At 7/10/08 04:34 AM, Rustygames wrote:
At 7/10/08 12:11 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:
so I stated $60000 for 10 games and $120000 for 20.
I think that's an extremely greedy estimate. I assume you were just trying to get rid of them. They'd be better off hiring a real full time developer for an entire year then to bother paying you that kind of money. And they'd get the source.
Well them getting the source was part of the deal. Hiring a full time developer is only a better move if they actually need a full time developer. It's better to pay twice the salary for one year of work versus half as much, but having to keep a developer on payroll until he/she gets old and dies.
As for the quote, it's really too vague to make a reasonable estimate given the description provided. Do they want tic tac toe and pong, or 10 MMORPG/RTS/FPS games? It's best to pick an hourly rate and project the amount of time it'd take to write 10 games of the caliber they want. Don't even bother giving a quote until you feel completely comfortable and well informed about the project specs.
For instance, say they want games that would take you about 5 weeks to complete at 40 hours a week. If your hourly rate was $30, then that's $30 * 5weeks * 40hours * 10games = 60,000, which is roughly a teacher's salary here (who are generally considered to be poorly paid) for an entire year's worth of work (50 weeks, 3 months longer than a teacher works). $30 is a reasonable estimate for someone who's "starting out", though it varies by individual. My first "contract work" or whatever, which this essentially is, was at $35/hr. So in the case I just mentioned, that doesn't seem at all greedy to me. It does depend on the size of the game, though.
This may come as a surprise, but companies make a lot of money. In fact, that's the whole reason a company exists. As well, they wouldn't be contacting people for work if they could do it themselves. Depending on the size of the company (which is important to consider!), $60,000 just might be an insignificant drop in the bucket. You have to abandon the moral high road and just go for the jugular when you're in these situations. On top of that, keeping yourself motivated for the duration of the project is in the interest of both you and the people you're working for. For a company that has a clue, quoting too low can cost you more work than quoting too high.
Anyway, I'm not really THAT experienced with this stuff, so take all this with a grain of salt--but don't make yourselves suckers. You're programmers/artists/whatever, not ditch diggers or crossing guards.