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[Dorgam]

Hello,

As in the topic of this post, I am planning to make a game that I end up selling and I have two other guys who wants to make the game with me but I am not sure how I should divide the earnings. I am going to describe each person role and I hope you can suggest me a fair share.

1. Me, I will Game Design (Mechanics and levels) and program the whole thing.
2. The Artist, he will basically do all the game art.
3. The Musician, He will do all the game sounds.

So what is the fairest percentage everyone should get?
Thank you.

[ProgramGamer]

Why not split it equally? Since you seem to have a small team, I think having good relations with your teammates is just as important as, if not more than, profit.

[ThemsAllTook]

Yeah, none of those three roles are intrinsically more valuable than the others. In the absence of other factors, equal split sounds most reasonable.

What's your current relationship with your two teammates?

[Conker]

33.33%

[Rarykos]

It looks like you're just collaborating so split equally. That's fair.

33.33%

[wisetaner]

I think you are all missing a critical item here, whether or not you have a business name or have filed tax forms. Anyone who makes any amount of money through brick and mortar or online sales, still has to pay taxes. I'm only suggesting you take the cautious route and file the proper taxes forms in advance, better that than finding out years later that you owe money to the Gov.

Oh and aren't you going to re-invest in your group or company?? Or do you just plan on this being a one time gig?

[Dorgam]

What's your current relationship with your two teammates?

The musician is a friend I made a Ludum Dare entry with before(Never met him) and I made with him a game for the Ludum Dare 32
The Artist a guy I found on Twitter who I made with the Ludum Dare 32 game.

Now this Ludum 32 game we all made together was good so I wanted to make a full version and sell it and keep working with the same guys who started it.

Does an equity share mean the time we all work on it should be the same? I mean I am a college student who is about to not take a summer class and work on the game almost full time, the others have jobs and will work from time to time.

[ProgramGamer]

That is still something you should talk about with your teammates. If you need the money, or if you feel that you deserve more, you should share your concerns with your team, that way at least everyone is on the same page. And if they request too much, then it's your decision to agree and share, or cancel the project, though I doubt that it'll come to that. Usually people who work on indie games do it for fun, so I don't think they'll be unreasonable about money. But comunication needs to be a priority.

[knifeySpoonie]

I totally disagree with the above... split it equally??... split it fairly... if your doing 40 hour weeks coding and your sound guys doing a track or two every now and then in his spare time how is it fair to split it equaly...

I'd basically say, Give everyone an hourly "wage", get everyone to record their time and agree to it, have a minimum % then split it fairly based off hours worked. Paying off wage's first then splitting any profit based off the percentages agreed.. For example if the coder and artist are full time and the audio guys working maybe 10-15 hours a week then a fairer split is going to be somthing like 13-20% for the audio guy and then 35-40% for the coder and artist.. If the audio guys doing other Jobs as well then count that too..

But from my perspective you should base it off time committed to the project. With minimum percentages like 10% each then the rest split based on contribution of time and effort.

[wisetaner]

Indeed! What KnifeySpoonie says is far more realistic! However, before anything is done, who ever is apart of the team needs to sign legally binding contracts. It must all be done legally and professionally. To do anything less is to go about it half arsed.

By the way, I hope everyone took to heart what I said about taxes, because if you don't take this all seriously from the start. You will likely find yourselves in a bit of financial issues with the gov in the future.

Having dreamy hopes of splitting the proceeds right down the middle is nice in theory, but in reality you need to think of the bottom line.

So as I said in the beginning of this post, KnifeySpoonie makes some very good points. And don't forgot what I previously said about taxes, even if some people reading this roll their eyes about what I'm saying. Keep in mind that I, with the tax form suggestions, and KnifeySpoonie's discussion regarding wages, is meant to help you.

Sorry if that seemed like lecturing.

I totally disagree with the above... split it equally??... split it fairly... if your doing 40 hour weeks coding and your sound guys doing a track or two every now and then in his spare time how is it fair to split it equaly...

I'd basically say, Give everyone an hourly "wage", get everyone to record their time and agree to it, have a minimum % then split it fairly based off hours worked. Paying off wage's first then splitting any profit based off the percentages agreed.. For example if the coder and artist are full time and the audio guys working maybe 10-15 hours a week then a fairer split is going to be somthing like 13-20% for the audio guy and then 35-40% for the coder and artist.. If the audio guys doing other Jobs as well then count that too..

But from my perspective you should base it off time committed to the project. With minimum percentages like 10% each then the rest split based on contribution of time and effort.

[joe_eyemobi]

This is good advice from Knifey.  We are working off exactly this model - so any profit made will be proportionally split according to time spent on the project.  It seems fair, esp. since on our team only 2 of us are full timers and the rest are part-timers.  It would also be worthwhile at some stage to put together a basic contract to cover it - worst thing would be if you did really well to have this become a point of contention.

I totally disagree with the above... split it equally??... split it fairly... if your doing 40 hour weeks coding and your sound guys doing a track or two every now and then in his spare time how is it fair to split it equaly...

I'd basically say, Give everyone an hourly "wage", get everyone to record their time and agree to it, have a minimum % then split it fairly based off hours worked. Paying off wage's first then splitting any profit based off the percentages agreed.. For example if the coder and artist are full time and the audio guys working maybe 10-15 hours a week then a fairer split is going to be somthing like 13-20% for the audio guy and then 35-40% for the coder and artist.. If the audio guys doing other Jobs as well then count that too..

But from my perspective you should base it off time committed to the project. With minimum percentages like 10% each then the rest split based on contribution of time and effort.

[EvilDingo]

Profit sharing is a terrible idea. Split evenly? The roles aren't remotely even.

If you're creating a company, you need to pay the others for their contribution. If you can't afford it up front, then profit share UNTIL you've paid their contribution. The programmer will do the majority of the work by a large margin unless the game is very simple.

Assume you all worked evenly to create the game, great! But now who supports it? Who ports it? Who fixes bugs? For how long?

Most games today need to be supported for as long as they are profitable and that means the programmer has to do it.

If you must profit share, I think Knifespoony's way is the way to go. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a situation where you're the only one working on the game and just paying the others years after release.

Consider the long term view. You all work hard for 6 months and create a game. Then you work hard for 2 or 3 years (or longer) while they still collect their 66.6%.

This isn't hypothetical. It happened to me a few times and I learned the hard way.

[BishopGames]

I won't comment on how to share the money as you received a fair amount of advice already but I will say this:

SIGN A CONTRACT ASAP that touches on everything related to shares, profits and money. You don't want to be 6 months into development and talk about revenue shares and have the team break up because one guy doesn't think what he receives is fair. It's annoying to talk about things like that but you absolutely need to do it. Lawyer up, what if a member bails out? What if you become overnight millionaires how do you split the money? What if someone dies, does its family get his shares or the team members? What is each member's worth in revenue share for the whole project?

Do that ASAP, make sure people are on the same page, get everything checked out and typed out by a lawyer, sign it, then get that stuff out of the way and focus on the game.

[LyndonHolland]

If you can't afford it up front, then profit share UNTIL you've paid their contribution.

in this deferred-fee scenario the contractor takes all the risk without any reward for doing so. If you can't front the cash, you must offer something more. Clearly profit sharing is always a massive gamble if it's the only form of remuneration as there are no guarantees whether the game will sell well enough to gain an appropriate return - you could easily end up earning much less than your standard fee. Thus, there must be the added incentive for a potential to exceed on your expected return in order for it to be worth the risk. Most I'm sure would agree that this is a fair way to conduct business. The amount given to each discipline, however, is contentious.

I would second KnifeySpoonie's structure, except that he has not considered a factor that I think shouldn't be ignored; the amount of money invested into hardware and software in order to produce the craft. I'm sure that each craft can make a case for the expense of their gear - computer, software license, tablet etc. But I would wager that the amount of money a composer must invest in sample library packages alone eclipses other disciplines' expenses. Not that I would want to see people scrupulously totalling up the sum of their components, and of course different projects call for less expensive forms of music, but I think this should be noted when assessing how much someone is worth.

[Cheesegrater]

Tool expenses absolutely should be ignored, unless they couldn't possibly be used on another project.

[LyndonHolland]

My point was not to bill developers for specific tools on each project, but to acknowledge the significant financial investment taken to reach the required standard in general. Since we're in the business of providing our own gear, the ownership of these tools become an asset to our skill set, so if the project requires the use of them, it must be understood that part of the contractors fee will be put towards paying off the debt taken out to pay for them.

[Cheesegrater]

You just can't worry about people's prior sunk costs. If someone produces work in Blender that's just as good as someone else who is using Maya, the Maya guy doesn't have more value because he has a bigger balance on his credit card.

I use my college education when I program, but I wouldn't expect my teammates to pitch in to cover my student loans.

[LyndonHolland]

I understand your point about tuition fees and I do agree that it becomes unrealistic to start costing up everything in your life that has contributed to your career. But I want to make a point about the tangible items that the company avoids having to pay for. In any other business, the employees wouldn't be expected to bring their own computers to work, pay for the licenses used - all this is taken care of by the company. But since this is indie gaming and we're all supplying our own tools, at least in part it should be recognised that you're not just paying for the time and talent of the individual, but the thousands of pounds worth of investment, which the company has avoided having to invest in. I guess you could look at it as paying for clients time and talent and renting their gear.

If there was a taxi service, one offering a ride in a toyota prius and the other a ferrari, which one do you think would charge more per mile on the metre? Extreme example, but I hope it makes my point

[wisetaner]

Ahh...yeah...I actually did make mention of the "investing", in one of my post's above. But I'm at least glad that Spoonies post gave you insight.

Don't mind me, it's late. 

...

....the amount of money invested into hardware and software in order to produce the craft. I'm sure that each craft can make a case for the expense of their gear - computer, software license, tablet etc. But I would wager that the amount of money a composer must invest in sample library packages alone eclipses other disciplines' expenses....