Cost Benefit Analysis of the RAGE Case Studies

Jarred Glass - Lead Developer PlayGen (United Kingdom)

Type of Game Development Studio:

PlayGen is an integrated R&D studio creating playful solutions that engage the audience, measure competencies and attitudes, influence behaviour, and inspire action. PlayGen’s R&D activities focus on: gamification and social mechanics for learning skills, creativity and behaviour change; user experience modelling and design; cloud system architecture, design and integration; and dissemination and exploitation including business models. Their key expertise is delivering world class solutions that combine play with serious topics.

RAGE Component Used : Social Gamification Assets SUGAR

“How do you make learning more engaging for learners and keep them on task? This is a problem that has faced educators for decades ? The PlayGen solution was to build “social gamification” into their Sports Team Manager Applied Game. The RAGE SUGAR component delivers a ready-made solution that includes features related to gamification, including matchmaking and team formation. SUGAR provides a software platform consisting of Web API and Client side components that enable game developers to integrate group-based gamification into their applications. It supports features such as clans, group resources and goals and tournaments.

Using SUGAR saved PlayGen a significant amount of time and money and allowed us to include sophisticated Social Gamification features , reduce development times and react to customer requirements quickly.”

Cost Benefit :

• Validating the decision to use components

  “Using the RAGE SUGAR component allowed us to produce a rich featured game for an extremely competitive budget. Using the component saved us a considerable amount of time and development cost in incorporating very sophisticated gamification features above and beyond what could normally be expected for a game developed within the budget available.”

• Benefits of using the component against the Cost

  “The cost of building the Sugar components from scratch equates to the cost of three developers over a twelve-month period. The cost of a junior developers, including overheads, is £80,000 per annum resulting in an estimated development cost of the Sugar components including research and development of £240,000. Integration of the component for testing and evaluation can be achieved within a single day with full integration of the asset in the case study taking a total ten days of single developer time equating to a cost of £3076. The resultant estimated development cost saving in the region of £236,924.”

Cost Benefit Ratio 78.02 (Benefit/Cost)

Jens Piesk - CEO Nurogame (Germany)

Type of Game Development Studio:

Nurogames is an independent games development company, founded in early 2006 by practised experts of the games and media industry. The head office is located in Cologne and two representative offices are held in Barcelona and Berlin. Nurogames covers a wide range of work experience, comprising high-skill development for mobile and cross-platform games, leisure applications being their main field of activity. Another focus of the company is placed on the development of games for Xbox 360 (Kinect), Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. Furthermore, Nurogames develop mobile games / applications and social games.

RAGE Component Used : Server-Side Interaction Storage and Analytics

“Nurogames were tasked with producing an Applied game to encourage the development of students at Hull College Group communication skills using an Applied Game. The Nurogames solution was to develop the Watercooler Game. The challenge of the game was in recording an analysing the critical interactions and communication of students. The solution was to collect data on these interactions, store this data and expose the it to tutors. A ready-made solution was provided in the RAGE Server-Side Interaction Storage and Analytics component.

Using the rage component allowed us to incorporate these features within our game that otherwise would have been beyond the budget”

Cost Benefit :

• Validating the decision to use components

  “The integration of this component into out game was straight-forward , the provided documentation was very well written (from a developer's perspective) there were no issues encountered in using the component and it (the component) provided functionality that would have taken a considerable amount of studio time to develop. The component provided user account creation capability and the really valuable function of single sign on capability to other components. I would highly recommend the use of RAGE components.”

• Benefits of using the component against the Cost

  “We are small development studio and the cost benefits realised by using the RAGE components are quite significant .To build the server-side interaction and storage would conservatively likely have taken us several weeks and this would not include testing and bug fixing . A minimum time for the development of this asset would be fifteen days.

  Using the asset cut the net development time down from about twelve days to a two-day implementation. Our (junior) developer costs including studio overheads are (approximately) 500 Euros per day resulting in a total development cost of 13,500 Euros against an incurred cost of two days of 1000 Euros resulting in an estimated saving 12,500 Euros on this one Asset . Savings are compounded each occasion we use this component and with each of other components used. ”

Cost Benefit Ratio 12.5 (Benefit/Cost)

Jared Glass - Lead Game Developer Playgen (United Kingdom)

Type of Game Development Studio:

PlayGen is an integrated R&D studio creating playful solutions that engage the audience, measure competencies and attitudes, influence behaviour, and inspire action. PlayGen’s R&D activities focus on: gamification and social mechanics for learning skills, creativity and behaviour change; user experience modelling and design; cloud system architecture, design and integration; and dissemination and exploitation including business models. Their key expertise is delivering world class solutions that combine play with serious topics.

RAGE Component Used : FAtiMA Toolkit, The Emotion Engine for your AI Characters and Robots

“Playgen were tasked with creating an Applied Game to help students develop soft skills for employability, with a focus on teamwork, communication styles, conflict management, emotional intelligence and time management. Critical to the success of the game was a requirement to create characters within the game that had social and emotional intelligence.

The solution was the Sports Team Manager Game and the solution to developing characters with intelligence was deploying the FAtiMA components.

The integration of the RAGE FAtiMA components into the game provided critical functionality at a fraction of the development cost of our studio having to develop them from scratch.”

Cost Benefit :

• Validating the decision to use components

  “The component provided the required functionality for our Game and saved us considerable time versus building our own bespoke solution. Given the good access we had to the asset developers throughout the integration process we were able to integrate this asset into our first and then second game relatively easily. It was a relatively stable asset to start with but any of the minor bugs we reported were quickly resolved making the integration process a relatively painless one. As a result, there were no significant problems in integrating the RAGE assets into the Pilot games.”

• Benefits of using the component against the Cost

  “We estimated the cost of building the functionality provided by the FAtiMA toolkit of around £80,000 based on the cost of one developer over a twelve-month period including studio overheads. The total integration of the features of the toolkit components into the PLAYGEN game took approximately one month of development time equating to a cost of £6, 667 . The resultant cost Benefit achieved of using the FAtiMA toolkit equates to a saving of £73,333.”

Cost Benefit Ratio 10.82 (Benefit/Cost)

Thierry Platon - Managing Director BIP Media (France)

Type of Game Development Studio:

BiP media is a Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo certified independent video game development studio located in the South of France, founded by two industry veterans and dedicated to the creation of innovative and high-quality casual games for consoles and PC. Since its creation in 2004, BiP media has successfully delivered commissioned or original projects for a great variety of game genres (adventure, platform, management, puzzle games) while steadily increasing the scope and ambitions of its productions on PS4, Xbox One, PC/Mac, WiiU, 3DS, Mobile, etc.

RAGE Component Used : Virtual Human Controller and Communication Scenario Editor

“BIP media were engaged to create an Applied Game for Randstad to help their clients develop their Job search skills CV creation and personal interview skills. In response BIP media created the Job Quest Game. To satisfy the Randstad brief the game was required to incorporate characters embodied with “human” characteristics such as facial expressions and synchronised speech. The solution was to incorporate the RAGE Virtual Human Controller and Communication scenario editor. The component generates expressive behaviour for characters including lip-synchronized speech animation, gestures, facial expressions and gaze.

Using the RAGE Virtual Human Controller and Communication Scenario editor allowed BIP to incorporate these features and save a considerable amount of time and ultimately money against having to develop the features independently.”

Cost Benefit :

• Validating the decision to use components

  “The RAGE components saved us (BIP Media) time and allowed us to include software features that we may not have been able to include had we have had to independently develop the VHC ourselves” There was good documentation and a considerable amount of Research and Development has gone in to the finished component.”

• Benefits of using the component against the Cost

  “The cost of a developer per day at BIP media is 350 Euros. It took around fifteen days to fully integrate the virtual Human Controller into the game we produced for Randstad. We anticipate this time would be greatly reduced on subsequent integrations, due to improvements made to the component as a result of our work and our increased experience of the component. We would anticipate a development time for the component of around two months which would result in a cost of 7700 Euros against an integration cost of 5250 Euros resulting in a cost saving of 2450 Euros.”

Cost Benefit Ratio 1.47 (Benefit/Cost)

Jeremy Cooke - Managing Director Gameware Europe (United Kingdom)

Type of Game Development Studio:

Gameware is a game developer and intellectual property owner of the historically renowned ‘James Pond’ platform games, the world leading ‘Creatures’ series of Artificial Life games and ‘Creebies’ , an Artificial Life product for mobile platforms. Gameware is highly experienced in the development of Artificial Life and mixed reality interactive entertainment products and enabling technologies.

RAGE Component Used : Text to Speech (TTS)

“Gameware were tasked with developing an applied game for the Escola de Polícia Judiciária (EPJ) (Portugal) to support them in developing Police Officers skills , specifically in the interview skills required for very sensitive subjects including abuse and violence.. To do this we needed to develop an authentic and efficient means Applied Game that reflected the very nuanced communication that occurs in this very sensitive domain. The Gameware response was to build the Interview Skills for Police Officers (ISPO) Applied Game. To develop the game, we deployed a suite of RAGE components, the components allowed us, as developers , to incorporate sophisticated speech analysis.

Using the RAGE components saved us considerable time in development and allowed us to include sophisticated text and speech features otherwise out of scope for an Applied Game with a limited development budget”

Cost Benefit :

• Validating the decision to use components

  “The component delivers core functionality to the ISPO application and was integrated from commencement of the application development as such. Integration was relatively straight forward and took around 4 hours including initial testing.”

• Benefits of using the component against the Cost

  “TTS technologies are complex and require expert knowledge to even chat me close to the market leading products from Microsoft and Google. To develop a bespoke Portuguese TTS component from scratch would take at least 3-6 months for a programmer with the required skill set. The cost of a developer at Gameware is £500 per day, given this integration costs were exceptionally low at around £250. This in comparison to an estimated development cost of three months of approximately £30,000.”

Cost Benefit Ratio 120 (Benefit/Cost)