Writing a game is tough to quantify in hours until you have done a number of them to get a feel for what your pace is like.

I've written a number of single player games over the last couple of years and have found them to be fairly quick to develop. Usually I can knock off a game in under 2 weeks of nights and week-ends.

But always try to overestimate something you haven't had experience with before. For example. I am currently writing my first multi-player game for a client. At first, it looked pretty simple. So I quoted it as if it would take me two weeks to write. Was I wrong. I'm still working on it and I started it 5 weeks ago.

So, to get an idea of how long a project will take, think like Scotty from Star Trek and multiply all of your estimates by 3.

borngamer