250 dollars for support ticket per hour?

#1 The key here is that you get dedicated engine support from the programmers who have been working with those key areas of the engine. For example, if you are rewriting the internals of DIF export functionality for your game, you would get access to someone like Matt Fairfax who has an extremely large amount of experience in the area and understands the process intimately.

Of course, if your request is something like "implement PhysX in the engine", you would definitely be better off paying for a license for a dedicated programmer to work with since a large-scale general integration on that level would get extremely expensive very quickly.

These support tickets are priced this way because it pulls the engine team from their usual functions working on Torque 3D or Torque 2D. It is like having Melv sit and debug your fxRender objects bit by bit.

Of course, I know I couldn't afford it and I know a lot of teams that couldn't as well.

#2 $250 an hour isn't unreasonable for specialized short-term help.

What is unreasonable is paying $250 per hour for something that should have been documented or is just another bug. It seems an awful lot like somebody thought that this was a great way to monetize the very popular "you have the code, you can fix it!" In theory, it would be for help with advanced engine features, customizations, etc. In practice, I'm not confident that will be the case.

#3 If I were running a business and planning support options, having an "overpriced" engineer available to help people seems like a great way to do it. It's a barrier to entry, so that the people who do use it stay very focused about what they want and don't overwhelm you with requests. If you get a lot of demand, it's easier to justify spending time on it (since spending a day on it would pay a big chunk of a month's salary).

Obviously you can't make people use that instead of doing normal development, bug tracking, etc. It would starve your business.

But for some people - the big, not-too-capable guys with deep pockets - it will be a great fit. And I've learned that if a customer wants to give you more money, you should find a way to let them.

#4 wouldnt the idea of paying money for support in general indicate that a person might be focused on asking a question? I mean if your going to pay 250 to ask about a bug fix, yah, i can see that being as a big frivilous. But then again, what else am i going to use this support for?

"For example, if you are rewriting the internals of DIF export functionality for your game, you would get access to someone like Matt Fairfax who has an extremely large amount of experience in the area and understands the process intimately."

Now for you programmers out there. This can be as simple as a few lines of code, or it could involve completely rewriting a entire setup. So It would be a pulling away a programmer for several hours to dubug a certain code set. What does worry about the about statement, Like David says, If we have to pull Matt Fairfax from his work to answer a support ticket? Is that the official answer GG is run by 10 programmers that there is no support in place and there will be support at the whim of the staff? I am putting it this way. If i had a company with employees. Would pulling your lead programmer off his assigned task to deal with support tasks be the best option?

Lets assume that 250 is a great number and the calls start coming in? What then? The related personel are running around answering support tickets for X number of hours a day. With the current setup? How does that compute on any level? Sure. We can say, 250 is a barrier, but it seems that the person with deep pockets will benifit more then the folks that are making progress and do need support. As i said above it seems to be geared toward the commercial licenses versus the other folks. If i need help with a large piece of rewriting of code, if it was that serious. Its likely not going to be a hour job anyway. Most code jobs arent. Becuase if it was as simple as a small code fix, anyone actually fiddling with the code might have some experience.

What is actually covered in a support ticket? If i needed a "for example" a code for making a person teleport though the walls of a Interior and leave behind a portal. Could I pay for that? Or does support means I broke something in this area of code, can i get assistance? For 250 bucks, it better not matter what is the request. If im willing to pay for a hour of time. I should get service? Right? or Is this support reserved for other areas? I ask this becuase this wasnt available before. And the setup here is pretty vague and feel like a promise that cant be delivered, other then by defering it to folks that can dish out the money for 2+ hour jobs.

#5 If you were willing to pay $250/hr for someone to add a feature... say rewriting DIF import... that's a month project probably. So the question becomes: for $40,000 could GarageGames arrange for that to happen? I think they would be able to figure something out.

I think that pretty much whatever you wanted could be in a paid support ticket. At $250/hr, two guys working full time would generate a million in revenue a year. If there was enough demand to hurt engine development, GG would absolutely be able to hire good talent to fill in the gap. A really good senior engineer is around $150k a year.

They can also do support for less. Don't you see how this works? $250 is the "if you really want us to we will find a way to spend your money" price. There would probably be a lot of people that get similar value for less. Free help on the forums, and of course the stuff that will go into the engine. But it's on a case-by-case basis.

Obviously all this can be perverted. You could only do engine work for paying support tickets. You'd maximize short term profit but kill long term opportunities. Maybe they will do that. Who knows? But I think it is possible to make it work out OK.

#6 actually at 250$ a hour consider 8 hour work days, 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks is 520,000 dollars of revenue, for 1 single programmer. nearly 3x the normal of a typical Nasa programmer and more then 2x the salary of the President of the United States.

#7 I would edit my older post, but no button for it yet.

nasajobs.nasa.gov/jobs/entrypay.htm

If someones going to make more then a nasa rocket scientist? No offense but the left isnt seeing what the right is doing. Yes doing support becuase "if you really want us to we will find a way to spend your money" starts making sense.

im just trying to figure out whats the reasoning behind this insane reasoning. maybe 250 for the first hour and 100 for each hour beyond? but really. This makes no sense mathmatically or seasonably. If you can afford to pay 250 bucks a hour for support, then your not going to need GG support. Realistically.

#8 They would only be making that much money if all they did, day-in and day-out were support queue questions at that rate. I know ERP suppliers and consultants that charge $1000 or higher an hour for on-site support and only slightly less for dedicated dev-to-dev off-site support support via chat, RAdmin, etc. Of course, that is outside of the gaming industry on huge-level support systems for banking, government, and educational institutions.

#9 Right, but thats what i mean, thats assuming you have 1 support ticket at a time. And its not realistic to assume that you wont get 5-6-10 tickets on 1 day for X number of hours one day, and on the other end none another. But yah, if your paying for onsite support, You have already paid for a product or expect that person to do the entire job professionally. If I pay for a piece of code via support, i would like to see a answer to said issue. But thats not what the support page says. Its more like a rounded starting points with no specific. and if support isnt designed to create solutions to a bug/problem or stuck point? then what is it for?

#10 It seems like alot at first. On first impression, I was thinking for that much, I want the code fixed, some free coffee.. and Fairfax humming my songs of choice the whole time! But realistically.. its not outside of the norm. And it is a good way of offering something that should only be used for extreme situations / allowing the programmers to stay flexible and not constantly tied down.

I'm sure someone could find the answers in the forums.. or offer alot less to someone if they truly wanted something bad enough.

#11

Quote:I'm sure someone could find the answers in the forums.. or offer alot less to someone if they truly wanted something bad enough.

Right - that's the point. You provide the $250 as an out for people with more money than time.

Hiring your own programmer is obviously much much cheaper, as is finding a resource or doing it yourself.

GG already provides free support. But you don't get any say on priority of tasks.

#12 yah i hear that. I also want to be clear I dont think paid support is a bad thing. The primary complaint is the price tag for such support. Which seems to be where this bus is going on all 4 wheels. But imo 100 bucks is more reasonable per hour. And that they have a actual support person on hand. Becuase it sounds like the Support Staff, is the main office staff on hand vs a actual support plan put in place.

Well, yah at those rates any programmer should apply to GG for a support position, "hey, guys they are charging 250 a hour." Must be making a bundle on the hour. And besides how much is support worth to a independant licensed person vs a commercial licensed person?

#13 It's not like the guy doing the work is pocketing that. :P

It's that it's official, GG support. So (hopefully) as high quality as possible. There's a million cheaper ways to get almost the same thing.

#14 Understood, Ben, and agree with the premise. I have no issue with it as is.

#15 Highly skilled and ambitious programmers should see this as an opportunity and offer their services for $249 per hour.

#16 The question Ben is if they arent using it to pay for support, what are they using it for? besides profits.

#17 The same thing they do with the "profit" they make on each copy of Torque... get more employees, pay them better wages, buy equipment, software licenses, pay taxes, health care, etc.

I suppose that at your job, you get to keep 100% of the money you make the company?

#18 actually as a house dad, i dont get to keep any of my money that i make.

#19

Quote:I've learned that if a customer wants to give you more money, you should find a way to let them.

That's the best single piece of business advice I've ever heard.

... and it was free ...
;)