Indie Company Thread

Hello everyone i'm new here and I have and idea for a business. This business would be more of a network then what you would think of as a company. The idea is a network of independent game developers who work together on their individual games collectively, with the main developer as the one who picks and chooses what will be in the game and what will be thrown away. Once the game is released the pay will be distributed to everyone 70-30, 70% going to the games main developer and 30 distributed to the ones also working on the game. This would provide security to designers because they would have a better game to produce, than having spent 5 years and alot of money on a game that tanks, all while maintaining his ideas, concepts, and design.

Now i'm only 17 and have no real knowledge of any business practice's, so I want to see what other people thing of this idea. pros, cons, likes, dislikes, improvements, or even reasons to trash the idea.

Edited by: Pugnator2

that sounds like a great idea for a business, and if you do decide to do it pm me

It sounds like an interesting idea, but I think you need some more technical details down before you're getting started. When you have a lot of people relying on your internal management, it becomes vital that you have someone who is quite competent, being responsible for all the management.

Also, to me, this model essentially just sounds like being hired by a larger company. All depending on how many people you end up getting on board, and how the distribution is across what you define what's the "main company" and who's the outliers, there could also be some issues with payment distribution. Point is, be careful with throwing around numbers like that, if they're just from the top of your head. Make sure you end up compensating for work efforts and the amount of people working in the outlying companies, or it could do a one-eighty and become a really bad deal for the indie devs.

Finally, I'm aware that this is just a matter of taste in business practices, but a lot of people are in the indie development scene because of the freedom it grants, not just because of budget limitations. Having a centralized administration goes against that freedom, which could be problematic. I'm not saying that this idea isn't possible - it actually sounds quite interesting - but we can't know whether it'll work in practice or not, and that's an investment insecurity for the companies involved.

On the other hand, it could be a good way to get some content on your CV and for your portfolio, if you're new to the industry and are struggling on that part. So by extension of that argument, I could imagine that there'd be some decent amount of interest in the concept. Still, the biggest question remains, however; where does the funding for payments come from, before sales?

Thanks for the great feedback Genero. I have not yet truly sat down to think this through, so sorry for the unfinished thought. Now about the taste in business part, I was thinking that this kind of organization would be great for people developers who like the freedom. The only thing they are really giving up in terms of that freedom is the time it would take to start their project, but with multiple people working on the games in the exact way the games would be produced fast enough that the delay would be kinda short (depending on how many people would actually work at such a place). Apart from that I was thinking kickstarter is a great way to get enough start up money to fund rent space, work space, and salary.

This is indeed a great idea. I'm sure it'll be easier to handle on a smaller scale. There is a lot of trust that needs to come across before people start working for each other. In theory I would love to be part of something either really really cool, or really really successful. But it would also take some courage to blindly create, for my part, animation, graphics for some other visionary's project.

On another note, most projects demand excessive amounts of assets to be created. When working 9to5 that is doable, but using sparetime might be a stretch. I dunno.

andreasng wrote:
On another note, most projects demand excessive amounts of assets to be created. When working 9to5 that is doable, but using sparetime might be a stretch. I dunno.

It depends on the project. Imagine you make a very stylized game with flat shaded textures - those models don't take long to model.
If you want to hand paint everything and have a lot of unique meshes, it will probably take very long to make assets for an entire map. I think the best application for this idea would be mobile and puzzle games, since they can be done comparably fast with a small team. Even if some bail out (which will happen, even without notice from them), you will still have a chance of finishing a game.

The general problem is gonna be the stubbornness of Game Developers. Even when we know something is not right, it may take a while (or forever), until we will admit it to each other So how can one Developer have more say than the others? I think the problem was described above. Project Leads can also feel like another person is interfering too much with their game concept. It happened to me when I jumped on a project that was poorly organized, and I tried to get it on track. I had a different vision than the mod leader and couldn't really help the project without his full trust. That never happened and another good mod fell apart. It's just very hard. You need credentials, you need paperwork and possibly a pool of really active people to make this interesting enough to those sceptics, like me.

Can't see it working for many reasons regardless of the split cost. Quality control and amount of work contributed are the 2 biggest things that effect this kind of idea. You can't measure the quality of the contribution digitally and you use content as a measure of share profit due to lack of quality assurance. You need generally need experienced humans to judge that and hire/pay on an individual basis.

Also designer is a very loose term and role on a game projects worth is better for of as experience*skill*hours = paygrade(profit)
Ideas are actually quite cheap but the good implementation of them from experienced designers is extremely valuable.

This model would work better for solo/duo gameplay scripters/balancers who wish to commission small extra work tasks perhaps with some kind of percentage share system.

Pugnator, this isn't to burst your bubble, but it's really important that you take note of this, if you seriously think this works as a backup plan: Don't rely on Kickstarter. You will only do well on Kickstarter if

1) People know you already, you're an established name in the industry.

2) You have a really, really good idea that just hits straight home. Odds for that are very slim, and you'll still have to work hard on the advertisement front before launching the campaign, or it'll still end up in the shitter.

If you want to get funding from there, beyond having filled out either (or both) of those qualifications listed above, you will also need to have a very tangible prototype. You can't just sell an idea, you need to sell a full concept. In other words, you'll need a serious workaround for that part, unless you're willing to take a gigantic risk - something I'm sure the involved parties wouldn't be too happy about either.

Beyond what I just said, that also means that there's an inherent problem with Kickstarter for new startups, as they'll run into a catch-22: You need resources to make prototypes, but you need prototypes if you want to advertise your concept and gain resources.