TIPS and TRICKS for outsourcing app development.

[Black Ops]

Originally Posted by WhatItTakesGame

@ Black Ops

Thanks for your reply - you provide some nice insights and ideas for alternative options.

We didn't really bother looking at Euro devs in the beginning as we thought they would be too expensive! We've since heard that Finland provide quality, affordable development? Have you had any experience of this?

We won't be needing to outsource development for anything else on this project thanks, but we almost almost certainly will for future projects! I'll add you as a contact and definitely give you a shout when that time comes. Cheers!

We have used developers in Pakistan, Ireland & Serbia. However at Spiel 12 in Germany I met developers from many parts of Europe offering affordable rates. If you can work it into your schedule I would suggest attending GDC in Cologne Germany in August.

[WhatItTakesGame]

Originally Posted by Eskema

The issue here is that you are trying to make a game (well you did), with a too low budget, thus you cannot expect ANY quality at all, like I usually say to all my clients, with that budget you will get A game, but never a POLISHED game.
Of course you can be lucky and find someone living in a "low cost country" who is a lovely person and can offer affordable prices, but you saw what happens, too much time wasted trying different options.

One of the things that people don't understand is the budget, games are expensive, very expensive, trying to create a 50k$ game with just 4k$ sounds like a good way of waste that money and end up with nothing but another game flooding the appstore. If you expect to create a 50.000$ game with a 4500$ budget, then hey, I don't believe in miracles, but personally I don't expect ANY quality at all from a game with such budget, maybe people is too naive and they do believe in santa claus or things like that....


The trick to understand a budget is to ask for quotes in the same place you live, as you live in UK (thus the price in pounds), what you have to do is to ask 4-5 companies/freelances in UK and ask for their quotes. You will get different prices and you can get the middle price, let's say for your project you get quotes between 30k and 50k, then with those quotes you can start looking for freelances in elance or odesk and save up to a 50%, but that's all, don't expect to reduce the budget from 15k to 7.5k and still get a quality game.

If instead of 15k for example (just 50% of 30k), you are trying to do this with less than that amount (your 7.5k), well you saw for yourself how it went...., wasting time with designers, programmers, and lose at least 2-3 months trying here and there and the results were...., but you wanted to stay cheap, right?, go ahead, at the end, you get what you pay for, and that's a universal truth no matter where you live.

Hi Eskema, thanks for your useful input.

What you've written is basically what we found - going incredibly cheap isn't and option when wanting to create a complex game. Up until our developers started work on the functionality that required internet connectivity and facebook integration, our game worked well. To get a fully functioning single player version of our word game would have cost us around £3,000, which should be affordable for almost anyone. The only downside up to that point was the developers taking twice as long as the time they quoted, but still the development got done. For people with limited funds this is certainly an option.

The reason we only had a budget of £7,500 is because that is all we could afford, and it's almost certain that the majority of new and inexperienced game developers will be in the same boat. But, as mentioned, once we entered into the realms of functionality that required internet connectivity, a multitude of issues decide to rear their ugly head.

Despite our bad experiences with the developers and designers, we still feel fortunate that things worked out the way they did. If we hadn't of naively believed that we could develop a complex game for £7,500 we most probably wouldn't have even started the project. The graphical assets, though bad, gave us a good starting point from which we were able to learn and improve them ourselves. The only real problem was the development.

I certainly wouldn't want to totally deter people with limited funds from ever attempting to create a game, because then game development becomes an elitist notion, where only developers or people with vast amounts of money can contribute. This shouldn't be the case - it should be within reach of the majority of people who wish to give it a try.

Getting a fully functioning single player game produced for £3,000 was totally possible. Anything requiring internet connectivity wasn't. If your game requires internet connectivity then the prices quoted by Eskema certainly look to be a good approximation. From our experience, if your game idea is single player only (no internet connectivity necessary), then as long as you're careful who you choose, there's a good chance you can get it developed at a reasonable price.

[Dragon Game Studio]

Great read, thanks for sharing!

Good luck with everything. Your game looks fun, hope it'll be a big success

[Syndicated Puzzles]

We completed a similar game called www.letterlicious.com in under 80 programming hours. I have no idea how What it takes could take 1 year to build. Although we built everything in house with our company iLifeTouch in India. We are submitting the app this week

[Bkb]

Hi all, first post and newbie to dev and all. I researched and found Netsmartz, they were the most friendly, professional, knowledgable and best price out of all the companies I talked to. But....
I'm now three months in: 2 months spent on SRS, R&D and project plan. 1 month just down on design and dev and all I have to show is a Logo, basic splash screen and a few unfinished screens! Oh, and those on what they call a "dummy app first build" which doesn't even function correctly....
It's been a tug of war and battle to get this far, all the while they are telling me good things.... I feel like I've done more work than they have. I've lost confidence in them and have no idea what is actually true anymore! Is this how it is for everyone?
Please help and if anyone can tell me experience with Netsmartz?
Thanks

[WhatItTakesGame]

Originally Posted by Syndicated Puzzles

We completed a similar game called www.letterlicious.com in under 80 programming hours. I have no idea how What it takes could take 1 year to build. Although we built everything in house with our company iLifeTouch in India. We are submitting the app this week

Hi Syndicated Puzzles,

Unfortunately for us, the reasons that 'What it Takes' took 12 months to complete are numerous, as outlined in the first 4 posts of this thread. Perhaps my writing style leaves some vagarity in areas, and this has caused some confusion?

If that is the case, could you point out which parts didn't provide you the understanding of why the project took so long? I'll then try to adapt them to make them more understandable - this post is supposed to be easy for everyone to understand.

Anyway, good luck with your game, it seems fun!

I'm inclined to believe however, that no matter who the developers were, they wouldn't have been able to complete 'What it Takes' in 80 hours.

Having a perfectly working 'Online Multiplayer Mode', 'Facebook Integration', 'Challenge Trophies' and 'Personal Profile' makes those time scales impossible. Unfortunately .

[Black Ops]

Originally Posted by Bkb

Hi all, first post and newbie to dev and all. I researched and found Netsmartz, they were the most friendly, professional, knowledgable and best price out of all the companies I talked to. But....
I'm now three months in: 2 months spent on SRS, R&D and project plan. 1 month just down on design and dev and all I have to show is a Logo, basic splash screen and a few unfinished screens! Oh, and those on what they call a "dummy app first build" which doesn't even function correctly....
It's been a tug of war and battle to get this far, all the while they are telling me good things.... I feel like I've done more work than they have. I've lost confidence in them and have no idea what is actually true anymore! Is this how it is for everyone?
Please help and if anyone can tell me experience with Netsmartz?
Thanks

If you are reading this thread, then you should know your experience with a SE Asia Dev company is not unique. Try to salvage what you can and pay as little as you can until you get what you actually want. If you can terminate and not be financially devastated it may be the wisest action.

Stay on them like a taskmaster and threaten them. They typically like to avoid legal issues and bad public feedback on freelance sites as that is their lifeblood. Find where they are acquiring business & use that to your advantage.

Hope this helps get things done.

[codetiger]

Being an Indian Company ourself, it sounds bad to see such experiences. However, we have to admit these things happen often with new studios trying to make money quickly. And this is not just for outside companies outsourcing, we too face problems when we outsource work to wrong people. I'll try to post some tips on how to choose a company here.

1) Choose a company/freelancer who work with passion (hard to find, but this helps a lot). Find the key people in the company and check his background. Check if they have contributed for Open Source projects etc.

2) If they promise for an end to end solution, better don't believe them unless they are very big studios with more than 100 people. Choose the one who is focused. In India, there are not many studios are good at everything (Programming/Design/Art/Music/SFX). But they usually promise for everything to be made in-house. Find what they are good at, and just use them for those.

3) Do some research on what they've already done. Know what skills you need for your project. Find the one who already has done something similar, and decide on the quality of their earlier projects.

Self Promotion:
Our answers to my own questions.
1) We work passionate in game development. We've contributed to various open source game engines (iSGL3D, Irrlicht). We've an in-house built cross-platform game engine. I am a programmer myself and I go by the name 'Codetiger' in many forums and open source communities. I have participated in Google AI challenge 2011 and ranked #1 in the country and #127 World wide. (http://aichallenge.org/country_profile.php?country=5)

2) We usually accept only programming part of the projects. If the client insists, we suggest people who worked for Music and Art works in our in-house games. We do not offer end-to-end solutions. We've a strong programming team and we project ourselves around this skills only.

3) We work on outsourced projects for clients only when we do not work in any in-house projects. So our main focus is building good games in-house. And in between in-house projects, we work for other companies. You can check our games in our website. (http://www.smackall.com/smackgames.php)

Harishankar Narayanan,
CEO, Smackall Games.

[CroRock]

Thanks for posting all this! It helped me a lot, really.
I wish you the best with your game!

[Syndicated Puzzles]

We are at 100 hours now. Letterlicious will be submitted at the end of this week. We have all the functionalities you are describing as well. Pretty much a fully loaded app. Working on a total budget of 5000 US gives us a fighting chance to make our money back.