other party into and lawsuits, for example the developers would have to swear that they had not plagiarised any of someone else's source code as to not get the publishers sued and the publishers have to have the right to ask the developers to make a game before they start to. The terms of termination will also be written out, this is what will happen if the deal ends before the game is fully complete.

License Agreements

A license agreement is needed when a game uses an IP that is already owned by somebody else, for example Star Wars being owned by Disney. The publishers need a license agreement before they can start production on the game, this is due to the fact that the agreement will have terms included that tell you what you're allowed and not allowed to add in your game. There are several different things that can be licensed for example maybe you wanted to make a game very loosely based on Star Wars and so only needed the rights to the characters or maybe a few story elements of the movies to be put into the game. The agreement can often be limited to certain platforms for example Xbox One and PlayStation 4, if the publisher wants to have the rights to publish on another platform. The territory is part of the license agreement that states where the game is allowed to be published, if they want it published worldwide then this normally costs more. The contract is bound to run out at some point, this is called a term, a game normally loses popularity from around 3 - 5 years and so this usually how long the contracts last. The cost for the license will be stated in this contract as well, the cost is usually paid upfront and then the royalties are based on the amount of units sold or occasionally percentage based.

NDAs and Confidentiality

A Non-Disclosure-Agreement is when one of the company tells the other information, this could be plans for future games or new technology they have in the works. The other company has to agree not to share this information, if they do then the first company can file a lawsuit against them. Some of them go into more detail than others in specifying that the party that doesn't comply must pay all legal fees. But as long as you're going to keep the secret confidential, those clauses then they won't apply. 






http://www.sloperama.com/advice/article58.htm https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-disclosure-agreements http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/licensing-agreements.html
http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1577

Level 3 in Games DesignUnit 73: Sound for Computer Games

Level 3 in Games DesignUnit 73: Sound for Computer Games

By Ben Allardyce

The Last of Us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97u-U0nvJM#

I feel that Gustavo used this music to convey the emptiness of humanity throughout The Last of Us. The instruments that he used are very reminiscent of spaghetti westerns you can hear the similarities in this track at 1:50 -  2:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7z6zRbGhfg. This also fits well with the game play since in The Last of Us you can ride on horseback which is often associated with western style films. The music is important to set the tone of the game, The Last of Us is a very emotional game filled with tension, so this had to be put across in the music which I feel is done very well. Personally I don't think there is any Foley in this track, Foley is where you add sound effects into the track after it has been recorded. A great example of this is shown in this video at 2:40 - 3:20 where they show the creation of the sound effects for certain creatures in game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJyk5do5pq0
Timbre is what makes two instruments sound different even when they are playing at the same note and volume, timbre is made because the sounds resonate at different frequency. Waveform is the graphical representation of signal, this includes sound vibrations. The main theme from The Last of Us sounds like the wave length would be a lot longer and dragged out to create the slow tones in the background of the track.

I believe this sound isn't just to create emotion but also convey information, I believe that a lot of the tracks in The Last of Us symbolise loneliness, not just the main theme for example this track is also very sombre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYUErkvORWA
An audio environment is how the track is recorded and therefore listened to, for example surround sound is a system involving three of more speakers, this enables the listener to have a more realistic effect. For example in the main theme for The Last of Us at 0:34 to 0:40 there is footsteps in the background, when I listened to this with headphones it sounds as if the person is walking from one side to the other, this is stereo sound. Considering that Gustavo was hired by Naughty Dog and created the all of the music in house, I cant imagine there being many legal issues however the music would have to be copyrighted so no one else is able to use it without crediting the original artist. Gustavo would also have to be careful when creating the music, as to not use any copyrighted music or Foley.

Little Big Planet 3 OST - Dead Heat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HrZAK2lZ0g

Personally this I think that this music doesn't work very well, there seems to be a lot going on at once that kind of put me off the main theme of the track, however it doesn't seem to take itself too seriously which fits in well with the game.
 The track seems to give the sense of machinery and perhaps some sort of factory based level. From what I can hear there seems to be some Foley in this track in the form of beeping, especially at 2:49 to 3:00. This is a big part of what makes it technically different when compared to The Last of Us main theme. I can imagine that the timbre was a big part of this track as it would allow us to distinguish the different sounds created by the same notes and volumes. I think that the wave form of this track would be drastically different to the wave form of the main theme for The Last of Us. I think that the wave length would be a lot shorter for Dead Heat, as there are a lot of quick beats and drops.
I think the music symbolises the craziness of the game and how its not supposed to be taken as seriously as a triple A title like The Last of Us would be. The track 'Dead Heat' uses the audio environment of stereo sound to give the perception of natural sound your ears would hear. You can hear this at 2:47 - 3:02 in 'Dead Heat' when the beeping in the background is alternating ears, if you listen using stereo headphones. The sources of the music especially Foley can come from anything from professional instruments to garbage cans. They are then often edited in a studio to create the sound you are looking for.

Task 2

Due to The Last of Us being a massive game, and both that and Little Big Planet being developed for a very popular platform, the tracks can afford to be uncompressed, which therefore means its a higher quality of sound. On Windows it would be saved as a WAV file, it is designed to store a lot of different audio formats, including lossy  and lossless. Since WAV can store PCM, this makes it suitable to store the original recording. The audio files are probably passed around to been edited quite often and so there would have to be a naming system as to not confuse the files. An example of this would be Chapter1_Cutscene2.WAV. The bit depth is the number of bits in each sample, and they correlate to resolution of each sample. An example of this is that audio in DVDs can store up to 24 bits, so would have a bit-depth of 24. The bit depth affects the bit rate and so the higher the bit depth, the more information can be sent or received per second, therefore the higher the bit-depth the higher the file size. There can be several constraints on what the file size is for audio, a major one being RAM obviously there is a specific amount of RAM on the PS4 and this cannot really be changed and so the developers have to take this into consideration. If it were on PC however this wouldn't be some much of an issue for the developers and more of an issue for the gamers as they would have to up the amount of RAM they have to be able to hold the games data. It also takes more data to output the audio in different ways, for example mono sound is only one channel of sound and so the file sizes wouldn't be as big as if it was outputting as surround sound. PCM is a form of sound that has been decoded from audio sound before it is outputted. It has to be uncompressed and has a high bit-rate and so will be a large file size. Gustavo has a very particular sound so it is easier to identify when Foley has been used in his tracks.


There are several different ways to record the audio, one being multitrack, this is where you record from multiple sources of sound on different tracks or at different times. DAT is a digital audio tape that is used to record digitally on tape at a relatively high level of quality. Its also quite a low cost and so is great for gathering several recording on one device. A sequencer is a piece of software that puts together a from a sequence on MIDI events. MIDI itself allows digital music to communicate with each other, advantages of MIDI are that it is compact meaning that an entire song can be in a couple hundred MIDI messages whereas audio data has to be sampled thousands of times a second. MIDI is also very easy to change, for example the pitch and duration can be edited without having to rerecord. MIDI also only describes the notes that you play meaning you send these notes to almost any instrument thereby creating any sound. The game can also be put onto a blu-ray disk which would allow for HD graphics and surround sound, you can tell it is ready for Blu-Ray because it is already on quite a large platform not on mobile. Doing this improves the quality of the game tenfold, this is especially true for The Last of Us. Its genre fits around this type of sound very well as it complements the environment and game play elements. It adds tension to the game by sending you sounds from different areas for example if there was a noise from the left you would hear it in your left ear and none in your right. Mono sound is where it comes from just one source making it sound very flat and two dimensional, stereo sound is where it comes from multiple sources and surround sound is where the sound will come from whichever direction it should do giving it an almost three dimensional effect and help immerse you in the game.

UNDERSTANDING THE GAMES INDUSTRY - INDUSTRY AND MARKET TRENDS

UNDERSTANDING THE GAMES INDUSTRY - INDUSTRY AND MARKET TRENDS - By Ben Allardyce

This is a report about industry and market trends. Industry trends are the trends of large companies and the software that they develop, whilst on the other hand market trends are the trends the gamers follow, for example what the majority of people want to play right now.

Market Trends

As of 2014  the leading country for games development is the UK, and according to a poll from several games professionals across Europe, the UK also the best source for games 10 years ago. Its strange that the people that are most playing games are over 45 year olds. And oddly the most used format for are applications on a mobile device, this is probably due to how easy and cheap they are to buy most ranging anywhere from free to around £2, with the odd few being more. This has also made the most popular genre puzzle type games often played by older women. Most of the puzzle games are free on an app store. Also according to the IAB the majority of the British gaming community now consists of women. According to Creative Industries in 2014 the amount of people in Britain that were gaming was around 69%, compared to 49% of people in 2011. and women made up around 52% of these people. The reason women and older people have begun to get into games is because they have been made so easily accessible via places like the app/google store. People however can spend too much time gaming, for example children aged 8 - 15 spend an average of 20 hours gaming a week, compared to people aged 16+ that spend an average of 11.

The digital market for games has grown in recent years to a point where physical copies of games are rarely bought. Around 48% of the population in the UK use digital stores to purchase games, 55% purchase mobile apps and 40% still purchase disk copies. The main things that pus the digital market in the UK is when new technology in developed. The UK has a very high end market for smart phones and has around 30 million phones in use, this is one of the major reasons the UK's app stores are the biggest in Europe. The fact that we have so many smartphones also drives the social media market up. Market trends suggest that mobile users send about 50% of the time on their on social media site like Facebook or Twitter. Social media does however boost the use of games due to easy access to other that play the same games. The PC download market is also growing exponentially due to online stores like Steam and Uplay. The UK is currently the best place in Europe to invest in the mobile market, a large part of this is because the UK has the largest network of WiFi hotspots in Europe. Games have to effectively market there products to gamers to draw them in.

Industry Trends

Technology is slowly advancing in video games, and one of the newest developments is the idea of VR. These are devices that let the player immerse themselves on another level of the game. However one of the biggest criticisms is that you can only do it alone. Currently the leading developers are working on social versions of VR. Compared to normal gaming VR is more of a physical experience and more attuned to the Nintendo Wii as it puts your whole body into the game. Augmented reality is where a game puts things into the real world, in a game. An example of this is the game Pokemon Go this game put Pokemon in real life locations that you could go out and find. This was a massive game at the time, however this may not have been due to the AR but the fact that it was Pokemon related. Every couple of years the current edition of consoles get an update, sometimes its just a slimmer version of the previous console however, there can be major updates as well, for example the Xbox One S also supports 4K movies. A recent development,especially in apps, is freemium this is a way the free games that attract thousands of downloads get make money other than ad revenue. Ads actually play a large part of it as one of the main purchases is normally no ads. A lot of games often include in game currency that is available to purchase with real money, the cost of this can range anywhere from £2 - £99, from what I've seen.

In conclusion, the trends of the gaming industry are quite varied. Market trends are what is popular within the community, like genre and console. However the trends of the industry are more focused around the development of new technology and how this impacts upon the market trends.

Design Brief

Design Brief

This is a rogue-like dungeon crawler game sees you play as various characters from the movie Big Trouble in Little China. Your character will constantly shoot in a direction when the corresponding arrow key is pressed, the movement will be set to the WASD keys. There will be 8 different floors, filled with randomly generated rooms, each with a set of enemies in it. These enemies will be increasingly harder as you traverse further though the levels. At the end of each level there will be a boss, there is different option for which boss you will fight and this is randomly picked in the last room. The option for the boss you get will increase in difficulty each floor down. There is an item room on each floor, containing one item, there are hundreds of items that change or modify the weapons and bullets you have.

P1 Understand the use of Sound and Music in Games.

P1 Understand the use of Sound and Music in Games.

The Dark Night Rises
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9neFAM4uZM     2:42 - 3:30

An example of a bad use of music would be the opening scene where we are introduced to Bane as the plane is being hijacked. Before the plane is even hijacked, we are bombarded by the music that is overbearing and completely drowns out any suspense that the visuals were trying to portray.

HEROES OF THE STORM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmX7GRpNwPw

This is the game from the main menu, its choir type sound along with the digital music put in builds up to the peak. Its sole purpose is to pump you up before the game and it does this to good effect.

Music in video games is by far the best way to set the tone and mood. For example, this is music from Fallout 3, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JKVanqVvVw. Fallout 3 is often described as “desolate” or “isolated” and “dreary” and it is shown in this score that is specifically aimed to make you feel so.

Another reason to have good music in a game is addiction. For example in the original Super Mario Bros, not as much music could be added back in those days. Due to this the music had to be repetitive and addiction in order to convince people to keep playing, however not irritating at the same time. People would then associate positive outcomes with that music, which will in turn make people more likely to keep playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhscMsBhNhw

Waveform

A waveform is how we represent, the shape of a wave and how it travels. First the wave length is the distance between the peaks of the wave, the frequency of the wave is the number of waves produced by the source every second. The amplitude of the wave is how far the peak of the wave is from its undisturbed position. The Rubens tube shows a standing wave by using sound and fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynqzeIYA7Iw

Foley

Foley is when you use real life sound effects in films, video games and other media. These sounds can include things like rustling paper, to glass breaking.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJyk5do5pq0  1:24 - 1:30  2:39 - 3:15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKa4A-oas74  1:49 - 2:00

Timbre

Timbre is what makes two different notes sound unique and stand out. This is because every note has certain vibrations, made up of the fundamental frequency and then inner ones as well. These are harmonics or undertones. The fundamental is the frequency that all of the wave vibrate. To be able to identify the tone it needs more than three harmonics.

Psychology of sound



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCAqDMfPcRA

This is the death sound for a unit in Civ V, for this reason the sound effect symbolises death.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ8z9FQEQiQ

You can hear the in the video above the instructions that Peppy gives you, this tells the player what they need to do.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfx6yf8pux4

This is the sound effect for picking up a coin in Mario, I believe it symbolises happiness and success when you hear it.

Unit 13 – Understanding the games industry

Unit 13 – Understanding the games industry - Financial Issues

This is a report about the financial issues around the games industry and what causes them. There are several reasons that cause a game to sell well or bad.

The Cost Involved in Creating a Game

There are several things that at costly in the development process, these things include staff, the development of software and hardware, the rent and bills, marketing and advertisement, legality.

In America in 2013 the cost of setting up and running an MMO games development studio for 12 months was roughly $618,000, excluding variable costs. The staff includes 2 programmers, 1 software engineer, 1 artist, 1 games designer, 1 PM/Team Lead, 1 QA tester, 1 systems admin. On average each person earns $73,000 per year, this approximately $584,000. The office space would be around $24,000 for 12 months. All of the equipment would cost $1,200 per person, so $9,600 for 8 people. Sometimes money ins't the only reason a game fails, Grim Fandango for example had several other factors some of these being the fact that the point and click genre just want popular at the time. Also other games like Half-Life came out at a similar time.

How Could a Game be Funded

The funding the developers get for their game comes in many different forms and can often decide how the developer will spend their budget. It used to be fairly limited when it came to getting a budget, your options normally being a bank loan, an investor, or a publisher. While these would help you stick to a set budget, they would be quite difficult to get, for example an investor would have to be quite sure that he was going to at least earn his money back and the bank would want collateral just in case the development didn't go well. It has recently become very popular to get funding though crowd funding sites such as Kickstarter and GoFundMe. It can also be quite hard to raise money this way since regular people have to bet on your game being good to decide to donate to you. Also it is quite regular to see the developer giving out rewards to people that donate a certain amount of money, these rewards can vary from IRL items, to access to the full game. The advantages of crowdfunding would be that genres that aren't often seen would get recognition and funding where in the past this wouldn't have been possible and example of this would be Exploding Kittens this is a card game that would have you trying not to draw cards instead of drawing them. Crowdfunding also allows indie developers to get more funding and following then they would normally get, this helps people get hyped for the game. This however can also be a downside as expectation may become too high, backers of the game may not get exactly what they were expecting, or may simply be disappointed by the end results. This happened with a game called Code Hero, a game that raised  $170,954 on Kickstarter, the backers were suddenly met with a comment from the developer Alex Peake saying he was quitting that was the last update in April of 2014.

Issues Affecting Small Companies

There are several reasons that a small company would have a lot more trouble then say a large company. One of these would be getting the funding to actually start the development of a game, there would be different reasons for this when compared to a larger games company. For example the bank would look at your current income, and since an indie developer plans on using their free time to make a game they probably don't have a full time job if they even have one in the first place. It is hard enough for a normal games designer to get one considering the state of their pay. There would be long periods of time where you are earning no money and then spikes every now and again. Another problem they would have is publishing, getting some one else to publish for you can be a good thing considering they would normally pay for the full development of the game, this covers all cost, however due to this they would take all the money the game earns until they break even and then the development studio would only get what was agreed upon in the deal, which usually isn't very much.

Conclusion

So we have learnt that it is important to not make your expectations too high and to set a budget as to not get off track. If you're under prepared, then you should take a step back and plan, to avoid too many financial issues. There are different ways of funding that are right for different businesses, these in turn would give different options to sell your game to the public. There are extra costs that you need to plan for in case any problem occurs during development. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-a-video-game
http://freshtechsolutions.co.uk/blog/advantages-disadvantages-crowdfunding/
http://kotaku.com/12-successful-kickstarters-that-never-delivered-1687019268
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-08-06-shovel-knight-devs-break-down-costs-sales
http://ukie.org.uk/research