Outsourcing development means hiring a third party company, organization or agents to do the process of a business. Before the process of hiring an outsourcing party, the advantages of outsourcing game development should be realized.
Outsourcing really makes the host company that hires the third party grow. A great number of gaming companies have been outsourcing in the previous days and the rate of outsourcing is growing.
The reasons why every company should outsource game are as follows.
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Cost Effective
The main reason why the game companies outsource is to develop their game in a cost effective way in order to save their money.
Outsourcing makes to complete the work by the cheaper staff from the countries with a great number of educated people and much cheaper workers such as China and India. If there is a dearth of resources at the game companies, they can outsource the third party company instead of hiring new resources for short term period.
Outsourcing also helps to have better work done because it is not easy to get an experienced, skillful and outstanding staff who can make a satisfactory work and the salary to pay him by the game companies will be much because of his skillfulness and experience, and also a new staff is mostly unable to make a better work because of their lack of experience.
In the very first days, a new staff cannot make the work as well as the outsourcing companies.
As Steve Mezak, CEO of Accelerance says, “As you know, it costs more to compensate an employee than just his or her salary. A reasonable estimate for taxes, healthcare, retirement plans, vacation time is about 33%. In other words, the salary is about two-thirds of the total compensation for an employee hired to do software development.
Therefore, for an accurate comparison, you should compute the hourly cost of an employee based on the total cost (salary + benefits, taxes, etc.) divided by the number of hours in a year: multiply 52 weeks into 40 hours = 2,080 hours per a year.”
Outsourcing makes business more cost-efficient and new remote team management strategies make it work effectively. A company can find a vendor in any part of the world.
In this way, it gets access to the local human resources at significantly lower rates. At the same time, remote employees are not underpaid – they receive the salary that meets living standards of the area or even much higher than average.
Time Consuming
Without considering the studio size, outsourcing makes the game developers build a large team of great artists, designers, producers and developers.
So there is only a little time spent to build a game effectively by outsourcing rather than hiring new staff to do the same work. Alternatively, there are more time to spend for hiring new staff because of interviewing, on boarding and training them.
This make the production delay while outsourcing saves more time which can be used in polishing the gaming content.
Reduced Overheads
Outsourcing is a way of avoiding the huge burden of hiring new resources. Moreover, it completely lowers the burden of the overheads, the regular and necessary costs, such as rental fees, electricity fees, paying for the other fees and buying new hardware and software, etc.
Staffing Flexibility
Working with outsourcing companies makes much flexibilities in time as they have to work according to the game companies’ instruction. They bring the additional resources whenever the game companies want and they can also be released after their work has been done.
Risk Management
It is very difficult to manage such time when the best game developers turnover.
Outsourcing is able to help any game developer at once without difficulty. Outsourcing brings experienced developers who are skillful enough to fulfill the necessities of the game companies in effective budgets. It help to reduce the risk of management of game developers.
New Technologies
If the employed team of game companies is unfamiliar with a new technology that is intended to use, outsourcing can make those game companies save time and effort when it is done by an external team which is familiar with technology planned to implement.
This makes the resources available for both short-term and long-term projects, improve project efficiency, save costs for research on new technology and hiring new in-house personnel.
Avoiding risks
Setting up a game development studio in an offshore location is like building a company from the ground up, yet in the unknown territory.
Therefore, there are a number of risks associated with it. It’s important to build all the essential business functions such as Information Technology, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Facilities Management and others.
On the other hand, a game development outsourcing company can cover all these takes.
Outsourcing vendors know the local market and has all these functions up and running. So they take on all the risks associated with managing the product, people and processes. In the long run, this saves a lot of money, even after paying fees for the outsourcing vendor’s services.
Game outsourcing in different countries
These are some of the reasons why companies should outsource. But there are much difference in salaries of game developers according to the different countries in which outsourcing vendors are situated.
It costs an average annual salary of 107,909 US$ for a software developer in United States, while it costs an average annual salary of 428,000 NT$ or 13,595 US$ for the one in Taiwan.
There are 8 times difference between an American software developer and a Taiwanese one.
This means that the money given to an American software developer for a game development is equal to that of the money given to a Taiwanese software developer for 8 games development. Thus, not only choosing outsourcing makes convenient, but also choosing outsourcing vendors according to their nation is important.
Considering all of the facts of English proficiency, STEM graduates i.e. graduates in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, salary, Education Systems, these are the best countries for outsourcing.
1.Taiwan
Taiwan may be a small island but their game industry is huge. It is home to most skilled developers in the world according to HackerRank, with strong proficiencies in game development.
The Taiwanese government has also invested heavily in their goal to become “Asia’s Silicon Valley” with improved STEM education and IT infrastructure.
The high education systems make literacy rate of 98.5 percent among Taiwanese people. That is a very amazing result. Because of high education systems of the country, an average of 13000 university graduates per year studies more in graduate studies in the United States.
STEM graduates are the most in number after Business and Management ones. Taiwan has never been out of the top 50 in English proficiency ranking among the nations. They are also considering making English one of their official national languages.
Its universities are trying to improve their international images and thus they want more international students so they have to teach the students in English. So, their English proficiency skill becomes more and more improved.
Taiwanese game developers earn an average annual salary of 428,000 NT$ or 13,595 US$ and this amount is very fair for the companies to give a job.
Taiwanese game outsourcing companies are popular especially Game Factory, a very large, fast and popular company in the world having branches in foreign countries like Japan, Myanmar and Mainland China.
Such companies like Game Factory have top technical outsourcing talents and the developers are familiar with leading engines including Unreal and Unity and having skills in Unity, C#, C++, Html5, Delphi, Java, SQL .
So, contracting a Taiwan software developer makes a lot of savings compared to the same developer in the U.S. There will be more efficiency as there may be more affordable for hiring more developers to complete a project.
2.India
The second country in the world to have the most STEM graduates with 2.6 million.
India is an ideal choice for US or UK employers interested in outsourcing. Their education system also focuses heavily on mathematics and produces as many as 2.6 million STEM graduates in a single year.
According to research from Gild, Indian developers their American counterparts on Mathematics and logic assessments by a full 11%. According to PayScale, the average annual salary for a software developer in India is 779,700 INR or 11,139 US$.
A software developer in India charges an average rate of 10 US$ to 15 US$ per hour, while a software developer in U.S. charges am average of 60 US$ per hour. Its English Proficiency index score is 52.45.
3.China
China is home to many of the fastest growing IT companies and produces as many as 4.7 million technology graduates every year. However there are a couple of potential drawbacks here.
First, only 10 million of China’s 1.3 billion residents speak English, presenting a large communication barrier for many international employers.
Second, China is known to have lax enforcement on Intellectual Property (IP) laws. However, this can be overcome by hiring a reputable outsourcing agency and establishing clear rules before starting work together.
Annual game developer salaries in China typically range from 189,000 CNY or 27,695 US$ to 357,000 CNY or 52,314 US$.
4.Ukraine
The Ukrainian government has a strong focus on education that has nourished a thriving tech industry there. According to statistical analysis from HackerRank, Ukraine developers had an average score of 88.7% across all HackerRank challenges.
Ukraine is also home to the largest number of C++ programmers globally. English isn’t widespread among the general population, but 80% of their IT community speaks English, so communication barriers are a minimal issue here.
Other benefits of outsourcing to Ukraine include a time zone that partially overlaps with US and UK times and a similar working culture which prizes challenge and competition.
5.Poland
According to statistics from HackerRank, Poland is home to the third most skilled programmers in the world. Their programmers ranked first in Java assessments and were listed in the top five for other mainstream programming languages like Python, Shell, and Ruby.
Two of Poland’s largest cities, Warsaw and Krakow, also randed in the top 50 cities on the Tholons Globalization Index. Western developers will also be glad to note that 30% of the Polish population speaks English as a second language, making communication simple.
North American companies will have to make some accommodations for time zones if they want to conduct live meetings, but there is enough overlap to allow functional collaboration. Data from PayScale show that the average game developer in Poland makes an annual salary of 85,069 PLN or 22,273 US$.
6.Romania
Romania offers its citizens access to tuition-free, egalitarian education, which has spurred one of the most diverse tech scenes in Europe.
Romanian developers ranked 20th in the world across all HackerRank programming tests.
Romania has invested heavily in its IT infrastructure over the past several years, propelling them to the 18th place on the A.T.
Kearney Global Services Location Index, which ranks countries based on financial attractiveness, skill levels and availability, and overall business environment. And with most developers earning at least three times as much as the average Romanian, this field is able to draw a steady stream of new and talented workers.
Romania also offers other key benefits for employers in Western Europe and North America. The time zone offers significant overlap with western Europe and even US time zones.
Almost 90% of the developer community in Romania speaks English, and many other foreign languages like Russian and German are common in Romania. Annual developer salaries in Romania range from 12,000 US$ to 35,000 US$.
7.Brazil
Brazil is home to roughly 6.18 million fluent English speakers and a government that is working hard to build better technology education infrastructure. Combined with an unusually young workforce, 38.18% of the population is under 24 years old – this makes Brazil an up-and-coming country for outsourcing software development.
However, the IT community in Brazil is still relatively young. Brazilian programmers only scored an average of 71.3% on HackerRank assessments. This makes Brazil a great place to find junior developers, but means you’ll want to look at other countries on this list for more advanced projects.
The cost of living in Brazil varies wildly from one place to the next, and programmer salaries vary accordingly. Depending on their location and experience level, Brazilian developers’ salaries range from 24,000 BRL or 6,009 US$ to 132,000 BRL or 33,054 US$.
8.The Philippines
Over 92% of Filipinos speak English, making the Philippines one of the largest English-speaking populations in the world.
They also have a specialized STEM high school system and have implemented serious educational reform in the past several years. These factors, along with the low global value of the Philippines’ peso, have combined to make the Philippines one of the top destinations for outsourcing, with the country’s capital, Manila, ranked as the second best city for outsourcing in the world by the Tholons Globalization Index.
However, reforms still haven’t closed the gap between software developers form the Philippines and developers from other nations on this list.
This means that while it’s one of the best countries to outsource software development if someone has got a simple project in mind, but he should consider Taiwan for more complex projects. The average software developer in the Philippines makes 554,000 PHP or 20,563 US$.
9.Egypt
Egypt only ranked 42nd on HackerRank’s list of the top 50 countries for software development, but they are dedicated to increasing their pool of tech workers. But they are dedicated to increasing their pool of each technological workers.
Over the past several years, Egypt has invested in the development of STEM-focused high schools, producing a large pool of tech-savvy workers.
Most schools in Egypt also teach English, so communication barriers should be minimal when dealing with Egyptian workers.
However, what really makes Egypt shine on this list is the pure affordability is cost effective.
Outsourcing to Egypt will cost everyone less than outsourcing anywhere else on this list. The average salary for a senior software developer in Egypt is 103,187 EGP or 6,041 US$.
10.Canada
Canada has strong educational infrastructure with a dedicated focus on technology: 18.6% of Canada’s annual graduates have STEM degrees. In terms of actual skill level, Canadian programmers were ranked 21st by HackerRank.
Three Canadian cities also ranked in the top 50 on the Tholons Globalization Index: Toronto, Calgary, and Halifax. Outsourcing to Canada also offers several other benefits, especially to US-based businesses. There are few cultural differences to worry about and the time zones allow for easy for companies to achieve true collaboration on more complex projects.
Canada is the most expensive place to outsource to on this list with the average software developer earning 64,266 DAD or 47,659 US$ according to PayScale.
