What is your time worth?

Starting to see more and more people trying to buy games or game dev, but how can you tell if they are being honest?

Many of you may feel that you lack the skills to be paid a fair amount, but the fact remains that you deserve to be paid a reasonable amount for your time.

Of course it's hard to gauge what to ask for without know what other people are truthfully earning.

So to those that are actually subcontracting, what do you estimate you're getting by the hour?

I plan to make and market my own games.

That said, I don't think anyone here could actually pay $20 an hour for a good artist to draw and make good sprites, when there are packs available for a few dollars.

That said. Your time is worth a lot. The only way to make that much is to make your sprites and sell them. You can charge a minimal amount and if you sell enough, you can make much more.

I would rather sell a lot of games for a low price than one or two at a higher price.

Ken

Not to mention you are probably losing the rights to things you create.

Not enough is the short answer. In the end it comes down to the question can I live with this amount of money? Naturally a country or circumstances are not supposed to be THE deciding variable. Living in Norway with a tax% 24+ depending of your yearly income (average is around 32-36% I think) one must make a reasonable amount of money per month to buy food that is more expensive than most countries, to pay bills that are more expensive than most countries etc. OH I love this country.. --______--" So glad we planning to move somewhere else in a few years

Anyway... To work full time for a production (8 hours, 5 days a week) I've counted that my lowest price would be 3000 USD a month with the current conversion to NOK. Lower than that I can't provide for my wife (she is not working at the moment) and I. That is only the worth of my time. The value of music is not technically part of that but because I haven't done music professionally for that long and I am not that known and wanted etc. plus I don't work full time with music I don't feel that those prices are exactly justified yet. So then I give a much lower price either per track or package.

Remember that to a point, you will make more lowering the price and below that point you lose again.

It is a balancing act.

So true Raybrite, so true. It is a balancing act especially in the beginning when we are still working in the indie realm. But to answer to newt's actual question.. I could guesstimate an hourly payment to anything between ~5 to 15 USD. Since I give per track or package deals the hours I use vary based on the difficulty of the task.