
Originally Posted by
W3ird_N3rd
$250,000 is nothing. Well, it depends on what you need it for.
$250,000 is a lot, in fact, far too much, if you just need to get some groceries.
$250,000 is plenty to buy a car.
$250,000 is reasonable to buy a very, very fast car.
$250,000 is OK to buy a house.
$250,000 can be enough to shoot a decent movie, but you're going to have limitations.
$250,000 is too little for a marketing budget for most countries.
$250,000 will pay for YouTube's bandwidth bill for approximately 6 hours.
$250,000 is one drop of water in a bucket for the national debt of The Netherlands.
$250,000 is one water molecule in a bucket for the national debt of the United States.
So how much is $250,000 in terms of game development? Well, to get someone to work here (The Netherlands), you have to pay minimum wage at least. That'll be €16800 a year. Plus vacation money (I'm not sure how to translate vakantiebijslag correctly), which is 8%. It's pretty much money you save up for periods when you don't work. Total: €18144. By law you can't pay anyone who works for you less.
That's almost a million dollars.. Oh wait, exchange rate is not that bad. It'll be almost $24,000 (EUR/USD 1.3171). So say you have 7 guys/gals working on a game for 18 months. 23897*7*1.5=$250919 just to pay everyone minimum wage. This does not include a building or something to house the programmers. This does not include licenses needed for the game for engines, codecs, music used, etc. This does not include the money PayPal or other payment service eats. It doesn't include VAT paid over sales either. This does not include bandwidth. This does not include hardware and other required equipment. It doesn't really include anthing, it's just a bunch of blokes/gals working for minimum wage.
It's a probably a nice bonus, but they're not swimming in the money like uncle scrooge.