4 ms·

I think as a developer, the easiest thing to screw up is the understanding of what a business is and how long it takes to build (and how much it costs to run).

I think as a developer, the easiest thing to screw up is the understanding of what a business is and how long it takes to build (and how much it costs to run). Say you are making $50,000 a year. The owner is probably paying more like $75,000-100,000 when you include insurance, rent, taxes, equipment, etc. Now, imagine you are on a small team of five - an artist, game designer, 2 devs, and a qa person. That is an outlay of about $500,000 a year. So, shipping a smallish game in 6 months is about $250,000. The author seemed to think that building the whole thing from scratch was "saving money", but it was costing him a tremendous amount of time, which was in fact costing him A LOT of money. So, if you are trying to start a business, understand that it costs some combination of money and time, and if you are short on one, you probably need to substitute the other. If you are short on both, you're screwed.

pjmlp 13y ago
This is what people usually miss when discussing about the costs of software development.
free652 13y ago
Also trying to playing multiple roles sometimes doesn't work - while I can do dev and probably qa, no way I can do gfx or level design. It's just a waste of time.
bluedino 13y ago
If you don't have an artist, you need to be able to do art+code. Even if you're making as simple puzzle game, your game is going to look a hundred times better with jewels/blocks drawn by someone who knows what they are doing, compared to something you hacked up in MSPaint. And don't go super-cheap on the artist. It might take them a few hours to do just a few simple icons/items, so pay them what you'd want per hour for a contract job. Don't pay them $10 an hour or offer $100 to do an entire replacement of your development art. The same goes for music. Even an original theme song is going to take 10-12 hours of work. So asking for a $50 song isn't going to yield good results.
- chii 13y ago
  what's a good rate for music for games? I can see two situations - you either find an artist whose style you liked/suites the game, and pay them for an original composition, or find an existing song that suits the game and pay a "licence" to use it. I have no idea how much it costs to do either - i'd really like to know.

pjmlp 13y ago

This is what people usually miss when discussing about the costs of software development.

free652 13y ago

Also trying to playing multiple roles sometimes doesn't work - while I can do dev and probably qa, no way I can do gfx or level design. It's just a waste of time.

bluedino 13y ago

If you don't have an artist, you need to be able to do art+code. Even if you're making as simple puzzle game, your game is going to look a hundred times better with jewels/blocks drawn by someone who knows what they are doing, compared to something you hacked up in MSPaint. And don't go super-cheap on the artist. It might take them a few hours to do just a few simple icons/items, so pay them what you'd want per hour for a contract job. Don't pay them $10 an hour or offer $100 to do an entire replacement of your development art. The same goes for music. Even an original theme song is going to take 10-12 hours of work. So asking for a $50 song isn't going to yield good results.

chii 13y ago
what's a good rate for music for games? I can see two situations - you either find an artist whose style you liked/suites the game, and pay them for an original composition, or find an existing song that suits the game and pay a "licence" to use it. I have no idea how much it costs to do either - i'd really like to know.