Documentary vs Hiring More Devs

Like, seriously??? WTF.... You should kill the source that information came from....

The non faithful part come from those I develop games with who cant believe that Uber will be able to complete a project of this scope with the funds that they have. Where I have no doubt that they will finish it because they have the same passion for the game as we have on the one we are developing and when you have that much passion you will find a way to finish it. But where they are coming from is the record of games that come off of kickstarter because not many have come out and not many have come in the way they were originally show as per their observations. I personally believe that Uber will complete this project and that it will have their stretch goals because they have the passion for what they are building. If I didnt believe that they could do it then I wouldnt have pledged $120 and dropped my bank account to $3 except for my credit card which doesnt even have $120 left on it.


EDIT:

lmfao

I would much rather see a weekly or monthly inhouse produced video blog than a professional dev team.

What i want to see is what parts of the builds, development/animation/etc. process and concepts that Uber feels they can publically share. Mesh that up with studio stuff such as workstation setups (yeah i saw Mavors Unicomp), development tools (i already spotted sublimetext), and use it to ask for feedback on issues they feel they want / need it.

They can also talk about the inspiration for certain concepts (ie the gas mine from John Ringo's Troy Rising series). And i would suggest being as open as they feel comfortable about the compromises they have to make.

I also think sprinkling puns and a guitar riff or two in there wouldnt be taken amiss. :mrgreen:

That's great! I am only confused about one thing; which game are you referring to?

Design won't be done till the game is out, and maybe not even then. We had an idea of what we wanted, but what the game would actually be couldn't start until we knew what the final budget would be. That's not a number we know yet btw as we have yet to calculate the final costs of physical goods and shipping and we're still waiting on final numbers from Kickstarter. (The number you guys see and we see on the project page isn't what we actually get.)

Engine is started and running on multiple platforms, but it's just a shell and far from being "done".

AI hasn't been started, still quite a bit of design and engine work to do before that's even touched. Sure previous experience will help here tremendously but there's a lot of unique elements to this game not to mention it being a custom engine which means just copy / pasting code isn't going to work.

This is generally the stuff that makes up the bulk of work on a game, not the "minor stuff". Sure getting a single unit up and running might not take long if the rest of the systems are in place, but getting that unit work with in the game visually, gameplay wise, and with any unique AI requirements can take months. And, as I talked about a bit above, just hiring 20 people for a week usually means you get a week of useless sh*t. Generally it can take about a month to get one person up to speed on a project to the point where they're actually productive. Plenty of people use outsourced artwork, but this still usually takes a few weeks to get everything running smoothly.

20+ people debugging a game at once is kind of a standard requirement for any game testing.

Game testing tends to work a bit like this:
A build of the game is marked for testing. Some specific items are called out for special attention when testing. Various sections or features of the game are given to single or a small number of testers who themselves either split up or test in parallel. When a bug is found, note the time, place (in game), and build and log that information in to a database. Either that tester or a manager (or both) compare their bug with existing bugs to see if it's a duplicate and remove or append to existing report(s). Bug report is sent back to the dev team where developers or managers divide up the tasks based on who is best suited to handle it (either due to knowledge of the system in question or by time). Dev team member attempts to reproduce the issue in their current (either same or newer) build. If they're unable to reproduce they send it back to be tested for further information or to be marked as fixed. If they are able to reproduce it they find a solution and mark the issue fixed with the build number the fix is expected to be in. Rinse repeat.

This!

Thank you for the information! This is really interesting.

Nice reading, thanx! This works the same way for desktop software development. I worked for years in a company that develop advanced planning scheduler for manufacturing sites. A lot easier than game development I know.. but the concept is almost the same.

Can I also point out for those who are worried that 2.3 million isn't enough:


At no point has Uber indicated the amount of their own time / money they are willing to invest in this project.

900k may have been what they needed for 'research costs', and they've got enough to handle the rest of the development. It may end up being worth 3 million, but their financial analysis is telling them that it will make them money in the end.

Point being, Kickstarter value != Total Internal Budgeted Value

Pretty sure that'd involve suicide.

actually, its difficult to say, but does someone know the gaussian distrubition ?

I learned in project management, that it is good to hire more, but too many is not good too, the highest point is actually the optimal human count. In our case for a schoolproject for one term was 3 person.


Anyway, they know what they do and the price which they took for the documentary was set by them.

Seeing just how many ppl i know who think this game is gonna be awesome but couldnt pledge during the kickstarter i think uber will get a ton of money when they release the game over a year.

2.3M should be enough to get the game up and running and after that they can develop it further with the money they get after the release.

For 100k, you can maybe add 2 greenhorn or one half decent programmer to the team, considering there is added overhead for everyone to get him on board and up to speed. That is if you are lucky enough, because pretty often new hires can turn out to be complete duds. (Good developers are almost never for hire - they usually work at a place that wants to keep them for good)

Adding people to a late project will make it later. PA is going to be pretty late, I fear, but I hope for the best.

They should provide what they promised.

I think this is generous on the cost for more people. I will admit my experience may be raising my cost expectations.

I agree. Many overheads on employment. Admittedly project only meant to be ~9 months, not a full year, so maybe.

Either way, they've promised a documentary so that's what they should deliver. This is no longer a choice up for consideration.

Uber promised what they promised, they cannot go back on that now, or people will get angry.

Like they said, it will probably be an ongoing series of Dev vlogs.

But this will be:
From when they start until July 2013 & hiring someone to edit the vlogs / assign someone internally to do it. Either way, time = money.

This is indie game development... not "bedroom coder indie", but still indie.

Look to glassdoor to see what game developers earn. http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Gas-Pow ... 108301.htm or maybe http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Riot-Ga ... 247538.htm or http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Gamelof ... E18006.htm ... kind of spot-on, I'd say; assuming some 30% overhead on a 9 or 10 month project (which is a smashingly tight time frame to begin with).

As I said, my experience has thrown me off. I have a very small sample set to go off of for software people, I'm used to engineers.

The answer is obvious; obvious, I say! Uber needs to use the additional funds to hire a full time barista. Productivity will skyrocket across the board, at least for as long as the plumbing holds out.

Can't speak for game development specifically but I would guess that your numbers are on the low side. Seattle is an expensive place to live, for one thing, and there are a variety of major corporations who need software people that have offices nearby, including Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Valve, and so forth.

Don't forget, too, the rule of thumb that salary is about 2/3 to 1/2 of the total cost of an employee. Benefits, equipment, office space costs, and other overhead add up to quite a lot of money.

Sins of a Solar Empire had a budget of $1,000,000 and they seemed to get a pretty good game out with that.