Cost to develop global platform/Programmer-Engineer needed

[ariel gratch]

Hi all! I will try to make this as short as possible - I'm looking for information and for help.

I am a professor of communication arts and, working with the International Storytelling Center, we recently won a $10,000 award to develop a game-based platform to be used for peacebuilding (https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2019/Q2/intern...).

I'm excited to be one of the leaders of this project, but I am way out of my league and could use some help and advice. The advice is more pressing, so I'll explain that first:

1. The initial award enables us to build a bare bones proof-of-concept (for more on our needs for a programmer/engineer, see point 2 below). We're in the process of applying for a sustaining grant that would allow us to move from p-o-c to a global version of the platform, but I need help trying to put the budget together. The platform will be fairly basic graphics (2-D will work fine for what we're thinking) and players will complete missions by uploading voice recordings to the site. Anyone have any idea how much it would cost (or how I could figure out the costs - like what info do I need and where can I go to determine costs)?

2. For the proof of concept, we have someone creating the wire frame for us, but we need to contract someone to take us from the wire frame to a playable proof of concept. We're working with a small budget ($10,000) for the p-o-c, and not all of that will go to our engineer/programmer, but a good bit of it will (and we know this is not enough to warrant the time and expertise, but we're hoping you might also do it for the good of humanity!) And whoever we get to program and engineer this portion of the game, we will likely also invite to partake in the more fleshed out versions of the game as we expand and seek out more funding.

Please contact me if you any insight into either of the two points above. 

[Ben F Rayfield]

Are any specific systems already being used by the partial prototype, such as java c++ php, certain clouds, certain login systems such as openid or log in through facebook or google where a popup comes controlled by those websites but you do your own content? You could get easier access to facebook users, for example.

Uploading voice recordings and putting them with play and other audio controls in a browser is very easy for a prototype of just a few hundred players online at a time, harder when its bigger. So is 2d graphics.

Is there some kind of chat or forum-like system? Voting?

Can you describe an experience of playing the game that includes each thing the game does at least once? I couldnt estimate a price or time to finish until picking out the technically hard parts which you may see as details not worth mentioning yet. How many simultaneous people using the system at once (not logged out) also affects the price, as it has to be designed differently for 100 vs many thousands of players, but both are available within that price if its simple enough and if you're willing to pay for ongoing computer rental.

Here's my resumE http://benrayfield.net/resume.doc

[Frederik Hermund]

Hi Ariel, 

I see that your original post is from August 2019, so I guess you've found what you were looking for?

It sounds like an interesting project, so if there's something to share at this point, or if you need additional help coding a prototype, I'd love to hear more.

A description of a game session, as Ben suggested, would be helpful.