I was actually requested this topic by a reader named Robert: “I’ve always been very interested in exact figures developers have paid for art, sound assets. Maybe if you could ask some developers and post the info. The name of the artist or composer doesn’t have to be included…”
So I do ask you fellow developers – how much do you normally pay for all of these assets?
With my current game, The Divine, I’ve actually avoided paying any of my staff upfront. I’ve worked out a royalty system so basically they all have an incentive to make this game awesome.
In the commercial game industry you can see from the 2003 Developer Salary Survey (it’s the most current online edition, offline is already 2006) that paying your workers can cost a serious amount of money!
So as I asked above if you are a developer please post (comments section) some information to help Robert out.
Thanks! 🙂
I did all art, coding and sound myself, so paid $0. I managed to sweet talk my composer into doing work for free, but I knew Gibbage would be getting a good deal of exposure, so didn’t feel too guilty about it because in turn it was great exposure for him.
Probably not that helpful, I know. But there are plenty of extraordinarily talented people out there who’ll work for the credit alone. It might be more work, but if it’s your first project I’d guess they’re well worth hunting down because there are no guarantees of revenue.
That said, when I write the sequel, I’ll be using profits from Gibbage to pay my composer for the excellent work he does…
Thanks for the info Dan!
Hope this all helps Robert!
I’m paying my sprite artist about $2000 for all the sprite designs and animations. My background artists are getting about $15-30 a pop depending on the level of detail needed. A mite expensive, true, but I am too cynical to trust anyone who will work for free. 🙂