Quote Originally Posted by czar View Post
You can make commercially successful games without spending massive of amounts of money. Take Angry Birds, written in LUA. The hard part coming up with a brilliant idea and pulling it off with style.
Definitely.

A good idea isn't enough, you also need good style, good execution and good marketing/buzz.

The game mechanics of Angry Birds f.i. were not invented by Angry Birds, there have been quite a few (more or less experimental) predecessors, and where Angry Birds succeeded was in:
- having cutesy characters that "scaled" well in the real-world and had enough fun/appeal (ie. good stylistic ideas, predecessors were unimaginative bomb or rock throwing)
- great execution on churning out levels and themes to keep the trend going (most predecessors had neither the polish nor the quantity)
- great marketing (viral buzz "the way it has to be done")

Overall I would say the code and engine are the simplest and cheapest part in terms of man/hours.