I have just started since if the price is cheap enough some parts I would rather someone else do. So far the people I have tried to get to do some things for under $20 have seemed very confused but I am still trying to filter out them looking for 2 or 3 solid programmers.
How much for example should I expect someone to charge for a basic PlayerPrefs Top 10 high score table ? That seems like a good one to test out a few people with. $15 ?
(Yes I know I can do this myself and I know you want to tell me you should do this all yourself because that is how you get better etc… I am a old guy with a family and barely anytime as it is to write my little games so it is worth a few dollars if someone can save me a few hours)
Cheap programmers are such a crap shoot, in my opinion. I guess it’s feasible that you could find a gem, but I never have. At my work, we use foreign freelancers from some website or other (can’t recall off the top of my head) who generally work for $15-25/hr, and even then their code is usually awful.
In my experience, programmers who are willing to work for dirt cheap produce shit. It’s fine if you just want one-off type work, but if you want something you can build off of or integrate into a larger project, I’d avoid it entirely. At least if your own code sucks, you wrote it and you’ll have a clue how to fix/modify it. If it’s someone else’s, you’ll likely rewrite it from scratch and throw away the garbage code you paid for.
That said, if it’ll save you time and help you do what you want to do, and the cost is worth it, I definitely recommend looking into it.
I was recently cold-called by a group of developers working under the name The Knights of Unity. They work for $25/hour. On a whim, I hired them to write a simple flight controller for a spaceship art asset I’m working on, since I’m busy with programming on a different project. They estimated 2 hours, they did the work in 2 hours, and they delivered a script that was exactly to spec and fully documented. I recommend contacting them over taking a gamble on fiverr.
If it’s a whole highscore system, it’s not going to be cheap for a solid one. I’ve written similar things (plus matchmakers with account system/game registration), and it’s a bit of a job.
You might be better off looking at different game services, and find one which allows small numbers of users for free, and has flexible pricing after that.
I have a simple game with a score. I have a High Score Scene. All I want is the program to take the score whne the game ends and add it to a collection saved locally (Player Prefs?). Then on the High Score screen show the Top 10 Scores and Names… I can tidy up the design myself… Seems like a good simple task to give someone… If it is more than $30though I might do it myself
Ok. If they can do that for $25… Then I think my simple tasks could be even cheaper… Something are even one or two liners… for example I have an issue with boxes being placed on other boxes flying away … Probably just Instantiating at th ewrong place… so that sorta simple stuff I am hoping someone can do in a few mintues for $5
I figured there were parts of the world where$5 is a lot more money to then than me so the economics would work out… I want to write the main code myself… I imagine the code I would want would never be more than 50 lines since it is mostly about me having trouble getting some aspect of the game to work
It is just a locally stored one… I did it on windows phone years ago Serializing XML… About 50 lines total… I have yet to get anyone to do anything successfully for me so I can’t say what the market value is… I’m still waiting for that one guy who gets it and can help me as needed… and I’m happy to give him a flow of money as I keep needing hlep
It’s obviously up to you, and you know the value of your own time better than anyone. But if it were me, and I just wanted help with certain small scripts, I’d use the forum as a free resource!
Awesome to know. We’re getting into a bit of Unity work at my day job, and so far I’m the only developer on staff. I may have to keep these guys in mind for outsourcing to!
That’s actually a reasonable rate to pay in the developed world for such speculative products if they are 90% competent coders and possibly a great rate to earn for them depending on where they live. Completely fair if they are good. I’d hire them if I needed to if I was in a bind on the last 10% of a project.
I’m looking more for long term help rather than a single project… I just make the games for fun and I hate when I run into a problem that I have to spend hours doing a work around when I know if there was someone smart who could look at the code the answer would take minutes.
I assume with bitcoin payments it open things up to even more people to make money
