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[thefoolishbrave]

I just finished a successful meeting with a programmer about my project, however I've never been in a revenue share situation and I'm not sure how to divide things. I'm the artist, writer, and designer, and he'll handle all the programming. I was thinking either 55/45 or 60/40, does that seem reasonable? How do most people figure out this kind of thing?

[Capntastic]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes

[Schoq]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump:_The_Art_of_the_Deal

[FrankieSmileShow]

I think a reasonable way to figure out profit sharing is to ask the contributors to count the time they spend working on the game, and in the end figure out a revenue split based on the ratio of time everyone spent on it.

Whats good about this, is that its flexible: a contributor that was planned not to be doing much work at first, but who ends up doing a lot more, wont need to "re-negotiate" the contract to get a fair share. Same thing for the other way around: if the team grows and some people end up with a lighter work load no re-negotiation should be needed.  Things can change around fast over the course of a project, so a flexible deal like that is useful.
The time keeping can be based on mutually-agreed upon time blocks per asset or groups of assets they make, to minimize the risk of a contributor inflating their recorded times to maximize their share etc, that might be a good idea if you are dealing with someone new.

One inconvenient part of this is that different people work at different speeds, and that kind of deal doesnt take the amount or quality or value of the work into account, only gives value to peoples' time, which is only "fair" if everyone working on the project is of roughly comparable experience. So yeah, not perfect, but I think its a good starting point.

[airman4]

I think a reasonable way to figure out profit sharing is to ask the contributors to count the time they spend working on the game, and in the end figure out a revenue split based on the ratio of time everyone spent on it.

Whats good about this, is that its flexible: a contributor that was planned not to be doing much work at first, but who ends up doing a lot more, wont need to "re-negotiate" the contract to get a fair share. Same thing for the other way around: if the team grows and some people end up with a lighter work load no re-negotiation should be needed.  Things can change around fast over the course of a project, so a flexible deal like that is useful.
The time keeping can be based on mutually-agreed upon time blocks per asset or groups of assets they make, to minimize the risk of a contributor inflating their recorded times to maximize their share etc, that might be a good idea if you are dealing with someone new.

One inconvenient part of this is that different people work at different speeds, and that kind of deal doesnt take the amount or quality or value of the work into account, only gives value to peoples' time, which is only "fair" if everyone working on the project is of roughly comparable experience. So yeah, not perfect, but I think its a good starting point.

*


Nice one but if a artist in the group make the cover for 1 hour (for example) and that cover draw millions of players , you pay him shit ?

[Capntastic]

That is how getting paid a proportion of revenue works, yes

[ProgramGamer]

Also, the chances that someone is going to make that good of a cover in one hour are pretty slim. Also also, a cover would probably be a one off commission by an outside artist, so in that case it wouldn't be rev share. Also also also, if the artist making the cover is a team artist, then that artist is doing other things and will probably get a good portion of the revenue regardless.

[Bad_Dude 2017]

raise some money and dont do revenue share.
its a serious investment from you and other person, i would be really anxious if someone worked and spend his time of life out there for me, for free.

[Capntastic]

If you only worked one or ten  hours on a game why should you deserve a bigger cut if the game (against the odds) gets big?

[Schoq]

calculating exactly how much ^value someone contributed to an _{artificially scarce} product which lacks practical utility and may sell 0 or 999,999,999 c o p i e s is a nigh impossible task

[FrankieSmileShow]

haha cmon smartass
Its a pretty good base system if you need to make such an extreme edge case to show a flaw in it imo!
Its pretty rare that a great cover art takes one hour to do like ProgramGamer said. Normally there would be a lot of time sketching concepts. Also, lots of other stuff than covers and trailers can end up drawing a big crowd, like a really solid soundtrack, or striking visual style, or inventive concept.

And it takes a lot more than a sweet cover to draw in millions of people nowadays. A better edge case might be having a really famous person on the team or related to the project, whose involvement guarantees a huge audience. That sort of thing could probably have enough leverage to let em negotiate a bigger cut.

But I dont think stuff like this is really relevant or the kind of situation we are talking about here. OP is clearly talking about collaborators working on the game, not advertising stuff.

[thefoolishbrave]

Thanks for all your replies, it seems that there is no DEFINITIVE answer, and I'll have to be smart and work it out for myself. On the bright side, the guy I was working with was really responsive for like 1 1/2 days, and now I haven't heard from him for 2. I sent him enough resources to start putting something together but reserved a bunch despite him asking me for a full sprite sheet and scene, so I guess the search continues for that unicorn programmer

[Bad_Dude 2017]

why would you withold resources from your programmer, he is your precious babby you must cherish him and give the best

i did not do anything on rev share, it was a waste of time.

[Fat Pug Studio]

Tbh i think you're wasting your time with all that revenue sharing stuff. Raise a loan and pay a pro to do you stuff by hour or work done.

[hube]

The Grunt equity model is great.its about building equity not dividing what doesn't exist yet. You assign everyone an hourly rate. If they are paid they get no points towards rev share. If they don't get paid they get 2x their hourly wage towards rev share points. If they invest money they get 4x their investment in rev share points. Everyday you have different rev share % based on who worked that day and earned points. Team members can take breaks. vacations, work different schedules and new members can join anytime and easily integrate into the fold for tasks small and large.

The only things to be mindful of:
1. If someone leaves before completion do they keep their share? Helps to split work into smaller independent deliverable chunks.
2. Setting expectations - the workloads may not be even and thus rev share will not be even. Avoid adding scope just to keep someone working because they don't want to lose rev share.
3. Put a reasonable time cap on that rev share, you don't want to be reporting to people forever even after they leave the company.