Hi,
I've worked as a web developer commercially for 15 years, I co-built globrix property portal if anyone remembers that. An ex-colleague and I have recently started a tiny two-man team web company aimed at the heritage sector so this is a very interesting thread to me. I really sympathise with this reaction but I'd make a few observations about costs and tenders.
Firstly, having your own staff costs a lot. If you had 3 medium level developers on 60k and a project takes them half a year.. well. Plus you have to find them in the first place - no cheap or easy task in itself. Companies are obviously looking to make an extra cut on that and commercially 130k isn't a big project by any means.
Coding websites has never been easier due to the amazing technology out there now, but development costs are as expensive as ever. London salaries are massive, junior devs with no experience are expecting 40k starting. There also hasn't been an evolution in requirements and process compared to technology in my view, so a lot of cost is still in other areas than development.
Thirdly, on the subject of tendering, we would never spend time tendering for something like this even though we would be a cheap option. The reason is that small companies who are arguably a bit edgier, cheaper and riskier don't win tenders (please say otherwise!). Also we would not be able to provide all the elements. To build a site and a game and etc etc. you need a team of designers, developers, QA, PMs and so on.
So I sympathise a lot. You can build a decent website cheaply I think, but it's really easy for it to be expensive. On a hopeful note, all the technology now is geared for evolving things and being flexible and I would say it is better to start off with a small product anyway.
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