Anyone know the average payout for programmers, 3D modellers, etc.?

I was considering finally getting serious about game design and maybe even a Kickstarter for this certain idea I've been fleshing out for over a year now (not the point) but I was curious what the Unity community thought about payment for "employees" in terms of small scale games.

What do you all think is the norm for things like this? If I wanted to create something like a racing game (it's not a racing game, don't worry) and I needed people to make meshes, what would I be paying them? What would I pay a programmer? An animator?

Any ideas? It sounds like it would be too expensive to pull off with Kickstarter, but I don't know. On a side note, do most of these jobs pay in salaries, and how do you go about dealing with quality of work and workflow?

I know I'm asking a bunch of questions, but I figured this is the right place to ask. I mean, working inside Unity is obviously my intention. Hopefully, the estimates you provide will be low enough that I may consider the actual project, and if it gets funded, I'd come to this site first for hiring.

Anyway, I hope you can look past my childish ignorance on the topic and help me get some answers from the people it involves most.

 

Maybe the Gamasutra Salary Survey 2014 is a good starting point?

 

So, you have no experience hiring a team to build a game... yet you're going to ask people to donate money to you for that purpose?

Assuming, on the off chance, that you do manage to raise the funds (which may or may not be in the ballpark) how do you intend to use it?

 

Thank you so much for this, it's exactly what I was looking for! I see some pretty big digits though, not like I expected anything less.

You're absolutely right, this will be my first real venture into hiring a team and also in making a full RPG if I do decide to start this Kick-starter. The only things I've done so far have been small 3D games that I did myself for the practice and experience. That's exactly why I decided it would be best to post this here, because I want that input.

Thing is, I'm 100% certain that I can make this game a reality, and that I can make it good, but only if I can afford to pay for certain things. I can handle a good portion of the programming myself, if not all of it. I'm worried about certain npc behaviors, even though that's my specialty, but I can work that out. I can do the level design of course, utilizing Unity to its fullest. Then I just need the meshes, animations, audio, and some kind of concept art (mainly for show on Kickstarter). Of course I should also get some professional testers to make sure there aren't any glitches throughout the game.

Thing is, I could probably make a smaller game myself if I had the meshes and animations, but this isn't going to be some Facebook app game, it's going to be a full fledged RPG if anything. I wouldn't be the first person to do something like this, but all that aside, I just need to know the practicality of it. Since I haven't had the money for college, I don't have any degrees, which means the only ways for me to get my foot in the door are to either make something noteworthy, or go intern at some company too many miles away. So what do you think, worth a shot?

 

I think two things:

1) Again it's concerning to have someone who has *no* experience hiring a team, is attempting to do so on others dime.

Building a game is a lot more than simply having an idea, raising some money, and hiring some people. I'd like to quote Edison, talking about building the lightbulb:

I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.

Question: What makes you think that this idea and this strategy, and the people you hire, are the say 2 in 3000 'reasonable ideas' that'll actually work?

2) You mention that you can't afford college, and therefor need to make something noteworthy.

I understand your position. However, instead of asking for donations to spend on a skillset you do not have, why not simply get a job? I started off in these forums, effectively earning $2/hr on some projects, and have not only worked on decent sized, well paying projects - I actually project manage several large projects at any one time, working with talent across the world.

Not only did I earn and learn a lot, if I was to ask for money tomorrow you can be sure that I could actually *deliver* what I promised.

 

For the most part it will cost a lot more to hire people to build your game than it will to pay for college. The chances of a Kickstarter succeeding without awesome demos, history of delivery, etc, are virtually zero.

Given you are planning on contributing much of the work you are probably better off finding an artist to work collaborate with (preferably someone you know in person but you can do it online). Convince someone your vision is worth implementing, do some work up front(i.e. playable demo with programmer art/free assets), and be willing to give them lots of creative input.

Note that even if you do this and do it well, its pretty unlikely you will make enough to pay for college.

 

Interesting, I particularly found this stat to be enlightening:



Now, OP, why are you trying to get into college again?

 

There are many people with prior experience who have tried this and failed, though. What do you have that they don't? Why would I want to invest in you instead of someone who does have a track record?

At the very least, you're going to spend loads of time getting the ground level experience that other people trying to start similar projects already have.

Lets put hiring aside for the time being. Have you even worked on this kind of project with a team before?

 

That data could be really skewed, though.

If I picked 100 programmers in my city, I'd expect 90 of them to have CS degrees or some other form of formal education in the field. Of the other 10, I'd expect that they either had an associated specialist skill and some entry level coding education (eg: there's a few non-software engineers here who also write software) or they've held their position for ages already and have climbed to a pretty senior position. Of the 90 people with CS degrees, I'd expect to see relatively few with other associated specialist skills, a more standard distribution in terms of the seniority of their position, and that most of them had held the job for less than 5 years.

So, in short, stats like that really can't be used on their own to make useful decisions.

Edit: Actually, the numbers above assume that we're talking about CS specific education. If we make it any formal education then the non-software engineers don't count, only the people with really senior positions, and I think that'd drive the average further upwards...

 

It could be, but I see it validated in my day to day life. Having a degree can (often) be translated into meaning that you've spent 3~4 years of your life not proving your good, not working in industry and not outcompeting your peers.

For example: I currently run a share house for students, and from my perspective the lack of initiative and useful education they have is frightening.

Anywho... I just wanted to pose the question to the OP to see how he answers.

 

Collaboration on big projects doesn't work. Go look at the Work in Progress and Collaborations forums and see how many failed large FPS and RPG projects there are. Bottom line, if there is no money, people are not going to stick around.

I echo NPSF3000's sentiments about running a crowd funding campaign. No matter how polished your campaign is, if you don't have a track record of completed titles and running a team, backers won't touch you with a 10-foot pole.

I'd suggest getting a few small projects with professional paid artwork completed and released on the stores first, not only for the experience and having an idea of budget requirements for a small project, but so you can project accurately the budget requirements you'll need for a large RPG project.

 

I really appreciate the great feedback you've all given. I suppose I believe that I could create a unique and fun game with the idea I have right now, but you're absolutely right that I wouldn't get the funding I need, and working with a team might make things really hard too. Thing is, when people say things like "300 people tried and 299 failed" I think those 299 didn't have what it takes. The reality of it all outside of the statistics is that most people now days that want to make some kind of game don't really have anything new to put out there, and those who have unique ideas that are actually good, tend to have a better chance.

All that being said, I realized that regardless of the concept I still fall short with money and experience. It's unlikely that a kickstarter will work out. Thanks to the input you've all given me, I've started working with one very close friend of mine for the time being just to do some concept art, tweak some level design, and rework some old background music I made for use in the project. If I'm lucky I might be able to convince my other friend to help with more complex models and I'll just take it from there.

My chance of success, guessing at about 12% max... Am I going for it? Yes.

 

Sounds like you're on the right track, let me give some more advice

Don't get fixated on the end goal, enjoy the process.

To go from 'amateur' to professional takes time, and in my opinion is very hard to do if you focus solely on a single project. Go out and learn your craft, work on dozens of projects, get thousands of hours of experience, build contacts, join your local startup community, get an education (not necessarily through uni) and constantly improve yourself.

If you want, work on your project, but also work on projects that are completely irrelevant. Diversify. Creative block? Build hangman!

I've been in your shoes, and there's plenty of great things in your path. Just keep your eyes open!

 

I'd also suggest you to start working on the gameplay first and not the content. It always amuses me that people start making these icons and logos for their company, concept art wallpapers and stuff, 3d models of guns and character... The only thing that never gets done is the actual game.
Focus on the game, use cubes and spheres, but make it run before you spend time and money on the assets.

 

True that. Prototype first. That's the biggest challenge for beginners to face. They want their game to be all shiny from the start when they don't even know what they need yet or which direction the game is going to take, or if the concept and mechanics will even work.

 

I like games

 

The last thing we need is another flop successful kickstarter

 

Can I just say +1? Even with the new 'Like' button, it's still fun to hear, "AWESOME post!"

Deep-fried, Sugar-Coated, Wisdom-Nuggets:

• Build the Gameplay first
• Prototype. Discard. Repeat!
• Finish 3-4 projects/year (crappy games still count).
• Try-Fail-Improve.

Gigi

 

Or Try-Succeed-Improve, that's good too.

Give yourself permission to fail, but aim to succeed.