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Unions seem to heighten wages, not lower them.
The bottom line is this. If a portal believes they can make more money than they are paying you, they will bid a game up to its market value.Once it passes market value, no one will bid it up anymore, simple as that.
so what malee is saying is that he doesnt expect money to be made from his games? money makes the games better. if you can get the same amount of money for a crap game or a good game, why make a good game? money makes the games better. its the only reason why i "try" to make games. Doesnt mean i wont last long.
VERY OFF TOPIC!
My comment was specifically about price fixing. Union members all adhere to the price determined by the union and then go on strike when someone thinks they are paying too much. Basically, the strike process is used to blackmail an organization into paying artificially inflated wages.Quote:
Unions seem to heighten wages, not lower them.
Personally, it drives me crazy. We have to pay someone 100 dollars an hour to help us put up our booth at trade shows. We don't NEED their help and we didn't ASK for their help, we are REQUIRED to use their help because it is a union facility. Basically, we are paying someone who knows nothing about how to put up our booth an exorbitant fee to do easy manual labor. The booth is always put up during business hours, it involves no heavy lifting, nothing dangerous, etc. What am I paying 100/hour for? Heck, it'd be a rip off at 20/hour. At the 100/hr price, they should be giving me a shiatsu massage with a catered meal while they put up the booth! To add insult to injury, the union management seem to be universally rude even though we might pay them 500+ dollars at a trade show for a couple of hours of work. At least the union laborers themselves seem nice enough.
Another example? We have carpet in the booth that works like a puzzle. It's a series of interlocking carpet tiles 2'x2' - for some asinine reason, we have to pay a union guy to lay them on the ground. It takes about 5 minutes to lay out our 10'x10' booth carpet. They charge us 100/dollars because the labor is by the hour. Another gotcha, depending on the state, is that if you have extension cords, they have to be connected by a licensed electrician - seriously. Another 100/hr person with a 1 hour minimum charge. Come on!
Anyways, enough ranting - this is a very sore spot for me because I hate wasting money and in this case, I can't consider it anything but a total waste in the end.
Maybe it's the fact that I'm on a salary which makes me think differently about money, I know I have a income no matter what (unless I become sloppy) so I strive for creating quality not crap, which inturn gives me my money.
"if you can get the same amount of money for a crap game or a good game, why make a good game"
this is why the industry is so ****ty right now (imo), because of thinking like this. How about you make a good game, get the same money as a crap one, then make 2 more good games because people want to play them, and so on.
I really want flash to leave its coffee break style and move on.
In countries like India it costs you only two dollars for a similar job.Quote:
Originally Posted by webgeek
This is exactly the reason why Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has come into play. This increases unemployment in USA:mad:
And what this means?Less experimental games?Release even if you think its not perfect enough ?Or means you plan everything before start?Quote:
Originally Posted by webgeek
Some good responses in here ( Some scary ones too ).
Can we try and keep it on topic where possible please ? Having both being a union member and then a manger having to justify every single thing to the union I'm aware of both sides, it's not so clear cut, but it is off topic :)
"And what this means?Less experimental games?Release even if you think its not perfect enough ?"
For fear of answering for Mike, from my own experience making games for myself I always had a list of features and a deadline. All self imposed, and all adhered to.
What a lot of people do is just throw every idea they can think of at a game, which just results in the game becoming vapourware because the code gets messy where things are added and a smallish game turns into a monster, and it's hard to stay motivated with something which is basically really hard work.
When doing commercial work you don't have the luxury of not being able to finish something, no matter what it's got to be done. If you stay realistic when making your own games so they are complete and good and done within a realistic time frame, then when you start doing paid work for clients it won't hit you as hard.
( As a side note to that, and going slightly o/t myself, it really pains me when someone posts a complete commercial game here and get the usual "Nice, but it would be good if...". A lot of the time we're aware of what it would be good to add, but in a commercial world you need to have a cut off point too. It's not laziness or lack of ability, it's a case of how much do you overspend on a project to add all the nice to haves ? )
"if you can get the same amount of money for a crap game or a good game, why make a good game"
Money is a happy side effect of what we all do. The better you do it, the more money you get, it's as simple as that. That, aside from taking a pride in what you make, should be reason enough to always strive to be better than your last game. And to be better than those around you.
If you can honestly be pleased making crap games then it's up to you.
"If its not a secret, why are you afraid to discuss it? Why is it a rule not to discuss it? Whats wrong with stating the obvious?"
Cancer, that's a nasty sod isn't it. Obvious, but nothing really to do with Flash game development.
Quite a few guys here have summed it up really well, that this forum is for the discussion of game development. The how to, the why, and the end results ( By that I mean an actual game to play, not how much has gone into peoples bank accounts ).
The boardroom seems to be a nice place to talk money amounts ( So long as any posts don't fall into price fixing ), it's pretty much what it's there for, although I think this discussion feels far from over.
Squize.
I think one thing that has not been given much heed in this discussion up until now is the 'Client'. Instead of all the developers discussing in between each other what's the best price, mainly it will come down to the agreement between the developer/company and the client for a specific project. Somewhere, you have to use your own brains to crack the right deal.
Not planning to stopping this discussion though, just FYI.
Regarding the link between money and the quality of the game, I think there is a big difference between making money from your games, and making games for money.
As I think has been mentioned before, the big commercial games companies have been going downhill fast with the quality of the games they produce, why? Because they are designing games with the end goal of making as much cash as possible even if the game suffers for it. On the other hand, there are countless indie games that have been made for no profit that are extremely innovative and fun.
With that said, everyone has to survive, and there is nothing wrong with trying to make some money from the hobby you love, providing that is a secondary goal.
Ali
Interesting thread.
The debate of whether money should be discussed here has always interested me. Personally I like reading about money/contracts and basically all the **** that people don't usually want to talk about precisely because people don't want to talk about it! :). People who write e-books and make money from them or companies who write reports and sell them for a fortune each can do that because they contain info that is not otherwise usually available. We're all looking for useful info that can help us get ahead in some way whether it be information regarding the financial side of things or technical stuff.
Now, having said that I like reading that stuff, do I actually think it's a good idea for it ("it" being money) to be discussed in this forum? no, I do not. The reason is simple, and I'll give you an example. Recently I needed some CMS work done on a website I was creating. I didn't have the time to sort it out myself so I went to one of the many websites that offer freelancers wanting to work on projects. I would say 90% of the freelancers on offer were from India or countries nearby, and they were always the cheapest. I found this to be the same situation on all the websites I visited offering similar services. And they were not just a "bit" cheaper they were a LOT cheaper then similar services offered from freelancers in the west.
Now there are reasons (prejudice, not convenient etc etc) why companies in the west don't all rely upon cheaper people in the east, but due to the international nature of the business we are in, I think its not long before most companies look to our eastern cheaper counterparts to get development work done. The only exception to this would be developers who are leaders in their fields, say like Carlos Ulloa (pv3d) working on a Sony project for example. These people will do well, because they are way out front in what they specialise in. But I can see a lot of development work being done outside the west, and discussions of project costs can only hasten that I think.
And we really must divide up projects done for digital advertising agencies and projects done for games portals, as they are usually (I say usually because I know of a few very high standard Flash games done by digital agencies, but usually its true) of a different standard. It will be harder for quality game projects for games portals for example to be farmed out to far off places then much simpler coffee break games.
As for making money from games, it really does depend on if you want to do it as a hobby or as a full time profession, and then if you want to make a "bit" of money or if you want to make mega bucks! So what we got there is 4 possibilities.
Hobby:
1) Make a bit of money - Cool, just knock out games in your spare time, use the various means available to make a bit of money from them (google ads, kongregate etc etc)
2) Make mega bucks - Spend years and much time becoming an expert in AS3, then create some amazing game that is way ahead of everyone elses game out there, so yours stands out and some portal buys the rights for big money, OR spend years and much time trying to think of some easy to do but unique interesting game idea, and then do it (line rider, DTD etc).
Working 9-5 as a games developer:
1) Make a bit of money - Go work in some agency doing games development. Work your butt off to earn so so money.
2) Make mega bucks - Errr.....stop being a games developer and work your way up to creative director, then senior partner?
The point of the above is that there are no EASY, NO RISK ways of making money from games. No matter what you do it will take a lot of time and hard work, and more often then not a big helping of luck. But if that doesn't scare you off, then cool go for it.
And to finish this ramble, I'll shift the emphisis slightly from development to design. Going back to what I was talking about at the start, regarding cheap labour out east. This doesn't seem to apply to "design", i.e illustration, animation, graphics design, motion graphics design etc etc etc. I visited a few sites recently looking at freelance illustrators, and the spread of freelancers was from around the world, with the highest earners actually being in the west. My point here is not that people in India etc cannot create cool digital design, of course they can, but this area of our business is much less down to knowledge and more down to talent, which I think is a lot harder to put a cost to.
Very interesting read coming from Boombanguk.
Heh, sometimes I get a hostile feeling in most forums due to what the Indian developer image is looking like :) but I am sure there are lots of people that we do end up overlooking when it comes to creative talent in countries like India, due there names or country name or whatever that might make you think. There must be n number of great games that many Indian developers might have done, but I know of one. You might have heard of the game 'UNO' for the XBLA. That was developed in India, and I read about it that it was one of the top selling games for XBLA, leaving behind games of capcom and even Mortal Kombat (if i recollect properly i.e., i might be proved wrong here though).
You're right on some parts, but I do hope that people don't start tagging people with the countries they are from, rather look at there quality of projects and services they provide.
Really giving my honest opinion about this, we will discuss game prices here, those groups of people who do work for cheap will give that a read here, and then they will do what they specialize in, competitively cheap work. Please guys, give a thorough thought to that matter.
Honestly, whether we discuss prices here will not effect my decision to outsource or not. The truth of the matter is I already do because I get the same quality for a much cheaper prices. Its a global market nowdays and developers in India are just as good in quality as developers here.
Your always telling us that sponsors have to compete and pay the increased prices or get out, I'm telling developers they have to do the same thing. Its not a one-way road.
Companies like Electrotank will continue to do well because they make products that are hard to imitate. But for most game developers, thats not true. Most of us in this forum have some development experience and many of us have made at least a couple of games. Even many of the sponsors, like myself, have made many games outselves, so when we talk about price, we're comparing our own games to the games we get offered for sponsership and we can estimate based on the quality how many hours it would take for us to make a game of similar quality.
I think a major reason for not discussing amounts is being missed: geography
The fact we all come from various places with wildly different economies makes any discussion of money pretty much impossible. There have already been references to global outsourcing practices, and with the rise of the virtual office, this practice can even make a difference across much smaller geographic regions. For instance, the same game development can be performed by someone living in Arkansas where the cost of living is 1/2 that of someone living in California (just made the 1/2 up for emphasis).
If you allow the discussion of money, you need a uniform basis upon which to build that discussion, and you just can't do that in a forum made up of people from a multitude of economic environments.
And as for the main reason not to discuss moeny, if you don't think price-fixing is an issue, just be sure to tell the DA that when the first indictments come down. Anytime there is an explosive growth in the amount of money being spent in a particular industry, as there is now in casual games, the Feds in the US start to salivate!
Discussion about money took place many times in these forums.
as I have already stated in previous threads a Flash game is a piece of art. Can you buy a Picasso, or a Rembrandt for $100?
However, Picassos, and Rembrandts cannot be faked or pirated …with ease!!!
I am personally against discussing money, yet from a business perspective I see reasons for it. However, the final verdict in my opinion should be not to discuss it, because this just isn't the right site/forum for such discussions for a great many reasons.
The main reason I'm against, is there is too wide a variety of people "types" here and because of this, there are too many points of view and too much ignorance as well (no offense). Why am I being so blunt? The fact is, some people here think: We should all be on equal footing; That all Flash jobs go to Flash kit developers; That what goes on at Flashkit represents the entire world market; This is all wrong.
Let me explain: If you were a freelance artist, who has built up 10 years experience illustrating and painting, would you feel threatened by new artists working at "entry level" rates? Would you feel threatened by art contests that pay tiny prize amounts? No, you shouldn't.
When I was a teen, I drew graphics for the sake of personal am bi tion and accomplishment. I would enter contests. The prizes (if won) would not be fair compensation for the time put into the work. But that's not the point. You enter contests for the "badge of honor" that winning gets you. It looks good on a resume and validates your achievement in your young career. Today, as a professional, I would never think to enter contests. They are now beneath me, but I would not argue that NO artists should ever enter contests.
My next step up was trying to be good enough to get paid. I considered myself the best pixel artist, based on what I saw in games. My first freelance job was drawing graphics for a Commodore 64 game. I agreed on $100 per "screen". (These were equivalent to 110x160 pixels bitmaps). I drew with a joystick, and it would take anywhere from 6 to 10 hrs per bitmap, with the attention to detail and polish I gave them. So we're talking anywhere from $10 to $16 per hour. Some of you would holler at this injustice! But previously I was earning $3.50/hr at a fast food joint. Why would anyone begrudge me for accepting this first job?
The bottom line is that experience, quality, and professionalism command a premium. And it is just plain "insecure" to worry that some guy fresh off the Tutorial boat is going to take your work away from you. On the flip side, it's ridiculous for the inexperienced guy to think he deserves as much as the pro. No matter how good you are, there are things you only get through experience.
The fact is, ad agencies, marketing companies, etc, are willing to pay premiums for those three things I bolded above. Companies with big budgets are not going to go trolling web forums looking for some newbie Flash dev and then nickle and dime them to make them the world's best Flash game for chump change. If you are not in this league, then don't expect top dollar. if you ARE in this league, then stop worrying about what the newbies and "junior" level Flash developers are settling for. Stop worrying about how much a portal MIGHT be earning compared to what they pay. Every business is based on trying to earn more than they pay out. Worry about what YOUR skillset is worth and go out there and get the business you feel you deserve.
An example would be logo design. You can get a logo designed for $50. But do you think fortune 500 companies pay $50? No, they spend upward of $100,000 for their branding. Can you imagine these professionals posting on forums "oh noes... people making logos for $50! My world will come crashing down!" I hope the ridiculousness is obvious.
So, if you are young and inexperienced, remember that you have to climb the ladder and earn your way up to big bucks. If you're older and more experienced, trying to do this as your livelihood, then stay out of the sponsorship scene. It's obviously not where you should be. Just remember that kids with no rent to pay eventually move out of mom's basement and end up having to make more. This cycle of life, climbing the ladder, and pay inequity based on experience is true in all fields.
PS: I want to add that this claim that discussing prices is "price fixing" is a JOKE. It's not price fixing unless the groups involved have some sort clout and power. If all Flash developers were here on this site, and agreed to certain pricing, and then people had no choice than to pay those prices, then yeah, that's price fixing. But to think Flashkit represents the end-all and be-all of this planet's Flash game developers is laughable. This forum doesn't have that kind of power or strength in numbers.
What C64 game was that Ray?
Excellent post guv.
Squize.
you tell 'em Ray, very eloquent!
good stuff, I agee completely
Excellent post Ray!