How much do I pay a Unity developer for N game?

I've searched online for this answer and found a couple of old posts that date back to 2015.

I'm supposed to make a mobile game about a cat falling down a building and avoiding obstacles thrown by NPC's from windows. It will obviously have the usual mobile stuff like: banner ads, video reward ads, and maybe a couple of in-game purchases.

I'd like to pay somebody else to program it, but not sure how much is too little, or too much. The artwork is already done, and the game design idea was sent to me in a not very detailed notepad by somebody with no experience in game design. A notepad is as far as he's going to go. Plus, it's a simple premise.

I've noticed that the average is $45 USD per hour. But how do I calculate that? I'm not sure how many hours it would take the average unity developer found at upwork (for example) to finish something like this.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Again the developer will have to take the artwork and notepad game design and well, make it happen.

Thanks!

 

Years of work, experience, practice, routine. You will suck at this at first, but when you do it, you will get better. Even developers suck at this and they are getting better to estimate time as they practice.

I won't guess for you, because these can cover anything. You know your requirements, you need to estimate what you think is right when it comes to time budget. If you don't have experience like you said, my advice is find a friendly developer in person, who has more experience and ask him/her about this. Show them your documentation/user stories/whatever you wrote to define what you need exactly and ask them. It's important to find someone who you can trust. The internet really can't help you with estimation unless you release your exact requirements. Sadly.

 

@Lurking-Ninja's answer is great. I'll add to it by saying that every developer is different, and some are way better than others. The best thing you can do is be honest and upfront, and give as much detail as you can, while getting as much detail from them as to their understanding of what the deliverable is.

If you have a fixed price budget, so be it... let them know what it is and see if they can do everything you need for that price. If they can't, ask them what features they can provide for the budget you have.

If you're going hourly (which, I think, is how most developers prefer to work. I know I do), give them all this detail and let them provide an estimate for how long it'll take to create. Calculate the cost based on their hourly rate. If the price seems appropriate, consider moving forward. If not, either enter negotiations or bid adieu.

Doing contract work is a scary proposition for both parties. You don't want to spend money (yours or the client's) and not get what you're expecting in return. They don't want to agree to something that's going to turn out to be far more work than they anticipated, negating the financial benefit of what they agreed to.

On a side note, I'm always looking for contract work. Feel free to PM me to get that estimate.

 

In addition to what has already been mentioned, the quality level of the game and the experience of the developer will be huge variables in your calculation. An experienced developer will obviously want more money than someone who has used Unity for only 6 months, and even an experienced developer can produce varying quality just depending on how much time you're willing to pay for.

For example, the same developer can build the same game either very quickly, or spend 3x as long on it for a higher quality result of what is essentially the same core game.

 

Thank you all very much guys for the detailed answer. I really appreciate it. I'll definitely get in touch with a trust worthy developer and show them the project.

At some point hopefully I can be as experienced as you all. Thanks again!

Oh and @Schneider21, I'll definitely contact you if the money is good. Since I'm starting, this person is going to squeeze as much discounts from my butt as possible.

 

One more thing: don't forget to sit down afterwards and think through and document what went wrong. Retrospective is always useful, because you learn from it. And yes, it worth to write it down, because this way you organize this information in your own brain. Even if no one else will read it ever, only you. This way you ensure you learn from your experience, when you realize that you underestimated the (wo)man-hours or chose a developer with a high rate and you needed to hand out a ton of money, which may not worth it at the end.
So just do it, think about it clearly, practice, look back where you sucked and think through how you can do it better. And you will do it better next time.

 

Estimating development time frames is a tricky business. It basically comes down to "How long did it take me last time I did this job". After you've done a few jobs, you can get pretty accurate estimates. But before hand, its pretty rough.

Best option is to talk with the freelancer you are interested in working with.

(If timelines aren't critical, it might be a project I would take on).