Hi,

I'm looking for a programmer for a catapult game in Flash, and possibly later a port to iOS. Pay could be fixed or a percentage. Deadline (for the flash game, at least) will be pretty short (>2 weeks) and not flexible once decided on.

I'm a game developer myself (most recently released a game for Adult Swim), this is a small side project I'm  outsourcing mostly because of lack of time on my part.

Ideally I'd find somebody with a strong work discipline and good communication skills (is that what you call it? I just mean somebody who answers e-mail as soon as they've read them) who I could keep working with for a couple of upcoming projects (possibly including more adult swim work).

E-mail me if you're interested!

http://games.adultswim.com/lee-lees-quest-2-adventure-online-game.html

Not the Symphony No. 7 of platforming games, but maybe ... Frank Zappa's Bobby Brown of games? Except of course less catchy. And less offensive. Hmm... actually not that much like Bobby Brown either. Maybe more like Weird Al Jankovic's "Amish Paradise" of platformers.

Thanks for sharing! Kudos!

Where would the world be without pretensions? A little bit of pretentiousness is only a good thing.

Found somebody, cheers

yeah but on further thought: have you ever traveled to a country outside of your own timezone (jet lag), in a culture very different than yours? i imagine it'd be pretty hard to sleep the first night here regardless of anything fish said

He said specifically he couldn't sleep because he couldn't stop thinking about what happened after the screening. Yes I agree, he didn't take it all that bad, but it's a shame he couldn't just laugh about it. I mean, the point I was making is that we can't really blame Phil for however the guy took it.

When I said he took it poorly, I based it on what I read in the article I mentioned, he said on twitter he couldn't sleep that night.

http://gadget.itmedia.co.jp/gg/articles/1203/08/news098.html

[prior experience of the developers]

I also just want to make a few comment about that rockpapershotgun article, there were so many interesting angles left untouched that a better journalist would have picked up on...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/07/the-competition-the-story-behind-the-igfs-critics/

Fish knew that re-entering Fez would be controversial even before he did it and admits that he was conflicted about the decision himself. But after asking Brandon Boyer about it and being told the game had changed enough to allow a re-entry, his concerns dissipated. At that point, he says, he knew what the IGF wanted.

Kale in Dinoland, an iOS port of a Gameboy title from 1992, was only played by five out of eight of its judges. And only one of those played for longer than a few minutes.

There's obviously some bias when Fish can just ask his friend Brandon, the festival manager, if the game is different enough to be entered, while the devs of Kale in Dinoland can hardly get the judges to even look at their game.

“When it comes to comparing, say, unfinished prototypes from solo developers with finished $100k projects from large teams, I can see why some people would see this as suspicious or unfair,” said another judge. “But I didn’t find this a problem at all… You can get a sense of how far into development the game is, whether the artwork is placeholder, the prior experience of the developers, the budget.

(my emphasis) A judge says he partly judges unfinished games based on what the dev has done previously - and this goes by unquestioned.

Can a mod rename this thread to the The Big Phil Fish Conundrum?

I don't think there was anything wrong with the comment Phil made about modern Japanese games sucking, whether or not it's factually true. It seems like a valid opinion to hold, and judging by the Japanese reactions to his comment, pretty much 90% of the game-interested Japanese people agree with him. It's a shame the guy who asked the question took it poorly, but he didn't even understand what the word "suck" meant (according to an interview with him on a Japanese site). He was probably just a bit traumatized because it took him a lot of courage to even ask the question in English - which really isn't Phil's fault, I mean, OK, his response was a little rude, but the guy asked the question, and Phil responded honestly.

Found somebody, cheers

If they were worried he wouldn't be able to keep up as a one-man team, they never should have included him in the first place. However, I don't think he managed to demonstrate the game mechanics very well -- or those game mechanics just didn't live up to the original concept. "Move left until you come to a door, then move right to pick up the key" just isn't very interesting. I think the best demonstrated game mechanic won this round -- I can imagine a whole bunch of interesting puzzles based around only being able to do one type of action at a time (in a fixed order?).

I think they realized he might not be able to keep up just because he failed to demonstrate the game mechanics. If part of the show is that they're going to throw random game languages at them, I sorta doubt he would have been able to really keep up, as he's more of an artist then a programmer (from what I can tell).

I didn't think the other games were all horrible, but it's ridiculous how they said the challenge would be about "core game mechanics" and then gave praise to the 2 brothers who made a broken Canabalt clone with a dog because it had "humor," not to mention the other Canabalt clone. I can sort of understand why they kicked Bean though, since he didn't have a playable prototype and they were probably worried he wouldn't be able to keep up as a 1-man team. Big shame though.

Thank you, that's very helpful!

Well, that's sort of obvious. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. I know how much money I want to ask for, but I don't know how to present it.

Edit: for example, if you are using contractors, do you need actual estimates from them to base their salary on? Should your own salary ideally be presented as an "estimated x hours * y hourly salary", or in some other way? etc etc.

Additionally, does anybody have an idea what is a reasonable hourly salary for a programmer to budget for if you're applying for a government grant? (interesting to hear from anybody with an experience in this no matter what country)

How do you write a proper budget, either for a client or say for an application for development funding? Do you have to base your estimates on anything in particular?

Not really filled (if I'm still discussing with you, don't worry!), but I'm no longer accepting new applicants. Thanks!