Friday, April 13, 2007

Wanted: Two Million Dollars

I think that one could make a perfectly acceptable large-scale (but not massive) multiuser online game, given two million dollars and two years.
  • Technical Lead, $120k
    • Developer, $60k
    • Developer, $60k
  • Art Lead, $100k
    • Artist, $50k
    • Artist, $50k
    • Artist, $50k
    • Artist, $50k
    • Artist, $50k
  • Design Lead, $100k
    • Designer, $50k
    • Designer, $50k
    • Jr Designer, $30k
    • Jr Designer, $30k
That's an $850k a year burn rate, or $1.7 million for a two-year development cycle. That leaves $300k available for purchasing third-party software and for overhead.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

300k probably won't cover your infrastructure though, like a good network, servers, workstations, and an IT crew to manage it. Also rent. Live at work is my solution to that. I'm not kidding. I like the high numbers in terms of salaries though, that should ensure a quality pool of talent, which is vital.

Anonymous said...

I wrote up a little response to this on my own blog: http://www.psychochild.org/?p=290

The upshot is: you've forgotten some pretty major costs. Payroll taxes, for one thing.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news. But, I'd love to see a revised estimate based on the info I share on my blog.

Have fun,