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[moetako]

I'm thinking about commissioning a programmer for a game I want to make.  It would be on a work-for-hire basis, a one time job.

It's a fairly basic typing game.  There would be a Title screen (I'd give him placeholder art to work with), a HUD that tracks various stats, and a Hall of Fame screen that records final stats.  There'd be a settings menu to adjust window size/fullscreen and volume options.

There would also be an online Leaderboard and Steam Achievements.

I'd want everything well-organized and commented so I could swap out art, text, and music myself.

How would you recommend going about hiring someone for this?

How much do you think it would cost?

[zizulot]

I have no idea, but programmer do about 30-50% of the game

[moetako]

Do you think a profit split would work better?

I've only commissioned art on work-for-hire basis.  Artists don't seem to be willing to do a profit split.  So I thought I'd approach this as work-for-hire.

A partner would be great, but that would be a whole other arrangement.  I wouldn't pay up front, but would split profits.

So, as an alternative to my original question, how would I find a programmer partner?

I'm still mainly interesting in my work-for-hire approach.

[Grhyll]

Nope, no profit split, unless your project is absolutely fantastic and you already have 10000 people wanting to buy it. If you want a professional, someone that will seriously work on your project, you need him to be able to eat and pay rent, and profit split does not allow that during dev. Offer profit-split in addition to the salary, if the game reaches a defined amount for example, so that the programmer wishes the game will do good, but keep a real, immediate salary.

The thing I don't understand in your original post is that you're not mentioning gameplay. Will your game only contain menus? It's good to know the UI and social functions you want, but it's probably not the core of your game?

[moetako]

The thing I don't understand in your original post is that you're not mentioning gameplay. Will your game only contain menus? It's good to know the UI and social functions you want, but it's probably not the core of your game?

It is, actually.  It's a very simple typing game.  I would provide more information to a programmer than I have in this thread, but honestly not much more.  The most difficult part, I think, would be the Leaderboard and Steam Achievements.  Then things like Steam trading cards.  I want to "check all the boxes" I can on Steam.

It's really more an art/novelty project than a game.  It's almost an incremental game only your task is typing instead of clicking.

[Grhyll]

Of course I can't say for sure, but maybe you're under-evaluating the work required for the gameplay part of any type of game, even an incremental. Anyway, good luck with your project

[bateleur]

How much do you think it would cost?

Impossible to say without a proper spec.

I'd expect to charge around $3000 for a project like this assuming the target platform is PC, but my experience with freelancing in the past has been that clients always miss dozens of important things out of their initial spec. Your project is likely more complex than you've made it sound and so you're probably going to need a higher budget to guarantee completion to your satisfaction.

Also note that it can be cheaper to pay a programmer by the hour. The reason being, if a programmer is asked for a flat fee they have to bill you for the uncertainty, so it typically works out higher.

[Refeuh]

It sounds from the initial brief that you will need "some" amount of flexibility regarding the content of the game, exposed in a "user-friendly" way so that a non-programmer could change/update part of it.

This, in itself, can scale quite a lot ; and therefore is a big unknown, and a big risk, for a programmer. Does it stop at swapping art assets, or would you like to be able to add achievement hooks yourself later ? Would you swap resources 1-for-1 only ? Because if not you would need to repackage the data, spritesheets, etc. for runtime and release (which means wrapping/automating the build process in an easy-to-use process), etc.

This is the kind of questions that need to be answered before a programmer can provide a reasonable quote for the development.

My advice would be to write more detailed requirements/specs, along with a feature list (including the front-end, the interface, the online service integrations, etc.), and hire a couple of experienced programmers in parallel to do a proper technical analysis and quote so that you can compare options and make sure the numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark and reflect a similar understanding of the complexity of the project.

[moetako]

My advice would be to write more detailed requirements/specs, along with a feature list (including the front-end, the interface, the online service integrations, etc.), and hire a couple of experienced programmers in parallel to do a proper technical analysis and quote so that you can compare options and make sure the numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark and reflect a similar understanding of the complexity of the project.

How would you go about hiring programmers to do that, and how much would it cost?

[TonyLi]

...hire a couple of experienced programmers in parallel to do a proper technical analysis and quote so that you can compare options and make sure the numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark and reflect a similar understanding of the complexity of the project.

I just wanted to second this excellent advice. Find someone you trust who's been in your position before and successfully hired programmers. It'll be well worth the investment of a few hundred dollars to pay that person and one or two experienced programmers/system designers to help you develop the specs and screen quotes. If you don't know anyone, go to local meetups or look up your local IGDA chapter.

Paying hourly is also good advice. If they're getting a single lump sum, there's a temptation to procrastinate and then do a half-assed rush job to meet the deadline. If future work depends on how well they complete smaller, incremental milestones, the work's more likely to be done better. Smaller milestones also give you the flexibility to pivot as you playtest the implementation.

[harrisleonard]

50/50 is always the best offer to me. You may find different opinions. Speak to some developers of your choice, you will see what they ask.

[Refeuh]

How would you go about hiring programmers to do that, and how much would it cost?

You hire them with the mission to perform a short technical analysis. The output should be a technical report that includes the risks and challenges, the proposed solutions to "translate" the specifications into a program/architecture, and a quote that scale with optional modules. You don't want a full tech design and development plan at this stage, you want something that explains the complexity of your project and addresses the difficulties.

The time it takes depends greatly on the amount of information you submit ; but all in all for a small/medium project it should take no longer than a few days, up to a week or so, for at least a decent initial pass. So we're talking a few hundreds $ to get your project reviewed and analysed. Note that is likely to be an iterative process, as the programmer will probably have questions to refine your specs where it is unclear or where there a conflict of requirements.

If you want to minimise the risk, get at least 2 technical analysis in parallel as suggested, to make sure the results are consistent. All inclusive, maybe $500-1000 for the whole thing to get a couple of reports with a good amount of details and a few iterations.

Payment should be split, e.g. 50% on order, 50% on delivery.

As to where to find such developers... Recommendations from contacts always feel safer ; but if you don't have any, meetups, freelancing site, etc. Just avoid "cowboy programmers" that dig right into coding and avoid the "analysis" stage entirely.