Commissioning one,
start to finish.

Commissioning a bespoke video game is unfamiliar enough that most people do not know what to ask. These pages are the answers to the questions that actually come up, including the ones people are slightly embarrassed to raise.

The single most useful thing to understand is where the money and the time go. Both are driven by the same two numbers from your brief: how many people are in it, and how many distinct places it visits. Every person is painted separately in every pose they need. Every location is a background that cannot be assembled from parts of another one without looking like it was. The engine underneath is shared and already works, which is what makes a fixed price and a real date possible at all.

The second most useful thing is that the brief does more than the budget. A commission described as a fiftieth birthday game for somebody's mum produces a nice game for somebody's mum. One that names the caravan in Tenby, the dog who is frightened of the hoover and the chair nobody else is allowed to sit in produces something only one family could receive. The detail is free and it is the whole difference.

We would rather tell you when a commission is the wrong choice. If the budget is tight, a well-made personalised book is a better gift than a strained commission, and there is a page here that says so.

Where to start