I wasn’t very happy with my first article about revenue shares, so I made a second one, more focused and more hands on.

This will mainly interest our contributors. However I have decided to keep it public in case it might inspire thoughts, initiatives or comments.

The main reason that contributors are offered revenue shares is that it helps looking at the project in a positive way:

• The project is exciting
• There is something to learn doing this project together
• The project will be successful and we want to be successful together

I want our game to be exciting AND profitable. To make sure that this happens, I try to give freedom and choices to all our contributors. You pick your tasks, decide when to stop and deliver at your own rate.

Aside from imagining games, writing code and doing a fair bit of everything, I make sure that all parts fit nicely together and monitor the market to make sure we’re making an awesome game that some players will like.

Anime 3D SFX : The Revenue Share FAQ

What’s a revenue share?

In short after Apple take their 29% cut, we share the remainder.
A typical share may be anything between 1% and 15%.
Initially shares pay over a 6 months period, starting from the date of product release. If you contribute significant work to another game (or an update to the same game) during the 6 months period, your share is renewed for another 6 months.

How are revenue shares evaluated?

I take three factors in consideration:

1. Output – how much work was delivered, compared to the overall size of the project.
2. Time – how much effort was put into the work. This is why keeping track of your time is a good idea.
3. Quality – usually I assure this upfront by choosing who we are working with, and suggesting tasks that are suitable for them.

How much % do I get?

Initially I start with a grid. For example the grid for Spectral looks like this:

• 9% - Game Design / Concept / Story
• 29% – Programming (does not include engine development)
• 14% – Level Design
• 24% – 3D art
• 5% – 2D art
• 10% – Sound
• 9% – Marketing / Admin / Management

So if you’re doing ‘sound’, the maximum you might get is 10%, unless I revise the grid later on.

Then as we go along and you deliver artwork, I will let you know how your share is doing. Typically the first 1% or 2% are complimentary (easy to get), then it’s more based on your output, and the last points are hard to get (the devil is in the details).

I’m trying to do it nicely – so you know that your work is valued while delivering – but without wasting time on petty calculations.

How much money will I get?

Likely, more than you would if you charged reasonable fees.

How do you even know that?

I regularly spend time estimating how much money games make, and how much risk is associated with making certain kinds of games.
Additionally the outlook is pretty good compared to my first game, which I did part time, as a solo project, and without any experience of the market. Antistar made some money, and
still makes a little bit of money although it’s been out for 18 months already.

What is the maximum we might get?

If we make a really good game, it could make $10,000 per month for a few months. For an indie game on a low budget, this is ambitious.

When will I get my money?

In a worse case scenario, you start getting paid 2 or 3 months after product release. Apple does not credit our account right away, and we may not have clear funds other than what they send,
although we get daily reports about our income and we share this information with you.

For minor shares, I may extrapolate to reduce the number of transactions (meaning, pay you in advance).

What if something goes wrong?

Hopefully we fix it. Typically problems can arise from undetected usability issues, or initially pricing may not be optimal.
Contrary to popular belief, getting it 100% right from day 1 is not a requirement (well, we try to!)

Few people know that Angry Birds lingered at the bottom of the charts for several months before the guys who made it fully digested the fact that hardly anybody (on iPhone/ iPod Touch) would pay more than $1 for it.

What is the idea behind the 6 months limit?

There are running costs involved in the game business. Minimally this includes developing and maintaining a game engine, or at least a game framework, buying test devices, doing customer support, sometimes buying a little advertisement, PR or industry reports.

These running costs are ‘not on the grid’.

Overall, as I work full time on our projects, I also need to make it worth my time no matter how much fun it is.

In certain situations I will offer an extension to the 6 months period, whether or not you remain active on our team.

Why do I get $100 after completing a few tasks?

Because I think it’s nice.
If you prefer you can get a %1 share instead. Seems like a good bet but personally I would rather get a little money first, which would put me in a good mood to contribute more work.

Aside from doing my part, how can I help?

1. Keep your eyes peeled. Seize every opportunity to learn more about the product.
2. Communicate! A virtual, international team is cool but it also means that we need to put extra efforts in letting each other know what goes and how it goes.
   => Lack of communication increases the cost of integration, leaving less time for finishing touches.
3. Share your opinions and your doubts. The design of this game has already improved a lot because some people tilted their head a little and pointed something out.
4. Add a nice touch to everything you do. Step back from your work and think, how could I add a nice touch?
5. Be proud of your work and let your friends know about it. If you can’t even do that, then you probably missed point 2 (share your opinions and doubts).
6. Translate the game and description in your own language (if other than English). This makes a big difference and can get done in a couple of hours (by default we do English, Japanese, Chinese, French and hopefully German – and we do it well!).

Today I’m giving my own, biased opinion about what an independent game team is like, and what they do. I was thinking posting this on my DA page but it’s kinda slow, and DA doesn’t have much formatting.

A Team

Minimally, a video game project needs three guys: a programmer, a visual artist and a musician. If these three guys are talented, motivated and committed, they might make a good game.

However it is tricky, because these three guys will be doing many unexpected things that have little to do with artwork, programming or sound. To be frank, one of the three guys better have enough guts to tell others about the project and bring new recruits.

Beautiful Beginning

A game project hopefully starts with a great concept, a great idea or both.

Game concept - It can be anything. A character. An interaction. A constraint. A landscape. A family of polygons (Tetraminoes?).

It’s the seed. If the concept is great it’s already enough to aggregate a team and start the project. On the other hand, many games – including many of the best games – don’t have a great/revolutionary concept (see below)

Game idea – It’s a description of ‘what the game will be like’. Again it’s varied (and usually lacks detail) and can include pictures, words, sounds and interactions. It’s more detailed than a game concept – maybe an A4 page.

A great game idea doesn’t need a revolutionary concept – maybe the concept is just ‘make a fantasy RPG’. Nothing new here, right? On the other hand a poor game idea (and a poor game) can spawn from the greatest betterest game concept (How many stupid, unplayable/dull clones of Tetris have we seen?)

Creativity & Design

Throughout the project, designers are needed at all times. Craft is one thing, creativity is often another. Things that creatives do on the game team:

• Create and refine the game idea and concept
• Design environments and creatures
• Imagine interactions and features
• Design levels
• …

Generally speaking, being creative means taking decisions. Drawing a new kind of monster means deciding what the monster will be like. You can do that using a pen, by making a collage or directly in 3D. At this stage it’s the design that matters, not the craft. Obviously being crafty is quite helpful to communicate your design to somebody else.

There are many crafty people that feel uncomfortable with this decision-making process. They can model a monster, but they want to know first what it will look like, or they worry the boss won’t like it. They can create platforms in 3D or using pixel art, but they don’t know where to put the platforms to make the game fun.

That’s why we need designers.

Product Management and Vision

After a while, making graphics and animations, designing levels and programming them, we need think about two things:

• Is a game ever gonna be released? If the project is close-ended and the game idea is very detailed, typically the answer is yes (unless the whole thing is bloated and impossible to realize). Otherwise the game won’t be released until at least one person on the team feel the need to wrap up, or exit one phase and enter another.
• Is it the game we wanted? When I’m modeling lavatories, or fixing the shape of a model’s eyebrows, I’m not thinking about the overall gaming experience. In fact I might be thinking about something else entirely (maybe not even thinking anything at all). From time to time somebody needs to take a little distance and figure whether the project is going in the intended direction. At least we want to know it’s going in an interesting direction.

Many teams have a kind of leader. Even if nobody said he was the leader, he still is. Often the guy bossing the team is also making sure the product is released, and the product we are releasing is what we wanted to make. Sometimes the guy who came up with the idea isn’t the leader, but still manages the vision – nagging everybody, sharing his ideas, scolding, despairing and inspiring.

Are we getting rich just yet?

If you’re not marketing your product, probably not. This is done in two ways:

• Let people know about your product. That’s the old way, still fashionable.
• Make a product that can be sold. That’s the new way – right from the start, ask yourself if you (or somebody else) would like to play the game once it’s finished. If not, maybe you need another game idea; or find out whether you’re doing it for bucks or the sake of it.

Not everybody’s born with insights about the market and natural PR talent. Knowing the market means not only finding about the latest games and trying them out, it also means looking beyond the hype to understand which products are really doing good, and why.

In summary…

In summary, the three guys in the ‘minimal team’ are signing for a lot more than you’d think. They assume a variety of roles – at the very least:

1. Game Designer – come up with concepts and ideas for games
2. Concept artist – help refine a game idea using stories, drawings, musical ideas etc… At a later stage collaborate closely with the level designer, 2D/3D guys and musicians.
3. Level designer – define the layout of levels, including the shape of corridors, where to put bridges, where to place monsters, gold and dildos etc…
4. Engine programmer – code essential features, like 3D visualization and sound, input support etc…
5. Game Programmer - code the game interaction and levels, the game menus, etc…
6. 3D modeling dude – needs an explanation?
7. Animator - … ?
8. Texture artist – … ?
9. Illustrator – … ?
10. Product manager – make sure that our game is released sometimes.
11. Vision manager - make sure we release the product we wanted
12. Marketing and PR – monitor the market and understand what’s hot. Give advice about game ideas, designs etc… Let people know about our great game.
13. H.R – find talented people to help with all of the above.

That’s it. Can’t get rid of the feeling that this presentation is upside down, but it will have to do for now.