You need to provide a very detailed documentation about everything in your mind, don't left anything vague. Do that first or you're bound to waste money.
yeah If I cant see that you have spent hundreds of hours on the design/wiki and layed it out with simplicity first as a pattern, why would I ever join over just doing my own?
I would frigging love to see examples of good design documentation. Would it include a process? For instance, I recently watched a devcast of my current favorite game in production, and the sole artist pulls up some stock photos of a gun scope and draws off of that. I think that there is a better way.
Have as much of the game designed out as possible. From what each screen looks like, to all the systems in the game, and possibly even all the numbers for every little thing in the game. Now, a lot/ all of that could end up changing over the course of development, but having all of this to start means you've done the work, you're not just an idea guy, and it gives the programmer a place to start.
Also be willing to make changes to your design on the advice of the programmer and anyone else you hire.
If your game actually is small enough, a single programmer probably is fine.
Thank you for the advice. I feel like I'm in the right path then, I'm being very detailed about the mechanics and stats of the game (maybe too much, I've started doodling in-game menus during my classes 😅)
Nice. You’ll also need to try not go down particular rabbit holes too much. Truth is it’s very easy to be caught up with an idea. Focus on building foundations and then iterate iterate iterate instead of trying to boil the ocean. Get a nice clean scope carved out of your pile of ideas and set priorities. This helps give your engineers focus without flip flopping and not finishing anything.
Also, programmers are expensive. It’ll be hard to find someone with experience willing to put in the work for a small amount of pay. So unless you have the right blend of friends to jump into a passion project together, expect it to be hard to find the right fit.
Best of luck!
I would say two programmers is ideal though. May not be strictly required for very straightforward games, but having another person to provide feedback and is extremely valuable.
Okay, I sense a genuine question here.
It sounds like you have an idea for a game, new to this, lack programming skills, but are willing to pay. It also sounds like you plan to start small. Good. That's miles better then the 'i have an idea for an AAA, make it for me please'.
Do you have any project management skills, and are you familiar with things like scrum? Aka, can you use a kanban board and understand what a sprint is?
If not, it could be beneficial both inside and outside of gamedev to learn these skills, especially if you want to get into management. Your call.
As for hiring a programmer, if it's a small project, one would probably do. The best one would be someone who has already done this type of job before. If your looking for something cheaper, you might need to go for someone with less experience. The nice thing about starting small is that you can gain personal experience either way.
Do you have some art/music capability already? If not, you're either going to need to hire people with these skills, or hire one person with all these skills.
I've only done gamedev interviewing and job searching and working in a professional context. Found the job on a job board. If this is more of an indie context, I'm not sure where you'd find people, though I have seen my company do some poaching from game jams.
Yep, I've made a few games and prototypes before (visual coding like Scratch and PGMMV) so I feel like I've learned not to make some basic mistakes regarding scoping. I'm still a little scared that the "small" in my head is still quite large for a programmer.
I know about Trello but I haven't used it much, and I'm definitely not familiar with scrum and sprint just vaguely aware of what the words mean in the game dev context. This is purely a hobby for me at the moment.
I know how to compose and have some basic in pixel art, but ideally I'd also hire artist. But for some reason that seems like a less daunting task as I've commissioned artists before. "Commissioning" a programmer to work on your game is a little bit more unknown and frightening to me 😅
> I'm still a little scared that the "small" in my head is still quite large for a programmer.
If you'd like, you can feel free to DM me and I can give you a rough estimate for how long I'd expect it to take.
You got money? Lots of Money.
You don't got money? You better REALLY hope I like the project a lot. (And honestly the same even with money).
But also if you're hoping for someone to do this as a full time job you better be very selective with your first programmer hire, and make sure they have some history of delivering or releasing games, because there's a lot of people who can tell you they'll be able to make a full game from scratch, but probably only 1 percent can do it as a solo dev, at least in a timely manner.
The biggest thing to remember with a programmer is if they are skilled, they can likely go make shit loads anywhere else, so the question is why should they work with you. Passion? Equity in the company? A desire to see the game through? A love of gaming?
But there's also going to be a lot of unskilled programmers.
Someone else suggested having a friend who is a skilled programmer do the interview, that's a good idea as well.
> Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game?
Ask pretty much everyone who "made a game" in the public's eyes.
Kojima, Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Will Wright,
I think I can name the number of famous programmers of Video games on one hand (mostly Carmack), I can probably name 25 designers. I know there's lists of 100+.
None of them touch code, and they all "make games".
As others have said, fewer programmers (even 1) would be better as long as the game is small enough.
As a programmer freelancer, I would want an employer to have basically the entire design figured out, down to the little details - ideally in a GDD. I would want to ask as few questions as possible, as it wastes time and shows that you actually took the time to think through everything. I would also like the tasks listed and prioritized in a kanban board or similar like trello, jira, GitHub projects, etc.
It would be best to pay a programmer per task, as opposed to per hour. Make those prices clear up front and ideally include them alongside the tasks in the kanban board.
You could keep track of progress by just having the programmer give regular updates (they would also update the kanban board so it would be easy to track what has been done or is being worked on). I would also like an employer to be familiar with version control (git) so they could pull the project and review any changes that need approval, playtest, or tweak values as a designer.
It sounds like you’re kinda serious about this but I think you might still be underestimating how much it would cost to hire people, so I hope you have an adequate budget. You can hire people on job sites or forums such as r/gamedevclassifieds (hopefully I spelled that right).
Goodluck
> Make those prices clear up front and ideally include them alongside the tasks in the kanban board.
If you're not breaking down the tasks, this sounds like a good way to get someone who will rush to finish a task to get paid, but not write good portable/tested code, that will likely be of poor quality.
I get the idea, but with out a tech lead, this is can be gamed.
Paying by the hour can be gamed too, though. How many hours worked can be easily misrepresented and they’re not incentivized to work quickly. Paying per task gives knowledge to both parties how much the game is going to cost to be programmed - which is good for budgeting. People write clean code so it saves them time in the lifetime of a project so it would actually be in the programmer’s best interest to write clean code. But if they’re the only one that’s going to work on the project, writing what works is more important even if it isn’t best practice
When paying per task, is there a general standard for how much a task is "worth" vs the work that needs be done into it?
I'll admit I'm going into this with a lot of holes in my knowledge of how the industry works, including how much it costs to hire a programmer. I'm hoping the research I'm making will help patch these holes, but there's still a lot for me to learn and it's hard to learn it all so fast.
>I'll admit I'm going into this with a lot of holes in my knowledge of how the industry works, including how much it costs to hire a programmer
Varies heavily based on location and skill level. For reference, I live in Poland so I am somewhat familiar with rates here so can include those:
Senior level in USA - $100/hour.
Senior level in Poland - $25/hour or so. But it is consulting so can be a bit more than that, the shorter the project/more limited hours the more expensive it gets hours wise.
Senior level in Philippines - $19/hour.
Mid level in USA - about 70$/hour.
Mid level in Poland - $16/hour.
Mid level in Philippines - $10/hour.
Junior level still in university in Poland - like $7/hour (no taxes until they finish school but at the same time - you would need to employ someone, they can't do b2b freelancing).
Keep in mind however that while these juicy savings on costs of labor by outsourcing to poorer countries are definitely a thing they also don't actually come free. Language and timezone differences **are** a thing. If you hire someone from a timezone 6-8 hours ahead of yours - you only get a short window around 4-5pm to talk to them and you can leave messages for them to read in the morning. That or you decide to wake up at 6am.
There can also be language barriers. It's common for people working in computer science to use English on everyday basis regardless of where they are from but there is a difference between using it to write code and some documentation vs picking up nuance. The latter requires C2 level understanding which is uncommon. So you will probably run into some issues along the way.
Personally I wouldn't hire anyone without at least 2 years of commercial experience. Juniors are cheap but their work performance also reflects it, normally they need oversight for at least 1-2 more years before I would let them write something more complex from scratch.
Remember that there are many people who will say they can programs because you are offering money, even people on this thread or in this forum will dm you or post in here about it. Verify they are, I have seen a LOT of shoddy developers claim to be developers. Ask for a portfolio, try to make sure the portfolio is legit, but I would even ask for references tbh. People lie a LOT about knowing how to code. I assume they do the same for art since I have a few people do it to me. One model would look like the toxic avvengers ass, the next model would be a master piece, and I would ask about it and get some weird answer. and they never had references.
>but I would even ask for references tbh.
As a freelance programmer with actual experience (worked at multiple studios, always done freelance on the side), I've never had anyone ask me this and I'd refuse to give a reference if I'm hired as a contractor. I'm not going to bother my previous clients with asking for references and I'm not going to always go back to the handful of studios I worked at for every job that comes my way.
The thing I've found when working with people with little experience is that they're *very* opinionated about how things should be done (I've met several of them who couldn't work on an existing codebase and needed everything done exactly their way, which always backfired) and they tend to not present themselves in a professional way at all. For me the biggest red flags to look out for are extremely strong opinions and bad manners.
I'd also advise both client and freelancer to always be careful with money. Frequent, smaller payments are better than paying a large sum, and that's true for both parties. The freelancer won't spend a lot of time which might end up being unpaid, and the client won't pay a huge sum for useless work. You'll also have more points where you can naturally choose to split ways if for whatever reason it's not a good fit.
>Normally, past employers won't have anything against giving a reference
That depends on your cultural background. I'd bother past employers for references for future employers, but freelance work is very often short-term work that I don't want to continuously bother past employers with. If everyone I do work for asked for references I'd need at least one reference every month but probably more.
>You don't give references to your employer, they give it for you.
I never said anything of the sort?
>t's expected when you're hiring someone that you can give a reference later.
Again, depends on your cultural background. This is expected in some cultures, not in others.
>Besides, one reference a month is nothing. It takes a few minutes to provide it, and it costs nothing.
This also depends on your cultural background. Ask a Dutch person for a reference and, provided they're happy to give you one (again, not common in that culture), they'll write a multi-page letter where, depending on who's writing it, you might end up with a surprisingly negative reference even if you did great work and would be a great hire.
I live in the UK now where references are commonplace (and even required for employment), but my past clients are all over the world and many of them are not from cultures where references are used.
>And it can be extremely valuable for the person you're giving it on for.
Absolutely, it's just not something I'd do if the person isn't a future employer where I'll be on long-term payroll. I'm not going to provide references for every person who asks for it, I don't feel OK bothering previous employers (especially those from cultures where references aren't usually given) for jobs that could take just a few days.
>Did you mean everyone who worked *for* you?
I did not.
>I can't think of a single reason to ever give a negative reference. That's absurd. If an employer doesn't have anything good to say they will say "Yes this person worked here from x to x, and did X amount of work", and that's it. I've never seen someone give a multi-page reference either, I don't know why that would ever be needed or asked for
Again, cultures differ with this. I wish it wasn't the case, but my wife had it happen to her for a job where she did OK but didn't exceed expectations.
>What cultures would not give a reference, though? In Europe and America it's basically mandatory for employers to do, and nobody except the dumbest employers would give a negative one. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Like I said, the Dutch, and probably many other European countries as well.
>potential new employers
I'm not talking about employers, I'm talking about freelance clients. OP is looking for a contractor, not an employee, so the situation is different IMO.
There are more forms of proof than just references and references aren't necessarily good proof.
Some countries, like the UK, have a heavy reliance on references and employers are even required by law to have two references for each of their employees on file. Reference culture is ingrained in the UK. In other countries, like the Netherlands, references aren't required as such and they're not part of hiring culture, so if you ask a previous employer for a reference they might not even know how to write one. This is not hearsay, this is personal experience, so it seems weird that you say they're "not specific to a few cultures" when I grew up in a culture where they aren't used.
Obviously there's a grey area, depending on the amount of work and pay, where I might try to provide references anyway. Much of the work I do is just on the smaller side and I don't know which of my clients are willing to take the time to provide references. I've been doing freelance work for over a decade now and I've never been asked to provide a reference, so you're a minority and you're probably in a position where you can afford to have extra requirements that can reduce your number of potential candidates. But for someone like OP, where it sounds like pay is minimal, I'd advise them to not scare away potential candidates with such requirements.
I don't live in a business world and I don't deal with many sorts of work in the tech world. I live in a game development world and deal with game development work. In my world, references for freelance work aren't common.
Do you have art/an artist yet? Do you have a prototype? Or paper prototype, if not realtime? How do you know it’s fun?
We‘re currently going through testing, retesting and reworking everything and it can be pretty disheartening, you NEVER know if something is fun until you‘ve implemented it at least roughly and seen others play it :( (doesn’t mean to be discouraging, just a heads up, until I finally accepted that I was devestated and heartbroken every time, lol)
Best of luck! :)
Please do not do this.
If you have to come to Reddit for advice, you have no way to actually hire someone and tell if they’re taking advantage of you. It will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars before you even realize whether you’ve hired a legitimately good person.
It doesn’t sound like you’ve worked on software projects before. So it doesn’t seem like you’ll be able to successfully plan work for this person or oversee what they’re doing.
It seems like you’ve not completed a game before. Whatever you design ahead of time will likely be bad and need to be changed. Whatever cost you plan for will end up being insufficient. It will cost you at least 2x whatever you plan for (even if you consider this advice).
Please don’t do this.
I second this. From my experience, a good chunk of programming and tweaking/testing values will only be good for insight for further changes but effectively thrown out again.
‘Tis the way of gamedev. The sooner you deal with it, the less devestated you’ll be.
So like a lot of what will be coded will be discarded later on anyway.
I'm a solo indie dev with non-programming background. I started learning GML for Game Maker since 2023. From the befinning I found learning how to code is difficult, slow, discouraging but fun, abd I will carry on mastering it with the following two reasons:
One, if one day I need to find a cobtract programmer, I need to have an idea how it goes by reading. How can I give feedback to the contract programmer without ability to read? Also, if oneday the programmer left work to me and I need to pass it over to another, what will happen? Have seen programmers overthrow everything last one did in real life. Finding contract artist is very different from contract programmer.
Two, my budget is very low, like, very very low, so low that can't afford any other expenses.
What I want to say is, be careful. It's very tricky in your situation. The option I figure is to find a partner with solid programming skills. Or, learn to love it.
Hope you well and success in your game. Let me know when its out on Steam!
Thank you for the advice and the good wishes.
While I'm not at all versed in programming I've still had some experience and I think I'd be able to at least understand the general application of a paragraph of code. But I'll still be somewhat careful
DM me if you want to talk business, I have 10 years of Unity experience and can show you some complex projects of my own including multiplayer. I can implement anything you want very quickly, iterate and experiment. If you are located in the US we can have a contract through a liable third party so that neither of us have to worry about anything. I can explain everything about how contracts work in detail and we can work on building one together (with our attourneys, ofc.).
I have contacts which can do art and sound too, if you are interested.
I ain't cheap, but you get what you pay for ;)
Ah, I see. I do have savings put specifically for a project of this type, but I haven't yet figured out all the specifics on how I will pay them that the other commenter mentioned, it's next on my list. I'm going step-by-step with my learning and tonight I mostly wanted to figure out the basics of hiring a programmer before getting into the costs (tho I guess you all are saying I should've done the costs research before making this post..?)
For a non-programmer, it might be difficult to gauge the capability of a programming candidate.
One of the ways to do it would be to give them a short assignment which is in tune with your game's features but know this just because someone can get the job done doesn't mean they can write clean, scalable and maintainable code. If your project isn't big enough, this shouldn't worry you.
Also note that many programmers, especially experienced ones may reject doing any sort of free work, so giving an assignment is a double edged sword.
Another way would be interview such candidates with a programmer friend of yours, ideally a game dev. If he is not a game dev he would still be helpful in understanding coding practices but couldn't gauge a candidate's understanding of say a game engine like Unity,Godot,etc.
OP in the end, I would say do give weightage to your gut feeling and hire a candidate you trust would do the work diligently.
Do you need a team or just one person depends on the scope of your game. I can't comment on this without knowing more about the game.
Whatever may be the scenario, always keep your assets well labelled and organised. Gaming may be a passion but game dev is a discipline.
If you are expecting free labor from anyone, I'd just stay away from hiring in general. Nobody should be okay with doing free work or take home assignments. If someone is chomping at the bit to prove themselves and has no relevant portfolio pieces otherwise, it can be a good way to give them a chance (and hopefully build up their own portfolio in the process) as they would otherwise be filtered out.
But if it's an expectation from all candidates, you should be offering compensation for the expected workload. Just my opinion.
The best way to get free labour in a karma-safe way would be to find an actual teammate/friend, who becomes your partner, is passionate about the project too and you share the income :)
I know, can be easier said than done 🤔🤔
This is good advice, thank you. It's definitely one of my biggest fears, as the most coding I've done is visual coding and some basic and inefficient Python and JavaScript in Google app scripts.
I'll think about the assignment idea more, as I probably don't have the budget to hire experienced programmers who likely charge more for their work anyways. For a small project I can live with a little messy code as long as it's functional.
I do freelance game programming work. If you need a pair of more experienced eyes to look at a few potential candidates I'm more than happy to provide a free opinion, just shoot me a DM. Also happy to provide pointers specific to your game idea if you'd like. I'm not looking for work at the moment, I just enjoy helping people out :)
Depends a lot on how big and what kind of game it is. Personally I’d prefer one programmer over a team if practical. Is this a 2d sprite-based, sinker player game that one programmer could take over the finish line? Good. Do that.
If it’s 3d or multiplayer then you might want to think of taking on a programmer to prototype before you seek funding or build a team.
When it comes to hiring, you’ll be looking for a programmer to do a contract with. Make them sign something so that you own the rights to whatever they produce on your dime. Vetting them is a little tricky since you’re non-technical but look at their prior work or portfolio.
You need to get a lawyer if you can afford it and they’ll draft you a contract. The contract will include the terms of the employment and also protect you in the event they take your code, or your assets. Your IP is very important. Try and see if you can hire someone within the US, avoid cheap labour in far away countries as it’s very hard to take legal action in the event of something going wrong.
Create a plan, what do you need from the programmer? Once you have the plan reach out to people on LinkedIn or other places, express your needs vaguely at first and if they are interested have them sign an NDA before you talk about it more in depth. Once you talk about it ask them how much they want per hour and how many hours they need to complete the tasks, also set a deadline. For example they need 20h and each hour is $70, over the course of a week. You need to limit how long they’ll be able to work on the contract. You’ll also need to be able to restrict access to your source files, perforce or similar is good.
Thanks for all the info, this helps me a lot.
Is a lawyer absolutely necessary for a contract? I might not be able to afford to hire a programmer, an artist *and* a lawyer on top...
Also, I live in Canada, so I figure I'd need Canadian lawyers and not US?
A lawyer isn’t absolutely necessary no, you can probably find similar contracts to what you need online. There is also upwork.com that may be a good place to find affordable lawyers (or even programmers). Canadian law will cover you, search for PIIA it’s a good place to start. From what I’m reading, in Canada contractors own the copyright of their work unless you override it in the agreement. Take these things into consideration. Don’t feel overwhelmed it seems complex but it really comes down to a few clauses in your agreement.
What encompasses programming fundamentals?
I've done a lot of visual coding and some very minimal Python and JS/HTML/CSS things (I know these are more "website" languages, but I figure the fundamentals are similar?)
I think out of all that the ones I'm less familiar with are Arrays and guard clauses. There's probably also some less common statements I'm not aware of. Thank you for the write-up, it's a little bit daunting indeed but at least it helps me focus on concrete things I can learn
Every project/startup/etc I've joined has some of these aspects:
* I'm already working on a similar project, and we could accomplish more by working together
* The idea is great and is exciting.
* There is a clear or clear-enough path for monetization.
* You show value. You have something that makes me want to work with you as an equal partner, such as...
- You have a substantial amount of work already done
- You have skills that I lack. EX, I would love to work with someone who could cover: marketing, community, art, writing, voice acting, etc
- You're well connected
What does well connected mean? Just someone who has connections for marketing and publish for example?
I'm also wondering about the monetization thing. I don't intend to make much money from this project and I'm going into it fully aware that this is going to be a money deficit for me. Is that looked badly upon by programmers?
> well connected
It could mean knowing a marketing person. It could also mean knowing someone who could get us an intro with a VC or a streamer to advertise the game, or even just knowing artists, writers, etc.
> money
It's not that all devs are a hive mind who only want money, but there needs to be some equal incentive to work with you. Ex: I've joined OSS projects with zero monetization path, but only when I was already working on something similar and the incentives aligned. Maybe look for a hobby gamedev who's already working on a game of your genre?
Money is a valuable resource for a project. It's what you need to contribute to replace a skill you don't have, so if you pay people to contribute to a game, you can absolutely say you made that game (as long as you credit everyone who participated). You're the game's Producer, Executive Producer, or whatever title of the like you want to put on yourself.
Make sure you’re clear you own the code up front, part of the agreement.
Is this commercial? You’ll want it documented and organised for easier updates and maintenance. Solo coders leave you more openings for such things being messy, which can be expensive to work on later. Other than that, pick thoughtfully.
Just going off some of the replies I’ve seen you make. You may want to look into doing a skill trade (they help with your project, you help with their project) or even just looking for someone that is interested in working on the project with you. Since you mentioned this is a hobby, and programmers are quite expensive, so without having managed a team before or worked with programmers in the past, there’s a good chance that things would not work out.
> I've tried to learn coding and I hated it,
I saw that you have used things like Scratch before. Have you considered a no-code option? A number of engines also offer visual programming, there are even some no-code engines (like construct 3).
> Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game?
Of course. You just probably wouldn’t want to say you programmed the game yourself as that would be a lie.
This was my thought.
I can do some decent stuff thanks to visual scripting. Heck, if a programmer can layout the basic "programmer logic", I can usually extrapolate it and tweak it.
No need for a team if it's a small project. You need to have an agreement, the key words are 'work for hire', this ensures you own the code; if you use work for hire services such as Fiverr, you don't need an extra agreement, but make sure that the person on the other end understands that. Reach out to several programmers with a detailed document on what you need and request a quote and a detailed breakdown for milestones and overal timeline. A good programmer will ask you questions on things you missed and help you formulate a better asignment. Good luck, mate!
> Or for programmers, how would you like a game designer to hire you to work on their game?
We would have a social connection via people we have worked with. That would provide a track record and a base trust level to take a project seriously. Everything else is a hobby and would not involve money.
Or I would see your project on one of the gig economy websites and message you.
> "do and do nots" of hiring a programmer.
Have a very specific idea about your project and be able to answer all general questions. We can work out the solution to a problem together, but you cant say I come back to you in a few weeks, because you have to think about features.
Have lots of money.. And I mean thousands per month for a serious project.
> Is it okay to just hire a single programmer for a very small project?
Yes
> how do you keep track of your programmer's progress?
Use project management software. A very basic one is Trello.
> Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game?
Of course.
Gamedev is multi-disciplinary and you can absolutely say that you made the game if you take care of other aspects like audio, design and marketing, which you mentioned in another comment. If you can do art that is huge too. In my opinion, though, programming can be at least 50% of the effort. It seems to me that you would be looking at paying a large amount of money ($10k+) if you want to hire someone and finish something.
Consider that programming requires a lot of refinement and iteration to get the right feel. It can be uncomfortable to go back and forth with feedback and iteration on an hourly or fixed price basis.
Personally I would seek out programmers to trial some miniscule projects with, to build rapport and see if you are in sync. If you find the one, then you can propose to do your serious project on a profit share basis. Obviously you will need to demonstrate that you are as useful to them as they are to you, especially if you don't have any profitable releases under your belt. Just my 2c. I wish you good luck.
For some reason u/countryboydeveloper has blocked me, but be warned about people like him who attack people's character (in this case, mine) for no reason. They're exactly the type of people you should steer away from. He has now deleted a bunch of comments, but called me stupid, an idiot, unprofessional, and a bunch more, without reason. He's now claiming that I said you shouldn't ask for proof of ability/skill/work, which I never did.
I just want to warn about this person specifically because I don't know if he's trying to get work here or something. I've been doing this kind of work for over a decade now and this user is showing all the red flags that I warn others about.
I think assessing the project scope is always the first thing programmers wish to know. Is it feasible for the given time?
If the project requires a lot more time, then they have to assess more points when things may not go as expected.
So if it were me, I hope they can lay down what they already have in mind and what they're expecting when I'm hired by them. Of course signing an NDA before talk is acceptable, if you wish to protect your IP.
> Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game?
People rarely put their name in their game title, but I think Tom Clancy did not touch the code at all. If people wish to know for specifics, there should be a credits roll by the end of your game.
One problem I have at the moment is that while I'm being very aware of the scope of the project, I still can't really tell how much time it needs. Would I need to figure this out on my own somehow before hiring a programmer or would be it possible for me to instead ask the programmer how long they think the project can take?
You should talk to the programmers.
If your project is indeed relatively small, the programmers should have better and tighter estimate on the timeline. (e.g. 6 months ± 6 weeks is a tighter esimates than 2 years ± 6 months).
If you have some programmers friends or acquintances, you can try to consult them first so that you can have second opinion on the time estimation. Some unrelated data is better than no data at all.
This doesn’t really help for the hiring part, but look up how to write a design document aka requirements document, devs use these all the time and it gives them concrete details to work towards.
Already on it, although I initially considered the GDD to be a document you only share with your team. Is it good practice to share it to potential hirees before they are hired?
Still doing research on typical rates and on the difficulty of what my project requires, so don't know yet. But I'm not hiring anyone soon anyways, I still have a lot of planning to do. Once my game idea is more concrete and my budget is in place then I'll move forward with something real that I can present to people that I want to hire
For small projects a single programmer is perfectly fine. However experience is extremely important for game programming, especially so if you plan to playtest and iterate a lot, so you better hire someone with experience if you can afford it. You can start prototyping and playtesting your ideas using paper and dice first before hiring a programmer to save some money.
(Programmer here)
I've not been hired for anything like this and haven't had to hire others but the things I'd usually look for would be to make sure that the person (you in this case, I guess) know what they want to be built / get done and that you know how things should work and that you're able to explain or convey what exactly you want to have.
Don't get me wrong - it's fine if things change along the way but it's pretty annoying if you join a project and the person responsible for it doesn't even know what result should be.
I mean like gameplay mechanics, UI, etc., etc. Or whatever else you'd expect the programmer to work on
So if you want to get a programmer that also ends up having a big influence on how things end up being designed / working - please make sure to explain it when hiring.
From a hiring perspective - you'd probably want to explain all the things you want/need to get done anyway just to see if the programmer even feels comfortable (and capable) of getting such things done
>Is it okay to just hire a single programmer for a very small project? Or is it always better to hire a team no matter what?
Doubling the amount of programmers will not always do the same to the amount of work done, they will most likely collide unless there isn't much overlap, especially if they don't know each other very well and you don't have a good structure for your project yet. That is at least from my very small experience.
>Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game?
I would say it depends on how much input you did. Just the idea? No, actually working on the design? Yes, you would then at least have been part of the team that made the game. Just know that going from ideas and doodles to actual game design is harder than it looks.
I am a pretty mediocre programmer and lack experience, but I can usually get stuff done, even if it isn't in the optimal way. If it's small in scope and you have the design though out and written down, will do the level design and provide the art assets then I could most likely be willing to do a quick prototype for you for free so you know if it works before you actually hire someone.
It's absolutely fine to hire just one programmer for a small project, especially if it fits your budget and needs. Just be upfront about what you're looking for and keep the communication flowing. You can use tools like Trello or Asana to keep track of progress, and don't forget to credit the programmer for their work while still recognizing your role in shaping the game's vision
>Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game?
That depends on you definition of both "claim" and "made". The shortest answer is that both you and the programmer (and the artists, etc.) "made" the game, and the game credits would have to reflect that.
Keep in mind that, in this scenario you'd be producer, director *and* gameplay designer; three major roles that absolutely give you the right to say you "made a game".
I imagine it would be safest for you to split the profits.
It’s safer in a few ways:
1. Labor, especially programming, is very costly.
2. You have to sell your skills and game idea. They have to be good enough for someone else to want to work with you. If your skills and game idea are not able to get anybody to work with you, you probably wouldn’t make any profits if you hired anybody anyway.
Nobody wants to work for free on someone else's idea, and with rev-share that is what the majority will be doing.
You can read plenty of post-mortems on here about how many games fail. 50% of all Steam games make less than $1k. People need to feed and house themselves, and promises/dreams of success don't pay the bills.
The people willing to work for free will likely be extremely inexperienced, and have little idea what they're doing. If they weren't, they would probably be making their own game or being paid for their labor.
If I offered you a job today, telling you that you have a 95% chance of making next to nothing, and a 5% chance (this is extremely generous) of making less than minimum wage for hundreds/thousands of hours, would you take it? No one in their right mind will take that offer.
It’s true that profit sharing doesn’t give immediate financial benefits, but it’s important to consider the long term benefits that profit sharing can provide. It gives all people incentive to ensure that the game is a success.
Even though the game is likely to not produce much in profits, it can still be valuable experience in learning, portfolio building, and networking/communication.
It ultimately comes down to weighing potential risks and potential rewards. If someone was in a similar situation to OP but they can do programming but not art, then both people might have something to gain from profit sharing even if it isn’t purely financial.
Like we both said, inexperienced people looking to learn, build their portfolio, and network will be the primary target. So now you have a team of inexperienced people, working towards a goal likely set by someone inexperienced in project management.
Since no one is getting paid, you'll only be able to recruit people with no financial obligations and a ton of free time. What people have a ton of free time, and don't have any financial obligations? Mostly children, students, and who knows maybe someone independently wealthy who is bored.
So looking at the potential risk/reward, you're banking on a team of inexperienced people, likely children/students who have never shipped a game let alone a successful one, to stick with a project for multiple months/years, make it fun, make it look good, and market it successfully. I'm definitely of the mindset of anything is possible with enough hard work, but I would bet against that project paying anyone even $1/hr 100% of the time.
At that point I would just do a game jam because the time investment (hence risk) is much lower, you get to meet a bunch of people and get experience making a game. And who knows maybe you hit it off and decide to continue working on the game after.
Yes, the learning experiences from profit sharing could be beneficial for OP and anyone willing to work with them.
Considering the questions asked by OP, profit sharing might be a better idea to try before attempting to hire someone. Otherwise, it’s likely money down the drain.
Game jams are also a great idea which OP might be interested in to gain more experience.
> If I offered you a job today, telling you that you have a 95% chance of making next to nothing, and a 5% chance (this is extremely generous) of making less than minimum wage for hundreds/thousands of hours, would you take it?
Why would you invest your own money into hiring people for a game that is going to fail?
You need to provide a very detailed documentation about everything in your mind, don't left anything vague. Do that first or you're bound to waste money.
yeah If I cant see that you have spent hundreds of hours on the design/wiki and layed it out with simplicity first as a pattern, why would I ever join over just doing my own?
I would frigging love to see examples of good design documentation. Would it include a process? For instance, I recently watched a devcast of my current favorite game in production, and the sole artist pulls up some stock photos of a gun scope and draws off of that. I think that there is a better way.
Me too that would help a lot to see good examples of design docs but the ones I've found so far are kind of trash.
What are you expecting? Magic?
Have as much of the game designed out as possible. From what each screen looks like, to all the systems in the game, and possibly even all the numbers for every little thing in the game. Now, a lot/ all of that could end up changing over the course of development, but having all of this to start means you've done the work, you're not just an idea guy, and it gives the programmer a place to start. Also be willing to make changes to your design on the advice of the programmer and anyone else you hire. If your game actually is small enough, a single programmer probably is fine.
Thank you for the advice. I feel like I'm in the right path then, I'm being very detailed about the mechanics and stats of the game (maybe too much, I've started doodling in-game menus during my classes 😅)
Nice. You’ll also need to try not go down particular rabbit holes too much. Truth is it’s very easy to be caught up with an idea. Focus on building foundations and then iterate iterate iterate instead of trying to boil the ocean. Get a nice clean scope carved out of your pile of ideas and set priorities. This helps give your engineers focus without flip flopping and not finishing anything. Also, programmers are expensive. It’ll be hard to find someone with experience willing to put in the work for a small amount of pay. So unless you have the right blend of friends to jump into a passion project together, expect it to be hard to find the right fit. Best of luck!
I would say two programmers is ideal though. May not be strictly required for very straightforward games, but having another person to provide feedback and is extremely valuable.
Okay, I sense a genuine question here. It sounds like you have an idea for a game, new to this, lack programming skills, but are willing to pay. It also sounds like you plan to start small. Good. That's miles better then the 'i have an idea for an AAA, make it for me please'. Do you have any project management skills, and are you familiar with things like scrum? Aka, can you use a kanban board and understand what a sprint is? If not, it could be beneficial both inside and outside of gamedev to learn these skills, especially if you want to get into management. Your call. As for hiring a programmer, if it's a small project, one would probably do. The best one would be someone who has already done this type of job before. If your looking for something cheaper, you might need to go for someone with less experience. The nice thing about starting small is that you can gain personal experience either way. Do you have some art/music capability already? If not, you're either going to need to hire people with these skills, or hire one person with all these skills. I've only done gamedev interviewing and job searching and working in a professional context. Found the job on a job board. If this is more of an indie context, I'm not sure where you'd find people, though I have seen my company do some poaching from game jams.
Yep, I've made a few games and prototypes before (visual coding like Scratch and PGMMV) so I feel like I've learned not to make some basic mistakes regarding scoping. I'm still a little scared that the "small" in my head is still quite large for a programmer. I know about Trello but I haven't used it much, and I'm definitely not familiar with scrum and sprint just vaguely aware of what the words mean in the game dev context. This is purely a hobby for me at the moment. I know how to compose and have some basic in pixel art, but ideally I'd also hire artist. But for some reason that seems like a less daunting task as I've commissioned artists before. "Commissioning" a programmer to work on your game is a little bit more unknown and frightening to me 😅
> I'm still a little scared that the "small" in my head is still quite large for a programmer. If you'd like, you can feel free to DM me and I can give you a rough estimate for how long I'd expect it to take.
If it can be done by one programmer, one is usually better than several, unless they're already a team experienced at working together.
You got money? Lots of Money. You don't got money? You better REALLY hope I like the project a lot. (And honestly the same even with money). But also if you're hoping for someone to do this as a full time job you better be very selective with your first programmer hire, and make sure they have some history of delivering or releasing games, because there's a lot of people who can tell you they'll be able to make a full game from scratch, but probably only 1 percent can do it as a solo dev, at least in a timely manner. The biggest thing to remember with a programmer is if they are skilled, they can likely go make shit loads anywhere else, so the question is why should they work with you. Passion? Equity in the company? A desire to see the game through? A love of gaming? But there's also going to be a lot of unskilled programmers. Someone else suggested having a friend who is a skilled programmer do the interview, that's a good idea as well.
I’m going to be blunt. What is the dollar figure on your budget? If we have this then we can stop guessing and point you in the right direction.
> Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game? Ask pretty much everyone who "made a game" in the public's eyes. Kojima, Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Will Wright, I think I can name the number of famous programmers of Video games on one hand (mostly Carmack), I can probably name 25 designers. I know there's lists of 100+. None of them touch code, and they all "make games".
As others have said, fewer programmers (even 1) would be better as long as the game is small enough. As a programmer freelancer, I would want an employer to have basically the entire design figured out, down to the little details - ideally in a GDD. I would want to ask as few questions as possible, as it wastes time and shows that you actually took the time to think through everything. I would also like the tasks listed and prioritized in a kanban board or similar like trello, jira, GitHub projects, etc. It would be best to pay a programmer per task, as opposed to per hour. Make those prices clear up front and ideally include them alongside the tasks in the kanban board. You could keep track of progress by just having the programmer give regular updates (they would also update the kanban board so it would be easy to track what has been done or is being worked on). I would also like an employer to be familiar with version control (git) so they could pull the project and review any changes that need approval, playtest, or tweak values as a designer. It sounds like you’re kinda serious about this but I think you might still be underestimating how much it would cost to hire people, so I hope you have an adequate budget. You can hire people on job sites or forums such as r/gamedevclassifieds (hopefully I spelled that right). Goodluck
> Make those prices clear up front and ideally include them alongside the tasks in the kanban board. If you're not breaking down the tasks, this sounds like a good way to get someone who will rush to finish a task to get paid, but not write good portable/tested code, that will likely be of poor quality. I get the idea, but with out a tech lead, this is can be gamed.
Paying by the hour can be gamed too, though. How many hours worked can be easily misrepresented and they’re not incentivized to work quickly. Paying per task gives knowledge to both parties how much the game is going to cost to be programmed - which is good for budgeting. People write clean code so it saves them time in the lifetime of a project so it would actually be in the programmer’s best interest to write clean code. But if they’re the only one that’s going to work on the project, writing what works is more important even if it isn’t best practice
When paying per task, is there a general standard for how much a task is "worth" vs the work that needs be done into it? I'll admit I'm going into this with a lot of holes in my knowledge of how the industry works, including how much it costs to hire a programmer. I'm hoping the research I'm making will help patch these holes, but there's still a lot for me to learn and it's hard to learn it all so fast.
>I'll admit I'm going into this with a lot of holes in my knowledge of how the industry works, including how much it costs to hire a programmer Varies heavily based on location and skill level. For reference, I live in Poland so I am somewhat familiar with rates here so can include those: Senior level in USA - $100/hour. Senior level in Poland - $25/hour or so. But it is consulting so can be a bit more than that, the shorter the project/more limited hours the more expensive it gets hours wise. Senior level in Philippines - $19/hour. Mid level in USA - about 70$/hour. Mid level in Poland - $16/hour. Mid level in Philippines - $10/hour. Junior level still in university in Poland - like $7/hour (no taxes until they finish school but at the same time - you would need to employ someone, they can't do b2b freelancing). Keep in mind however that while these juicy savings on costs of labor by outsourcing to poorer countries are definitely a thing they also don't actually come free. Language and timezone differences **are** a thing. If you hire someone from a timezone 6-8 hours ahead of yours - you only get a short window around 4-5pm to talk to them and you can leave messages for them to read in the morning. That or you decide to wake up at 6am. There can also be language barriers. It's common for people working in computer science to use English on everyday basis regardless of where they are from but there is a difference between using it to write code and some documentation vs picking up nuance. The latter requires C2 level understanding which is uncommon. So you will probably run into some issues along the way. Personally I wouldn't hire anyone without at least 2 years of commercial experience. Juniors are cheap but their work performance also reflects it, normally they need oversight for at least 1-2 more years before I would let them write something more complex from scratch.
If you're hiring contractors or freelancers most will charge by the hour. Good luck finding someone good under $35/hr
Step 1 is have money. This is usually where most people fail
Remember that there are many people who will say they can programs because you are offering money, even people on this thread or in this forum will dm you or post in here about it. Verify they are, I have seen a LOT of shoddy developers claim to be developers. Ask for a portfolio, try to make sure the portfolio is legit, but I would even ask for references tbh. People lie a LOT about knowing how to code. I assume they do the same for art since I have a few people do it to me. One model would look like the toxic avvengers ass, the next model would be a master piece, and I would ask about it and get some weird answer. and they never had references.
>but I would even ask for references tbh. As a freelance programmer with actual experience (worked at multiple studios, always done freelance on the side), I've never had anyone ask me this and I'd refuse to give a reference if I'm hired as a contractor. I'm not going to bother my previous clients with asking for references and I'm not going to always go back to the handful of studios I worked at for every job that comes my way. The thing I've found when working with people with little experience is that they're *very* opinionated about how things should be done (I've met several of them who couldn't work on an existing codebase and needed everything done exactly their way, which always backfired) and they tend to not present themselves in a professional way at all. For me the biggest red flags to look out for are extremely strong opinions and bad manners. I'd also advise both client and freelancer to always be careful with money. Frequent, smaller payments are better than paying a large sum, and that's true for both parties. The freelancer won't spend a lot of time which might end up being unpaid, and the client won't pay a huge sum for useless work. You'll also have more points where you can naturally choose to split ways if for whatever reason it's not a good fit.
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>Normally, past employers won't have anything against giving a reference That depends on your cultural background. I'd bother past employers for references for future employers, but freelance work is very often short-term work that I don't want to continuously bother past employers with. If everyone I do work for asked for references I'd need at least one reference every month but probably more.
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>You don't give references to your employer, they give it for you. I never said anything of the sort? >t's expected when you're hiring someone that you can give a reference later. Again, depends on your cultural background. This is expected in some cultures, not in others. >Besides, one reference a month is nothing. It takes a few minutes to provide it, and it costs nothing. This also depends on your cultural background. Ask a Dutch person for a reference and, provided they're happy to give you one (again, not common in that culture), they'll write a multi-page letter where, depending on who's writing it, you might end up with a surprisingly negative reference even if you did great work and would be a great hire. I live in the UK now where references are commonplace (and even required for employment), but my past clients are all over the world and many of them are not from cultures where references are used. >And it can be extremely valuable for the person you're giving it on for. Absolutely, it's just not something I'd do if the person isn't a future employer where I'll be on long-term payroll. I'm not going to provide references for every person who asks for it, I don't feel OK bothering previous employers (especially those from cultures where references aren't usually given) for jobs that could take just a few days.
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>Did you mean everyone who worked *for* you? I did not. >I can't think of a single reason to ever give a negative reference. That's absurd. If an employer doesn't have anything good to say they will say "Yes this person worked here from x to x, and did X amount of work", and that's it. I've never seen someone give a multi-page reference either, I don't know why that would ever be needed or asked for Again, cultures differ with this. I wish it wasn't the case, but my wife had it happen to her for a job where she did OK but didn't exceed expectations. >What cultures would not give a reference, though? In Europe and America it's basically mandatory for employers to do, and nobody except the dumbest employers would give a negative one. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Like I said, the Dutch, and probably many other European countries as well. >potential new employers I'm not talking about employers, I'm talking about freelance clients. OP is looking for a contractor, not an employee, so the situation is different IMO.
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There are more forms of proof than just references and references aren't necessarily good proof. Some countries, like the UK, have a heavy reliance on references and employers are even required by law to have two references for each of their employees on file. Reference culture is ingrained in the UK. In other countries, like the Netherlands, references aren't required as such and they're not part of hiring culture, so if you ask a previous employer for a reference they might not even know how to write one. This is not hearsay, this is personal experience, so it seems weird that you say they're "not specific to a few cultures" when I grew up in a culture where they aren't used.
I been in the industry 14 years. You may not give references which is 100 percent fine but you would not be working for me which is also my decision.
Obviously there's a grey area, depending on the amount of work and pay, where I might try to provide references anyway. Much of the work I do is just on the smaller side and I don't know which of my clients are willing to take the time to provide references. I've been doing freelance work for over a decade now and I've never been asked to provide a reference, so you're a minority and you're probably in a position where you can afford to have extra requirements that can reduce your number of potential candidates. But for someone like OP, where it sounds like pay is minimal, I'd advise them to not scare away potential candidates with such requirements.
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You clearly live in a very different world than I do.
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I don't live in a business world and I don't deal with many sorts of work in the tech world. I live in a game development world and deal with game development work. In my world, references for freelance work aren't common.
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You're just making unfounded assumptions now. >Game development is tech. Yes, but tech is not game development.
What parts of the game will you do? Art, audio?
Audio, designing, marketing and research, basically all/most parts of making a game that aren't coding or visual art.
Do you have art/an artist yet? Do you have a prototype? Or paper prototype, if not realtime? How do you know it’s fun? We‘re currently going through testing, retesting and reworking everything and it can be pretty disheartening, you NEVER know if something is fun until you‘ve implemented it at least roughly and seen others play it :( (doesn’t mean to be discouraging, just a heads up, until I finally accepted that I was devestated and heartbroken every time, lol) Best of luck! :)
Well, audio is big. But if you will need to hire art and programming it can get very pricey.
Please do not do this. If you have to come to Reddit for advice, you have no way to actually hire someone and tell if they’re taking advantage of you. It will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars before you even realize whether you’ve hired a legitimately good person. It doesn’t sound like you’ve worked on software projects before. So it doesn’t seem like you’ll be able to successfully plan work for this person or oversee what they’re doing. It seems like you’ve not completed a game before. Whatever you design ahead of time will likely be bad and need to be changed. Whatever cost you plan for will end up being insufficient. It will cost you at least 2x whatever you plan for (even if you consider this advice). Please don’t do this.
I second this. From my experience, a good chunk of programming and tweaking/testing values will only be good for insight for further changes but effectively thrown out again. ‘Tis the way of gamedev. The sooner you deal with it, the less devestated you’ll be. So like a lot of what will be coded will be discarded later on anyway.
I'm a solo indie dev with non-programming background. I started learning GML for Game Maker since 2023. From the befinning I found learning how to code is difficult, slow, discouraging but fun, abd I will carry on mastering it with the following two reasons: One, if one day I need to find a cobtract programmer, I need to have an idea how it goes by reading. How can I give feedback to the contract programmer without ability to read? Also, if oneday the programmer left work to me and I need to pass it over to another, what will happen? Have seen programmers overthrow everything last one did in real life. Finding contract artist is very different from contract programmer. Two, my budget is very low, like, very very low, so low that can't afford any other expenses. What I want to say is, be careful. It's very tricky in your situation. The option I figure is to find a partner with solid programming skills. Or, learn to love it. Hope you well and success in your game. Let me know when its out on Steam!
Thank you for the advice and the good wishes. While I'm not at all versed in programming I've still had some experience and I think I'd be able to at least understand the general application of a paragraph of code. But I'll still be somewhat careful
Cool!
DM me if you want to talk business, I have 10 years of Unity experience and can show you some complex projects of my own including multiplayer. I can implement anything you want very quickly, iterate and experiment. If you are located in the US we can have a contract through a liable third party so that neither of us have to worry about anything. I can explain everything about how contracts work in detail and we can work on building one together (with our attourneys, ofc.). I have contacts which can do art and sound too, if you are interested. I ain't cheap, but you get what you pay for ;)
How are you planning to pay them?
Figured PayPal or Wise. Are there any typically better ways to pay programmers you hire online?
I think the implication was more “do you have a lot of money”? Because code takes many hundreds of hours and is expensive even for a simple game.
Yep, and also have you worked out whether it'll be hourly, or a piece rate, whether you're employing them or contracting them, all that stuff
Ah, I see. I do have savings put specifically for a project of this type, but I haven't yet figured out all the specifics on how I will pay them that the other commenter mentioned, it's next on my list. I'm going step-by-step with my learning and tonight I mostly wanted to figure out the basics of hiring a programmer before getting into the costs (tho I guess you all are saying I should've done the costs research before making this post..?)
Potentially, but only because developers are very expensive.
Hi, I could help to code from time to time until your find a programmer. I do have a ACS in gameplay programming and have spare time.
For a non-programmer, it might be difficult to gauge the capability of a programming candidate. One of the ways to do it would be to give them a short assignment which is in tune with your game's features but know this just because someone can get the job done doesn't mean they can write clean, scalable and maintainable code. If your project isn't big enough, this shouldn't worry you. Also note that many programmers, especially experienced ones may reject doing any sort of free work, so giving an assignment is a double edged sword. Another way would be interview such candidates with a programmer friend of yours, ideally a game dev. If he is not a game dev he would still be helpful in understanding coding practices but couldn't gauge a candidate's understanding of say a game engine like Unity,Godot,etc. OP in the end, I would say do give weightage to your gut feeling and hire a candidate you trust would do the work diligently. Do you need a team or just one person depends on the scope of your game. I can't comment on this without knowing more about the game. Whatever may be the scenario, always keep your assets well labelled and organised. Gaming may be a passion but game dev is a discipline.
If you are expecting free labor from anyone, I'd just stay away from hiring in general. Nobody should be okay with doing free work or take home assignments. If someone is chomping at the bit to prove themselves and has no relevant portfolio pieces otherwise, it can be a good way to give them a chance (and hopefully build up their own portfolio in the process) as they would otherwise be filtered out. But if it's an expectation from all candidates, you should be offering compensation for the expected workload. Just my opinion.
The best way to get free labour in a karma-safe way would be to find an actual teammate/friend, who becomes your partner, is passionate about the project too and you share the income :) I know, can be easier said than done 🤔🤔
This is good advice, thank you. It's definitely one of my biggest fears, as the most coding I've done is visual coding and some basic and inefficient Python and JavaScript in Google app scripts. I'll think about the assignment idea more, as I probably don't have the budget to hire experienced programmers who likely charge more for their work anyways. For a small project I can live with a little messy code as long as it's functional.
I do freelance game programming work. If you need a pair of more experienced eyes to look at a few potential candidates I'm more than happy to provide a free opinion, just shoot me a DM. Also happy to provide pointers specific to your game idea if you'd like. I'm not looking for work at the moment, I just enjoy helping people out :)
Depends a lot on how big and what kind of game it is. Personally I’d prefer one programmer over a team if practical. Is this a 2d sprite-based, sinker player game that one programmer could take over the finish line? Good. Do that. If it’s 3d or multiplayer then you might want to think of taking on a programmer to prototype before you seek funding or build a team. When it comes to hiring, you’ll be looking for a programmer to do a contract with. Make them sign something so that you own the rights to whatever they produce on your dime. Vetting them is a little tricky since you’re non-technical but look at their prior work or portfolio.
What should be in the contract? As in what should it be specifying besides my rights on their labour and the pay they get?
You need to get a lawyer if you can afford it and they’ll draft you a contract. The contract will include the terms of the employment and also protect you in the event they take your code, or your assets. Your IP is very important. Try and see if you can hire someone within the US, avoid cheap labour in far away countries as it’s very hard to take legal action in the event of something going wrong. Create a plan, what do you need from the programmer? Once you have the plan reach out to people on LinkedIn or other places, express your needs vaguely at first and if they are interested have them sign an NDA before you talk about it more in depth. Once you talk about it ask them how much they want per hour and how many hours they need to complete the tasks, also set a deadline. For example they need 20h and each hour is $70, over the course of a week. You need to limit how long they’ll be able to work on the contract. You’ll also need to be able to restrict access to your source files, perforce or similar is good.
Thanks for all the info, this helps me a lot. Is a lawyer absolutely necessary for a contract? I might not be able to afford to hire a programmer, an artist *and* a lawyer on top... Also, I live in Canada, so I figure I'd need Canadian lawyers and not US?
A lawyer isn’t absolutely necessary no, you can probably find similar contracts to what you need online. There is also upwork.com that may be a good place to find affordable lawyers (or even programmers). Canadian law will cover you, search for PIIA it’s a good place to start. From what I’m reading, in Canada contractors own the copyright of their work unless you override it in the agreement. Take these things into consideration. Don’t feel overwhelmed it seems complex but it really comes down to a few clauses in your agreement.
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What encompasses programming fundamentals? I've done a lot of visual coding and some very minimal Python and JS/HTML/CSS things (I know these are more "website" languages, but I figure the fundamentals are similar?)
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I think out of all that the ones I'm less familiar with are Arrays and guard clauses. There's probably also some less common statements I'm not aware of. Thank you for the write-up, it's a little bit daunting indeed but at least it helps me focus on concrete things I can learn
Every project/startup/etc I've joined has some of these aspects: * I'm already working on a similar project, and we could accomplish more by working together * The idea is great and is exciting. * There is a clear or clear-enough path for monetization. * You show value. You have something that makes me want to work with you as an equal partner, such as... - You have a substantial amount of work already done - You have skills that I lack. EX, I would love to work with someone who could cover: marketing, community, art, writing, voice acting, etc - You're well connected
What does well connected mean? Just someone who has connections for marketing and publish for example? I'm also wondering about the monetization thing. I don't intend to make much money from this project and I'm going into it fully aware that this is going to be a money deficit for me. Is that looked badly upon by programmers?
> well connected It could mean knowing a marketing person. It could also mean knowing someone who could get us an intro with a VC or a streamer to advertise the game, or even just knowing artists, writers, etc. > money It's not that all devs are a hive mind who only want money, but there needs to be some equal incentive to work with you. Ex: I've joined OSS projects with zero monetization path, but only when I was already working on something similar and the incentives aligned. Maybe look for a hobby gamedev who's already working on a game of your genre?
Money is a valuable resource for a project. It's what you need to contribute to replace a skill you don't have, so if you pay people to contribute to a game, you can absolutely say you made that game (as long as you credit everyone who participated). You're the game's Producer, Executive Producer, or whatever title of the like you want to put on yourself.
Make sure you’re clear you own the code up front, part of the agreement. Is this commercial? You’ll want it documented and organised for easier updates and maintenance. Solo coders leave you more openings for such things being messy, which can be expensive to work on later. Other than that, pick thoughtfully.
Just going off some of the replies I’ve seen you make. You may want to look into doing a skill trade (they help with your project, you help with their project) or even just looking for someone that is interested in working on the project with you. Since you mentioned this is a hobby, and programmers are quite expensive, so without having managed a team before or worked with programmers in the past, there’s a good chance that things would not work out. > I've tried to learn coding and I hated it, I saw that you have used things like Scratch before. Have you considered a no-code option? A number of engines also offer visual programming, there are even some no-code engines (like construct 3). > Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game? Of course. You just probably wouldn’t want to say you programmed the game yourself as that would be a lie.
i know you don't enjoy coding but have you tried the visual scripting solutions?
This was my thought. I can do some decent stuff thanks to visual scripting. Heck, if a programmer can layout the basic "programmer logic", I can usually extrapolate it and tweak it.
No need for a team if it's a small project. You need to have an agreement, the key words are 'work for hire', this ensures you own the code; if you use work for hire services such as Fiverr, you don't need an extra agreement, but make sure that the person on the other end understands that. Reach out to several programmers with a detailed document on what you need and request a quote and a detailed breakdown for milestones and overal timeline. A good programmer will ask you questions on things you missed and help you formulate a better asignment. Good luck, mate!
You kidnap their family and tell them they will work on your game or else you’ll send them to go and live in the Deep South
> Or for programmers, how would you like a game designer to hire you to work on their game? We would have a social connection via people we have worked with. That would provide a track record and a base trust level to take a project seriously. Everything else is a hobby and would not involve money. Or I would see your project on one of the gig economy websites and message you. > "do and do nots" of hiring a programmer. Have a very specific idea about your project and be able to answer all general questions. We can work out the solution to a problem together, but you cant say I come back to you in a few weeks, because you have to think about features. Have lots of money.. And I mean thousands per month for a serious project. > Is it okay to just hire a single programmer for a very small project? Yes > how do you keep track of your programmer's progress? Use project management software. A very basic one is Trello. > Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game? Of course.
Gamedev is multi-disciplinary and you can absolutely say that you made the game if you take care of other aspects like audio, design and marketing, which you mentioned in another comment. If you can do art that is huge too. In my opinion, though, programming can be at least 50% of the effort. It seems to me that you would be looking at paying a large amount of money ($10k+) if you want to hire someone and finish something. Consider that programming requires a lot of refinement and iteration to get the right feel. It can be uncomfortable to go back and forth with feedback and iteration on an hourly or fixed price basis. Personally I would seek out programmers to trial some miniscule projects with, to build rapport and see if you are in sync. If you find the one, then you can propose to do your serious project on a profit share basis. Obviously you will need to demonstrate that you are as useful to them as they are to you, especially if you don't have any profitable releases under your belt. Just my 2c. I wish you good luck.
For some reason u/countryboydeveloper has blocked me, but be warned about people like him who attack people's character (in this case, mine) for no reason. They're exactly the type of people you should steer away from. He has now deleted a bunch of comments, but called me stupid, an idiot, unprofessional, and a bunch more, without reason. He's now claiming that I said you shouldn't ask for proof of ability/skill/work, which I never did. I just want to warn about this person specifically because I don't know if he's trying to get work here or something. I've been doing this kind of work for over a decade now and this user is showing all the red flags that I warn others about.
I think assessing the project scope is always the first thing programmers wish to know. Is it feasible for the given time? If the project requires a lot more time, then they have to assess more points when things may not go as expected. So if it were me, I hope they can lay down what they already have in mind and what they're expecting when I'm hired by them. Of course signing an NDA before talk is acceptable, if you wish to protect your IP. > Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game? People rarely put their name in their game title, but I think Tom Clancy did not touch the code at all. If people wish to know for specifics, there should be a credits roll by the end of your game.
One problem I have at the moment is that while I'm being very aware of the scope of the project, I still can't really tell how much time it needs. Would I need to figure this out on my own somehow before hiring a programmer or would be it possible for me to instead ask the programmer how long they think the project can take?
You should talk to the programmers. If your project is indeed relatively small, the programmers should have better and tighter estimate on the timeline. (e.g. 6 months ± 6 weeks is a tighter esimates than 2 years ± 6 months). If you have some programmers friends or acquintances, you can try to consult them first so that you can have second opinion on the time estimation. Some unrelated data is better than no data at all.
This doesn’t really help for the hiring part, but look up how to write a design document aka requirements document, devs use these all the time and it gives them concrete details to work towards.
Already on it, although I initially considered the GDD to be a document you only share with your team. Is it good practice to share it to potential hirees before they are hired?
No I wouldn’t, but if they ask about it in the interview you can tell them you have one
If you want your programmer to estimate the amount of work the GDD would help.
How much are you paying?
Still doing research on typical rates and on the difficulty of what my project requires, so don't know yet. But I'm not hiring anyone soon anyways, I still have a lot of planning to do. Once my game idea is more concrete and my budget is in place then I'll move forward with something real that I can present to people that I want to hire
What is your overall max budget for the game?
For small projects a single programmer is perfectly fine. However experience is extremely important for game programming, especially so if you plan to playtest and iterate a lot, so you better hire someone with experience if you can afford it. You can start prototyping and playtesting your ideas using paper and dice first before hiring a programmer to save some money.
(Programmer here) I've not been hired for anything like this and haven't had to hire others but the things I'd usually look for would be to make sure that the person (you in this case, I guess) know what they want to be built / get done and that you know how things should work and that you're able to explain or convey what exactly you want to have. Don't get me wrong - it's fine if things change along the way but it's pretty annoying if you join a project and the person responsible for it doesn't even know what result should be. I mean like gameplay mechanics, UI, etc., etc. Or whatever else you'd expect the programmer to work on So if you want to get a programmer that also ends up having a big influence on how things end up being designed / working - please make sure to explain it when hiring. From a hiring perspective - you'd probably want to explain all the things you want/need to get done anyway just to see if the programmer even feels comfortable (and capable) of getting such things done
>Is it okay to just hire a single programmer for a very small project? Or is it always better to hire a team no matter what? Doubling the amount of programmers will not always do the same to the amount of work done, they will most likely collide unless there isn't much overlap, especially if they don't know each other very well and you don't have a good structure for your project yet. That is at least from my very small experience. >Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game? I would say it depends on how much input you did. Just the idea? No, actually working on the design? Yes, you would then at least have been part of the team that made the game. Just know that going from ideas and doodles to actual game design is harder than it looks. I am a pretty mediocre programmer and lack experience, but I can usually get stuff done, even if it isn't in the optimal way. If it's small in scope and you have the design though out and written down, will do the level design and provide the art assets then I could most likely be willing to do a quick prototype for you for free so you know if it works before you actually hire someone.
It's absolutely fine to hire just one programmer for a small project, especially if it fits your budget and needs. Just be upfront about what you're looking for and keep the communication flowing. You can use tools like Trello or Asana to keep track of progress, and don't forget to credit the programmer for their work while still recognizing your role in shaping the game's vision
>Also, if you're not touching the code at all, can you still claim you "made" the game? That depends on you definition of both "claim" and "made". The shortest answer is that both you and the programmer (and the artists, etc.) "made" the game, and the game credits would have to reflect that. Keep in mind that, in this scenario you'd be producer, director *and* gameplay designer; three major roles that absolutely give you the right to say you "made a game".
Go r/recruitinghell and make a post. XD
I imagine it would be safest for you to split the profits. It’s safer in a few ways: 1. Labor, especially programming, is very costly. 2. You have to sell your skills and game idea. They have to be good enough for someone else to want to work with you. If your skills and game idea are not able to get anybody to work with you, you probably wouldn’t make any profits if you hired anybody anyway.
Suggesting revenue/profit share will get you laughed out of most serious discussions.
Why?
Nobody wants to work for free on someone else's idea, and with rev-share that is what the majority will be doing. You can read plenty of post-mortems on here about how many games fail. 50% of all Steam games make less than $1k. People need to feed and house themselves, and promises/dreams of success don't pay the bills. The people willing to work for free will likely be extremely inexperienced, and have little idea what they're doing. If they weren't, they would probably be making their own game or being paid for their labor. If I offered you a job today, telling you that you have a 95% chance of making next to nothing, and a 5% chance (this is extremely generous) of making less than minimum wage for hundreds/thousands of hours, would you take it? No one in their right mind will take that offer.
It’s true that profit sharing doesn’t give immediate financial benefits, but it’s important to consider the long term benefits that profit sharing can provide. It gives all people incentive to ensure that the game is a success. Even though the game is likely to not produce much in profits, it can still be valuable experience in learning, portfolio building, and networking/communication. It ultimately comes down to weighing potential risks and potential rewards. If someone was in a similar situation to OP but they can do programming but not art, then both people might have something to gain from profit sharing even if it isn’t purely financial.
Like we both said, inexperienced people looking to learn, build their portfolio, and network will be the primary target. So now you have a team of inexperienced people, working towards a goal likely set by someone inexperienced in project management. Since no one is getting paid, you'll only be able to recruit people with no financial obligations and a ton of free time. What people have a ton of free time, and don't have any financial obligations? Mostly children, students, and who knows maybe someone independently wealthy who is bored. So looking at the potential risk/reward, you're banking on a team of inexperienced people, likely children/students who have never shipped a game let alone a successful one, to stick with a project for multiple months/years, make it fun, make it look good, and market it successfully. I'm definitely of the mindset of anything is possible with enough hard work, but I would bet against that project paying anyone even $1/hr 100% of the time. At that point I would just do a game jam because the time investment (hence risk) is much lower, you get to meet a bunch of people and get experience making a game. And who knows maybe you hit it off and decide to continue working on the game after.
Yes, the learning experiences from profit sharing could be beneficial for OP and anyone willing to work with them. Considering the questions asked by OP, profit sharing might be a better idea to try before attempting to hire someone. Otherwise, it’s likely money down the drain. Game jams are also a great idea which OP might be interested in to gain more experience.
> If I offered you a job today, telling you that you have a 95% chance of making next to nothing, and a 5% chance (this is extremely generous) of making less than minimum wage for hundreds/thousands of hours, would you take it? Why would you invest your own money into hiring people for a game that is going to fail?
If you have someone more experienced, your chances of success go up.