Was curious looking around at all the successful apps and noticed everyone I checkout had many people working on it. I was wondering if there is a successful paid app out there that was developed with a team of 1 or 2 people. Just seems a game like Angry Birds would be easy to make, so there has to be successful apps created by 1 or 2 people.
How about The Lost City by Fire Maple Games? I think its a 1 person team doing amazing work.
But in general I agree with you. You need a team made up of people with different skill sets or the ability to acquire where you lack. Its a rare person who can have amazing graphics, programming, marketing skills and great imagination all at the same time.
I know I can barely tick one of those boxes on a good day so I know how right you are.
@ksan brings up the point I wanted to make. It’s rare when you have a person who’s both a left brained artist and a right brained programmer (or did I get that backwards). I have an art side, as a photographer, but it’s driven by my tech knowledge of photography more than my talent as an artist.
But for a game like angry birds, sure one person can do it if they have both skill sets (plus audio skills!!) but the factor you have to consider is time. For Angry Birds, someone has to create all the game art. There is little animation needed. The art to do the cut scenes requires animation and storyboarding skills that your game artist might not have those skills. But in addition to the time to create the art, sounds and programming you also have to have level design skills and you have to have real testing to make sure the levels are playable and challenging. For fun lets figure this out:
80 hours of programming
80 hours of level design
80 hours of game art
80 hours of animation
80 hours of sound engineering
80 hours of QA
480 hours total.
1 programmer, 1 game artist, 1 animator, 1 sound engineer, 1 level designer and 1 QA person. If you got perfect overlap, you finish the project in 2 weeks. Of course it won’t be perfect, the QA person can’t start until later in the project, etc.
A single person is 12 weeks. (Those hour counts are very low for a game like Angry Birds btw) but you can see how much harder it is for a single person to pull it all together. Then there is sales and marketing too.
How about The Lost City by Fire Maple Games? I think its a 1 person team doing amazing work.
But in general I agree with you. You need a team made up of people with different skill sets or the ability to acquire where you lack. Its a rare person who can have amazing graphics, programming, marketing skills and great imagination all at the same time.
I know I can barely tick one of those boxes on a good day so I know how right you are.
@ksan brings up the point I wanted to make. It’s rare when you have a person who’s both a left brained artist and a right brained programmer (or did I get that backwards). I have an art side, as a photographer, but it’s driven by my tech knowledge of photography more than my talent as an artist.
But for a game like angry birds, sure one person can do it if they have both skill sets (plus audio skills!!) but the factor you have to consider is time. For Angry Birds, someone has to create all the game art. There is little animation needed. The art to do the cut scenes requires animation and storyboarding skills that your game artist might not have those skills. But in addition to the time to create the art, sounds and programming you also have to have level design skills and you have to have real testing to make sure the levels are playable and challenging. For fun lets figure this out:
80 hours of programming
80 hours of level design
80 hours of game art
80 hours of animation
80 hours of sound engineering
80 hours of QA
480 hours total.
1 programmer, 1 game artist, 1 animator, 1 sound engineer, 1 level designer and 1 QA person. If you got perfect overlap, you finish the project in 2 weeks. Of course it won’t be perfect, the QA person can’t start until later in the project, etc.
A single person is 12 weeks. (Those hour counts are very low for a game like Angry Birds btw) but you can see how much harder it is for a single person to pull it all together. Then there is sales and marketing too.