>>LordKronos

The reason behind why I get paid first is because I gave the developers an initial funding to contract commercial level artists (I guess you feel that is not fair). This is almost like an inbetween, where normally teams can either pitch an idea to a publisher and get fully funded, or finish their game and have the publisher sell it. This would be the game is almost finished or is finished and we help them finish it by providing higher level art, or a complete make over.

We probably won't be funding a game with 20 developers. I'm looking mostly at the lone programmer who has a puzzle game, an arcade game..something simple withing 6-12month development time.

So here is an example which might clear things up. Say the dev team finished the game (2 developers). Endboss.com provided an initial $5k to finish up the art for their game. We agreed Endboss.co getting 30% and the development team getting 70%.
We start selling the game. The development team won't see their 70% until Endboss.com makes back the initial $5k. From then on each copy sold we split 30/70. The 70% the dev team gets would have to split up further among their team.

>>Anonymous Poster

That would have to be negociated on a project by project basis. As for full fledged publishers they would usually take 60%+, depending on how complete the game is or if this is the dev teams first title. I won't be takeing that much because the role is almost reversed as we are not a experienced publisher. We will try to accomidate the developers and find a middle ground to work with. I'm thinking more like 10-30%.

We arn't exeactly doing nothing.
1. We offer partial funding
2. We can offer beta testing
3. Run a community board and help do support
4. We have a programmer who can also help trouble shoot code
5. Marketing

Of course this will be all in a limited capacity as we would be a small publisher.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you both for replying, this will help me see many loop holes or problems that can occur.

[edited by - z3lda on July 12, 2002 5:03:48 PM]

Personally I don't think it's unfair, assuming you tell the developers upfront how much the art will cost. Especially if it's high quality art. Some of you say you can find artists who work for free.. Well.. they're probably not going to draw very great art. Generally, you'll have to pay for professional art. If z3lda can offer a team of programmers commercial quality art at no charge, and then make that money back when the game is sold, that's perfectly fair. They wouldn't get that quality art without him, unless they paid for it out of their own pockets. It's almost like how a credit card works, you charge something to it and then pay it off later. This is even better though because it wouldn't cost the team anything at all, meaning they wouldn't be losing money they already had. The idea does have some problems but it has potential. Good luck z3lda.

[edited by - FenixDown on July 12, 2002 5:20:06 PM]

Hi, that''s me again!
I think you have to concentrate more on marketing, beta testing and support (community board are useless for most games).
Offer to find an artist only if programmer really want it.

quote: Original post by z3lda
The reason behind why I get paid first is because I gave the developers an initial funding to contract commercial level artists.

You that sounds all pretty and all, except for the fact that you originally said it was you that was providing the art. You can say the same thing about a programmer. He is giving the company a $50K/year advance to pay himself a salary of $50K. Then once the game finishes, he should get the $50K "loan" repaid to him before anyone else gets any money. It just seems insincere to me.

quote: Endboss.com provided an initial $5k to finish up the art for their game. We agreed Endboss.co getting 30% and the development team getting 70%. We start selling the game. The development team won't see their 70% until Endboss.com makes back the initial $5k. From then on each copy sold we split 30/70. The 70% the dev team gets would have to split up further among their team.

Seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You get your entire pay from the front end, then indefinitely suck off an extra 30%. The deal seems too slanted in your direction. Now, if you were providing complete bugtesting, publishing, and marketing services it would be a different story (the 30% would be your publishing fee). And I'm not just talking about selling the game on your web site. I'm talking about submission to hundreds of download sites, issuing of press releases, customer service, etc, etc, and more etc.

P.S.
The first time I read through, I missed the part about beta testing and marketing. I guess that would make it sound fairer. I still dont like the idea of paying that so-called "advance" back at the front end. However, I'm sure there are some out there that would go for your deal. I guess more important than anything else, though would be seing how good of a publisher you are and how well you can sell the game. If you can't sell more than a dozen copies, I might as well just give you 99% royalties.

If nothing else, I think at least we helped you figure out how to sell the idea. Your original post came off very lame sounding. Now, at least you are sounding somewhat reasonable.


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



[edited by - LordKronos on July 12, 2002 6:14:28 PM]

LordKronos: considering that most publishers will give you 10-15% royalties, and some better ones like Dexterity give you 30%, the fact that you''d get 70% after covering art costs sounds like a good deal to me.. Big software publishers work in a similar way actually. They will give you an advance (in this case it''s in the form or art) and then ONLY after the sales cover their expenses will they pay royalties. Nothing illogical about this.. Publishing is not about fairness, it''s about money.

>>LordKronos

Ok, I see your point now. You're basically saying what if I invest $1k into your development team for art, and we decide to sell the game on my site. So the game is not very successful and it only generates $1k in sales. This would mean I make all the money back leaving you with no money?

Is this correct?

Here is a possible solution but it puts me in a bad position..but anyways I would like to discuss it here.

Say I initially fund you $1k for art and the game is finished, and we decide on a 30/70 split.

Now previously I would require that I make back the $1k initial investment first before you see any profit, but instead I will do this. (rough estimate)

For the first $0-250, you get 5% return
$251-500, you get 10% return
$501-750, you get 15% return
$751-1000, you get get 20% return

..etc etc.

The above is a rough and not acutal, just used to get the idea across. That way we both make a %. Once all money is paid back you will then get your full 70% return. Of course this idea would put me at a greater risk.

What do you guys think? Remember this is still in planning stages, and I might not even dicide to do this . I'm trying to see what the responses are and possible solution to help indie developers while trying to establish a publishing company. I also do plan on creating and selling our own games using the endboss label. I also like to add i'm not a professional publisher, I'm also an indie developer like the people who read these forums.

John





[edited by - z3lda on July 12, 2002 7:14:42 PM]

quote: Original post by FenixDown
Publishing is not about fairness, it''s about money.

Yes, its not about fairness. And look how badly a lot of developers got screwed by publishers because of this attitude. You can''t just sit on our side of the fence and say "well, they are just doing their job over there". Im not saying z3lda is trying to screw developers over, not by a longshot. I''m just saying what I think I would feel if I were trying to work with him.

As for 70% begin great, better than dexterity, and much better than the big publishers. You might notice that when you have less of one thing to offer, you offer more of something else instead. When you have a smaller market share, if you are offering a fair deal you give a higher royalty. If zelda can''t sell more than a handful of my games, a 100% royalty isn''t going to be much better than a 1% royalty to me. It means either I make $1 or I make $100. Neither ammount is going to make me rich or fund my next game. That''s why if you re-read my post you will notice I said his sales ability is probably more important than my royalty rate. You may also notice that (I tried to say) I missed the part about him offering marketing services and so-on. Without those services the 30% uncapped royalty would be ridiculous. So I wasnt saying taking 30% for the publisher was unreasonable, I was saying taking 30% for the artists was.

quote: Original post by z3lda
Ok, I see your point now...the game is not very successful and it only generates $1k in sales. This would mean I make all the money back leaving you with no money? Is this correct?

Yes, thats what I was getting at. It almost looks like you are just trying to recoup your costs so that if things don''t work out you can bail out. It doesn''t show that you have confidence you can sell the game.

Put it this way: If you knew you could sell 10000 copies of a $20 game, why would you be so concerned about recouping your initial $5K up front when you your 30% is going to net you a good $60K? Perhaps its because you dont have confidence in how well you can sell it.

quote: Here is a possible solution but it puts me in a bad position

Don''t you think the developer want to be as safe as you? You invest your time, they invest theirs. Both of you do so on the hopes of profiting off it.

Anyway, yes your new scenario seems (to me) to be more favorable. I''m not sure how happy it makes me, though. Then again, its hard for me to say how much I''m still persuaded by your initial post.

And like I said a few posts ago, there are certainly developers that would take you up on any offer (even your original one). I just wouldn''t. I guess its up to you how much you want to share the risks and rewards with the developer.

If you can sell a game like no one before, you could charge 90% commission and get away with it. If you cant sell worth squat, good luck getting a developer to sign at any rate. On this topic, do you have any existing sales experience?

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

quote: Original post by LordKronos
Original post by FenixDown
Publishing is not about fairness, it's about money.


Yes, its not about fairness. And look how badly a lot of developers got screwed by publishers because of this attitude. You can't just sit on our side of the fence and say "well, they are just doing their job over there". Im not saying z3lda is trying to screw developers over, not by a longshot. I'm just saying what I think I would feel if I were trying to work with him.

As for 70% begin great, better than dexterity, and much better than the big publishers. You might notice that when you have less of one thing to offer, you offer more of something else instead. When you have a smaller market share, if you are offering a fair deal you give a higher royalty. If zelda can't sell more than a handful of my games, a 100% royalty isn't going to be much better than a 1% royalty to me. It means either I make $1 or I make $100. Neither ammount is going to make me rich or fund my next game. That's why if you re-read my post you will notice I said his sales ability is probably more important than my royalty rate. You may also notice that (I tried to say) I missed the part about him offering marketing services and so-on. Without those services the 30% uncapped royalty would be ridiculous. So I wasnt saying taking 30% for the publisher was unreasonable, I was saying taking 30% for the artists was.

As far as fairness goes, publishers aren't charities. They're businesses that have to make money to stay afloat. I'm not condoning bad treatment of developers, but you have to look at it from the publisher's perspective too. How much choice do they have when statistically 1 in 10 games they publish is going to actually make them money? Again, it's not a pretty business, and a lot of developers get smacked around but unfortunately that's the only way publishers can stay alive. They're not exactly making huge fortunes themselves you know.

But as far as z3lda goes, the only thing I would want if I were a developer working with him, is a non-exclusive distribution deal. Basically meaning I could sell the game on my own web site. The royalty ratio to the developer by z3lda could than be lowered somewhat too. This way if z3lda fails to do a good marketing job, I could still do my own marketing and sell the game. That, or some sort of clause in the contract that says if the developer is unhappy with z3lda's work he could start selling the game on his own either getting all rights to selling the game or just the option of selling the game on his own, after like 120 days or something. I don't like contracts that bind developers exclusively to one publisher. If that publisher doesn't live up to what they promise the developer gets quite screwed.

[edited by - FenixDown on July 12, 2002 11:23:19 PM]

>>LordKronos

We all have our own opinions, and I respect yours and appreciate your help in discussing this topic further.

I am in talks with 1 or 2 developers who might be intrested. They are waiting to see if they can get artists on board working for free . In any case I've still got ways to go before every little detail is worked out.

>>FenixDown

yes, we still have to work out other details, and we do plan on doing a non-exclusive distribution deal. Acutally it will be exclusive deal for a duration of time which will be determined based on each project. Say we decided on a 6 month exclusive deal, then after the 6 months you can take it to another publisher or sell it on your site. Thanks for bringing it up. We also will not own any of your code, all IP belongs to the developer.

John

[edited by - z3lda on July 13, 2002 1:52:21 AM]