This is an idea I came up with to create a startup company to publish games online. I would like some feed back on it so I can see how doable this idea really is. ----------------------------------------- I will contract and provide the art for a game. So the developers can finish and work on the code. In return, we sell the game on my ecommerce site. Before the developers make any money I have to get back the cost of providing you the art you need and then we split a %(Yet to be determined) of sales from each game sold. We do this because art is much easer to put a price on then code. Since there are allot of amatuer programmers out there, it would be more logical to fund them the art. Also as independent publishers we do not have the capital to fully fund a development team (perhaps in the future). So this is a way for us to start publishing and for the developers to get published. This idea only works if your dev team consists of only programmers. In an ideal situation you would want everyone to work for free, but that is not alwasy the case. What is needed is a demo(or previous working samples), well written design document listing all art assets and a schedule/milestone. From there the game will be evaluated and the process can begin. The dev team owns all the rights to the code, and we own the rights to the art, if for any reason the project is not completed or fails, I take a major loss. The ideal project would be something short 6-12months, from classic arcade games, puzzle, card games..etc. John Hsia [edited by - z3lda on July 11, 2002 8:53:25 PM]

Lack of originality Will Robinson! Lack of originality!!!

*flails arms about like celine dion at a kiss concert*

First of all, you must keep in mind that 1 in 50 games gets finished. Now that you know that, the first thing you need to do to keep your losses down is only provide art for a nearly finished game. So called "programmer art" is perfectly fine up to the point where you know the game will be finished. That will be a decent way to keep losses down, but once you have a finished game with all the art and everything, another problem comes up. You need to MARKET it. Ideally you will use a site such as sharewarepromotions.com to pay for marketing.

This will significantly improve the chances of making money off the game. However, there is more. The game has to have a target audience and it has to be good (at least on par with the competition) if you want to make good money. Those are just some of the things you need to consider. Hopefully my little speech will help you better understand why publishers are so picky about games, and why publishing is a pretty involved thing.

[edited by - FenixDown on July 11, 2002 10:01:08 PM]

quote: Original post by z3lda
Before the developers make any money I have to get back the cost of providing you the art you need and then we split a %(Yet to be determined) of sales from each game sold.

We do this because art is much easer to put a price on then code. Since there are allot of amatuer programmers out there, it would be more logical to fund them the art.

Excuse me if I laugh for a second. So the programmer doesnt get paid until after the artist has been paid? That reeks of "I''m more important then you". Seriously, if anything, I think you have it backwords and the programming should probably get paid before you. There are a lot of artists out there offering free graphics, free textures, and free 3D models. If I''m making a space shoot-em-up, its a lot easier for me as a programmer to go find some free models of space ships and drop them into my code than it would be for you to go pick up some free code and drop it around your artwork.

To be honest, I''m of the opinion that anyone who isn''t providing their work for free should either be paid in full (or weekly/monthly/etc) up front before publishing, or be paid a percent commision on the product. Anyone who gets a percent commision should be paid their respective percentage from dollar one (or if you have some debts to pay off for dev tools or something, then start everyone''s commission as soon as these debts are paid off).

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

>>T R i K s A N D
Excuse my lack of originality. This is the reason why this post was made, so I can get a feel, some feedback on if I should persue this idea. If someone can fill me in, do most budget/shareware publishers pay $$ up front to fund their developers??

>>FenixDown
Thanks for the reply, I will only be concentrating on 2 titles at most if this idea takes off and I have people who will be helping me manage the funds and the projects. It will be a big risk. As for marketing we will be hitting up popular game related sites and similar things listed on sharewarepromotions.com

>>LordKronos
Yes you may laugh . Now i''ll try to give some reasons behind my idea, this is why I posted in the first place.

Most or all the developers I would be helping are programmers, who are the head of their own projects and already working for free. My idea would be to simply help them fund the art they need for their game. In return I would like to get the money back that I invested and have the right to sell their game on my website which we will split a %.

I did also say it would be best for the programmer to have an artist join his/her team and work for free, but that is often not the case. If you do get an artist you normally wouln''t get the quality of art you would like to make it a commercial game.
Also if you get an artist, then you wouldn''t need my services .

Another point is code is harder to put a $$ on. In my opinion anyways. Besides that funding a programmer to work full time is way more expensive then contracting an artist a one time fee for art assets.

I hope I''ve answered as clearly as possible and not made myself look like an ass .
John Hsia

>>T R i K s A N D
Excuse my lack of originality. This is the reason why this post was made, so I can get a feel, some feedback on if I should persue this idea. If someone can fill me in, do most budget/shareware publishers pay $$ up front to fund their developers??

>>FenixDown
Thanks for the reply, I will only be concentrating on 2 titles at most if this idea takes off and I have people who will be helping me manage the funds and the projects. It will be a big risk. As for marketing we will be hitting up popular game related sites and similar things listed on sharewarepromotions.com

>>LordKronos
Yes you may laugh . Now i''ll try to give some reasons behind my idea, this is why I posted in the first place.

Most or all the developers I would be helping are programmers, who are the head of their own projects and already working for free. My idea would be to simply help them fund the art they need for their game. In return I would like to get the money back that I invested and have the right to sell their game on my website which we will split a %.

I did also say it would be best for the programmer to have an artist join his/her team and work for free, but that is often not the case. If you do get an artist you normally wouln''t get the quality of art you would like to make it a commercial game.
Also if you get an artist, then you wouldn''t need my services .

Another point is code is harder to put a $$ on. In my opinion anyways. Besides that funding a programmer to work full time is way more expensive then contracting an artist a one time fee for art assets.

I hope I''ve answered as clearly as possible and not made myself look like an ass .
John Hsia

Now that you have explained it better it sounds more reasonable that it did at first, but I still think it''s not a good idea, and certainly nothing I would ever want to be involved in. To me, no matter how you put it, the fact that you get paid before anyone else is just wrong. Either you are willing to take a risk, or you are not. If you are NOT willing to take the risk you demand pay up front (and if the team isn''t willing/able to agree to those terms, you look for work elsewhere). If you ARE willing to take the risk, then you fit right in with everyone else on the team taking the risk by working for free. If your "fees" are $1000, and the game only ends up making $1000, why should you get paid in full while everyone else receives absolutely nothing. If you take the risk and join up with 4 other people, and the game only makes $1000, you all accept that your risk didnt fully pay off and walk home with $200 each (assuming you split the percentage equally, which I dont think is necessary, so you may only walk home with 10% of that $1000, but everyone walks home with their respecive percent).

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

Let''s talk about that "%"...
It''s, in your opinion, less than 30% or more than 50%?

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Let''s talk about that "%"...
It''s, in your opinion, less than 30% or more than 50%?

I assume this is z3lda and you just forgot to log in again.

Percentage depends on a few circumstance, most importantly are quantity of work/effort and number of people. If you have a team of 20 people, most likely nobody is getting 30% unless one person contributed 10 times as much as everyone else. If 4 people worked on the game for a year and a half and someone came in for 1 month to do graphics I would consider doing it a few different ways. Either that graphics person gets an uncapped 2% of profits, or the person gets a capped higher percentage (10-15% of profits, up to a max of $5000 or something).


Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

No, was me... I wanted to know what he was thinking.
I think he is hoping in a high percentage joust to do nothing, find someone to paint it''s not so hard.