Hi Dennis,
You hit the nail on the head here. While writing an E.T. game might be fun to do as a hobby, a side project, $100 or even $200 is not even close to hiring a professional developer to do the job. If we consider the average developer makes $50,000 a year that comes close to $25 an hour. At that rate $200 would only cover the first 8 hours of development. Basically, just one full days work.
Even if we lowered it to $10 per hour that $200 would only cover 20 hours of work not even including production costs for sounds, music, etc that would be required to produce the game. In short, privately hiring a developer really isn't financially feasible. The developer would pretty much have to do the majority of the work out of interest in the project rather than financial reasons. Which brings us to my point.
When Michael mentioned the idea of creating a game I was purely looking into it as something I might like to do as a fun little side project. I knew up front that I wouldn't make anything off the game financially so chose to look into it as a little hobby rather than a business arrangement. Were I really willing to do it on a contract basis, an actual business arrangement, I would bill him the same as any other contractor at $20 per hour as that's the going rate for a trained professional. Obviously, the cost in hiring me on a contract basis would be more than the game is worth. So the decision for me is weather or not I want to do it out of self-interest, as a hobby, rather than for profit.
On 5/24/2012 2:46 AM, Dennis Towne wrote:
Michael, Your best bet is to get friends to help you, or find someone who also really wants to build the game and is willing to help with it. You're not going to be able to hire a professional programmer; even if you hire offshore programmers, a hundred dollars would buy you one day worth of work at best. In my opinion, it's best to keep money out the picture, since you'll probably be working with friends on it as a hobby project. Money destroys friendships pretty easily. Dennis Towne
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