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SFX and Sound Design Fees?

TheoKrueger

TheoKrueger

Senior Member
Hi all,

I was approached by a video game company yesterday which contacted me about getting work as a sound designer/sfx creator for an upcoming internet game of theirs and they are asking me what my Quote and time fulfillment will be for this job.

I have no idea of how much to charge for such work. Is there some industry standard? I don't even know how many SFX will be needed and how much work this would take me.

How do you go charging? By SFX or by the hours of work? What is more reasonable?

Is it a good idea to ask them questions, like "Approximately how many SFX are you going to need?" , "When is the deadline?" etc, or are these questions better asked after the deal has been closed?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I don't want to delay this too much!

Thanks a lot,
Theo.
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I've never done solely SFX, so I can't really comment. I usually do SFX, but mostly charge for music if they want that initially. I haven't really had enough experience with SFX or music in games negoation wise with an actual established company though.

Yet.
 
I do this on my hourly post-audio rate for corporate usually unless specifically asked for a per-effect rate, but on past games, it's per effect.

If there is a wide range of complexity you might have to break the per-effect rate down into a couple of scales.
 
I just talked about this on a webinar I did for the IGDA yesterday!

In the game audio community, one standard way to charge is a "per SFX" rate, and a "per minute of ambience" rate.

A good typical rate is 30-50$ per individual FX, and $300-500 per minute of finished ambience.

These are prices for a typical mid-range game (Nintendo DS, premium Flash). If this is a major console release, AAA game, the price probably doubles.

I charge (right now) $40 per SFX and $400 per minute of finished ambience. Right in the middle, and those are the types of games I'm pitching to, right now. ;)

Hope this helps!

Mike
 
A pro sound designer rate is about $50 to $75/hour and however long that takes. Usually a good sound designer should be able to provide the client with a decent time estimate. Videogames work a bit differently since they'll sometime just ask the sound designer to provide the programmers with raw sfx elements (footsteps, gun shots, etc) and hence that's when the sound designer charges by the sfx.

In film and TV, the $50 to $75/hour rate is what's charged (obviously the bigger names charge a lot more than that, and the beginner guys less).
 
Nathan Allen Pinard @ Fri Feb 19 said:
What do you guys charge for sound, even if the sound is grabbed from one of your libs?

Say...a rain loop.
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The best is to still work with a price per sound effect. Some sound effects will be easy and you can grab them from your library, but some require much more work, additional purchases (fruit, meat :mrgreen: ) etc.
 
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