So I’m going to be outsourcing the programming for this game. I’m getting closer to finally looking for a programmer, and I’ve had a lot of suggestions from people on how to go about it and what to be careful of, etc. Originally my plan was to just outsource cheaply to an India-esque place where they have big groups of 50+ programmers working under an agency that takes projects and assigns them. My ideal way of working is in-house with a programmer in the same room as myself, but because I don’t have access to that right now I’m going to give outsourcing a try.

A lot of people are nervous about outsourcing to places like India, Russia, Lithuania, etc. (I’m going to just refer to them all as “India” from here on) They think it’s automatically sketchy and the contractors are going to take the money and run or the quality of the work will be terrible quality.  A lot of companies even try to hide that they outsource, like they’re ashamed of it, which is understandable given the whole “sweat shop full of children making shoes” stereotype everyone’s heard and the rough economic times we’ve had lately.  I think part of this is just a bias of “it’s different so it’s scary” or “it’s not how it’s SUPPOSED to be done, so it’s wrong and will result in doom”. I’m attempting to approach this pretty logically. So let’s take a look at the main pros and cons.

My game is a continuous game where everything gets faster and faster over time, until you can’t keep up and get hit by 3 objects and then it’s Game Over. From a gameplay perspective if all you do is move left and right and dodge the same type of object that increases speed at the same rate, there’s only going to be so much variation in your results…you’re going to learn to know “when I get to about a minute in, it’s impossible for me” and all the fun is taken out of it because it’s now predictable.

One way I’m mixing that predictability up is by having mutliple types of objects…each of them comes at you in a different way or damages a different sized area. There are also objects that heal you. So now it’s a little less predictable…you don’t know if a throwing-star is going to come out, or dynamite, or some healing sushi.