{"schemaVersion":1,"title":"Carny Island — Production Team & Cost","stages":["Stage 1 — Game 1 launch on Steam and itch.io for PC","Stage 2 — Game 2 mobile game for iPad"],"basis":"Equivalent US human-hire cost. US-market estimates based on approximately 2020 rates.","roles":[{"number":1,"title":"Graphics Engineer / Technical Artist (Rendering)","does":"How the game draws — the hand-inked line look, lighting and shaders that keep the art faithful on a phone.","skills":"Unity 6, URP, HLSL/Shader Graph, Metal, iOS profiling.","duration":"14 months","humanHireUsd":175000},{"number":2,"title":"Gameplay Programmer","does":"What the player does — digging, tools, energy and detection.","skills":"Unity 6, C#, New Input System.","duration":"14 months","humanHireUsd":134000},{"number":3,"title":"Systems Programmer (World-State & Persistence)","does":"The engine that remembers the world — damage, weather and progress that persist across a run, inside a memory budget.","skills":"Unity 6, C#, systems architecture, memory profiling.","duration":"10 months","humanHireUsd":100000},{"number":4,"title":"Build & Release Engineer (iOS)","does":"Turns the project into a signed app on the iPad, reliably.","skills":"Unity build pipeline, Xcode, iOS signing, IL2CPP/ARM64.","duration":"3 months (contract)","humanHireUsd":34000},{"number":5,"title":"Technical Artist — Asset Pipeline","does":"Gets the hand-drawn art out of Photoshop and Fresco into the game at full fidelity.","skills":"PSD, SVG/vector, Photoshop/Fresco, Unity import.","duration":"7 months","humanHireUsd":55000},{"number":6,"title":"Animator","does":"Brings characters and the villain to life in motion.","skills":"2D animation, Fresco motion layers, compositing.","duration":"6 months","humanHireUsd":43000},{"number":7,"title":"Lighting Artist","does":"The sky, sun, moon and shadows across the day/night cycle.","skills":"Unity lighting, URP post-processing, celestial math.","duration":"4 months","humanHireUsd":32000},{"number":8,"title":"VFX Artist","does":"The spectacle — gore, weather, explosions and craters.","skills":"Unity VFX/particles, shaders, performance budgeting.","duration":"4 months","humanHireUsd":33000},{"number":9,"title":"UI/UX Designer & Front-End Engineer","does":"The on-screen interface — tool tray, action button, scoreboard and menus.","skills":"Mobile UI/UX, Unity UI, haptics, PSD.","duration":"5 months","humanHireUsd":44000},{"number":10,"title":"Audio Designer & Composer","does":"Sound effects, ambience and music.","skills":"Sound design, Unity audio, composition.","duration":"4 months (contract)","humanHireUsd":28000},{"number":11,"title":"Narrative Writer","does":"Dialogue, lore, in-world news and epitaphs.","skills":"Game writing, world-building, script.","duration":"3 months (contract)","humanHireUsd":20000},{"number":12,"title":"QA Engineer","does":"Breaks it before players do; verifies every build.","skills":"QA methodology, Unity, iOS device testing.","duration":"6 months","humanHireUsd":38000},{"number":13,"title":"Producer","does":"Runs the schedule, scope and delivery.","skills":"Production management, game pipelines.","duration":"14 months","humanHireUsd":134000}],"costComparison":{"schedule":"Approximately 14 months","humanTeam":{"baseSalariesUsd":870000,"fullyLoadedUsdApprox":1100000},"aiAgentStudio":{"subscriptionsUsdApprox":12000,"hardwareUsdApprox":18000,"totalUsdApprox":30000},"bottomLine":"The same 13 roles, built for roughly 3% of the equivalent fully loaded human-team cost."},"authorship":{"source":"Brett Clements production estimate supplied 2 August 2026","status":"Author-provided estimate"}}