There's a million ways you can spend $10,000 but what would be the best way to make sure you get the biggest bang for your buck? Brian and Ike discuss a few different scenarios on how they would handle a big chunk of money.Today's Developer DiaryIke launched his game Rhythm Friends on iOS and Amazon! Although it's technically his second game he's shipped, it's the first game he started and finished this year living up to the New Year's Resolution of "Ship It". Rhythm Friends is a rhythm tapping game intended for 6-8  year old's. Ike worked with his 6 year old daughter who just started taking piano to help her improve on the feeling of the notes rather than just knowing the counts of each note. He goes into some detail about the gameplay and challenges he faced but all in all this was a great experience and if nothing else a great memento working with his daughter. We wish Rhythm Friends luck and be sure to pass it along to anyone you know with kids in that age group!What Would You Do With $10,000?We decided to challenge ourselves a little and think about what we'd do if we had that kind of money and had a game we were working on, how would we spend that money? Since it depends on what stage you're in and where you want to go next, we explored a few different scenarios.Scenario 1 : The 1-2 Person Programming TeamWe can break it up into categories:

MarketingKey Art Points - CharacterStore Front Presence

For the programmer heavy team, it would be wise to spend your money on art and hopefully you're not making a game that is too character heavy but more of a puzzle game like Doodle Jump.

It is really important to have good looking promotional screens, a landing page and an icon because it can give people a vibe of your game. With that said, we would put about $2500 towards getting all the promotional art and marketing materials including a video. An artist can polish anything indefinitely and in the world of art, the saying goes "It's never truly done, it's only abandoned."

Here's a breakdown:

$2500 - Marketing Materials$500 - Music and Sound Effects$3500 - Characters and Effects$3500 - Backgrounds and Props

How do you squeeze the most amount of the highest quality art as possible with the amount of money?

Focus on monetizing. In the free-to-play market you want to drive the player to purchase by trying to figure out how to get money in a way that is rewarding for both sides (you and the player).  So focus on the up-sell art that gets the consumer looking it and wanting to have it.

How much art should you expect?

An artist can ask anywhere from $20-$100 per hour.

Seasoned Artist - $50-$60 per hourMid-Level Artist -$30-$40 per hourJunior Artist - $15-$20 per hour

If you find an artist that charges $35 per hour, $3500 will get you 100 hours or two and a half weeks of work. It will take the artist a day or two to get acclimated to the style unless you provide them with a style guide with color palates and so forth this helps the artist to not go in a direction you don't want them to.

Keep in mind you're probably going to have some lost work. It's really hard to have a game almost 100% done and then plug in the art and it all works perfectly. Some of the work will get lost, called art waste.

It also depends on how much business vs art orientated you are. As well as your inspiration and goals.

More Art: the game is done when  say it's done - can end up spending more money, not having it out as soon but have an amazing gameMore Business: This is the game - have it all gray boxed in, put in final art and when we're done with the budget we're shipping it. If does well, maybe invest 10-20% back into the title

Platforms

There is always an expense related to every platform that you launch on, usually a couple hundred bucks. You might have to purchase devices during your development. Brian likes to purchase the older models simple because you develop fo...