Does anyone know where I could get more information on building games from a business perspective? For example is there a way to determine how long it would take to develop  game's similar to the tycoon genre with 5 to 10 workers? or the costs?

Thanks to anyone that can point me in the right direction.

 

-Josh  

Well I don't know anything about tycoon, but I doubt that you'll find any sort of studies or formal guidelines for this sort of thing. If your lucky, perhaps you can get in touch with some project managers from existing game studios who could give you their opinion, but every game project is different, each with its own unique challenges. How long it will take and what it will cost depends more on how skilled, motivated, and organized your team is than it does on how many team members you have. The best estimate of how long something would take to create is going to come from the people you wish to hire to do the work. Hiring people with demonstrated experience costs more, but you can also see in advance what they can do, and can find out how long it took them to do it.

Yep, the only semi-accurate way of estimating anything that has to do with the process of developing software is by using previous experience of the team.  If it's a new team, then it's a crapshoot.

That's why agile development methodologies will work an initial sprint (2 weeks or so) to see how much work the current team can accomplish in that time.  They then use that experience to estimate how long it's going to take to complete the work.

ITs not written about much but

http://www.amazon.com/Indie-Game-Development-Survival-Guide/dp/1584502142 

and other similar ones http://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Business-Legal-Guide/sim/1592000428/1/ref=pd_sexpl_s_b/102-5024762-5797708?ie=UTF8&pf=book

Otherwise www.gamasutra.com has some more business like articles

Estimating software is a tough thing to do, especially if you are not an expert in that area...

 

I blogged about this early this year:  http://letskilldave.com/archive/2007/01/04/How-Do-I-Publish-My-Game_3F00_.aspx.

 

Keep in mind that the question you are asking is more about the software development lifecycle and less about game development.  In the end, game development is no different from any other software development project at it's core principles of management.  You may want to check out books on project management as well.  Another good read is The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks.

Something like Agile development is great for this. Its a methodology thats based on short 'sprints' toward immediate goals. The idea being you can re-focus your efforts on a continual basis. The other plus is, that over a single sprint (anywhere from 2 weeks to 1 month) you can calculate your teams velocity, or how fast you are accomplishing tasks which can then give you a better idea of how long developing your game will take. As far as costs, overhead and salary are pretty easy to predict. Its the outsourcing, marketing, support, certification, and waiting costs (waiting 3 months or longer for a check from the publisher) that can be tricky. Play it safe, and whatever number you come up add some padding (20-40%). Another strong point will be your technology - do you have tools and an engine in place, or are you building tech from the ground up? If if you're building from the ground up, how long will that take? Would licensing something like Gamebryo make sense?

Good luck!

-gameD3V