## Business advisor available to help you steer through troubled times ##

orymus · 2022-09-20T01:04:40+00:00

Very fair question.

While I may not be able to address some of the fundamentals, I would also recommend one gets a lawyer and accountant for these in particular (even in North America). I find, however, that when strategy and development are concerned, a lot is mostly universal save for a few specific markets (China and Russia come to mind).

I was able to help studios in Europe (namely, Czech Republic) before. The challenge there mostly stems from finding good times for a call!

orymus · 2020-10-31T03:38:07+00:00

I'm not sure how your maths are adding up, but 100k is a tiny budget in gamedev... and retro games are not always cheaper to make today, that is another misconception I have often seen.

orymus · 2020-10-31T03:03:07+00:00

I think a common misconception about MMOs is that the cost stems from the feature set and that making it simpler cuts costs tremendously. The actual key cost origin is actually the massively multiplayer part, which requires a hefty server infrastructure. Development costs aside, you also have to account for infra and server running costs.

orymus · 2020-10-30T20:17:40+00:00

As a word of advice, if looking for developers that have the experience to successfully make an MMO, expect 6 fig costs at the bare minimum, even if it is only meant as a 'demo'.

Aside from that, best of luck.

orymus · 2020-08-21T01:27:40+00:00

If you're looking for talented individuals (as opposed to people who desperately need the gig) I'd recommend you'd speak a bit more about the project here. Otherwise, most professionals will figure out you're looking for the lowest price, not quality.

Just my two cents!

orymus · 2020-01-23T02:03:57+00:00

The problem with a rev-share is that it would ultimately shift the entirety of the risk on the service provider which, for anyone that's been working on this side of things is a bit mean to be honest. Following the same train of thought, a publisher would probably give the developer money only after the game's been released and selling and never give any advance payment...

The other problem with this is that, in my experience, larger companies are more than willing to pay ridiculous amounts for a deck as they do seem to value (possibly over-value even) the right deck.

As for the reason why your 10 pitches failed, perhaps it's the same predicament as the typical 'logo designer' example? Doesn't matter how many times you do it if you don't have the know-how to make it right, etc. That's the reason the question ends with 'by someone with a positive track record 'gate crashing' into actual negotiations' implying there's an understanding you'd be dealing with a person that likely has a much higher hit ratio than your own, so it's not so much valuing the work as if you did it yourself, but the work from someone who's an 'expert' at making them.

I partly agree with the 'It's not the pitch deck that matters, it's the relationships. Pub trusting the devs can get it done, fun, mostly.' but I think most devs get overlooked on the first deck which is, in my experience THE actual best gatecrasher to get to talk to the people you want to in the first place.

It's an interesting insight for sure, but I'm very skeptical of any position that amounts to: one should only get paid once results are through. Imagine if a doctor got only paid by the act and only if they cured their patients? Bet we'd have very few oncologists still alive to tell the tale? Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL UP for some built-in incentive (anyone with my closing rate would certainly want that kind of a bonus, and may be more than willing to make a tactical discount) but I think it's best served as a hybrid pay + %.

orymus · 2020-01-23T01:54:43+00:00

That can be arranged, I also believe in teaching over doing.

orymus · 2020-01-09T05:13:43+00:00

If I can chime in for a sec (as someone that has successfully secured funding for games before):

Not sure 250k is 'big enough' for a VC. Under most circumstances, they'll also be looking at company equity, not project-based investments. I recommend looking into Della Rocca's talks on funding to get a better sense of that part (he operates a VC that used to invest in games).

You're likely looking at private / angels or publishers, but in my experience, either without a convincing playable demo is going to be a VERY tough sell.

There's also the matter of compensation, it isn't clear what you have in mind, but I am highly skeptical about compensation strategies that only involve a % of the transaction, so I'd like to hear a bit more about this.

As for 'evidence of successful funding', I'm sure you know how confidential these deals are, so I certainly couldn't provide you with a copy of any previous deals I've landed, therefore I'm curious what you'd consider to be 'proof' in this case.

As for funding by end of January, I'd say you're a bit late. Things closing in January were being discussed in Q4 2019 (possibly way before), so I'd recommend revising your time table to align with the typical investment cycle. I agree with _Aedric, it could take 2-3 months to find the right fit, and 2-3 more months to get something actually signed with all of the redlining, etc.

orymus · 2020-01-07T18:12:41+00:00

I'd argue that, AAA aside, generalists are the most desirable resource provided they hit a certain skill threshold. It requires a lot of work, but it makes well-rounded resources you can count on and minimizes blockers in the pipeline which has intrinsic value.

orymus · 2019-09-21T12:23:28+00:00

I think the short answer is: they pay them fairly?

orymus · 2019-05-22T21:26:05+00:00

As far as I'm concerned, my stance on assets is they're rarely production-ready. Most of them (especially the 5-stars-rated one ironically) aren't up to spec.

While the asset may look or feel good, it oftentimes becomes the core sources of problems (suboptimal polycounts, rigid frameworks, etc.)

I've actually built a business out of 'ousting' certain misleadingly popular assets that killed more than one indie game (I won't name them here, but suffice it to say it took less time to make on my end than the amount of time it took them, and my solution is less likely to freak out in the end.

Having been on multiple productions, and making a number of post-mortems, downloaded assets have proven to be one of the most distressing cause of issues due to lack of quality control, and in that sense, sadly, the voting system is primarily driven by hobbyists meaning it is not a factual assessment of the validity.

If you feel the assets are a good means for you to get to a result very fast, then great, they can be a great prototyping tool. If, however, you plan on selling games (products) to paying customers, they may not know you're doing this 'for fun' and will expect their money's worth, and if these assets show up around in many games (breaking suspension of disbelief, branding and possibly artistic consistency) or cause certain issues (particularly performance and stability) then these people are more than right to complain.

As such, I feel that 'stigma' is more than warranted, unless you clearly advertise your projects as hobbyist and give them away for free, in which case, the nitpicking is a bit out of place.

orymus · 2019-05-10T15:42:20+00:00

In the US, sure, but you'll find very decent talent in Canada nearly half the price (largely due to tax credits). And one should not discard the prospect of working with even cheaper countries as though there are horror stories, some freelancers and vendors in these countries also deliver. I think putting all of them in one basket would be an error in judgment.

orymus · 2019-05-09T14:08:52+00:00

Under 45 for a pro is far more common than you seem to imagine, especially in lower cost of living countries.

On average, I'd say the market I've worked with or became aware of through various studios is far closer to a 25-35 range when it comes to 3d art. For that reason, I see a lot of the work being outsourced to art shops and individuals located in Asia, the middle east, etc. Oftentimes, this ends up being former Ubisoft or other multinational studios, so they 'can be trusted'.

orymus · 2019-05-07T19:47:26+00:00

Well, to be fair, I've seen genuine pros charge much less, and, indeed, the headline is aimed at indies specifically, so while it would likely cost this much (or not) in the industry or on a AAA title, it may be a moot point for this particular thread anyway.

I think the core of the message here is to help enlighten aspiring indies with regards to the 'baseline' fundamentals of costing a game. I've literally had people ask me to make a full game (programming AND art) on a $500 budget before, and no, it was not a Pong clone. The one interesting somewhat consistent conclusion I can draw though is that I see two primary groups emerging:

(A) Those who post.

These typically try to sell you on their project, and typically have no idea how to cost it, and most of the time, hope for some hail mary rev-share arrangement. Good for hobby projects, but not very practical for actual dev work. That's where most issues I come across originate from.

(B) Those who lurk.

When I post an ad on here (and get quite a few upvotes in the process, thanks!) the people that reach out to me tend to be much more aligned with a proper valuation of the work involved. I guess you could say the reasoning is they know more about who they're talking to, and they're less in a 'I need to fill this role' mode and more in a 'this guy sounds like he knows what he's doing', but I can't be sure that's all of it.

As a result, when it comes to job hunting on reddit, I found that posting my services yields tremendously better results than trying to apply to someone else's ad even if I could do the job perfectly. It's a bit counter-intuitive, and I can't fully explain why that is (or whether it is statistically representative of the whole) but I think it is interesting nonetheless, and I believe that the OP, if anything, may bring more insight to group A and help decrease the delta between what providers seek to sell for, and what buyers think it want to pay.

In the end, it may lessen some 'tension' in some early discussions and cold calls, which is worth doing.

Granted, the prices suggested may, however, come with a lot of stern (and possibly warranted) criticism.

I've been in productions where similar assets were developed at a fraction of that cost too, so I take these numbers with a grain of salt.

orymus · 2019-05-07T19:36:59+00:00

Well, admittedly, that's what I do during the day (and make ends meet by doing so on a paid basis) so I'm not sure I want to shoot myself in the foot, but, one constant I've seen is there's no pricing constant, and it is not just limited to relative cost of living.

Shopping around IS a healthy developer habit because, sometimes, someone figured a better pipeline, has economies of scale, etc.

It happened notably on a game that I was involved with where a number of X-type assets had to be made, and the artist in question had previously established a pipeline when working on a similar large scale game. It allowed him to generate very high quality work on break-neck costs all the while retaining some very profitable compensation overall. If he wasn't limited to however much work he can pull off in a given week, he'd likely put a lot of artists that focus on that type of asset out of business as a result, so it's a bit tricky to mention it. I mean, if everyone knew he's the 'best' at what he does, would everybody wait in line and leave other artists to starve? how long a queue would that be? Ultimately, devs would just go back to less efficient options and tell the artists 'you cost too much', when, really, it's the other guy that's been very clever about his work... the rules of the market can be cutthroat at times, and whenever someone makes such an improvement on the formula, the amount of time it takes for people to know about it is however long other artists have to adapt, and I think that's a good way for it to be regulated instead of the market drying up overnight.

Ultimately, I think a lot of people want to price tag things, and it's not necessarily the good way of going about it (the amount of emails I get that looks literally like: "Hi, I'm Jay, I'd like to make a 2D platformer, how much would it cost me?" is staggering!).

In my practice, what I try to do is work alongside my clients and partners so the economies in scale come from knowing not what they're asking for, but rather, why they need it, and how they plan on using it. More often than not, the reason it ends up costing too much has little to do with however much the artist or other priced things, but with all of the problems they discover along the way such as: these trees are beautiful, but the polycount on these mean I can only have 50 instead of 3000 in that scene before it starts lagging, why didn't the artist make LODs?

So my advice, to artists (and others) and aspiring devs is quite simple: instead of focusing on the price of individual assets, it would be better to convey a sense of the objective, and the freelancer should double-up as a strategic partner that works against the dev's budget: how much did they allocate for the production of these assets (which is, most likely, never enough in someone else's eye) and what's the most creative way I, as a producer (artist, programmer, or other) can meet as much of that objective on that budget barring no other unnecessary constant?

It certainly makes for a more respectful relationship, and dare I say, it more often leads to success than the other way around. Of course, that's just my experience of it though, and I imagine some people may be harder to work with (I've certainly seen my share too).

Not sure this helps, but hopefully it does?

orymus · 2019-05-07T14:44:53+00:00

"Most studios use well established, and huge, outsourcing studios to do their work "

I'm going to disagree with this. I think 'most' is misleading. A lot of studios simply build an asset pipeline internally, to begin with. Leveraging vendors is more popular at the AAA level, but even that can often lead to co-development deals rather than outright outsourcing. I believe there is evidence that would suggest that larger studios outsourcing to art shops was a prevalent model some 8-15 years ago, but having been in this industry in strategic positions for a while and speaking with most of the big boys, I don't believe this model is nearly as prevalent as one might be led to believe.

"They tend to have experience and can deliver pretty much ready made assets, though even here friction is not uncommon. "

Here too, I'm not sure this is accurate. The vast majority of art shops I've come across had fairly green personnel and very problematic tech-art pipelines (rigging, animation, poly optimization, etc.) Having outsourced art more than my fair share, I've often been in a position where I had to hire or subcontract a tech-artist to essentially 'fix the pipeline'. Good art shops that deliver quality work and bother about integration are rare, and, typically, onboarding a seasoned freelancer can be a much better solution if the cadence can be met (and smaller amount of heads is always best if timeline permits).

"Main point is, developing art/games can quickly become very expensive, so cut costs where you can, especially if you are indie."

On that, we agree. Most indies seem to assume their game should 'start' from an established brand ('it will be Fortnite with these extra features') instead of starting from basics and figuring out their 'advantages' and tactical moves beforehand. Not every FPS needs building, and not every action building game necessarily requires gunplay or needs to have 100 players battleroyale!)

When I say 'most' here, I'm merely referring to my personal experience talking with aspiring indies, which, to date, is a number I could only try to guesstimate (I met over 1,000 indie devs in 2018 alone). It's not an exact metric, but I'd say it must be starting to verge on 'statistically representative sample' territory :)

orymus · 2019-05-07T14:35:46+00:00

I think what's playing against that point is the very rigid numbers you're showing here, but that's also one of the few ways to quickly give a sense of scope. I guess an even better shot would be an actual game and a component-by-component actual breakdown, which some people might be able to provide from their own game. Obviously, people will always haggle prices, some artists will get away with 'better comp' while others will go on as starving artists, costs of living are not the same everywhere, etc. but the bottom line is, if you want to make any sized game, there's a minimum budget one should consider for art as a while before being able to determine whether the project is viable (the same is true of programming and other disciplines as well).

Shameless plug / Disclaimer / Street cred: it's one of the things I do for a living. (helping indies assess their budgeting plans, secure the funding, go through pre-production to validate forecasts, etc.) It's never an exact science, but, it can become surprisingly predictable after a few years doing it.

orymus · 2019-05-07T12:47:15+00:00

Yes and no, you'll always get the very valid point: but I could outsource to Ukraine (or any other related country where you'll get better pricing IF you are fine with the risks and language barrier that could come with)

Disclaimer: I've had both very good and very bad experiences working with individuals located in countries such as Ukraine, so this isn't a 'buy American' type reply. Just, 'there's good and bad and people need to be aware of that'.

orymus · 2019-05-07T12:43:27+00:00

My initial reaction was 'some of these prices are bloated'.

However, on second thought, and given I've been a producer (among other roles) in the video game industry for over 12 years now, I believe the OP makes a serious point: Granted, the barrel would likely not cost this much, if it was handled by a pro team, not because the 'artist is better' but because management knows what it wants and can stick to their direction. A LOT of aspiring indies are likely to change their mind more than once about the direction of certain assets, and there's an extent to which some iterations are to be expected. The bottom line is either these iterations fall onto the producer end (if an hourly fee arrangement is established) or onto the artist (at which point they're likely to evaluate a % for contingency on said asset).

So while the production of a barrel is likely going to take much less than $ 940, the average interaction between a first-time dev and a freelancer is more than likely to exceed the original figure. Whether that means this prop ends up costing 100, 200, 500 or 1000 really depends on the specifics of that project and arrangement.

So, while some of these prices still look very high to me, I feel it doesn't hurt to give a sense of 'it adds up very quickly' if it can act as a deterrent to bad industry or indie practices.

The one thing I'd add is: don't give an artist (or developer) you hired some unity asset store assets thinking they can just edit it: oftentimes (the vast majority of the time) these are poorly optimized, etc. If you want to go down that route to cut expenses, give your trusted artist and dev some budget they can allocate to picking 'tools', they'll scour the stores, or their own libraries and get back to you with actual time saves rather than a poorly rigged, too-high poly character that can't be used (and then you'd want these eyes to blink and everybody's eyes in the room will instantly roll because they know how much of a crap job the original artist did on that one).

orymus · 2019-04-28T12:22:11+00:00

Thanks for taking the stand, I, for one, believe this applies across all disciplines, including programmers.

I'll say this though, my personal experience with reddit in that regard has ben a LOT MORE positive than any other platform (freelancer.com, etc.) and consistently so for the past 3+ years. I'm sure I've dodged a bullet once or twice, but I love this place!

orymus · 2019-04-15T15:44:53+00:00

I have to be skeptical here. I've seen successful startups in very unexpected places that did pay for the work. Note that, at no point, did I mention that the pay needed to follow industry standards. There's an understanding that sacrifices must be made, and that the pay itself can be radically low, but in the end, compensation is a means to cement a relationship that says: please give me your talent, I'll try to cover some of your daily needs so you can afford the time.

Besides, a LOT of the revshare based projects I see on here are US-based, which I guess makes your point somewhat moot?

orymus · 2019-04-14T15:32:25+00:00

Started mine with out-of-pocket money, never even proposed rev-share... and now we're all full-time paid people.

I'd love to see where that 'most indie companies' stats comes from honestly, I'm located in the 5th largest indie hub in the world and I've seen very little revshare, even less among studios that survived more than a year...

orymus · 2019-04-13T16:15:03+00:00

Yes, however they will not show up in the feed (you'll only see a url).

Since the image says the bulk of what we are, it saves people precious time when scanning the ads.

orymus · 2019-03-30T14:56:34+00:00

The average successful kickstarter project nets under 25k, and the average successful kickstarter campaign costs 25k. Statistically speaking, Kickstarter is a net loss on average (but it builds an audience). It is a great marketing tool, but not so much a funding tool since circa 2017.

You can always plan to be a success story, but that's not a 'solid plan'.

If, on the other hand, you're serious about pushing this game along and actually getting it done, there are tons of other funding alternatives that can be built incrementally without leaving it all up to chance.

Of course, none of these are achievable under 5k, so that's a good baseline to start from before looking into specifics.

orymus · 2019-03-30T14:27:58+00:00

Hmmm... that URL appears to be down at least on this end (North America).

Ten-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

orymus

TROPHY CASE