I’ve been a hobbyist for a long time, but it’s that time where I’d like to try collaborating again and making something cool with other people who are as enthusiastic as me.
While I can do everything related to game development, I’m not sure I can commit enough time to a project to warrant a paid position but I also want to make sure it’s a project that people are motivated to finish so I ask…
Have any rev share projects from the collab forum been released? Most of the times I’ve tried collaborating (even on a paid project) it ends up getting cancelled. I don’t even care if it sells well (though, it would be a bonus). I’d just like to help make something cool and maybe learn/teach a few things in the process.
If you want to make things that are cool and maybe learn a few things in the process, you’re better off working on your own. Revenue share projects have about the same success rates as unpaid work does in general because, when you get right down to it, it still is unpaid work. You can’t eat off the promise of maybe making some money in the future.
If you want a better success rate, you pay people. But even as you said, those projects can fall apart as well.
The only two successfully released games built on the “unpaid collaboration” ideas I know were Eternal Summer and Katawa Shoujo, both of them visual novels that took a lot of time to develop.
Revenue share project means unpaid volunteers, and those project appears to have something like 99% failure rate.
Because I haven’t been watching the Collaboration forums, I don’t know how many of those projects succeeded.
With all of the people who have posted this question here clearly there are many people interested in such a thing. What happens to these people? That is a good question.
Maybe try searching for their posts and comment on them to see if they are still interested. Because they would have been told the same as you… give it up basically.
Unfortunately, one of the big issues here is such posts often get moved to the collaboration forum where for some silly reason people are not supposed to comment (I think) and that probably kills 99% of such endeavors because there is no sense of community.
Maybe try to find a better site out there that is more supportive of such a thing. I remember seeing some like teamup or something. I don’t remember now but there are sites very supportive of linking people up.
I agree, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy and it really was that bad. It almost begs the question on why have that subforum at all?
I’ve tried collaborating several times over the last few years and even amongst paid projects, the longest I’ve been on a project was 3 months. A lot of it, I feel, comes down to 2 things. Experience from the organizer (they are usually just “Idea People”) and organization (No VCS, Documentation etc).
So if no one else has seen any, like GarBenjamin said I might as well see if there is another place for this. Any suggestions on a place like this?
Also, I think you’re onto something about the lack of commenting in collaboration. It really kills the community feeling.
Many years ago I participated in several collaboration revenue share projects, some of them were quite lengthy (think half a year or more). All of them failed.
Based on my experience I see lack of funding as a big red warning flag indicating that the project is very likely to die unfinished.
Because of this, if you’re looking to get some experience, it might be a good idea to still charge for your service, but charge a small amount.
I’d recommend checking 1GAM, GameJolt forums and considering participating in game jams.
In those places you will find very active communities of people actually making games and often just for fun. Also many Indie games and teams started out as much smaller simpler rough game jam projects.
I do participate in quite a few game jams, but I’ve never collaborated in any. Don’t know why didn’t start there. Thanks for that, hopefully, I can find a few that will be enjoyable.
I’ve started doing this as well, I run into another issue there with people losing track of scope but so far it has been fairly successful. Thanks for that. I definitely recommend it for others. Just make sure to define a clear and exact scope. (You will do X but not X)
Hopefully someone else can stumble across this and learn from it.
I think you’ll have much better luck if you try it in communities of active developers… maning people continually completing games and releasing them even if only on the 1GAM website, gamejolt or game jam entries list. Such people are doers actually completing games so that automatically weeds out the hurdle of coming across people talking about making games but never completing anything.
I participated in over a dozen rev share projects between 2003-2011 and the only one I know of that didnt fizzle out and die was FolkTale (on steam).
I stopped participating in late 2011 when I started a new job and had real life requirements so I dont know if the project eventually switched to paid participation or if it continued as rev share.
While I was on the team we had roughly 5-6 part (full) timers diligently working on the project not including the lead designer/developer.
I think this is very good advice and it’s how I started to (and sometimes still do) approach freelancing/collaborating on projects. I think perhaps that there is too much guilt around the idea of charging very low prices even as a relative beginner, but it’s actually a very good way to get some experience and develop your skills. If someone is just starting modelling for example, and is not great but still does stuff that is way better than ‘programmer art’, I think that a lot of programmers would see that as a huge opportunity to get a small budget project finished. Think of it as a self-managed ‘internship’ - and relationships are always better when money or other investments are involved.
The thing to remember though is this: ALWAYS do the best job you can, regardless of the price you charge. If you think you deserve $100/hour, then charge exactly that, but one way or the other don’t compromise your work ethic, reputation, and opportunity to get better by doing a half-assed job. It can be easy to think “well I’m just helping out, I’ll just knock something together” but what you do is what you will be remembered for, $100/hour or $10/hour.
As for rev share in particular, I haven’t done it yet but I think it’s the same sort of thing (though on a much smaller scale) as a startup. Everybody has to be dead serious and very committed, there has to be teamwork, organisation, and a sense of purpose beyond simply “I wanna make a game and I will let some people join in”. Lack of ability to explain the project in very clear detail, lack of documentation, lack of plan, lack of initial investment (website, prototypes, etc), and not having already signed up one or two quality people that they know personally or otherwise very well, are all good signs of someone who is going to let the horse wander into the ditch taking everybody’s hard work with it.
I’m currently working on what amounts to a “revenue share project”, we just don’t call it that. There’s two of us working on a commercial project that has yet to generate income, which sounds to me like the same thing. The main difference is that we don’t consider it a “revenue share”, we consider it a “startup game company” and are treating it as such. We didn’t start it looking for a project to contribute to, we started it out of a shared desire to make games commercially, a mutual trust in each others’ abilities, and a solid agreement and commitment on how to make it all work.
If you put it that way, then Vlambeer probably counts as “revenue share” business as well. Rami has said numerous times in talks that he and his business partner don’t even like each other, and iirc they make revenue share contracts with all the freelancers they hire.
They’re a well-known studio though, with a proven track record and a reputation on the line. I think that’s proof enough at least that they will not be letting things just fizzle out. There’s probably a queue of freelancers wanting to get on board with them.
I’d like to clarify that this advice only applies to side projects, “for fun” projects, etc.
If you’re working as a freelancer fulltime and it is primary source of income, then you should pretty much never undercharge for your work, unless your financial situation is really stable. That’s because working underpaid for just a few weeks can make you feel miserable.
However “charge a little” instead of “unpaid collaboration”, can be used to weed out good portion of incompetent people and “idea people”.
Even if you’re a millionaire you shouldn’t undercharge because it’s bad for the market as a whole which still is full of other freelancers that need to make a living from their work. I see the point of weeding out some of the clients with low pay instead of free, but I think there’s also a point to be made for either free or fully paid and nothing in between.
That’s for sure, I’m only saying that if you’re simply looking to expand your experience, develop your skills and work with other people, it can be a good way to do so. I think that a lot of us are pretty motivated and have interesting ideas as well as reasonable competency in a particular skillset, and given that games are difficult and time consuming, it makes sense to try to get together and get something done. If the person who owns a very interesting project can pay a quarter of a normal freelance wage as well as offer a rev share, I think it’s an interesting opportunity, depending on the person.
I did this to get experience on a multiplayer game when I had none - so I just undercharged a lot, explained that I knew how to learn stuff fast but didn’t know anything about multiplayer, and ended up integrating a lot of new assets into project without any trouble, and learning about how multiplayer worked.
Definitely though, if you’re relying on it for livelihood, you’d probably best not do that (or games entirely for that matter);
As always, it’s completely dependent on the kind of person you’re dealing with. But I think there’s a general tendency in the perception of what’s a good project to work on, to skip directly from our own (some of us at least) situation of doing it on rags and dreams, directly to expecting someone to be able to pay $50/hour for a game’s worth of content in some particular skillset. If you can find someone with the right character and slave away with them it might just turn into something really fruitful. But of course it’s risky if you don’t know them that well, and probably even so if you do.
The thing I wonder is, say you did pay someone $50 dollars an hour (or however much they asked for), how would you know how long it would take to get the job done? And how you would know they aren’t lollygagging instead of working?
As an example, you mentioned multiplayer, how long would you expect to be able to add basic multiplayer to an existing single player game? Just keeping it simple, one vs one deathmatch. Is this something you could do in a few hours or would you expect a few weeks of work? That would make for a pretty huge difference in expected price to pay.
I’ve often thought about hiring people to speed things along, but I just never know how much it would actually cost.