A veteran game developer on your team. One flat rate.
Six shipped titles across Steam, mobile, and VR. Unity and C# — plus a custom C++ engine when you need to go deeper. Full-time on your game for a flat $6,000/month retainer.
6
Titles shipped
4
Platforms shipped on
2014
Building games since
$6k
Flat monthly retainer
The Problem
Getting a game built is brutally expensive — or brutally risky
The Game Studio for Hire
$50k+ per milestone
- Minimum engagements priced for publishers, not founders
- Your project competes with their bigger clients for attention
- Layers of producers between you and the people building it
- Milestone contracts that punish every design change
The Freelance Marketplace
It's a lottery
- Portfolio pieces that turn out to be asset-store flips
- Prototypes that collapse the moment you add real features
- Nobody owns the whole game — just their fragment of it
- You inherit the codebase when they vanish
Building a Team
$300k+ /yr
- Programmer, designer, producer — before one level exists
- Months of recruiting in a brutally competitive market
- Massive burn rate while you're still finding the fun
- Overkill when what you need is a shipped game
The retainer model is the third path: a developer who has shipped complete games, full-time on yours, at a price an independent founder can actually sustain.
Why RedZone
Why your game is better off with me
I've actually shipped — six times
Six titles carried from blank project to store shelf: Steam, Google Play, and VR. Most developers for hire have shipped fragments of other people's games. I've owned the whole pipeline, repeatedly, including the unglamorous last 10% that kills most projects.
Engine-deep, not just engine-user
I work in Unity and C# daily, and I've written my own game engine in C++ from scratch. When your game hits a wall — performance, physics, rendering — I can fix the problem under the hood instead of shrugging at a black box.
Range across genres and platforms
Match-3 with hand-crafted level design, physics-based platforming, VR sports, 30-player mobile battle royale. Whatever your game is, I've probably built something that shares its hard parts.
You talk to the developer
No producers, no account managers, no telephone game. Design conversations happen directly with the person implementing them — which is how good game feel actually gets made.
One person, the whole game
Gameplay code, UI, tooling, build pipeline, store submission. One accountable person who understands every system and how they interact — nothing falls into the cracks between specialists.
Your IP stays yours
All code and assets delivered continuously to a repository you control. No royalties, no rev-share clauses, no hostage situations. If we part ways, you keep a clean, documented codebase.
Pricing
Studio-quality development without studio pricing
No milestone contracts, no per-feature quotes, no royalties. A full-time game developer for one flat number you can budget around.
The Retainer
$6,000/month
A full-time game developer, dedicated to your title
- Full-time, dedicated game development — your game is my day job
- Unity and C# development, or custom C++ engine work when you need to go deeper
- The whole job: gameplay, UI, tools, optimization, and store submission
- Direct line to me — email, phone, or your team's Discord. No producers in between.
- Playable builds delivered weekly — you judge progress with a controller in hand
- You own 100% of the source code, assets, and IP. No royalties, ever.
- Month to month. No long-term contract. Cancel anytime.
Compare: work-for-hire studios quote $50k+ per milestone. A single senior gameplay programmer runs $11k+/month loaded — if you can find one.
How It Works
From pitch to playable
- 1
Email me your idea
A paragraph and a reference game is plenty. NDAs are fine if you need one.
- 2
Free scoping call
We talk genre, platform, scope, and timeline. You get an honest read on what's achievable — including what to cut.
- 3
Start within a week
No studio onboarding process. The retainer starts and so does the prototype.
- 4
Playable builds, weekly
You evaluate progress by playing it, not by reading reports. We find the fun early and iterate from there.
FAQ
Fair questions
Why a retainer instead of a milestone contract?
Game development is iterative by nature — the design you start with is never the design you ship. Milestone contracts punish that reality with renegotiation at every turn. A flat retainer means we can chase the fun wherever it leads, without a contract amendment.
Who actually builds the game?
I do. Jeff King, founder of RedZone Studios. Every title in the RedZone catalog was built hands-on, and your project gets the same treatment. Nothing is outsourced.
Unity or custom engine — which would my project use?
Unity and C# for most projects; it's the fastest path to a shipped game on PC, mobile, or VR. But I've written a full game engine in C++ from scratch, so if your project needs custom tech — or you already have a C++ codebase — that's on the table too.
Can you take over an existing project?
Yes. Rescuing a half-finished game is a common starting point. The scoping call includes an honest assessment of what's salvageable.
Do you take royalties or rev-share?
No. The retainer is the entire cost. Everything the game earns is yours.
What if I only need a few months?
Then hire me for a few months. The retainer is month to month with no minimum — a vertical slice or a polish-and-ship push are both fair game.
Your game deserves a developer who finishes
Full-time means one retainer client at a time — availability is limited. The scoping call is free, and so is the honest answer about whether your game is buildable.
jeff@redzonestudios.com