BTW friends in germany seem to be reporting there is not a good market for iphone developers there. Is this true? Not a lot of jobs and poor pay for contracting.
what is a good market for iphone dev? there is huge demand for any mobile developer from alot of companies here. work is there.. question is if someone wants todo all thoose dead boring high salary jobs.. (not the 16k a month jobs other people talk about) ... most of the coders i know are in game dev because they want to not because they need to or don't exactly know they can easily double their income by getting thoose other jobs.. demand is there and alot of companies don't want to source out internationaly for different reasons, some won't even source out national but are interested in close vicinity devs.. so living in the capital is not so bad. feel free to send your german colleagues my way, we are always looking for capable fresh blood. as for you good that you get constant work through this agency.. question is is you represent the the "middle" men.. the average iOS developers.. i doubt that.. but in the end i think the thread is pointless anway.. since no serious developer can you anyone a quote without really knowing what the job is about.. and i would warn anyone jump the gun with developer who say they can do project x for like 12k without even knowing anything about it.. chance is high you'd loose quite some money into "pros", would not be the first time someone was burned by "to good to be truth" offers..
I will let my german friends know and pass on info if they are interested. Thanks On that note do you feel the game industry pays less then normal programming jobs? My rather light impression in the US is that it does.
of course it pay ALOT less.. at least here in germany you find a handfull of highly paid guys.. then comes long time nothing and then the average joe with his 2,2-2,4 (before tax) and then all the newcomers the companies can press their young souls out who go with max 1,5 before tax.. which leaves with with slightly more after tax than they would get with welfare.. but at least they get paid.. 10 years ago sometimes it felt like 50% of the companies where made out of trainees doing unpaid fulltime job.. and they did it with joy because there where now developing games, something which was like a lifetime dream come true.. only to find later out what an horror is really can be.. if you stay out of game developement you can easily earn +50% more than an average programmer in the biz, but they know this.. thoose people who stay in the biz are usualy the toughest one, no other software developement job has so bizarre working hours and bad paid jobs.. one of the reasons alot of them split at some time from the big companies and try their luck with smaller joints or freelance work. not all of them succeed because running a business is something completly different from just working on a project.. but it can work out.. like working 6hours a day/ 5 days a week and earning alot more than working 10+ hours /6 days a week in a big joint working on triple A rpgs.. it always depends.. i sometimes miss big budget production because having millions of euros at your disposal allowed for quite some different thing to happen and adapted to alot smaller project takes quite some time..
Reading your post made me think seriously to move out from Greece! I will explain what i mean... - here in Greece (and in other parts of the world i guess) the prices for applications are way bellow even the 10k. Of course there is not much work here, and companies are after the quick money and no serious professionalism for their products (check. Greek Economic Crisis). - My team has taken jobs for way less money than the budgets you are discussing guys! How do you think i can attract employers from abroad? The fact that I have setup my business over as a US company doesn't help at all?
Well that all sounds like the worst of it in the US also. What does 2,2-2,4 ? That notation / numbers have no meaning to me in the US.
I can't tell you yes, or no, on your brief outline but it seems a bit high for what you are describing. My last game was over 60k to develop, I have a long ways to go before recouping that cost. Can you live with that fact that most games/apps fail to deliver a return? However, there is a premium for support after the sale, this is priceless and important. Also, will they discount future work on the game if they are involved?
Somewhere in the 10-30K range may be the a fair estimate, but in no way does it make it a smart investment. If I had put that much money into my game during development I would still be far in debt --- as goes for thousands of other dev's projects. Don't let it discourage you however! I worked around costly development by producing the game largely myself. Lets see some concept art!
There are a lot of negative comments out there and I know the reality of the App store, for every tiny wings, there are 1000s of games that never make it. I do however think if you truly believe in it, understand the market and willing to put in the work and passion into ensuring it's a great and fairly unique game then i say go for it. Just understand the risks. I quit my full time job to work on our first game. It went way over budge t- 30K game and thats with good friends helping out, it could have easily been a 100K project since it took almost a year to develop and there were 3 devs and 2 part time artists an animator. It was a huge risk, but It has paid off because of the hard work we all put into it. Good Luck!
