Let's break it down.
$48,000: Staff Salaries - 8 people for 10 weeks
Makes sense - this is low salaries, people. As someone else mentioned, this is 600$/week per person, pre taxes. This is ridiculously low.
$30,000: Animation and Clean-up Contracting
That is a bit expensive, but it's the costs of outsourcing, not to mention that clean up is pretty costly.
$4,000: Voice recording
That sounds about right. If they go professional recording, they need to pay the voice actors the pre-defined amount from their union (it's this way in Canada - there's 2 separate unions and they have pre-set prices per line). Some people might say this is high, but you gotta factor in calling back old voice actors because they might need extra lines for interactions with the new character.
$2,000: Hit-box Contracting
I wonder who they outsource this to. My guess is they'd probably outsource it to a lone game designer, but even then this is at *least* a one-week job, maybe two. You gotta factor in balance with every other character.
$5,000: Audio Implementation Contracting
Audio programmers don't come cheap, and syncing of audio with a lot of other stuff is a lot of work.
$20,000: QA Testing
This sounds about right, too. QA is expensive, especially if you outsource it, because those QA farms are not cheap. The reason they're that expensive is that if you have in-house QA, you have to pay them during downtime and in the end it costs more than outsourcing a QA farm for 2 months.
$10,000: 1st Party Certification
Yeah, cert is fucking expensive and takes forever, not to mention if they fuck with you, you'll not only have to fix what they decide should be fixed (sometimes it's bullshit) but you have to pay AGAIN to re-cert. I wonder too if this includes ESRB/CERO/whatever certs, as these aren't too cheap either.
$10,500: IndieGoGo and Payment Processing Fees
The hidden costs of crowd-funding!
$20,500: Manufacturing and Shipping Physical Perks
So that people pledge more, you have to pay more. It sucks but it's what it is.
It's entirely reasonable, imo.
$48,000: Staff Salaries - 8 people for 10 weeks
Makes sense - this is low salaries, people. As someone else mentioned, this is 600$/week per person, pre taxes. This is ridiculously low.
$30,000: Animation and Clean-up Contracting
That is a bit expensive, but it's the costs of outsourcing, not to mention that clean up is pretty costly.
$4,000: Voice recording
That sounds about right. If they go professional recording, they need to pay the voice actors the pre-defined amount from their union (it's this way in Canada - there's 2 separate unions and they have pre-set prices per line). Some people might say this is high, but you gotta factor in calling back old voice actors because they might need extra lines for interactions with the new character.
$2,000: Hit-box Contracting
I wonder who they outsource this to. My guess is they'd probably outsource it to a lone game designer, but even then this is at *least* a one-week job, maybe two. You gotta factor in balance with every other character.
$5,000: Audio Implementation Contracting
Audio programmers don't come cheap, and syncing of audio with a lot of other stuff is a lot of work.
$20,000: QA Testing
This sounds about right, too. QA is expensive, especially if you outsource it, because those QA farms are not cheap. The reason they're that expensive is that if you have in-house QA, you have to pay them during downtime and in the end it costs more than outsourcing a QA farm for 2 months.
$10,000: 1st Party Certification
Yeah, cert is fucking expensive and takes forever, not to mention if they fuck with you, you'll not only have to fix what they decide should be fixed (sometimes it's bullshit) but you have to pay AGAIN to re-cert. I wonder too if this includes ESRB/CERO/whatever certs, as these aren't too cheap either.
$10,500: IndieGoGo and Payment Processing Fees
The hidden costs of crowd-funding!
$20,500: Manufacturing and Shipping Physical Perks
So that people pledge more, you have to pay more. It sucks but it's what it is.
It's entirely reasonable, imo.