by redle » Mon, 15Mar23 23:43
There is no specific set cost associated with making a game. It can be done completely for free, for thousands of dollars, or anywhere in between. (with plans of making money off a game, you'll need to pay stricter attention to legality. There are certainly games in this genre that use images grabbed blindly off the web or tools used that allow redistribution for non-commercial use. You'll need to make sure everything you use allows for your creation to be used in a for-profit distribution)
A game tends to have a story/theme/plot. Generally a creator makes this up on his own, but a story can be bought or collaborators found.
Many games have graphics. Games can also be created without graphics, but assuming it isn't, this can range from self-created graphics, stock photos, commissioned artwork, computer generated, or other formats. Since you mentioned Shark's games specifically, he uses 3D rendering tools. There are a number of free tools to do this sort of work and rather pricey software that can be purchased. It's a matter of choosing tools to fit your price range spending time to learn how to use them. On top of having software to actually manipulate and render the 3D images, you also actually would then need actual objects to place in the scene (people, clothes, buildings, etc). Once again there are many free objects and many purchasable objects. It's up to you how much you spend or when you are satisfied with what you are capable of creating (you can create your own objects too, but obviously that requires more tools, time, and talent).
(download Daz3D for free and some of the free models that come with it. Play around a little and decide where you want to go from there)
Besides graphics and story, you also need a platform for the game (and the corresponding game mechanics coded out). Flash, RAGS, HTML (with or without JavaScript), Python, are some examples or even coding from scratch in a full programming language. Some formats, like RAGS and flash, require buying the software to generate files in the appropriate format (a license to be a developer is how they work so that anyone can play for free). Other formats are completely free to use, but are less specific as to what they can create. Most people make use of intermediate tools to generate the final format. There are free and commercial versions of tools to help with all of these. Finding a tool that's right for you is a personal choice. There's no one-size fits all here.
In summary, it's a general trade-off between time/money/knowledge(skills). The more work you do yourself, the more you can lower the cost, but the more time and talent you'll need to spend.