Hi everyone,

I’m new to the community and gaming development in general. I apologize for a slightly lengthy post, but I have a question about how to get a project going through open-source channels. Just a quick background on who I am/the project:

I’m part of a small team from an MBA program that is starting an educational gaming platform in response to the educational problems presented by COVID. We won a contest hosted by the school and got some small seed money to get it up and running, but that evaporated quickly after hiring someone from Fiverr to create a demo. We kicked the can down the road a bit, but we still think this is something that schools could integrate, even when COVID is past.

The goal of our creation is to encourage collaboration and an innovative learning model for Grades K-5 while socially isolated. In its full form, the platform will be a community where classmates will work together to solve problems, complete tasks, and build on the curriculum offered in the classroom. We want the world to be something like an RPG meets a sandbox environment. Students will earn points and be able to buy special items for their character, build their own schoolhouse together, etc.

While we have founded and established the company, none of us are game developers or know the first thing about it. We hired someone to make a short, playable demo, but the money dried up pretty quickly, so we’re looking for partners who can make our vision a reality. We know we need much, much more to generate excitement and to build partnerships with schools while simultaneously getting kids and families interested in the platform. Basically, no school will be interested without a beefier version of the game.

We know this might be a long-shot, but does anyone have any advice on how to connect with developers and how to get a longer, playable version of this game made through the open-source community? As I mentioned, we have some files that we own from when we paid someone on Fiverr to create our short demo if that would help. We have connections who are committed to server space, hosting, etc. once there’s an actual game and schools on board, so any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks, and I look forward to the responses!

DefinitelyNotADeveloper said:
We know this might be a long-shot, but does anyone have any advice on how to connect with developers and how to get a longer, playable version of this game made through the open-source community?

Piles of money. Proper work-for-hire contracts. Getting at least a few industry veterans on the project. And continuous accountability, such as money for accepted milestones.

Most people are woefully ignorant of the costs involved for custom software. Even relatively simple games developed from scratch tend to have multi-million dollar price tags. If you are hiring professionals, depending on your location on the globe 10Koreven10K or even 10Koreven15K per work month are good starting estimates. In my current location if you're looking at 6 months and 5 professionals be prepared to throw a half million dollars at it, your location's cost and your project's duration in work-hours will vary.

Then recognize that development costs are often only about a third of the total cost of most games. Marketing is usually equal to development cost, and the costs of pre-production, post-production, support, distribution, and administration are often yet another third. That is, perhaps 10M on development, 10M on marketing, 10M on pre-production, post-production, and other costs, give or take.

If you're looking for someone to start from scratch and then post the entire content to the open source world, those can be quite expensive. You'll own it, your lawyers will write up the contracts, and you'll publish it as open source.

If you're looking for people to leverage existing open source tools and products you first start by finding a community of people who have already created something similar, then essentially pay to co-opt their project or extend their project using the seed money. The farther away from their current project and the more work involved the bigger your pile of money will need to be. To increase the odds of success you need to hire people who have already created projects successfully.

Good luck.

Frob,

This is an incredibly helpful breakdown, and I really appreciate the insight and understanding shown. This definitely gives our team a lot to think about as we consider how to move forward and how to draw up the proper financial goals and future plans.

Thank you for the reply!

Do you have a link to the demo?

@SkyPenguin

Sorry for the late reply - just now seeing this! I put the files in a Media Fire folder. Honestly, at this point, it seems to be too capital intensive for what we can pull off, but who knows. If someone takes the idea and runs with it, awesome. If not, great. https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ga0x9tas2mjtp/School+Learning+Game​

alas, unplayable on my linux machine. I'll have to try later on my other comp. Figured you'd have a web-app, they have a much wider reach these days which is as important for educational games as anything else.
Well, if you still plan on making an app and are fine with a web-focused approach, msg me, I might be interested.

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What language is this in?