--closed--

This is sort of like asking a professional author what he would charge to post on your blog, and then complaining that you thought articles were cheap.

If you want cheap, you'll need to hire cheap people to make a cheap game. A game "like Cityville" is a major development undertaking which involves something on the order of a dozen programmers, artists, and testers plus a project manager to keep things on schedule.

You can't have that on the cheap. You can, however, have a crappy little fake clone of Cityville with lower-quality graphics, not as much content, and minimal testing that isn't as much fun.

For a Game of that size, I wouldn't even look over your proposal if you didn't have a min of 150k ready to spend. Your talking MONTHS of development, and many hands to pay.

Cityville is much more than your standard game, its very complex and it also has huge maintenance tasks.

A more simpler game from maybe an up and coming developer would be probably more up your street.

I think the OP just may not have a grasp on exactly what all is involved with developing a massive game such as cityville so I'll have to side with Gordon above, no need in cutting him up lol.

But OP, you just have to understand that Cityville is a huge game.. I mean you can get simple games developed from anywhere from 250 bucks from what I've heard but I also don't know exactly what kind of games those may be either. I have no clue whether say a FB game would cost more than an iphone or android game.

What you spend is going to depend on the quality you're wanting, the depth of the game, and actually many different other variables as well.

Perhaps you could think about just kind of using cityville as a model for something a lot simpler that would carry less of a development price tag.

hpgoodboy,
Did you just send this 1 email?

I'd take that same email and send it to 100 developers and see what kind of a response you get...

Honestly, in software development, the estimates can be all over the place. I've had projects developed for $3,000 that others would have bid $25,000 to do.

Also, it will help if you can spell out a bit more what you are looking for...it's really hard for someone to quote a good estimate unless they really have an idea for what you are looking for. That's just one reason why they might give you a high estimate.

If you can give them a really good description of what you are looking for, so they can really think about the development costs, you will probably see wildly different numbers and some of them won't be nearly this shocking.

Wish you the best,
Jack Duncan

P.S. Never give up. If you really want to go down this road, try a small, simple (and less expensive game) and then reinvest the profits. Hey, one day you may just have that 500 grand to build the next big blockbuster. Keep at it!