• Expected Development Cost
  • Arcade Cabinet
  • Marketing and Website Costs
  • Other Costs
  • Costs in the Multiverse
• Development Schedule
  • Week 0
  • Intern Goals for Day 1
  • Weeks
• Scheduled Weekly Meetings
  • Full Team Production Meetings
  • Team Lead Meetings
  • Professional Development Meetings
  • Integration Testing
• Future Work
  • Complete Package
  • Minimum Viable Product
  • Director's Cut
  • After Publish

We are estimating the final cost to be about $1,000. The largest expenses come from purchasing the materials to build two arcade cabinets however there are several other costs associated with the development of the project and with keeping team morale high.

These are our estimates for the prices of the items required to build each arcade cabinet.

As you can see, we are estimating the cost of one arcade cabinet to be $468.84 so the cost of both cabinets combined will be an estimated $937.68. These two arcade cabinets are the primary costs associated with our project which is understandable as they are large and we want to use durable materials to construct them to prevent natural wear and tear ensuring they can survive and be accessible to the public for a long time.

UPDATE: We were able to purchase the Logitech racing wheel on sale for $218.49 rather than $264.99 that we originally expected to pay for it. This allowed us to save $46.50 on each wheel for a combined $93.00 saved.

There are a couple other costs associated with the project including printing costs and subscription software. In our marketing efforts we plan to create 2-3 poster designs that we can hang around campus to invite people to play test our game and to announce it's release to the RIT community. These costs will be relatively low, however we will be printing in color and we're estimating to hang around 20-50 flyers that can be hung up around the academic side of campus as well as the dorm side. Printing 8.5 x 11 posters in Wallace Library will cost $0.30 per color poster. Additionally, we can print at the HUB Express in RIT's Digital Den where we can print posters at a variety of different sizes and with different kinds of paper to use for different thinknesses. The prices here range depending on size and paper type.

If we print on the standard 8.5 x 11 lightweight paper ($0.80) and we print 30 copies for 2 different poster designs, we would pay $48.00 for a total of 60 posters. Alternatively, if we print on 12 x 18 heavyweight paper ($1.65) and we again print 30 copies for 2 different poster designs, we would pay $99.00 for a total of 60 posters. We would likely choose to use the standard 8.5 x 11 paper size and to use the lightweight paper but as we don't know exactly how many posters we would want, it is difficult to know the exact cost however we would expect it to be around $50.00. We also may choose to print one or two larger posters on heavyweight paper that could be hung in the most important areas.

The couple subscription costs that we need to be paying for are related to our website and its upkeep. We are using to use the nickynicegame domain name which costs us $20/yr. We also use Heroku to host our website which costs us between 5 and 7 dollars per month. In our first month we were charged $5.79 but this cost will fluctuate based on usage of the site. We are charged $0.001/hr with a maximum charge of $7 per month.

The final expenses of this project will come at the very end when we have a launch party to celebrate the launch of our game. Our team consists of 44 people so if everyone does show up that could quickly become a large cost to accomodate food for everyone so we will likely want to jsut have some snacks rather than anything too big. I would estimate that this could cost around $50 - $100.

Our project advisor, Nick also got plush Mario Kart items for the local team members to play around with which helped create a fun and positve workplace enviroment. This addition reminded team members to have fun while working and helped boost team morale as we delved into our project. These probably cost Nick about $30.

We estimated our real total costs above to be around $1,000 but we then asked what might be different if this project was structured slightly differently. Currently we are going to be given two old PCs and monitors from RIT's college of computing but what if we had to pay for these. An old PC like the ones we will be given would probably cost around $250 and an old monitor would likely be about $90. If we were to purchase new PCs designed for game development, 3D modeling, and other power intensive uses they would probably cost around $1,000 and new monitors would be around $200.

What if all the students were being paid a salary. If all 43 students were being paid New York State's minimum wage of $15.50/hr, working the full 13 weeks of the project, and putting in 40 hours of work each week, it would cost $346,580 to hire all the students as minimum wage employees. What if the students were paid what ZipRecruiter claims is the average salary of a software engineer, $147,524. This would be about $71/hr and cost $1,587,560 to hire all 43 students as full time employees for the duration of the project. This large price would be

• Temp discord
• Google drive copy

• Get set up with the temp discord and g-drive
• Attend the 10am Meeting
• Get assigned research tasks for the week
• Get to know their individual teams and team members
• Share important information that others should know about if there is any
• Nick and Josh will jump around into some larger teams to help with some role organization
• Skim through the current state of the design document
• Maybe play some mario kart games (alone or with others)
• Start preparing their research findings for a presentation to the team on wed (draft), thursday, (revised draft), friday (final).

May

1. (5/19 - 5/23) Networking, Learning, research, rnd, brainstorming, pitches, notes, filling in design docs, goals
   • By wed each team a presentation pitch Research. What is a kart racer?
   • 5pm Wednesday- josh draft presentation
     • What are we making?
     • Again midday thursday
     • Final on friday at 1pm
2. (5/26 - 5/30) Concepts, planning, Prototyping, greyboxing, controller built, state system placeholder
   • Level team with some “dirt” rooms

June

3. (6/2 - 6/6) Level content and systems, first art content, programmer art
4. (6/9 - 6/13) Playable build of full cycle of game loop
5. (6/16 - 6/20) Refine Aesthetic content
6. (6/23 - 6/27) External Builds and Testing

July

7. (6/30 - 7/4) Planned Buffer
8. (7/7 - 7/11) Progress, polish, and publicity
9. (7/14 - 7/18) Multiplayer pause
10. (7/21 - 7/25) The Final Stretch
11. (7/28 - 8/1) Testing and Tocuh Ups

August

12. (8/4 - 8/8) TBD
13. (8/11 - 8/15) Retrospectives, post documentation, party, showcase

On Mondays we have morning meetings at 10am, 1 hour after the day begins. The production team runs these meetings, introducing the team to the project goals for the week. This meeting helps us all come together after the weekend and refocus ourselves with our tasks at hand. The team is given the theme and goals for the week to give everyone a good understanding of what they should prioritize.

On Wednesdays we have mid-sprint check ins designed to get a sense of how each sub team is doing with their specific work for the week. We go through each sub team, having one or two members discuss their progress, difficulties they've faced, and what they expect to have done by the end of the week. We then open the floor for questions and comments to allow people to give their own critique on how they think the presenting sub team can improve and give their thoughts on things that could be changed or improved upon. Usually the team leads are the ones presenting their sub team's progress ot the team and they have the option to show a slideshow, video, or other media as they give their presentation.

On Fridays we have end-of-sprint retrospective meetings where we give everyone on the team a look into the full project progress that has been made. Similar to Wednesday meetings, we go around and each sub team gives a short talk about the progress their team has made. Teams cover the tasks that they've completed and worked on in the past week, any challenges they've run in to, what they may change moving forward to avoid more challenges, and what their upcoming tasks will be to work on the following week. This meetings flow very similar to the ones on Wednesday with the exception that after each sub team has presented, Josh, the project lead, stands up and gives an overall update on the state of the project. He gives insight into how we have all been doing, what our goals are moving forward, and any critiques he has on how we can be more efficient as a whole team.

After the full team Monday meetings, the production team has a meeting with all of the team leads to deliver specific tasks to each team. It is good to deliver these specific tasks so that the sub teams have specific deadlines for when they should get things done by and can work toward their own specific goals. It is also beneficial for each team lead to hear the tasks given to other teams so they will know what other teams are working on and can better understand their work load when trying to collaborate between teams.

After Friday's full-team retrospective meetings, Nick, the advisory team lead, takes some time to teach the rest of the team professional skills that are not necessarily learned in our e-coop environment but may have been learned through traditional internships. Sometimes Nick takes this time to give a presentation with a clear learning goal for the team and he uses personal examples from his experience in the industry to teach professional skills. Sometimes during this Nick plays videos of speakers from the industry or documentaries of game development. Other times Nick brings in guest speakers who are either other RIT faculty or friends of Nick's who work in the industry. It is helpful as students who are looking to enter the games industry to hear about the career paths of different professionals and to listen to stories of the industry and what we can expect. We've also taken time previously to work on our own resumes, portfolios, and digital profiles to improve how we present ourselves online and increase the liklihood of getting future job offers based on our online presence. These professional development meetings are intended to give us real world skills that are not necessarily specific to the games industry. Ideally, each team member can learn things in these meetings that will allow them to perform better in all aspects of their professional careers.

On Tuesday and Thursdays at 4pm we have scheduled integration testing. This is time that we block out each week where everybody can play our game and see what we've all been working on. This playtesting allows us to quickly find small bugs that may not be easily found with a smaller audience playing the game. Ideally, we can find the largest issues with game, whether they be bugs or other changes that need to be made, and determine what is the most pressing and what whould be improved first. This time allows each team to see exactly where there aspects of the game could be improved and the feedback forms that we can fill out helps us alert each team to their largest issues.

The complete package for our game is to have four playable maps, six selectable characters, four upgradable items (making 16 items in total), and ultimately being able to play the game on an arcade cabinet stored in the Golisano Atrium at RIT. We want to have Grand Prix, Quick Race, and Time Trial functionality, while having a clean website to effectively convey information about our game, and a backend that will store relevant player statistics for our game as well.

The minimum viable product for our game is to have one selectable character that can drive around a map, with no items. This game would be able to run on PCs, and would likely be distributed through itch.io or public GitHub releases. Player stats would not be recorded, and our website would only convey entry-level information, or just be our itch.io description.

Were we to be blessed with more time, we would want to increase our roster to include some characters like Ritchie, or President Sanders. We would ideally have more race tracks as well, and maybe the option to switch vehicles or swap cosmetic items on characters. We would also want to have more items, and be able to advertise our game with more short form content on platforms like TikTok or YouTube shorts.

After publishing, we would leave potential for smaller teams to come in and work on essentially "DLC" for our game, adding some new content like more race tracks or characters. This would hopefully keep our game feeling fresh, and provide more opportunities for RIT students to get co-op credit.