Gnollrunner said:
he only people who will typically work under said conditions are very inexperienced people who are desperate to get their foot in the door and are unsure of their worth.

I have a feeling that most of this is a theory, and not from experience.

I've had very nigh caliber people apply to my projects ,some of them with stable day jobs in the industry and surrounding fields.

Gnollrunner said:
I'm curious, what are you providing to the project? Is it only management or are you going to be doing a significant part of the coding and art?

I provide all business functions, from management,, to PR, to HR.

Oh, and I'm also a writer.

GeneralJist said:

I have a feeling that most of this is a theory, and not from experience.

I've had very nigh caliber people apply to my projects ,some of them with stable day jobs in the industry and surrounding fields.

This is from my admittedly limited experience on various forums. But perhaps I'm wrong. So, what successful rev-share projects have you completed? And by successful, I mean projects where people received compensatory payment for their work at the end. I mean you said you had good people, right? If you are still running rev-share projects that tends to mean your past projects weren't exactly world beaters.

I provide all business functions, from management,, to PR, to HR.

Right…….

I feel judged….

Go to my website and see what I've and we've done.

AS for the question of pay out.

about a year ago, some shit went down, and I felt it appropriate to zero out everyone's hours on a project, and pay them.

we negotiated an hourly rate for each individual, and I personally paid out everyone's hours.

Also for a short time, I used ADP to process payroll. before I ran out of disposable capitol in may of this year.

Also, yall may want to have a look at:

https://www.moddb.com/​

no one makes money on mods, yet wonderful content and long lasting teams work together, documented here.

GeneralJist said:

Also, yall may want to have a look at:

https://www.moddb.com/​

no one makes money on mods, yet wonderful content and long lasting teams work together, documented here.

No one is asking mod contributors to relinquish their copyright. No one is asking mod contributors to sign one-sided “employment”-style contracts. No one is treating mod contributors like unpaid employees. Mod contributors are de-facto partners by default, even if no contract is signed.

There is a world of difference between contributing for free to a free hobby project and contributing for free to a project that's there to make money for someone else.

GeneralJist said:
I feel judged…. Go to my website and see what I've and we've done.

I did exactly that, which is why I said that it looks very much like a hobbyist endeavour. Much of it does not come across as professional, such as the biography that goes into great detail about departed members.

What it sounds like is that someone approached you expecting to essentially become a technical co-founder, and you don't want that sort of arrangement. That's up to you, but it wasn't an unreasonable or even unusual request.

If I had one piece of advice to give you, I'd say you need to decide firmly which side of the fence you're on, hobby or business, and then commit to it.

Kylotan said:
such as the biography that goes into great detail about departed members.

Umm, those bios were people that where here.

Choosing to show those, along with our current member bios is how we pay respect to people we worked with.

A lot of small companies have bios on their home pages. Knowing the bios of current and former people plays into the decisions of people who contact an work with us.

I was also thinking about moving all of the formers to our history page.

And you are totally being judgmental.

Who are you, and your background?

Kylotan said:
hobbyist endeavour

By this, I'd technically agree, because all of us are volunteers. And this is not our main source of income.

However, we do hold ourselves to high standards.

There are limits to what you can expect and ask from volunteers.

I've funded and kept the lights on here for a long time, people who don't think that matters or if that means anything, can GTFO.

Kylotan said:
What it sounds like is that someone approached you expecting to essentially become a technical co-founder, and you don't want that sort of arrangement. That's up to you, but it wasn't an unreasonable or even unusual request.

No.

What happened was we had a job ad out for “lead programmer” he applied under this job position and description.

During the interviews, he said a bunch of stuff, and before the interviews, he was quite demanding as to wanting to know the capabilities of everyone who was here.

He said he wanted partnership as one of the things he was looking for, despite having a regular day job in the industry. He emphasized this several times.

I kept telling him that that was not the position advertised, and that I'd need time to consider his proposal.

I told him I'd need time to get to know him, at least a year or so, and I told him how long I knew our previous partners and prospective partners. (2011, 2014,and 2015)

He refused to say the % he wanted, and he refused to say why me and why us.

Sounds like he wanted to be a tech cofounder somewhere, and although I'd be open to the idea normally, his entire approach and how he handled the interviews makes me feel wary.

Furthermore, he said he'd be willing to NDA up, so he could see what we had.

I sent him our contract, which is based on Tom B.'s Game dev kit contract.

He did not want to sign, or commit himself.

He wanted us to show him all of our cards, where we were in development, all of our assets, etc.etc. and then he would judge and decide if this was suitable to him.

It felt like he wanted to have all of our cake, and eat it all, and then also judge and rate our cake,

He also said a huge red flag to me, is he said directly, that he was not the kind of person to socialize with people, and become friends.

So it's essentially like your looking for a department lead, and the person drops the bomb shell that he wants a % of the company, within the 1st hour of knowing each other.

Kylotan said:
hobby or business

umm, for us, it's not that simple.

As said, there are limitations as to what you can expect out of people without paying them a regular wage.

I have a feeling that most people here never worked with volunteers.

Also, even if you do pay people an hourly wage, and go through the hassle of pay roll, which I did for a little bit, they will not appreciate you for it, and will leave with no regrets once the money dries up.

I also paid people a lump sum in the past for animations, that went a little better, though it sill had it's issues.

I'm never paying people out of the USA again.

Also,

It felt like he wanted us to bend over backwards for him.

I could have a skewed perception, and biased, since I've been at this for so long.

Defining the limits of hobby vs. Biz is totally subjective most of the time, from my experience.

As soon as money changes hands, it suddenly becomes biz?

Also, I'm about 1.5 hours away from his city for the holidays. , I'm wondering if it would be worth meeting this guy in person…

What yall think?

Also he asked how much money I've sunk into my biz, and he brushed it aside, and said he was trying to assess current value.

GeneralJist said:

I feel judged….

Go to my website and see what I've and we've done.

Are we talking about Honor games? I see a mod. In any case, my point is when you say rev-share, that means people might be expecting to be paid at some point and want the game to be successful so they can recoup something for their time. Anything that is truly hobby is a different story. But someone serious may want some assurances that there is a payout at the end and therefore they feel they should be involved in the management.

I'm not really judging, but I just find questions about “hiring” practices in projects where there is no real guaranteed pay a bit odd. Make a deal or not. It's your decision. If the guy is so good maybe he's worth it. None of us here can know the extent of his skill.

My overall feeling about this kind of thing, still stands. If you are paying someone for work, then obviously partnership requests, refusal to sign contracts, etc. might be out of line. But for people contributing their time for no guaranteed pay, then you will likely have to make a lot of concessions.

I personally paid out everyone's hours.

I guess my question would be are we talking about something close to industry wages or is this just dividing up some small profits. Has anything actually made real money? Note I'm not claiming to be any more successful at game creation than you. My project is at this point a pipe dream, although I do work on it every day. I'm OK with that. It's just that I see a lot of people calling themselves a studio or game company, doing websites, and most of the time it seems a bit on the bogus side.

GeneralJist said:

So I'm in a bit of a situation.

We are looking for leads for art and code, and this very talented guy applies for lead coder.

All goes as expected, until he drops a bombshell, asking to become a partner in the business. He tells us this in our 1st interview, and reiterates it in his 2nd interview, which took place last night.

Normally I'd be willing to hear him out, as due to a variety of situations, I am the sole owner, where there used to be a few of us.

I explain to him that the last partners were people I've known and worked with since 2014, 2015, and 2011.

I barely know this person, yet he is asking for a stake of the business.

The success of our current project may hinge on this, if we are to make our self imposed deadline.

Maybe you should simplify things. . .

You mention your “current project." Given the context, specifically that you are posting here on gamedev, I'm assuming that project is probably a game, or something game-like.

Is this project supposed to generate revenue? If so, rather than talking about “stake in the business,” maybe the focus should be on the revenue for that specific project. Figure out what it takes to complete that project. Break things down into specific parts (programming, art, writing, etc). Give a percentage to each part of the project. Put these percentages in writing, before things get completed. Then, when things get finished, give everybody (including yourself) shares of any profits based on what they actually accomplished for that specific project.

If you do that, you remove the issues such as how well you know somebody, or how long you've worked with them. At the end of the day, it is all about what they specifically accomplished to make the project a reality. And I'd think that (if this is something like a game), the lead coder would be due a pretty large share of any profits.