Details of a Typical Contract

I'm afraid I won't be much help here, I use Construct for fun. Here's a resource I found that might be of use. It addresses a few of your questions.

google.com/amp/s/assets.codementor.io/ultimate-guide-for-hiring-freelance-developers-1o92072302.html

I´m humbled I count as experienced. I don´t have that much experience with contract stuff though but I do know some things.

1. A game design document is usually standard. Keep in mind that these documents tend to change constantly during development, i.e. you thought of a inventory system that sounded good on paper and endet up being cumbersome and nobody liked it.

2a. I know of "work contracts" (could be named different based on your location) that are usually specifically for a single project. That project can be anything including "a single part of a whole". I also think the payment is just up to what both parties agree, hourly or fixed amount usually. If it takes way longer than usual (happened to me when I once had such a contract) you can just renegotiate. In my case we just made a second work contract following the first one, same conditions that basically just added another month.

2b. That varies a lot based on experience, if they are freelance or in an agency and actually also where they live. Sure, the cheap asian developer is kind of a stereotype but it´s also often true. Mostly I´ve seen ranges between 50-200$ per hour but there´s no upper limit. It´s also possible to agree on a revenue split from the finished game in turn for a cheaper (or no) hourly rate, but not everyone is up for it. If the game is a big success this can mean big money for the developer, but if it flops it flops, but it can work if the developer sees great potential in it.

3. Generally you don´t have to. The assets are automatically copyrighted and ideas cannot be copyrighted. You want NDAs if you want secrecy. I´ve also heard of Non-compete clauses that might work for this case but I´m not sure.

4. You should monitor the development of course. I´d say have a generous amount of milestones that you can check up on and if the developer just constantly sends them 3 days late and full of bugs it´s probably best to cut the contract. I think this is a very important part actually, make sure you defined cases where you can opt-out of the (full) contract. If you have 10 milestones and the third milestone you just notice it isn´t working out, cut your losses. You probably pay the 3 milestones worth of work to the dev and move on. Bugs later down the line I´d say depends on how much later. 3 days after the contract ended the dev might be like "yeah whatever I´ll fix it real quick" but a month or two later probably not.

Otherwise FromChris has some good points about those freelance platforms. They usually have a bunch of things figured out it terms of disputes, payments and such.

WackyToasterFromChris

Thanks guys for the excellent information! I appreciate your time and thoughts

Hi all,

I have a couple questions centered around the topic of hiring Construct developers:

1. What type of documentation does the developer usually require? Is there an industry standard?

2a. What are the normal contract types and how does pay work for each? (Ie. What if I just need a single part of a whole? What if the intended project takes way longer than expected? Etc..)

2b. What is a normal pay range for developers?

3. How does the employer protect their assets, ideas, etc. ?

4. How does the employer assure quality? (Ie. What if the employer is not happy with the results but the developer feels it is adequate? What if there are bugs later on down the line? Etc.)

Thanks all

1. There is no industry standard online, but you can do a hire for work contract as your country region has however those contracts are useless in the online medium, so as the above people i suggest using a platform that can reach and enforce a "pay for work" contract online globally (upwork, rocketlawyer etc)

2a. Usually contracts can be of 3 types in development world (being it games/websites/typography etc)

2a.1 Pay per hour of development being it trough upwork type of platform, or have the developer at your location or trough skype or discord sharing etc.

2a.2a Pay per milestone, now me personally i have a 25% sign fee upfront, that ensures the Employer doesn't quit and change his mind middle development and i did not wasted 2-5 days of work for nothing, work is work, and some people think sitting at computer and coding, designing or writing being it projects or storylines or even doing simple math problems is not work. So if he changes his mind, my 2-5 days of work is paid for, i don't offer days of work for free, as in the physical world you will not see that happen anywhere unless you are UNICEF.

2a.2b Now i personally divide my milestones in 5 parts that deliver at completion a demo updated every time, being it a website/game etc, that way you can show what you did in that milestone and not just say and expect the Employer or Client to know what you did, most people look at code and don't know what they are seeing, on top of most people don't know what they are asking most of time so you have to follow their indication and really try to understand what they want, cause they might say "make this character jump" but they might of pictured it "jumping realistically" and not "change Y coordinate position" which most of the project timelines are usually describing.

2a.3 Pay per project, this is rarely introduced depends on the project size here, if its small you can do per project like a small website that takes 5 hrs to make or a flappy bird type game, for big projects this is risky for both sides.

2b. Normal pay range depends on multiple factors, country of origin of the developer, expertise, language spoken etc. but overall a cheap normal hour of development goes at around 5-15$, a medium anywhere from 20-50$ and high over 50$ but at this point you have to be talking code like Neo in the matrix.

3. You can protect your ideas, graphics etc, by a NDA there are plenty of NDA templates on google that cover different legal aspects of IP over the internet, however... none truly protects you, so in the end the only thing that will protect you is have a trademark on that idea/product and since you don't have a product yet and is in concept stage you have to go on a 50% trust based system that is what we call today NDA. which is something that has no value, if you are from USA and the developer is from Indonesia, different countries different rules, and your country can enforce laws on other country, or their people ... i mean in any legal way, internationally, all that can truly protect you as i said is a trademark or a patent, and those things need a well documented idea or product made before you register it and is recognized world-wide.

4. Milestone management & revision agreements must be inside the contracts you make, without revisions and milestones you will not get your product that you think you ordered, that is the only way you as a employer can assure you get the quality you need, developers don't have a say in what is enough, if the product is yours at the end of the day, if they do have a say in what is enough, then they are not your employees they are your partners and that is bad for business, unless you think the same.

if you think i missed out parts let me know.

the above is from my personal experience, and my price value on my time, others might have different ideas of what their time is worth or experience.