How to calculate a budget for a project
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Let me preface this by saying I know that most questions along the lines of “how much does X cost?” or “how much should I charge for X?” can usually be answered “it depends...”
Nonetheless, I’m in situation where I need to figure out a budget for putting together a team, and I’m struggling to figure out how much various positions usually charge.
To begin with I am looking to hire:
- UE4 Developer (C++ required / VR experience preferred)
- Environment Artist
- Character Artist
I am based in the UK and hoping to hire here in the UK.
I can find plenty of job positions posted online (here, on ArtStation, etc) that are similar to my requirements, but NONE of them list the salary. I understand that this is probably because the salary is negotiated based on various factors after a successful interview, but it leaves me high and dry in terms of working out how much to budget for a project!
Can anyone give me some indication of salary for those positions in the UK? Currently I can find no decent information on which to base these decisions. We actually have a pretty decent budget in place, but I have no way of calculating whether it’s one year’s operating costs, two years, or what.
It would be good to get a sense of both low-end (Indie Dev) and high-end (AAA) so that I can work out a sweet spot in terms of our actual budget.
Any help anyone can provide would be much appreciated, even if it’s just to point me in the right direction for how to figure these things out.
Replies
is this a full time employee hire, or short-mid term contract?
startup or established company? Secure funding?
what sort of experience level is important to you?
Where are you based and are you expecting team members to work in house?
is this a full time employee hire, or short-mid term contract?
I'm not sure what the correct term would be, but it will be yearly contracts, renewed every year depending on funding and project requirements.
startup or established company? Secure funding?
Startup. Thus far I have been a solo-developer working for my client. Based on my prototype I have now been funded to build a team. Depending on the costs involved (which is what I'm trying to understand), I have either 1-2 years funding secured.
what sort of experience level is important to you?
I think a basic set of requirements would be:
– To have already worked as part of a team
– To have been involved in at least one project that has been released
I'm not expecting to hire AAA quality people because I doubt we can afford them, but neither do I want to hire cheap/inexperienced people who won't actually produce quality work.
Where are you based and are you expecting team members to work in house?
I'm based in Bristol in the UK. I will initially be looking for team members right here in Bristol, then extending to the wider UK. My ideal situation would be for people to be able to work individually (at home or wherever they choose) but close enough that we can meet in person periodically.
Let me know if that answers all your questions adequately. Thanks!
(First off though, you need to shift the idea of "AAA quality" vs "indie quality". Some of the best developers in the world work for tiny indies)
Given what you've said, i reckon you could estimate Coder/Env artist/Character artist at roughly the same level. If you were after more experience, you'd generally find coders to be a bit more expensive.
given you've said its not an Full Time Employee hire but instead a (potentially rolling) yearly contract - since its at least a year rather than a shorter term, you're probably not going to be far off FTE salaries - even for a professional freelancer. You don't want someone charging you a standard daily rate for a year or you'll be crippled, its up to you to negotiate with them based on solid work coming in for a year-plus.
You could, potentially, roughly estimate this on the total wage cost of an Full Time Employee. I'm not entirely sure of the cost of living in the west country and how that translates to average salaries, but here in Yorkshire i'd estimate around 30-35k for the sort of people you've described, as FTE. Call it 33k for the purposes of a spreadsheet.
Remember for FTE you need to add on 13.8% NI contribution, and allow for an average of 2% for work place pension (you have to offer it, but they don't have to take it, if you see what i mean). That'd give you a total of around 38k to account for.
That might not be quite enough for someone with just the promise of a yearly contract, but its up to you to sell it based on the quality of the company and the title and promise of the future. Try not to fuck anyone over while you do it.
All in all though, if you want to do it more scientifically, you're probably best off hitting up a few reasonably experienced freelancers in your area and seeing what they'd ask for for the promise of a years worth of work.
edit - oh another thing, you can't keep people working on long term contract indefinitely. You've probably only got 2 or so years before HMRC come sniffing around and you're expected to bring them onto the payroll.
The ballpark figure you've given me is something I can definitely work with. I guess the next step is to put the feelers out and actually speak to some people here.
Thanks so much.
There will absolutely be times when there is a gap in your pipeline that needs some tool being made, or you might realize that... oh shit user interface is actually important and nobody knows how to do it... someone better get on that.
When faced with this problem your solutions are:
1. hire a freelancer as/when needed for those tasks, they won't be intimate with your project, they won't really care about your success, and they are expensive.
2. hire your initial team with multi-skilled people in mind to leave as few and as small gaps as possible. however, people who are GOOD at multiple disciplines are more expensive, people who aren't, might slow down areas of production.
3. be prepared to either move someone from one skillset to another (ie: you're not a character artist anymore, we need someone churning out props, GOGOGO). Just beware that some people will rebel against this and leave, or struggle with the transition.
and finally, don't under-estimate the importance of being able to do things yourself. you haven't mentioned your own skillset in this thread yet, so when looking for employees, bear in mind that there is a huge stigma against "idea guys", regardless of how deep their pockets are. Be ready to either bring skills to the table, or learn them fast.
As for me, I’m an ideas guy but also a generalist. For the prototype I built to get the funding I did everything (sculpting, modelling, textures, materials, coding, rigging, animating) except the sound design and music. I’m by no means world class in any of those things, and still have endless amounts to learn, but I really appreciate being a generalist who understands pretty much every part of the pipeline to some degree. I will definitely be getting my hands dirty on this project. To be honest, I could probably do most of it myself it would just take a VERY long time for one person to do!