Are those royalties for real?

#1 First of all, don't think you will get paid on a monthly basis (I assume you don't have enough experience for that, otherwise you wouldn't be here). So, royalties is about the only deal you can get....
You are right, it is possible most of those are just 10 year old (ok, perhaps older... but you get the point)... but you can seperate them easely from the ones you can trust. Just don't join a team without doing your own research. Do they have a site? Do they have experience (previous projects)? Is their work any good? Personally I'm especially interested in the work and the experience, because all you should be after at this point is experience and fun... money only comes when you become one of the best.
If you really want to be sure you can always ask for a contract of some sort... but I doubt a lot of them will be willing to give you one.

#2 I would agree with you that many of the people placing ads looking for team members will most probably not have the dedication and/or skills to produce something of significance. However, there are a few gems in there. I wouldn't expect to get paid on any project you work on at this point unless you are especially talented and lucky. Take the opportunity to work on a project and gain some experience.

Looking at your profile, I notice that you don't have much information there. You might want to fill out your profile, including any projects (personal or otherwise) to which you contributed. This way if you do find a sharp-looking team that is looking for help, you can apply for a position with them and they can check you out, also.

#3 At some point, GarageGames will be helping with this problem. We intend to implement a system that automatically divides the income stream between developers. There are a lot of issues to work out, but we feel this is a major enabler of allowing worlkd wide teams to work together.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#4 Another "feature" (I think it's been mentioned before): a developer "rating" system where you can give your opinion on developers you've worked with before, similar to how seller ratings work on for sale sites. With a lot of the help wanted posts here, it's pretty easy to pick out which ones wouldn't be worth your time, but a little feedback can help when it's not clear.

#5 That would be great.. simply by putting people with actual projects that are willing to pay monthly aside from kids wih nothing better to do than to trick hard working teams into doing their dream games (and steal the code), would really help. :) meanwhile we have to do it ourselves.

Your best weapon against getting "flashed" by one of these guys is common sense, if a deal is too good to be truth it probably isnt.

Keep an eye out for the following sympthoms of a 10 year old, trying to pull your hair...

-*Bad Ortography and poor language skills:
"LIZTEN I will pay BIG $$$ for peple daing.. RULS!"
Doesnt sound exactly like an award winning marketing campaign does it? if it looks like a 10 year old writing it probably is.

*No server?:
"get $10 bucks a day from guy@hotmail.com" If the guy doesnt own enough money or skills to have his own server for his "company". How exactly is he going to pay you and a team of coders?

-*No art, no documents, no url:
CODING a game and doing the actual art which will be used, is basically the LAST step in a game designing process, art design, scripts and sometimes animations are done before. Also a publicitaty web page maybe made to attract both contractors and publishers, even if the project is not commercial. Not having at least one of these or having one with terribly low quality shows a lack of actual commitment to the project. which may mean the project is fake or it only exists in a little kid's mind.

-*The "I will pay you next month" trick:
Theres nothing wrong with being honest and saying "I dont have any money but I do have this great idea, and if you guys help me maybe we can get it done" what is seriosly wrong is to offer money you are not entirely sure you will EVER have "If you become Part of my (fictional) company, next month we will show a demo to some people and they will throw money at us! just work your butt out and next month theres money abound!" do what I do, if a "company" offers that they will have money for next month, wait for the next month.

-*No experience/fake experience.
"If I did it once, I can do it again" this is true. Doing something for the first time ever, is always dificult, once you have done something.. you know a bit of how to do it, and your chances to repeat it (or improve it) are greater, I know is unfair, but start ups have the best chance of being rip offs, fakes or 10 year old kids. However since this is a new engine, and a new chance for a lot of people, most of them wont have prior experience and still be legitimate, once again you will have to use your common sense.
However if you find a "company" that claims to have made some games, do as much research as possible to see how good or complete they were, and make sure it was truly theirs.. being the account manager for a game dev doesnt count as experience. (unless you want an accountant) playing Final Fantasy for 1000 straight hours and then faking screenshots doesnt count neither (unless you want a game tester or a photoshop expert).

-Using UN-Licensed, prohibited or straight out "what were you thinking?" material for a game.
The classical sign of a 10 year old HAX0R making "CLONES" , POPULAR TRADEMARK MATERIAL (like creating an star wars/dragon ball game without a license) OVER THE TOP content (even by today standards!) like porn games, anti-ethnic, anti/ultra religious tone, unsensitive to real life, too much senseless violence/ gore(killing kids, portraying serial killers) are the best ways NOT to make any money out of any game (no publisher will touch it), and most probably get sued instead. However 10 years old either are completely unaware or dont care for this facts. Run like hell from projects like this!

#6 A dedicated team is the most the majority of us can wish for right now. Picking the right team is usually the hardest part than again most off the people around here aren't as motivated as they think they are. It's kind of a "chicken and the egg" story, you need motivated people to show people stuff, you need to show stuff to get motivated people, it all comes down to a lot off luck, but it does happen i'm sure...

For me personaly, i don't care about the money, i work 60 hours a week making enough money, i do it all for the fun of it... I spent most of my free time working on both 2D and 3D art and i probably have less free time than the bunch off you, still the learning experiance and the fun of it keeps me motivated. For now i would surgest let the money for what it is and have some fun, if your good and motivated the money will come soon enough.

get your work out, find a good team, take time to get to know people and have a good time doing it is probably the best advise for now.

#7 Thanx, it's good to know there are people here that "are for real". I haven't been on this site much so haven't started anything, but I guess my plan will be non-profit game development just for the experience and fun.

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#8

Quote:.. simply by putting people with actual projects that are willing to pay monthly aside from kids wih nothing better to do than to trick hard working teams into doing their dream games...

Don't agree with this. You devide them into 2 groups... Kids and people with money. You have to understand that there are a lot of people out there with money and having no idea how to make a game.... wouldn't want to work for one of those, they just don't understand what it is all about, they're just after more money...
Also what's wrong with experienced, dedicated people, but with no money? If its all about money...I don't think you should be here.....

#9 Hmm... well I guess is ok, because it is a LARGE post but if you read it all, you will notice I did mentioned "is ok if you say I dont have money and I want to do this" thats exactly how I work now and Im happy with that.

But "indie" doesnt mean "free" it just means is not attached to a major company, the possibility for someone who bought the engine to try to invest in an startup with it, is not unthinkable. Who wouldnt like to get payed for working? maybe quiting the day job for this?

According to the garage games working model is possible to create a good game publish it and then divide the royalties (or by percenteage points) to everyone on the team. That or get no/less royalties and get payed monthly. (which has less risks for the team but requires an investment) I will be happy for just I dont know .. $500 a month or by a $1000 completion contract (per example) or even $100 per project+royalties whatever, any extra income is good.

However there a lot of weasels, who can convince a team to make a game and then keep it to their selves calling it their own, never finish it, getting grants from investors and then cutting them 90% them 10% team, never paying promised monthly fees and not giving out royalties or simply keepping all the royalties once the game is done. This guys are either physically or mentally "10 year olds". I just wanted to post a document on how to detect one, and I think thats a valid idea.

And yes, there are some legitimate people working here =)

#10 Yeh, competely agree with you.... was only the first part of your previous post that I didn't totally agree... but I guess you didn't mean it that way...

What bothers me is this: 10 year old "weasels" (like you say so nicely) are "stealing" all of the availble talent... I don't know how they manage, but they trick a lot of people into making a game for them.
Because of this it becomes harder for the serious workers to find some good talent to join their team.

#11 >You have to understand that there are a lot of people >out there with money and having no idea how to make a >game.
Yes sure about it. But I don't like to give my work and spare hours for free or to a project that I don't know much about. (they can tell me is a simulated underwater conflict between zombies and droids) and that still dosen't change my life. I always wanted to do games, I work as an animator doing Interactive, multimedia an advertising and YES, I do have the experience...but dont want to give hours on royalty-basis pay...What for? I'm sure I will never see a nickel. And feel good about the models and bad about the game.
Is that hard for someone that pretends to put his time and energy for a proyect to just get somekind of return, It could be a postcard from the bahamas...who knows! they;re gonna get really good models and artwork...Do they believe that their game deserves it?

Regars

Diego A

#12 Heh Ward.

Old post, but it seems to still ring true.

#13 hmm... I'd just like to say that there seems to be a strange stereotype in indy game dev. Although I wouldn't classify myself as an industry professional, nor have the elitist ego/attitude that seems to fill my workmates, many game developers do frequent GG. I'm personally involved because I wish to gain an influential position within a promising startup; I've worked in modelling and graphic art 'grunt' positions and can easily get that type of work but it's not what I want. I wish to be able to contribute, have a voice, and be able to provide creative input besides the 9-6 pay packet weekly design list. Seriously... it's a real drag, and I hope everyone can get out of that route.

Through GG I'm involved with an extremely promising startup group (Sentient Machine - check out our GG profile or visit www.sentientmachine.com) and I'm in a great position to be able to contribute, own my small percentage of the company, and work with some other like-minded individuals. heh, we've got a better design doc, business plan, and more industry contacts than the companies I've worked with before - plus it's all about fun working towards our dream ;D

#14 Hello

We are working on a royaltie basis , for now the system works fine. ( We're not making millions though.)
What we do is that we set up the payement notification so that every person that contributed to the game receives an email when a sale is done.
I wrote a little customer management software/royalty calculation program ( http://patrox.free.fr for screenshots )
Of course nothing prevents me from disconnecting the automated email, but well it is a question of trust. ( We want more games so it is not in our interest to rip people off anyway )
I know that some payement providers ( Kagi, and esellerate soon ) have a royalty scheme in their payement system, but once again nothing prevents the "administator" to disable it after a couple of months... it's all about trust ( just start on a tiny project , or a little part of a project , try before the big big jump ;) )

patrice.

#15 You also have to realise that even a good team can't make money without a publisher, and most publishers are all but broke. I work mostly with consoles, but came here a couple of years ago whilst in between jobs. just to see if there was anything in it. Since then I pretty much got ripped off by one group, but didn't care too much as I had some extra portfolio work in a genre I liked but never got to work in. Actually my next commercial project was in the same Genre so it might have actually been what caught their interest initialy.

In this industry you have to expect to get burnt, for most people its a pipe dream, you first need the talent, then you need the experience, and then you need to find a developer who has to have a publisher. And even then you have a high chance of your project being canceled. With consoles its even worse as your product has to go through Q&A testing throughout development and finaly at the end, if it doesn't pass your contract with your publisher is void, and no one gets paid.

A lot of publishers are scraping the bucket and on the verge of going out of business and are even selling off their top licences to finance new products, either that of file bankruptcy. And if your trying to sell them new games, the biggest hurdle you have to get past is theirmarketing departments, who generaly aren't interested in your new game ideas, but want a world recogised licence to back up your game. They all want to make the next titanic, and it needs to allready have a public identity. Ithis is the console market I'm talking about).

Start ups have even more trouble, as publishers like developers that have allready shipped games, have proved that they can work together as a team, have the technology to make a game utilising the latest technology, and can work to a schedule. So no matter how good your game is, without all of these things and sometimes more, your game may never get made, unles syou do it for fun and experience like most people on here are.

BTW, working in the game industry sucks at crunch time, sometimes 12 hours working days minimum, most people get paid sallary so there's no overtime, and the last 3 - 5 days before a milestone deadline most people work through the night with a couple of hours of sleep at the office in the morning.

However, don't let that put you off, its usually the last 3 - 6 months that are almost unbearable, the rest can be a lot of fun if your with a good dedicated team :)

Sorry if my post sounds a bit bleak, but its also real, and you have to be pretty tough mentaly and physicaly to get through it over the years.