Indie Developers Getting Screwed by Big Publishers

[racketboy]

Just read this:
http://www.magicalwasteland.com/2008/08 ... e_time.htm

"A startup developer was working on a small downloadable game for a large publisher. The publisher canceled the game midway through development for business reasons, and didn’t pay the developer for the work completed thus far – in violation of the terms of the contract. When asked about the money, the publisher’s lawyer got on the phone.

“Listen, guys,” said the lawyer. “I speak regularly to my colleagues in similar positions at the other major publishers. If you turn this into a big issue or try to take legal action against us, I’m going to tell these people that, based on my experience, you are a very difficult developer to work with. And when they hear that, they may avoid doing business with you.”

It was a cheap scare tactic, but the words resonated. As a nascent company with no name or reputation built up – no track record to fall back on that could dispute the lawyer’s threatened claims – there was little choice in the matter but to settle for a deal.

This is one of the reasons why in the game industry, as in film and music, the money for interesting new projects overwhelmingly finds its way to those groups with a well-established (and well-communicated) prior history."

Quite sad.
Anybody else heard of similar stories?

[lordofduct]

And that's why you keep a tape recorder on hand... heh.

A claim like that would ring strong in court.

And it's a disheartening factor. EA loses out on a small project and lose several grand, it ain't no sweat off their back. If I got pooched for as little as a few grand I'd be on the street.

[LivingtheDream]

I've heard plenty of stories like that over the years..it has been going on for as long as video games have been on this Earth.

A good example is Atari's old policy of not giving the people that worked on a game any credit, see; http://www.retrothing.com/2007/09/ataris-biggest-.html

Personally I'm trying to break in to the business and it's hard. Through my college I met a guy that does have experience in the industry and basically he's told me; "Work hard, don't expect a ton of money at first if ever, and work on as many projects as you can. Getting credit is no always a good thing, because if you work a game that turns out to be awful your name will be associated with it". He also told me that most people end up working on games that they are really not interested in. For example he told me it's possible for him to put in a word for me at EA but he said it would probably be a place that I wouldn't enjoy working at.

Hopefully the problem with publishers will go away in the future though. Now that we have the ability to distribute our work via the internet we can by-pass the need to press CDs/DVDs and paying for stock in advance. We also have the ability to sell our games directly to people through Xbox live, WiiShop, and the Playstation Network.

[RackGaki]

It's really sad to hear... one reason why I like to financially support Doujin or Indie developers. They usually need every penny.

[lordofduct]

I've heard plenty of stories like that over the years..it has been going on for as long as video games have been on this Earth.

A good example is Atari's old policy of not giving the people that worked on a game any credit, see; http://www.retrothing.com/2007/09/ataris-biggest-.html

Personally I'm trying to break in to the business and it's hard. Through my college I met a guy that does have experience in the industry and basically he's told me; "Work hard, don't expect a ton of money at first if ever, and work on as many projects as you can. Getting credit is no always a good thing, because if you work a game that turns out to be awful your name will be associated with it". He also told me that most people end up working on games that they are really not interested in. For example he told me it's possible for him to put in a word for me at EA but he said it would probably be a place that I wouldn't enjoy working at.

Hopefully the problem with publishers will go away in the future though. Now that we have the ability to distribute our work via the internet we can by-pass the need to press CDs/DVDs and paying for stock in advance. We also have the ability to sell our games directly to people through Xbox live, WiiShop, and the Playstation Network.

Yeah, working EA is boring as shit I hear. While I was in LA I heard horror stories about EA and Activision alike. My roommate worked Activision and said it was just mindless drone work all day long when your on a team of a bajillion. Really your should be doing it merely for the love of the final product, something like a video game now a days takes such a large team that you aren't intimate with the entirity anymore. You've got your one little task like, "scenario scripting" or "animation interfacing".

and getting a job is all about knowing people and only that. Like my buddy got his job merely because he somehow started communicating with his idle 3D modeler and that guy found out my buddy didn't have a job and one day was just like, "oh hey, you're gonna get a call in the next hour for a job in New York... take it." That was crazy though, it was weird, my best friend would go ON and ON about the guy (Ben Mathis is his name, he originally heard about him because his professors at SCAD bitched about the kid, he was a SCAD drop out), one day we were designing some MOBs for an indie project when he started pulling up Mathis work for ideas and the sort. He then gets this IM from some random joe.

He talks to this random joe for like a half hour before he recognizes the similarity between the username and the website he was on, and was like, wait a second... it turned out to be the man and my buddy literally fell out of his chair. I mean come on, what if your all time idle just called you up one day and was like, "hey, your pretty talented at what you do."

What kind of stuff do you do? Artist, programmer, designer? I ask mostly because my buddy up in NY and I still work on side projects (spare time no funds kind of stuff, just to build portfolios)...

[LivingtheDream]

I'm a programmer who loves doing level design and making scripted AI for impossible boss battles.

Art is not my strong point and I doubt it ever will be. I grew up in a house full of artist, my grandmother has won many awards for her oil works and sells them to people that have too much money. I just never had the talent for it...

My design background is mostly in the world of print. I've been running a press for as long as I can remember. This is probably why I got into programming/designing for the web because it's very similar to how we do things in the world of print.

Right now I'm a novice when it comes to programming in the gaming world. I got my start in web based stuff back in the mid-90s and I'm just now moving in to C, C++, and C#. As of late I've been putting together simple stuff with the XNA framework. I've also been writing very simple applications for the Dreamcast and Wii. I got a few projects I've been planning on doing over winter break and next summer. One is a simple game built with the XNA framework that is based on a football board game. Another is porting Super Mario War to the Wii and Dreamcast (a port exists for the Dreamcast already but it's an older version and could be improved a lot). For the most part I'm just reading a lot of other people's working code and trying to figure out how it works.

[lordofduct]

heh, same here, obsessed with AI and impossible boss battles.

Our first project was in XNA and my buddy kept getting upset with me about how "oldschool" I wanted the gameplay to be. And when I say "oldschool", he meant "really freakin' HARD!"

Right now I'm trying to create this AI engine that's light weight enough to run on Flash, but also can be brought to XNA for 3D and to load it up with tons more entities. My buddy and I have a little Pikmin style game that is based around it where the whole gameplay is based around having to "persuade" the computer entities into solving puzzles. As of this far I have entities that path find based on a series of "sense node trees" that builds an applicable map of its surroundings via smell, sight and sound. Of course this is more figurative then literal.

[LivingtheDream]

Sounds neat.

It's always better to have a friend working on things with you. Is your buddy local or do you guys communicate mostly through the 'net?

I'm thankful I met a guy on "the same level" as myself over at the school. He's very good with photoshop and I've got more experience in programming so it is more or less a perfect fit. It's always good to have someone to bounce ideas off of too.

I usually go over to his place once or twice a week and we'll work on our projects. Sometimes we don't get any work done though...instead we end up smoking some of that green stuff, getting lazy, and from then on we are useless! We either start playing video games (the research part of "research and development" ) or talking about things I don't normally discuss with other people (sci-fi becoming reality, future of gaming/people/the internet, ancient texts, and well the list goes on and on...).

BTW old school gameplay == the best. I love an impossibly hard game! Games today are too damn easy.

[lordofduct]

He used to live down here in my house, but when I left to LA he left to New York. I've subsequently returned to Florida, but he remained in New York. My plans are to move up there soon, 1 to work with him locally again and 2 because it's where I am from initially and I'm itching to get home.

Oh man, and research wise... we don't smoke any of the green stuff, but maybe we should because we get into absurd situations. This one time a while back we went to Everglades City to take photos for textures... well this was our excuse, we really just wanted to hang out with the gators. Next thing we know we decide to drive to Arizona for desert textures... which turned into San Fransisco then Seattle, we got all the way to Iowa rafting down the Mississippi with hippies when the mosquitos convinced it was time to get back to Florida.

[LivingtheDream]

Sounds like fun...I know how much fun hanging out with the gators can be! Personally I'm from NC but I've spent plenty of time down in your area as I have family in Jacksonville.

Wish I had the spare cash to go on a road trip...lately it has been hard just to keep food in the house. -,- But that's what I get for living in a small town in NC I suppose..not much work around here for a young guy that knows nothing but computers.