Test Survey

I'm sitting down to do a round of budgets, and as always I'm amazed to discover that I haven't got a $*^!@%^! clue when it comes to how long it really takes to make something. Every time I look at my old estimates, I think "jeez, what the hell was I thinking?"

I really learned a lot from of *The Wisdom of Crowds* and *Blink*, both of which suggest that "lots of peoples dumb-ass guesses average out to a very accurate estimate," This made me think I'd send this short survey of content creation times around to all my artist pals and compile the results for all to see. So I put together a spreadsheet with a bunch of line items for building various asset,. Once a bunch of people fill it out I'll collate the results and send those back to everybody who responded. The responses should be anonymous, and the results will be passed around only in the aggregate.

How the survey works:

I've listed a bunch of asset types (please email me with suggestions if you think any categories could be improved upon).

For each one there are four field to fill in:

Low EstimateTime, in working days, for an easy asset. Fractional days are OK.

High EstimateTime, in working days, for a tough or particularly complex asset

Risk % represents how the likelihood the asset will likely be reworked once it is "done", for either artistic or technical reasons; a risk factor of 100 would mean the asset will probably need to be redone from scratch one time.

Polish % Means, roughly, how much more than the typical time would it take to really bring the asset to perfection. Eg, if I can make a passable house in 3 days, but a really good one will take me 6, that would mean a polish % of 100 (ie, double time).

If you don't have any estimates for a particular asset, enter zeros in all the fields.

Your survey responses will be stricly confidential and data from this research will be reported only in the aggregate. For a copy of the results contact me at steve - atsymbol - theodox.com.

Thank you very much for your time and support. Please start with the survey now by clicking on the Continue button below.

* Low estimate (working days)

* High estimate (working days)

* Risk % (in percent; 100 = double time)