If you want to own your IP (indie bussiness model) you must be able to hold on until at least alpha by yourself.

That's not universally true; you can secure a loan without writing a single line of code.

I was talking about publisher funding. If you get funded by a publisher before showing at least an alpha, they will try to get all rights on your game (development funding).

That's totally up to the contract. Sometimes the publisher tells _you_ what game to develop and you just do it for a fixed price and that's it. Some times the only thing the publisher is paying for is the right to market the game - but it remains your your baby. You decide how it will look and play like and at the end you still own the IP.
 

That's called an advance payment (when they don't pay you to develop, only for market rights) and usually around alpha stage is the time to try to get them...

If you want to own your IP (indie bussiness model) you must be able to hold on until at least alpha by yourself.

sounds great!

so... is anyone gathering tonight? it would be great to organize some get together soon...

Just checked in to Hotel Union Square - room 417. 12 hour flight but I managed some shuteye so I'm moderately awake!

You mean the Larkspur Hotel? I'm there too...

How do I add a map mark?
Anyway, we (ACE Team - Zeno Clash) will be at Larkspur Hotel (524 Sutter Street, between Powell St and Mason St)

Greeting from San Francisco! I'm checked into my hotel and checked out the convention center a few hours ago. I didn't realise the center was sepparated into several buildings, this place is huge.

We did the same thing, they told us we can get our passes tomorrow at 5pm, gonna check the emails to confirm that...

We already checked in in Larkspur Hotel, who was staying here again?

Ah, super excited for this game. Hope there is another way to buy this than Steam, though.

should be out for prepurchase today in Direct2Drive

they just added it about 15 minutes ago!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/22200/

And you can save 50% if you buy today!

Anyways, see you guys at GDC! whooot!  :D

If all that is true, then he probably got ripped off...  

Ripped off is relative. We don't know his percent of the royalty share. What would be unfair? My only experience in the matter is this: once some company offered to give me 7.5% in order for them to get Immortal Defense on the XBLA, after Microsoft's share was taken out (which is about 45%) -- so I'd be getting 7.5% of 55% of each sale, which is very tiny. I refused that since I felt it was too little. But I've no idea if that is typical or not, maybe it is.

What I'm saying is: is very different to be employed by a company and develop a game for them (or simply develop one of their projects), than having a game on your own and sell the rights on it.

if that company created the IP of Immortal Defense, financed it and simply paid you to develop it, then the percentage they offered you was reasonable, but if you created the IP, developed it and they are just the middle men between you and the public, then it is an insignificant percentage.

For Nifflas, if he's making a god percentage, given that he created the idea and started to develop before he made the deal with Nicalis, then it's ok. All I'm saying is that IP (and in this case his fanbase and name as a developer) have a value that should not be ignored.

PS: I used to work for a development studio that focused on casual gaming, now I'm a partner in a new indie studio with our own games. There's a big difference in what you get in both cases.

Nicalis is paying Nifflas to work on the game, they didn't just buy it from him.

Yes they did. The Night Game project existed prior to Nicalis, and it wasn't until several months into development that Nicalis offered Nifflas a contract. (Which transferred ownership of the rights to the game from Nifflas to Nicalis.)

Also, I'm don't think Nicalis is actually paying Nifflas (regularly). I know Nifflas still has a "real" job. He isn't a full-time game designer.

If all that is true, then he probably got ripped off...   

I'll be arriving on Saturday after what I think it is a 17 hour flight, so I'll probably be worthless until sunday...

Isn't "Nicalis" Nifflas's own real first name?

Nicklas Nygren, that's Nifflas' real name

Hmmmmm. I don't know, I kind of like the bizareness of cutting my face down the middle.

How about these, any votes?

Personally I like #2, but #3 is a bit less serious

That literally means that Nifflas is no longer an indie game developer, by definition, at least with regards to Night Game.

Yeah... it's so sad.

Of course i was joking with the boycott thing, Tyrone is already doing my part of boycott doing the game only for Wii. I want to clarify that i don't have anything against Nicalis, but i think they're not indie.

After reading all this thread I started to wonder... why is it that we have Night Game competing in the IGF, and in two categories?

To me, the point is, was Nifflas an employee for Nicalis? Or is Nicalis the middle man that got exclusive distribution right for the Nifflas' game? Seeing the Nicalis web site, it seems that Nicalis is a studio formed by two persons: Tyrone and Nifflas.

Even if we can doubt on Nicalis' indie spirit, it seems that it still is an independent studio.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks very different to the scenario where Nifflas lost their NG rights to Nicalis, it looks more like he is a part of Nicalis...
May be Nifflas has a small share in the studio and can't impose his oppinion on commercial issues, I don't know. We should ask them if we want to know more about it...

Which one do you find more pleasurable?

Left one looks more professional.

I like the idea of the right one, though, but would not cut the face exactly at half. Any other proportion seems to be better. Try 2/3rd or 1/3rd instead?

I concur...

MyGDC doesn't work for me... I emailed support but no response yet (five days later).

I realized that after changing my password at the GCD site I had to wait a couple of hours before the change propagated to the myGDC site so I could activate my account... a couple of hours I spent re-registering, entering my password over and over, etc... 

I anyone using MyGDC? I noticed that it works like a mixture between facebook, a scheduler and a calendar, you can have friends, coordinate meetings and such...

My profile is http://mygdc.gdconf.com/c547129, what about yours?

Also, I quite like many of the ones here

yeah, we were watching that site when we were thinking in our business card, some cool ideas there...

We finally went with an ACE card design, the back is the back of the card, with our logo in the place used by the brand of the deck, the front is an ace with our personal info on it... looks pretty cool...