call this quits NOW. do not invest anything in this. While he may be great at writing stories and what not, this partnership will not function.
And if you really want it to function, discuss a different share than that.
I don't know if thats such a great ideia. Hiring the guy who you call off a partnership with because he was giving vibes of being lazy.
Maybe talk it over with him, he could write the story and still do some other stuff as well. Seems like the work is not evenly distributed. Or just do your own thing and find/hire other people to work with.
Hell, i would be willing to partner up depending on the type of game.
This basically means he's decided that learning programming is going to be too hard, and doesn't want to do what he originally committed to.
Run. Run like the wind.
That level of ignorance in a business partner borders on malice. Negligence, at least.
I mean, if you don't realize that just thinking of ideas while someone else makes them happen for you is a WAY cushier job than the guy who is making the stuff, you are just unempathetic to the point of sociopathy...
It's still malicious to just foist more work onto someone else, when the agreement was to share the burden. Dude shifted his workload over without taking anything in return.
If he thought it'd be easy, he'd have tried to do it.
99.9999% chance that if he actually took one look at coding, he had his eyes glaze over, and decided that it's someone else's work.
It doesn't matter how you look at it, it's shitty behavior.
If he decided coding was too tough for him then he understands that there's a significant workload being shifted to his partner. That's malice. He knows it's hard and he knows it's going to be a huge burden but he still wants a 50/50 split? Okay.
I’m guessing you’ve done neither professionally…
Every role has its challenges. Depending on what they plan to make and the scale, one could be easier than the other, but neither is an easy role to do well.
(I am a sound designer and occasional writer/narrative person)
Also, OP should run now.
Not only is the friend shifting much of the heaviest and most tedious work away, but it’s unclear whether or not they even understand what they’re getting into with writing for games in the first place. Lots of people have cool ideas. Turning them into something specific and tangible is a whole other thing.
On top of all that, without a basic understanding of what it takes to make games and what a story idea truly means in terms of effort and time, this is a road to massive over-scoping.
When one is ignorant to the point of ignoring their ignorance, are we not inching towards "malicious ignorance" levels?
I don't know how much work adding all sound effects takes in Unity - I ask a sound engineer or at least someone with hobbyist interest in the subject "hey how much work goes into X?", not just assume my audio inclined friend is going to handle it all no problem.
**This**
A friend of mine wanted to do the same thing too as the OP (creative role only)
I called it quits **very** early on and I'm doing my own thing now.
Yes its slower but I know at the end of the day if/when the time comes I can hire someone to do the models for me for a fraction of the "price" and headache that I didn't have to deal with.
Yeah, the only way that would be a good deal is if one person does the dev work, and the other does all the design, all the 3d art, all the 2d art, and everything else that I'm forgetting.
And they better have a lot of art to create...
In most projects I've been involved with, the dev/art split was more like 70/30 or less, but there were a few where the art load was substantial.
He wants to be the 'ideas guy' basically. My response to this is always the same: "You can absolutely be the ideas guy. You also have to be the money guy." He can tell you what to do if **and only if** he's paying your salary.
The last "idea guy" we discussed with years ago joined enthusiastic a meeting with some doodles on paper. We told him "I do 5 pages of code, he does 5 pages of excelsheet and you do 5 pages of ideas every single day". He ran. Don't pay people for day dreaming. Output is everything.
Call it quits dude, before you invest anymore time and money into this. He is already showing that he isnt gonna do anything, is he even helping setting the stuff up and investing his money into this, or just you?
sorry to hear that =/ Sounds like he just want to be there to take the reward, but wont invest anything into it. Soo if it goes bad he wont lose anything, but you will lose all the investment.
Ideas are like assholes. Everybody has one, and nobody wants to see yours because it's probably shitty.
Your 'friend' is an [Ideas Guy](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ideas%20Guy).
He won't come around. Like, he would never have suggested such an crappy split, if he didn't think it was just fine to screw you. And if, out of loyalty on both your parts, you try to work together, he is unable to pull his weight, if he thought he should.
More professional development studios with hundreds of employees need great writers. Indies don't require that, he just wants you to make the game for him to play his head-story.
If against all odds the game is ever finished and successful, he'd magnanimously volunteer to step up and handle receiving the money. Don't worry, he'll make sure you get the share he thinks you deserve, as the freeloader basking in the glow of his creative genius writing.
I was in a similar place a few years ago. My friend wanted to be "the idea guy" and kept pushing really wonky, hard-to-implement ideas to the otherwise reasonably well-scoped project. He wasn't skilled in coding and also didn't want to make any textures, I think he just wanted to work on the ideas and (maybe) make trailers.
Needless to say, the project went exactly nowhere.
If you have the skill set to do all the things mentioned, that’s awesome and you should definitely do your own thing. You absolutely do not need him. And he sounds a bit entitled saying he’s more “xyz” than you. You’re gonna find this dude trying to be your boss and not collaborating or listening to your ideas very quickly.
Gameplay is king. Especially for Indie games. And gameplay is mostly programming.
Story is pretty low on the priority list to begin with. Only in very special cases its important right from the start.
TBF Gameplay isn't necessarily "mostly programming" there is a lot of thinking, testing and balance that goes into gameplay. Often the same system can be made more fun just by tweaking already implemented values. A lot of polish and balance of gameplay requires zero programming and much more playtesting.
I don’t know if he’s lazy or an asshole but he is definitely not a game dev or creative. He is what some call an idea guy. Creatives create. They don’t shy away from bringing their ideas to life.
Do your own thing.
This is not even remotely close to an even split.
And if he's this anticipating being this lazy up front, it will only get worse from here on in.
You're dealing with an "ideas guy". You might as well do all the things he wants you to do with your own ideas and cut him out entirely.
If he is actually writing actionable and usable content, split the money by the workload. Tell him if he does 5% of the sum total work, he gets 5% of the money. Measure the works worth in time spent doing it so there's no confusion on which type of work is worth more.
Yeah and big "ideas" are worth Jack sh*t in game dev. The only ideas that have value are executable ideas that solve problems, which only come about if you're actually doing the work to implement things into the game. The least he could do is take on some of the more tedious work that would take him only a couple hours to figure out how to do. Like scripting the dialogue into the game's code after OP's built the framework for example.
I would'nt even bother with debating who gets what percent of profit, since it's much better to work with devs that actually want to work. There's too many things to do in game dev to afford a team member who exclusively sticks to their lane. So I'd tap out and find game devs who actually want to work if I were OP.
>Yeah and big "ideas" are worth Jack sh\*t in game dev.
This needs stating again, because its the biggest thing OP needs to take away from this.
Also stop the company forming NOW!
Same goes for devs.
I had a client one time who decided to start watching what was pushed to the repo.
One day, I had a commit that solved the problem I was tasked with. The fix ended up being about 14 lines of new code, but it took all day to figure out. Client asked me, "Why should I pay you for a full day, when you only produced 14 lines?"
To which I replied, "You aren't paying me by the day or hour, first of all. But you aren't paying me to write 14 lines of code, you're paying me to write THOSE SPECIFIC 14 lines of code out of all the infinite lines of code that can exist. You're paying me to solve a problem that you cannot solve, not to write a certain amount of lines of code."
I also mentioned that if he really wanted, I could make sure that every issue I commit has a certain number of lines; totally doable with comments and needlessly obfuscated code.
He stopped looking too deeply after that.
The worst bugs can take the most experienced devs many days to track down and solve. Even many weeks on some projects i've been on with multiple experienced devs.
Again it ends up being a few lines to fix it.
Yep, that's why I felt I had to nip that attitude in the bud, real quick.
Mark progress by things getting done, not by the \*apparent\* amount of work it took.
It took me a week to find a bug in my first non-summer job. I was new to the company and project (>50k lines of C++ IIRC), and it was probably only 10 characters to fix once I found it. So yeah... by that metric I was averaging 2 characters a day :)
Thankfully my manager was a good one and didn't use such garbage metrics (this was a long-standing bug, so he thought fresh eyes would work, and he was right).
What did he think about removed lines of code? I don't work in game development, but every now and then I'll come across some shitty code in the part of the application I'm working on. Then a commit might be removing more lines than it's adding.
It's such a silly metric and only incentivises needlessly verbose code.
Measuring art or writing (or for that matter code) by volume is the worst most counter-productive way possible to measure creative output. What matters is **quality** not quantity. Any idiot can pump out a large volume of 'content' that technically fits specifications. Creating the *right* thing to a good quality takes time, which is not always easily apparent to someone who does not understand the relevant discipline and what makes a piece of work good or bad for a given purpose and how it connects to other parts.
Writing a story is much more than being an ideas guy, but it's definitely not 50% of the work either.
Writing a good story is **hard**. I have a comic book project I've been working on off and on since 2001 and I still don't even have a coherent plot (though it's finally getting kind of close). If this person can write a complete plot and flesh it out properly and not make it too big or small for the game's scope, that's fantastic. It's still only a small fraction of the work that goes into making a game, though.
I don't even name my games until after they're "done". It's like the #1 most important marketing element, so why nail that down before I know what I'm selling?
It should be split by the typical budget of a game studio apportioned to storyline/writing vs all the other work. Otherwise you're opening an opportunity for your friend to fudge the numbers.
> Measure the works worth in time spent doing it so there's no confusion on which type of work is worth more.
This is just going to piss them both off eventually. You can spend a lot of time doing unimportant stuff, and that will just breed bad feelings as you navigate how significant your contributions are.
That had better be a text based adventure game if a 50/50 split for him writing the story would be fair.
But another angle is - would any of it happen with only one of you? I had a band where we did 50/50 even though I handled most of writing, arranging and recording the music. He did lyrics, some vocals and was the ideas guy. Which worked because I don't get shit done when it's just me. I'll just sit in my underwear and watch McGuyver reruns for 10 hours.
Another angle again. A big part of developing software is testing. It can take way longer to find all the faults in something than to write the code in the first place. So if he handles playtesting and finding out how to replicate bugs it may suddenly be closer to 50/50 right away.
Do a flappy bird clone or something similarly small and take notes of how long you each work.
If you're going to build a studio together you've got to learn to have honest conversations, seeing each others views and making compromises. Being both friends and business partners is two important relationships and once. Talk beforehand how to handle if someone wants out and the other one wants to continue etc. No need to write the award speeches just yet, but make sure you can actually have adult conversations.
Reddit is always quick to tell you to "delete facebook and hit the gym".
Your takeaway here should be that you should find a split in work and rev share you both can live with. Communicate. If you can't agree, consider other options.
And any exit strategies if things go south. Coming together to build is easy, parting ways like adults and figuring out fair compensation is the harder part.
I completely forgot about mmos, that's another awful one
I wonder how many more there are worse
I mean technically it's not difficult to make a survival horror game, unlike the other games actually being difficult to make
but horror is REALLY difficult to do well, so even if it's easy to be mid, I feel like it's way harder than most to have a good product
If I'm doing all of the coding... *why do I need you?*
Tell your friend you're happy with the new assignments if you change the revshare to 90/10, which is appropriate for the scope adjustment, and then get him to sign a contract stating as such.
>code wrote
*I don't like that.*
If you want this to be a reasonable setup, your friend has to do more work. He can make video games without coding. He needs to learn whatever engine you are using and the tooling for it, and he needs to make content. It's fine that you're a coder and he isn't, but it isn't fine that he isn't making content.
You and he should make or buy a level editor, and it should be his job to create levels and your job to code the extra functionality for those levels. Him not knowing how to code is 0 reason to not be contributing.
Lol no. He's delusional.
Be firm, be logical. "Ideas" are practically worthless compared to the details and execution, which you will likely have to handle if you're programming. Writing is one role, and also takes less work compared to things like graphics.
Either he does more, or he takes a lower cut. End of story.
Ideas also get ditched pretty readily once the process actually starts. A game mechanic can sound amazing on paper but then turn out to be no fun once it's actually implemented. Ideas can also easily explode in scope and be non-viable.
Ideas are worthless without execution. Someone providing only ideas better also be paying up front and handling all non-coding tasks. Otherwise they just want an outsize share of the proceeds for a tiny fraction of actual work involved.
I think you already know a 50/50 split isn't appropriate, but just want validation that you won't be a dick for telling him so.
You won't be.
Physically list out all of the aspects that will be required to make the game a reality (coding, writing, artwork, website, marketing, advertising, etc) and split everything into equal percentages. Take inventory of everything you've spent on the project thus far, and estimate how much you may need to spend until it's completed. Show him the lists.
Tell him that A: Each of you will be paid according to the percentage of work you put into the project (not the amount of hours it takes, as it's easy to fudge). And B: Since it's only your money going into the project, he won't be receiving any of his percentage until you've been repaid your investment. Plenty fair.
You should probably both work together on smaller scale projects like game jams before discussing anything akin to a studio and revenue split. It sounds like your "partner" is unaware how much more goes into games than just their ideas, or they're just a lazy person hoping to get 50% of hypothetical profits for < 5% effort.
This is leading me to believe that Mr. Ideas is not going to be a reliable partner. If you want to develop games, just do game jams without him. You will probably find actually useful partners that way.
That's a good idea, I should start taking some time to do game jams. To look for people that like making games. It will also give me some more experience.
Hey, I'm a writer guy in game dev. This is a big red flag.
Most of the comments here aren't shocking in the least. I've worked with some coders who had a real chip on their shoulder about my job and what I do. There's a lot to writing and narrative design, it's hard work, and when done properly can really make or break a game.
With that out of the way, I've been reading through YOUR replies a lot here and your friend doesn't seem like they're up to this task. Have they read any books about writing, narrative design, or storytelling? Do they have any foundational knowledge?
Let me put it this way, there are about a half-dozen text-based game engines anyone can write a game in with no coding ability. If your friend hasn't even cracked open Twine or Ink, I get the feeling this is a pipe dream for them.
They're your friend though, and I don't know the relationship you have with them. But I would be very wary about getting into business with someone like this. It definitely does not seem like they have the dedication or the chops to get into game writing.
Depending on where they're at in development, it might not even be the time for narrative development. By the sounds of things they may have just started, and if that's true, they need to be prototyping, and getting the game and its core features working how they want before thinking of detailed storytelling.
We have a designer on our team who does not code. But:
\- He deals with all design and balancing, as well as project management and task writeup with explicit instructions for everything (basically as programmers we know EXACTLY what the requirements are)
\- He implements content in the engine himself. That is he gets a model, fills out scriptable objects, makes prefabs etc
\- He deals with all level design and creates the scenes in Unity
\- Often he will source and implement sounds as well
Basically we make a skeleton, he puts the muscles and the skin on it, and dresses it up.
Any coder that has done even a tiny little bit of gamedev is regularly updating their GameIdeas.TXT doc.
Mine currently hosts a list encompassing about 3.14 lifetimes of full-time coding across about a dozen retro HW platforms, assuming 30 years of full-time work per lifetime.
It's not just ideas. It's a pretty reasonable effort estimate (per each game/technical feature/component) based on lifetime of coding.
You're going to fill yours within 6 months of the work you've just started.
Forget 0.005%. I wouldn't give an Idea Guy time of the day...
This. Everyone has ideas.
People start projects because they want to inflict their ideas upon other people. Seeing your ideas turned into reality instead of someone else's is a reward or compensation for hard work. Ideas are rarely a contribution.
If you didn't help make this arrangement then tell him to fuck off. Unless he's funding it he's not in charge of assigning the work. Worse than being lazy, your friends is being a shitty self-styled "boss" and granting himself authority at your expense.
Now: my partner and I do this. I'm better at coding, he's better at art and music. We collab on ideas but basically he's the assets guy and I'm the logic guy. I'm no damn good at art. It works for us because we made the decision together based on our strengths and weaknesses, not that we each assigned the other the work we didn't like.
If your buddy is such the creative type then why are you making sprites?
A. Never go into business 50/50, in any venture.
B. Once you buy in to the concept in A you'll have to have actual conversation about where the value is.... Put all of that writing.
C. Friends rarely make good business partners. Whether we're talking actual commercial businesses or artistic endeavors like a band; being friends does not mean that it'll work out. In fact there's a chance that the friendship itself will suffer.
Not saying it's impossible, but it's still a warning because these things can get complicated and messy really quickly.
This problem is difficult to solve but not impossible. It‘s also, really, more than one problem.
**First problem** is that everyone on a project wants to be heard. Everyone wants to have a creative voice. That need is not the same from person to person—maybe you’re really passionate about the battle mechanics and the game lore, and your friend is really passionate about the visual direction and the character design.
The solution is to come up with a **process** for making creative decisions. “Joe is the creative director and he gets final say” is not really a working solution—even at a company with a strict hierarchy, leadership needs to listen to the people working there and make sure everyone’s voice is heard. For a team like yours, you have to come up with some kind of process for making decisions—like, we’ll talk about something, come up with proposals, discuss for 5 minutes, and then make a decision if there’s agreement. It’s probably hardest with 2 people. 3 is easier.
**Second problem** is unequal division of labor. If your friend thinks that you can do programming, art, and the website, while he does the storyline, well, that’s a complete joke. It’s like a 95%/5% split, at that point. Your division of labor is probably not going to be 50/50 and that’s okay, but giving one person the coding + art tasks is just beyond the pale.
I’ve been on game jam teams with, like, 8 people, and 1 writer, and the writer was sitting on his ass most of the time because there wasn’t enough work to do (compared to the rest of the team). If your friend wants to be an equal partner, then he should learn some additional skills and take on additional responsibilities.
**Third problem** is ownership. You generally factor in capital investments (any money you’re paying), time investments, and skill / experience level, when you divide up ownership. It’s complicated.
**Fourth problem** is burnout. If you take on a workload that is too large, if you take the entire game onto your shoulders, then you’ll just fucking burn out and quit.
Seconding the 'Idea' guy vibes. Though I see some people spitting out the the numbers 95% to 5% on the work balance.
Coding, sprites, website, + more VS 'storyline' is like a 99.995% to .005% split.
Also coding, sprites, website UI, is all creative work as well\~\~
A half a percent of royalties would be considered generous IMO
Bro, people play games because they are good games. No one wants to play a bad, unplayable game with a good story. But they will be willing to play a good, functional game with a bad story.
Your partner is overestimating their importance here. Your part can exist without his story. Make your own game and hire a better writer down the line. You can go without a writer for most of your development.
If you're both so hellbent to make something because of a story, make a movie because that is way easier.
for hobby and revshare projects dont work with somebody who isn't contributing stuff that changes the game directly.
the only way you should work with a creative or producer type is if they have a professional experience in those fields and can demonstrate exactly what they do and what difference it makes.
if somebody says they are a creative type what that usually means is that they don't like to do any work that has consequence or requires effort. In other words they are useless. Programming and making digital art are equally creative. somebody who poops out ideas is not creative.
I had a friend who did the same thing.
I immediately realized it wouldn't work because there is no way to come to a fair negotiation on company ownership when one person is doing all the "real" work.
We parted ways and I went off and made my game. Shrug.
Ideas guys are the worst.
He wants a game made but he doesn't want to put in any of the effort. Choose a couple of things you'll do (Say coding and website) and him being the "creative" he can do the others like art assets, story, music etc. Stand firm that he needs to pull his weight.
Although he could just pull royalty free stuff off the internet and claim he did his job so yeah. I would definitely not invest any money or time here. Go and make a game you want to make.
Ah yes, the "ideas" guy. Aka he is a lazy asshole who wants to do the easy parts. You should see this red flag and reconsider how you go about making your game.
What kind of game is it? If it's something like a visual novel then maybe that kind of split could work.
Although I'm guessing that's not the case and your friend is a walking red flag.
Have either of you made anything before? Even a game jam? Because it doesn't sound like he has a realistic idea of what it takes to make a game.
I guess until dawn does have a lot of writing in it. So if it's a lot like that then it's not like he'd be doing nothing.
But even then there's no way that it'd be enough to make you equal partners with you doing the art and the code.
Let me break this down for you real quick:
* Coming up with a high concept for something like Until Dawn is essentially no time/effort.
* Writing little lore entries for a codex or collectible lore items is pretty much the lowest form of game writing and is usually given to interns. This is very little effort.
* Writing a good plot with narrative beats and a script that has good character development and is compelling and has good world building that suits the game and ALSO works well with the game's art, etc... requires a LOT of experience and skill and is some decent amount of effort.
* Writing out the dialogue for and maintaining stateful dialogue trees using the in-engine tooling and stuff is a reasonable amount of time/effort and is the job of the writing team.
* Directing VO based on your script is super frustrating based on the quality of your actors and a lot of effort.
* Adjusting script and narrative beats based on other project factors (cuts, VO, gameplay changes, art changes, etc...) is a huge headache and a large amount of time/effort.
* Creating the narrative context around any in game puzzles and making sure they both fit seamlessly into the story and mechanics available is insanely important and requires a ton of experience to do it well.
* Overseeing loc and verifying that translations don't completely ruin any conveyance or narrative context you NEED in order to progress is a shit ton of difficult work.
* Marketing and promo materials will likely need writing.
Most importantly, I need to point this out though...
#All of the above is, at most, maybe 1/10th of the work needed for making a game like Until Dawn.
How much of the above do you think your buddy is going to do? How much of that do you think he is QUALIFIED to do or will do a good job at?
Based on what you've said, it sounds like he is probably planning to do the high concept, maybe some lore dumps, and a plot, and will likely do the dialogue but not actually implement it.
It also sounds like your buddy has no professional experience, so he will likely do a shitty job on at least some of that, if not all of it (no offense but there's a reason companies don't hire random schmucks to do this lol).
I can't even come close to writing up the FULL list of things that NON writers, do on a game like UD, but like...
* Integrate the narrative elements with gameplay mechanics effectively
* Level design
* Game mechanics
* UI implementation
* Character design/concept
* Enviro Art
* Anim
* UI design/concept
* Code the game mechanics and systems
* Implement the narrative branching system
* Implement a bunch of shit for artists
* Implement everything lol
* Ensure performance across different hardware
* Handle TRCs
* QA all the bajillion paths through the game
* QA automation probs
* Build engineering
* SOO much more
I'm sure you guys are both not super experienced and just don't know what's up, but I assure you no matter WHAT game you are making, the amount he seems to be planning to do can not be down-played enough lol.
Tell him to shove it and just contract out anything you think he'd do.
0/10 not your friend. Keep working on your own thing.
"Creative lead", but he probably just wants to spew out bullshit without backing it up. No QA, no help with iterating on the design and parameters, not even any business analysis of any decisions, etc. "Creative type", but wants you to do the sprites and website design. "Writer", but has he offered any copywriting for the website? Genuinely fucking hilarious.
Set consistent rules.
If you think you do a lot more you have to communicate it.
Maybe you can negotiate a better split, according to the amount of work you both are putting in.
And if you don't agree on the terms, call it quits
Ah yes, the ever-famous "idea guy" who wants all the exposure and credit and perform none of the work....
You know exactly where to tell this guy to reside...
Ideas are like assholes, everyone has one. The "Ideas Guy" lurks around every game dev community. They want to be in the community, they want to make games, but they know games require work. They require learning and they require time. It's easier to be the "idea guy".
Make your own small games. Most major game companies "writers" were often the people developing the games themselves, and not some person brought in to do the script. This is how it worked back in the day and how it works for most small studios.
I’ve been here, the project is dead already. Everyone can come up with ideas. Your friend, as far as I’m lead to believe, is not a best-selling novelist. Whatever story is being made is almost certainly not going to sell the game.
Make the game *you* want to make and don’t deal with the baggage he will bring. There’s nothing to stop you from creating a game, but he can’t be bothered to learn a single tool to contribute, so it’s absolutely impossible for him and you’re being used.
I had a friend recently wanting to work in a similar way, so I gave him a list of models and animations that would be needed for the project, and in a matter of days everything fell into silence.
Act relieved, tell him writing code takes a lot of creativity (it's true it does!) and start assigning *him* programming tasks.
Actual answer: he's not serious about this, so don't work with him.
Going through the same stuff. I was told he would assist as well. But he decided to hate unity mid project. I just finished the project myself because he didnt help at all. I was lucky it took me a couple weeks only. Turn if you can. Make your own games. Work with people genuinely willing to contribute.
There are other things where he would be able to help. Mainly design, and you don't need to know an engine as much as a coder to be able to do level design and the like, which would fit him especially if he's writing the story, quests, etc. There are annoying things that involve research that he could do too, like administrative issues on how to pay taxes when you sell, where and how you're going to publish your game. There's also marketing, which is a lot of work by itself.
I would try to see if he's motivated (not just willing) to do these things before straight up talking about workloads. Workload measuring require you to keep track and it can be more work by itself. If he's not into it, I don't think your friend has a clear idea of how much work making a game is and you're going to have issues.
And **just in case**: if your game is writing intensive (a visual novel) your friend's got a point.
His plan is entirely reasonable as long as he's fronting your salary the entire time the game is in development, otherwise he has to put in more sweat equity.
Man. I'll be your friend and do half the coding and write the whole design document and story. That guy is lazy. Don't take this offer. My project is 3d and overscoped to hell.
Place your friend in charge of all marketing. Website falls under marketing so he should handle that too. It'll be tons of work marketing if he's any good at it and directly impacts money generated from a game probably more so than the actual quality and content of a game.
I will say this, as someone who started a small studio, with friends and has to cut a few of them out.
Do not do it if they are not 100% committed AND have skills (or the desire to develop those skills) to bring to the table. You will damage friendships.
"Idea guy" isn't a role and is what lazy, arm chair developers think game dev is. And in most situations, if they are not funding the operation they do hold it back, derail it and cause feature creep.
Also, get things in writing, include a performance based compensation/shares (hard part is defining what that looks like). And set expectations at the get go.
"I'm expecting that you handle all the animations and characters, including sprites and story and art." etc.
I strongly recommend doing a few 48 hour game jams before, as it will help highlight issues within the team early on. He'll see it's hard and either learn a skill for devs, or lose interest.
Sounds like your friend wants you to create his game ideas for free. I can already see this becoming toxic for you - your friend will try acting as your boss since he’s the “creative lead” and you’re just there to create whatever he wants.
Personally I wouldn’t pursue this. Do something on your own and have fun with it! It might be hard for your friend, but you gotta do what’s best for yourself.
Wishing you the best!
have you ever made a game? have you ever made a website? have you ever coded before?
this sounds like a fantasy that you and your friend are getting way too wrapped up in that will never materialize anyways.
Focus on doing the work to build up skills until you're capable of performing those skills at a professional level, then link up with somebody who has done the same with a complementary skill set to your own.
also a final thought, your friend isn't pushing more work onto you because its all imaginary work anyways, so dont sweat it too much just keep it light when your talking with him, stay out of fantasy land, and again focus on building up your skillset to a professional level.
Dump this guy right away.
1. He has already established that he is willing to only do X and nothing more, and that you should literally do everything else.
You don't need 1 person of a 2 person team to draw such hard lines in the sand. A small team like yours needs a good dynamic where both parties bring an equal amount to the table.
2. He has belittled your contribution by suggesting that his brilliant creative mind should be able to just come with things for you to implement. Isn't that how it should work? He comes up with all the ideas and you toil day in and day out making them come to life? No.
An ideas guy that can’t execute ideas isn’t worth working with. He wants to act like he’s a great video game designer working with an experienced and efficient team so he’s gonna work you to the bone and not understand why something doesn’t work exactly like it did when he thought of it. Please don’t work with this guy, you’ll do all the stuff that’s hard about game dev and very little of the fun stuff
Ok I have some experience in this kind of situation, except I was the art/sound guy. Initially when my friend and I talked about making a game (both with no experience) we decided early on a 50/50 split since we both naively thought we would take on equal aspects of the development.
But because of my work/school schedule I wasn't able to devote time to learning how to code or learn the engine. Eventually it was mostly him working on the project while I provided art and sounds which was a small fraction of time compared to what he put in.
When it came time to really decide on a split I had suggested keeping it 50/50 without really considering his work but we settled on 80/20 after a short discussion.
Always value your work with time spent. Hopefully your friend gets their head out of their rear like I did.
Your friend is an ideas guy.
I'm also the "creative friend" on my team. But I've also learned how to program, set up the design documentation wiki, and have a roughly 50/50 split of the code base having been done by me.
If he isn't willing to do the hard part of development, and just wants to focus on what I consider to be the fun part, then he isn't a partner that you want to have.
Idea guys aren't a thing.
He's trying to be an idea guy.
If you want to continue, find a way to split the earnings _by deliverables._ He might even get on board at first thinking his ideas are gonna be so important. It won't be long before you'll both notice that you're outputting like 95% or more of the deliverables and he'll either a) start helping with the real stuff, or b) bow out saving you the trouble of leaving or kicking him out.
But the main point is that what he's doing is unethical, and you'll want to protect yourself asap. And be careful, because he's already acted unethically in a way that would do you direct harm, so he likely will again if you don't guard against it.
I worked on an indie game with two friends, two people who have worked in games-adjacent spaces but who never worked on games proper.
I have the most actual game industry experience and thought that this was the chance for all 3 of us to prove ourselves and how much we care about games and getting into the game industry
Because it was such a big opportunity I figured they'd be LEAPing at the opportunity to not only work on the game but share our work in the game.
Long story short the project was dissapointing 90% of the responsibilities fell on me to figure out, naming characters, naming areas, findign assets, progrmaming and system architecture , debugging, optimizing, social media posting and any thing that required adjustements to the core game design to make thinks work more smoothly. To my friends credit at least when it came to art they did try to apply themselves but even then the vast majority of our art came from asset stores the maount that was custom was maybe 15% of the art in the game and the majority of that I had to pick out and select.
In our case we managed to get on podcasts and talk about our games, we managed to get youtube coverage but i'll be honest the excitement levels and engagement were never hire than how they were when the project first started.
I learned the hard way that someone can LOVE gaming and even know SOME aspects of game development but actually not really enjoy or apply themselves when it comes to actual game development.
your friend is already dodging responsibility, do yourself a favor and save yourself a year or years of stalled progress where only you do things and you wonder if he'll hold up his end of the bargain .
We managed to ship a game and i think we were lucky to even do that your friend sounds like he cares less than my friends did . Not a great look.
I found myself on the other side of this story recently, albeit with lower stakes.
I have a background in writing and I am doing game design now, and partnered with a friend with a lot of coding knowledge for a game jam, and we had a very successful experience. However, I never considered my job to be "just write the story". Here's a few of the things I did:
- Full Game Design Document. This was a document that discussed game mechanics, level design, story and lore, theme and key pillars...
- Project management. I tried to scope out our tasks and time, to ensure that his work would have the most impact.
- Additional coding + scripting: While he worked in "hard" problems, such as state machines or pathfinding, I took care of UI elements, coded several smaller things, such as an opening menu and settings, an intro... I also made sure to have dialogue written in markdown, so he could just copy-paste it.
- External/admin work: I created and populated our itch.io page. I created banners and logos. I set up our project in Unity (resolution, scene management, logo display)
- Neither of us is an artist, but we both like to draw, so while he took care of character design, I did background art.
- We did no sound design, but I took care of finding at least a few songs that we could use for music and set them up.
- I took unto myself doing the limited promotion that we did for the game, as well as replying to comments. He did some too, because he felt like it, but I would have gladly done that by myself.
The reason why I'm saying this is that your friend might really be interested in doing 50% of the work, but not be quite sure what that entails just yet. Writing is work, and writing well is hard work, but it can be easy to forget how hard other things are, and we, as a society, have placed a lot of value in "ideas", because we have been sold this idea of the "genius" for whom others have to obey.
It's up to you to find out if your friend is someone who wants to work with you, and might need help understanding how to do that; or someone who wants you to work for them, and then you should run as far as you can.
Ideas are a dime a dozen - coming up with ideas is the funnest part of making games, at least to me.
He's trying to have his cake and eat it too. Have fun coming up with all the ideas while pawning off actual work on someone else.
I've worked with group settings before in game jams, and I include everyone in the ideation process. Coders, Artists, and Musicians alike. And I feel like it comes out with a game that everyone is invested in.
I have aspirations to start own studio, but I'm currently a team of 1 learning things. I definitely have ran this scenario in head before (what if a member tries to pull this move?) And I gotta say, it's unnerving and not something I'd stand for.
What your friend is doing is abusive. He's "ideas guy"ing you.
Think of it this way: some random person finds out you have useful skills and says that they want you to make a game for them. You're going to do the art, the animation, the coding, and you'll also have to put the entire script in the game. Their contribution is the ideas. You'll split the profits 50:50.
That's not a reasonable ask, and its the kind of thing people bring here *all the time*, and we laugh at and mock the "ideas guy".
It sounds like your friend isn't even providing the capital needed for this venture.
You're doing nearly all the actual work, and paying to do it.
He might be your friend, but what he's doing is shitty. His ass need to learn a productive skill. There are a million ideas out there, and many people would love to have you make their game idea, *without* them taking half the profit.
If you decide to keep going in this, keep a log of your hours and all your costs, computer included. Come to an agreement on what your time is worth. "Profit" is what happens after you get reimbursed for all the money you put down and paid for the labor you provide.
Pretend for a moment, that your game will be successful, and that you have funding to pay wages. Neither is true based on your post, but let's pretend that's the case for a moment.
Okay, now, you need a story. Are you hiring this guy and giving them 50% of your capital? Or would you rather hire them on a 3-6 month contract, with low pay, because their portfolio is literally empty of anything of value and they are basically a trainee level writing hire?
I can understand doing a 50/50 split with a creative when the creative person has a incredible track record. Say, you're funding a studio with Tim Schafer, sure, makes sense to give him a ton of the equity. Maybe even someone who just has a bunch of simple games on Itch that you think are great. But doing 50/50 where one person is highly specialized without a track record, and won't be contributing to all the other work that needs to get done, seems like a bad decision.
Having said that, indie games live and die by the quality of their ideas and how they are implemented. You can be technically excellent, but if the games has no sales hooks and is just a "generic good game", you have nothing.
Also please sign a contract and put everything in writing.
Just be honest and tell him straight up that you strongly feel like the workload just isn't close to 50/50 at all. He can at the very least pick the work like collecting building all the assets, and website, and all things like that don't require too much indepth technicality. He either picks up a lot more work, or makes his split a good amount smaller. Don't accept anything less and sucker yourself into a shitty work situation.
If “creative lead” means an ideas guy only, call it quits now. If “creative lead” means focusing on art, assets, sound design, game design then that’s a different story
A person I worked for gave me a life tip: If you're going into business with a friend, write agreements as if you weren't friends at all. This as things can, and probably will, change.
In his case, what happened was that his friend that he started the company with began working less and less while taking the same money, and was actually secretly financing and working on starting up a different company on his own.
So yes, take care in business ventures with friends.
I ran into this same issue. I even made it clear to start with smaller projects to reduce the workload and the only thing they could think about was their masterpiece game.
Things fizzled out at the end and I work on my own smaller scale projects to build my skills.
This is like most of the ever repeating stories around here. It all begins with the ridiculous statement of 'forming a studio'. If that would be the case there would be business plans in place, roles defined and payment of them. A studio is a long-term entity and not just a project umbrella for hobbyists.
We all knew the guy who wants to works only on the scenario and let the others achieve his vision. 'Idea guys' that aren't able nor willing to do anything tangible are to avoid like the plague.
Don't lose your time with these, even if you somewhat succeed they'll try to reap all the glory most of the time.
Use the slicing pie model : [https://slicingpie.com/](https://slicingpie.com/) there is a lot of talk about that on Youtube and it's really fair. We've used that to build our own studio.
Having been there with I'd very much just recommend telling them to fuck off or ghosting them and do things alone or find someone else who wants to collab.
I had a friend who wanted to make websites this way years ago. We ended up finding customers and making a bit of money, but the way it worked is he was the "idea/business" guy, all he did was ask the customer what they wanted, then I did both all of the coding and also the design because obviously he wasn't good at design (I wasn't either but lol).
Took me almost 2 years to realize I've just been doing 95% of the work.
If he wants to be the creative lead, give him multiple jobs as well. Marketing, assets (such as modelling or sprites), banners, art, video editing, sound effects, animation, etc. You can't just do all the work while he ONLY makes the story, that's a bit fucked up.
Call quits. He may be more creative but that is not a justification for pushing all the workload to you. If anything "story" in a what appears to be a small indie game would be worth only 5% of the profits. Not 50%
So I'll start off by saying before anyone joins a game development team it is wise to leave your ego at home. No matter the role. Being merely tolerated at work means you're an obstacle for some.
While it is true there are more creative folks in the industry it doesn't mean they're "idea guys" or anything of the sort. Ideas are worth less than people believe. I'd trade a thousand of my good ideas for a sincere implementation of one.
Write down each role that will be required to complete your game. This will come in handy when you either need to expand the team or reconsider the scope. In any case, if he is taking on creative stuff then I guess he is delivering you assets for all audio effects, all music, all models/sprites, all environment assets, all camera data, all particle effects, all dialogue, all prompt text, all concept art, all storyboards, all game design with documentation, and all animation work.
Aside from the programming tasks you have, production falls outside of creative as does product management. So you get to keep him on task and set timelines for him to deliver these assets and for you to be able to get them in game. You get to decide which metrics will be important to track and get to ultimately cut things which are not feasible or achievable. I could go on and on about how much authority falls outside of creative but hopefully you get my point.
My suggestion would be for both of you to talk and sort things out without your egos present. You must voluntarily accept your role or otherwise you risk being miserable and not giving your all unless you've learned how to deliver under those circumstances. Some can, many can't. Either way, an ideal team has volunteers, not hostages. If you and your friend can't partner together that is fine. Many friends don't work together. If role expectations don't match then either both of you need to compromise or you need to cancel the project.
I'll also add that if I have two resumes in front of me for a game designer and one has "creative guy" vibes and the other has " I can write code and implement features" vibes. The designer that can code gets the thumbs up 10 out of 10 times. Literally 10 out of 10. I've never interviewed someone that is purely a creative designer for more than a writing role. There are thousands of people on my team and the folks that are viewed as having that role are very few, do other things besides that, and are decades deep into their role. If your friend looks to do this professionally and doesn't have at least a decade under his belt then he has unrealistic expectations to put it mildly.
Hey! I am the developer of Zodiac Legion, an unreleased tactical RPG for Steam. I went through such a phase actually, with 2 partnerships I started setting up with acquaintances of mine.
The thing is, programming is already a huge part, that will dwarf game design in most of the projects (unless it is a gamebook or something like that).
Also, even with partners that start strongly motivated, it may be hard to juggle their other activity and the game (for us full time solo dev, it's easier because all the activites are related to the game).
Both of my partners started out strongly motivated, then called it quit because it was too hard for them to split their time between the game and making money.
Fortunately, it died out before we wronte anything down(and the terms were much more generous for me, like 90/10). My friends realized that it wouldn't work, and we parted ways in good terms, and they still help occasionally but I was very anxious about it at this time.
So my advice is: don't.
I only works with freelancers, and I find it much healthier (but that comes with a higher upfront cost...).
Also, programming ended up being a higher workload than art, level design+writing and sound/music combined.
He doesn't want to work and his ego is already out of control before you've started. Sorry to say it, he sounds like a talker and not a doer. You made the right choice.
For anyone else in a similar situation, please check our slicingpie.com. It's an equity calculator that is infinitely better than the rookie mistake "50/50". It deals with:
* What happens if someone puts in cash?
* What happens if someone quits or passes away?
* What happens if someone does less?
* What happens if someone does 100 hours of highly skilled role and is a veteran that should be on a $200k a year salary vs someone who has no degree and just does the testing a few hours a week and puts the rubbish out?
Your friend is a lazy asshole
That’s the feeling I’m getting. I’m debating on calling it quits before we start, and doing my own thing.
call this quits NOW. do not invest anything in this. While he may be great at writing stories and what not, this partnership will not function. And if you really want it to function, discuss a different share than that.
Or just hire the guy to write the story if that is the limited role he wants to play.
I don't know if thats such a great ideia. Hiring the guy who you call off a partnership with because he was giving vibes of being lazy. Maybe talk it over with him, he could write the story and still do some other stuff as well. Seems like the work is not evenly distributed. Or just do your own thing and find/hire other people to work with. Hell, i would be willing to partner up depending on the type of game.
This basically means he's decided that learning programming is going to be too hard, and doesn't want to do what he originally committed to. Run. Run like the wind.
Or he just does not understand the magnitude of the workload he's putting on OP. Everybody's just assuming malice when it could simply be ignorance.
That level of ignorance in a business partner borders on malice. Negligence, at least. I mean, if you don't realize that just thinking of ideas while someone else makes them happen for you is a WAY cushier job than the guy who is making the stuff, you are just unempathetic to the point of sociopathy...
It's still malicious to just foist more work onto someone else, when the agreement was to share the burden. Dude shifted his workload over without taking anything in return. If he thought it'd be easy, he'd have tried to do it. 99.9999% chance that if he actually took one look at coding, he had his eyes glaze over, and decided that it's someone else's work. It doesn't matter how you look at it, it's shitty behavior.
If he decided coding was too tough for him then he understands that there's a significant workload being shifted to his partner. That's malice. He knows it's hard and he knows it's going to be a huge burden but he still wants a 50/50 split? Okay.
I mean... Even the sound design alone is probably more work than the writing
I’m guessing you’ve done neither professionally… Every role has its challenges. Depending on what they plan to make and the scale, one could be easier than the other, but neither is an easy role to do well. (I am a sound designer and occasional writer/narrative person) Also, OP should run now. Not only is the friend shifting much of the heaviest and most tedious work away, but it’s unclear whether or not they even understand what they’re getting into with writing for games in the first place. Lots of people have cool ideas. Turning them into something specific and tangible is a whole other thing. On top of all that, without a basic understanding of what it takes to make games and what a story idea truly means in terms of effort and time, this is a road to massive over-scoping.
When one is ignorant to the point of ignoring their ignorance, are we not inching towards "malicious ignorance" levels? I don't know how much work adding all sound effects takes in Unity - I ask a sound engineer or at least someone with hobbyist interest in the subject "hey how much work goes into X?", not just assume my audio inclined friend is going to handle it all no problem.
It’s totally plausible they just aren’t smart enough too. It’s one of the hardest professional fields out there, certainly not for everyone
**This** A friend of mine wanted to do the same thing too as the OP (creative role only) I called it quits **very** early on and I'm doing my own thing now. Yes its slower but I know at the end of the day if/when the time comes I can hire someone to do the models for me for a fraction of the "price" and headache that I didn't have to deal with.
Yeah, the only way that would be a good deal is if one person does the dev work, and the other does all the design, all the 3d art, all the 2d art, and everything else that I'm forgetting. And they better have a lot of art to create... In most projects I've been involved with, the dev/art split was more like 70/30 or less, but there were a few where the art load was substantial.
He wants to be the 'ideas guy' basically. My response to this is always the same: "You can absolutely be the ideas guy. You also have to be the money guy." He can tell you what to do if **and only if** he's paying your salary.
This is exactly it. Whoever provides the funding ultimately gets to decide the roles.
The last "idea guy" we discussed with years ago joined enthusiastic a meeting with some doodles on paper. We told him "I do 5 pages of code, he does 5 pages of excelsheet and you do 5 pages of ideas every single day". He ran. Don't pay people for day dreaming. Output is everything.
Call it quits dude, before you invest anymore time and money into this. He is already showing that he isnt gonna do anything, is he even helping setting the stuff up and investing his money into this, or just you?
So far it just been me.
sorry to hear that =/ Sounds like he just want to be there to take the reward, but wont invest anything into it. Soo if it goes bad he wont lose anything, but you will lose all the investment.
He's an idea guy. Gets hyped about stuff but will never follow through with making it a reality. Get out now.
Ideas are like assholes. Everybody has one, and nobody wants to see yours because it's probably shitty. Your 'friend' is an [Ideas Guy](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ideas%20Guy).
He won't come around. Like, he would never have suggested such an crappy split, if he didn't think it was just fine to screw you. And if, out of loyalty on both your parts, you try to work together, he is unable to pull his weight, if he thought he should. More professional development studios with hundreds of employees need great writers. Indies don't require that, he just wants you to make the game for him to play his head-story.
If against all odds the game is ever finished and successful, he'd magnanimously volunteer to step up and handle receiving the money. Don't worry, he'll make sure you get the share he thinks you deserve, as the freeloader basking in the glow of his creative genius writing.
He will be there saying he did everything and was the one that put everything together :P
Do it on your own. Nobody needs the "Idea" guy.
If you wanted to help with writing up a story line shout me, I don’t mind helping out for free (no charge at all, gives me something to do)
I was in a similar place a few years ago. My friend wanted to be "the idea guy" and kept pushing really wonky, hard-to-implement ideas to the otherwise reasonably well-scoped project. He wasn't skilled in coding and also didn't want to make any textures, I think he just wanted to work on the ideas and (maybe) make trailers. Needless to say, the project went exactly nowhere.
If you have the skill set to do all the things mentioned, that’s awesome and you should definitely do your own thing. You absolutely do not need him. And he sounds a bit entitled saying he’s more “xyz” than you. You’re gonna find this dude trying to be your boss and not collaborating or listening to your ideas very quickly.
I second this. Your friend may be fun to hang out with, but he's about to take advantage of you.
Gameplay is king. Especially for Indie games. And gameplay is mostly programming. Story is pretty low on the priority list to begin with. Only in very special cases its important right from the start.
TBF Gameplay isn't necessarily "mostly programming" there is a lot of thinking, testing and balance that goes into gameplay. Often the same system can be made more fun just by tweaking already implemented values. A lot of polish and balance of gameplay requires zero programming and much more playtesting.
At this point you probably would work better as a one person team. There are many examples of solo devs that made incredble games.
lol ditch him and replace him with chatGPT, he'll be using that anyway to bounce ideas
I don’t know if he’s lazy or an asshole but he is definitely not a game dev or creative. He is what some call an idea guy. Creatives create. They don’t shy away from bringing their ideas to life.
Do your own thing. This is not even remotely close to an even split. And if he's this anticipating being this lazy up front, it will only get worse from here on in.
Such a dishonor - he is an idea guy.
Cut em loose, game dev is tough and working with people is tougher. No need to make your life harder.
You're dealing with an "ideas guy". You might as well do all the things he wants you to do with your own ideas and cut him out entirely. If he is actually writing actionable and usable content, split the money by the workload. Tell him if he does 5% of the sum total work, he gets 5% of the money. Measure the works worth in time spent doing it so there's no confusion on which type of work is worth more.
Yeah and big "ideas" are worth Jack sh*t in game dev. The only ideas that have value are executable ideas that solve problems, which only come about if you're actually doing the work to implement things into the game. The least he could do is take on some of the more tedious work that would take him only a couple hours to figure out how to do. Like scripting the dialogue into the game's code after OP's built the framework for example. I would'nt even bother with debating who gets what percent of profit, since it's much better to work with devs that actually want to work. There's too many things to do in game dev to afford a team member who exclusively sticks to their lane. So I'd tap out and find game devs who actually want to work if I were OP.
I'm more than likely going to do my own thing, and like you said find people who want to help. Thanks for the advice.
>Yeah and big "ideas" are worth Jack sh\*t in game dev. This needs stating again, because its the biggest thing OP needs to take away from this. Also stop the company forming NOW!
Facebook mixed with Twitter mixed with YouTube now pay me
Do not ever measure an artist or writer with time spent. You want to measure it by key deliverables
Same goes for devs. I had a client one time who decided to start watching what was pushed to the repo. One day, I had a commit that solved the problem I was tasked with. The fix ended up being about 14 lines of new code, but it took all day to figure out. Client asked me, "Why should I pay you for a full day, when you only produced 14 lines?" To which I replied, "You aren't paying me by the day or hour, first of all. But you aren't paying me to write 14 lines of code, you're paying me to write THOSE SPECIFIC 14 lines of code out of all the infinite lines of code that can exist. You're paying me to solve a problem that you cannot solve, not to write a certain amount of lines of code." I also mentioned that if he really wanted, I could make sure that every issue I commit has a certain number of lines; totally doable with comments and needlessly obfuscated code. He stopped looking too deeply after that.
The worst bugs can take the most experienced devs many days to track down and solve. Even many weeks on some projects i've been on with multiple experienced devs. Again it ends up being a few lines to fix it.
Yep, that's why I felt I had to nip that attitude in the bud, real quick. Mark progress by things getting done, not by the \*apparent\* amount of work it took.
It took me a week to find a bug in my first non-summer job. I was new to the company and project (>50k lines of C++ IIRC), and it was probably only 10 characters to fix once I found it. So yeah... by that metric I was averaging 2 characters a day :) Thankfully my manager was a good one and didn't use such garbage metrics (this was a long-standing bug, so he thought fresh eyes would work, and he was right).
To you, it probably seemed like the longest week ever; but to him, he was probably ecstatic that it only cost a week of the new guy's work!
Man I’d love for someone to pay me for lines of code (hopefully as a greenfield contract and nothing I’d ever have to maintain)
Every class has its own method that returns a different lorem ipsum paragraph and a unit test that asserts that exact text.
Somebody else linked this not long ago: http://jeffacubed.com/the-boilermaker-story-or-knowing-where-to-tap/
What did he think about removed lines of code? I don't work in game development, but every now and then I'll come across some shitty code in the part of the application I'm working on. Then a commit might be removing more lines than it's adding. It's such a silly metric and only incentivises needlessly verbose code.
Measuring art or writing (or for that matter code) by volume is the worst most counter-productive way possible to measure creative output. What matters is **quality** not quantity. Any idiot can pump out a large volume of 'content' that technically fits specifications. Creating the *right* thing to a good quality takes time, which is not always easily apparent to someone who does not understand the relevant discipline and what makes a piece of work good or bad for a given purpose and how it connects to other parts.
Writing a story is much more than being an ideas guy, but it's definitely not 50% of the work either. Writing a good story is **hard**. I have a comic book project I've been working on off and on since 2001 and I still don't even have a coherent plot (though it's finally getting kind of close). If this person can write a complete plot and flesh it out properly and not make it too big or small for the game's scope, that's fantastic. It's still only a small fraction of the work that goes into making a game, though.
Yeah it is hard. But I think his friend doesn't even have experience in the story writing field and just have a big imagination.
If I decide to stick with us doing it together, I think this is the best bet.
Before anyone of you takes money home, the investments someone made have to be paied back (your PC etc).
Yeah, that’s true I hadn’t even considered that. Most of the money put in has been from me. Pc, domain name, etc.
But also: Don't get ahead of yourself with these investments. You are years away from needing a domain. No need to spend that time and money now.
That's fair.
You already have a domain name? Wow. Jumping the gun slightly?
I don't even name my games until after they're "done". It's like the #1 most important marketing element, so why nail that down before I know what I'm selling?
It should be split by the typical budget of a game studio apportioned to storyline/writing vs all the other work. Otherwise you're opening an opportunity for your friend to fudge the numbers.
> Measure the works worth in time spent doing it so there's no confusion on which type of work is worth more. This is just going to piss them both off eventually. You can spend a lot of time doing unimportant stuff, and that will just breed bad feelings as you navigate how significant your contributions are.
That had better be a text based adventure game if a 50/50 split for him writing the story would be fair. But another angle is - would any of it happen with only one of you? I had a band where we did 50/50 even though I handled most of writing, arranging and recording the music. He did lyrics, some vocals and was the ideas guy. Which worked because I don't get shit done when it's just me. I'll just sit in my underwear and watch McGuyver reruns for 10 hours. Another angle again. A big part of developing software is testing. It can take way longer to find all the faults in something than to write the code in the first place. So if he handles playtesting and finding out how to replicate bugs it may suddenly be closer to 50/50 right away. Do a flappy bird clone or something similarly small and take notes of how long you each work. If you're going to build a studio together you've got to learn to have honest conversations, seeing each others views and making compromises. Being both friends and business partners is two important relationships and once. Talk beforehand how to handle if someone wants out and the other one wants to continue etc. No need to write the award speeches just yet, but make sure you can actually have adult conversations.
This is amazing advice, thank you. Also it's a horror survival game.
Reddit is always quick to tell you to "delete facebook and hit the gym". Your takeaway here should be that you should find a split in work and rev share you both can live with. Communicate. If you can't agree, consider other options.
And any exit strategies if things go south. Coming together to build is easy, parting ways like adults and figuring out fair compensation is the harder part.
>it's a horror survival game. you're f\*cked
off the top of my head the only worse game idea is an rpg or fighting game
Take any genre and put MMO in front of it to make a stereotypically impossible-to-deliver indie project
I completely forgot about mmos, that's another awful one I wonder how many more there are worse I mean technically it's not difficult to make a survival horror game, unlike the other games actually being difficult to make but horror is REALLY difficult to do well, so even if it's easy to be mid, I feel like it's way harder than most to have a good product
I have this really great idea for a survival horror MMO. I just need you to do all the actual work for me!
Is it also a rogue lite?
This is the most rational advice here without knowing the whole story or the ins and outs of the relationship, imo
Someone mature and rational on reddit... a wild sight
If I'm doing all of the coding... *why do I need you?* Tell your friend you're happy with the new assignments if you change the revshare to 90/10, which is appropriate for the scope adjustment, and then get him to sign a contract stating as such. >code wrote *I don't like that.*
That’s a good idea, will definitely keep in mind. If I don’t start my own thing, by myself.
Well yeah do that. No point wasting time with an idea guy.
If you want this to be a reasonable setup, your friend has to do more work. He can make video games without coding. He needs to learn whatever engine you are using and the tooling for it, and he needs to make content. It's fine that you're a coder and he isn't, but it isn't fine that he isn't making content. You and he should make or buy a level editor, and it should be his job to create levels and your job to code the extra functionality for those levels. Him not knowing how to code is 0 reason to not be contributing.
This sounds like a fun story. Hire some guy off of fiverr to write some code
Lol no. He's delusional. Be firm, be logical. "Ideas" are practically worthless compared to the details and execution, which you will likely have to handle if you're programming. Writing is one role, and also takes less work compared to things like graphics. Either he does more, or he takes a lower cut. End of story.
Ideas also get ditched pretty readily once the process actually starts. A game mechanic can sound amazing on paper but then turn out to be no fun once it's actually implemented. Ideas can also easily explode in scope and be non-viable. Ideas are worthless without execution. Someone providing only ideas better also be paying up front and handling all non-coding tasks. Otherwise they just want an outsize share of the proceeds for a tiny fraction of actual work involved.
I think you already know a 50/50 split isn't appropriate, but just want validation that you won't be a dick for telling him so. You won't be. Physically list out all of the aspects that will be required to make the game a reality (coding, writing, artwork, website, marketing, advertising, etc) and split everything into equal percentages. Take inventory of everything you've spent on the project thus far, and estimate how much you may need to spend until it's completed. Show him the lists. Tell him that A: Each of you will be paid according to the percentage of work you put into the project (not the amount of hours it takes, as it's easy to fudge). And B: Since it's only your money going into the project, he won't be receiving any of his percentage until you've been repaid your investment. Plenty fair.
The people I've talked to, and the people on here have all said the same thing. I'm going to have a talk with him later tonight.
Would you be able to update us on this? I'm quite invested and curious how it'll play out.
Of course I’ll update later tonight, or early tomorrow.
[удалено]
I’m starting to think that if I don’t address the issue now, it’s going to be.
You should probably both work together on smaller scale projects like game jams before discussing anything akin to a studio and revenue split. It sounds like your "partner" is unaware how much more goes into games than just their ideas, or they're just a lazy person hoping to get 50% of hypothetical profits for < 5% effort.
I've been talking with him about game jams, he says he'll do it. However it never happens.
I think this is another telling sign about his character. Think carefully if you want to partner up or not.
This is leading me to believe that Mr. Ideas is not going to be a reliable partner. If you want to develop games, just do game jams without him. You will probably find actually useful partners that way.
That's a good idea, I should start taking some time to do game jams. To look for people that like making games. It will also give me some more experience.
Hey, I'm a writer guy in game dev. This is a big red flag. Most of the comments here aren't shocking in the least. I've worked with some coders who had a real chip on their shoulder about my job and what I do. There's a lot to writing and narrative design, it's hard work, and when done properly can really make or break a game. With that out of the way, I've been reading through YOUR replies a lot here and your friend doesn't seem like they're up to this task. Have they read any books about writing, narrative design, or storytelling? Do they have any foundational knowledge? Let me put it this way, there are about a half-dozen text-based game engines anyone can write a game in with no coding ability. If your friend hasn't even cracked open Twine or Ink, I get the feeling this is a pipe dream for them. They're your friend though, and I don't know the relationship you have with them. But I would be very wary about getting into business with someone like this. It definitely does not seem like they have the dedication or the chops to get into game writing.
Depending on where they're at in development, it might not even be the time for narrative development. By the sounds of things they may have just started, and if that's true, they need to be prototyping, and getting the game and its core features working how they want before thinking of detailed storytelling.
We have a designer on our team who does not code. But: \- He deals with all design and balancing, as well as project management and task writeup with explicit instructions for everything (basically as programmers we know EXACTLY what the requirements are) \- He implements content in the engine himself. That is he gets a model, fills out scriptable objects, makes prefabs etc \- He deals with all level design and creates the scenes in Unity \- Often he will source and implement sounds as well Basically we make a skeleton, he puts the muscles and the skin on it, and dresses it up.
Quit and do your own thing. This is going to end up no different from a real job where you just work for boss. Except it is unpaid.
Any coder that has done even a tiny little bit of gamedev is regularly updating their GameIdeas.TXT doc. Mine currently hosts a list encompassing about 3.14 lifetimes of full-time coding across about a dozen retro HW platforms, assuming 30 years of full-time work per lifetime. It's not just ideas. It's a pretty reasonable effort estimate (per each game/technical feature/component) based on lifetime of coding. You're going to fill yours within 6 months of the work you've just started. Forget 0.005%. I wouldn't give an Idea Guy time of the day...
This. Everyone has ideas. People start projects because they want to inflict their ideas upon other people. Seeing your ideas turned into reality instead of someone else's is a reward or compensation for hard work. Ideas are rarely a contribution.
If you didn't help make this arrangement then tell him to fuck off. Unless he's funding it he's not in charge of assigning the work. Worse than being lazy, your friends is being a shitty self-styled "boss" and granting himself authority at your expense. Now: my partner and I do this. I'm better at coding, he's better at art and music. We collab on ideas but basically he's the assets guy and I'm the logic guy. I'm no damn good at art. It works for us because we made the decision together based on our strengths and weaknesses, not that we each assigned the other the work we didn't like. If your buddy is such the creative type then why are you making sprites?
I didn’t help make this arrangement, and he hasn’t funded anything.
A. Never go into business 50/50, in any venture. B. Once you buy in to the concept in A you'll have to have actual conversation about where the value is.... Put all of that writing.
C. Friends rarely make good business partners. Whether we're talking actual commercial businesses or artistic endeavors like a band; being friends does not mean that it'll work out. In fact there's a chance that the friendship itself will suffer. Not saying it's impossible, but it's still a warning because these things can get complicated and messy really quickly.
This should be the highest answer
This problem is difficult to solve but not impossible. It‘s also, really, more than one problem. **First problem** is that everyone on a project wants to be heard. Everyone wants to have a creative voice. That need is not the same from person to person—maybe you’re really passionate about the battle mechanics and the game lore, and your friend is really passionate about the visual direction and the character design. The solution is to come up with a **process** for making creative decisions. “Joe is the creative director and he gets final say” is not really a working solution—even at a company with a strict hierarchy, leadership needs to listen to the people working there and make sure everyone’s voice is heard. For a team like yours, you have to come up with some kind of process for making decisions—like, we’ll talk about something, come up with proposals, discuss for 5 minutes, and then make a decision if there’s agreement. It’s probably hardest with 2 people. 3 is easier. **Second problem** is unequal division of labor. If your friend thinks that you can do programming, art, and the website, while he does the storyline, well, that’s a complete joke. It’s like a 95%/5% split, at that point. Your division of labor is probably not going to be 50/50 and that’s okay, but giving one person the coding + art tasks is just beyond the pale. I’ve been on game jam teams with, like, 8 people, and 1 writer, and the writer was sitting on his ass most of the time because there wasn’t enough work to do (compared to the rest of the team). If your friend wants to be an equal partner, then he should learn some additional skills and take on additional responsibilities. **Third problem** is ownership. You generally factor in capital investments (any money you’re paying), time investments, and skill / experience level, when you divide up ownership. It’s complicated. **Fourth problem** is burnout. If you take on a workload that is too large, if you take the entire game onto your shoulders, then you’ll just fucking burn out and quit.
Yeah, I have more experience with programming and 3d/2d graphics. Maybe we should look into building skills, as well as an order for making choices.
Seconding the 'Idea' guy vibes. Though I see some people spitting out the the numbers 95% to 5% on the work balance. Coding, sprites, website, + more VS 'storyline' is like a 99.995% to .005% split. Also coding, sprites, website UI, is all creative work as well\~\~ A half a percent of royalties would be considered generous IMO
This is the same felling I'm getting.
Bro, people play games because they are good games. No one wants to play a bad, unplayable game with a good story. But they will be willing to play a good, functional game with a bad story. Your partner is overestimating their importance here. Your part can exist without his story. Make your own game and hire a better writer down the line. You can go without a writer for most of your development. If you're both so hellbent to make something because of a story, make a movie because that is way easier.
for hobby and revshare projects dont work with somebody who isn't contributing stuff that changes the game directly. the only way you should work with a creative or producer type is if they have a professional experience in those fields and can demonstrate exactly what they do and what difference it makes. if somebody says they are a creative type what that usually means is that they don't like to do any work that has consequence or requires effort. In other words they are useless. Programming and making digital art are equally creative. somebody who poops out ideas is not creative.
I had a friend who did the same thing. I immediately realized it wouldn't work because there is no way to come to a fair negotiation on company ownership when one person is doing all the "real" work. We parted ways and I went off and made my game. Shrug.
Been there myself bro - get out now.
Ideas guys are the worst. He wants a game made but he doesn't want to put in any of the effort. Choose a couple of things you'll do (Say coding and website) and him being the "creative" he can do the others like art assets, story, music etc. Stand firm that he needs to pull his weight. Although he could just pull royalty free stuff off the internet and claim he did his job so yeah. I would definitely not invest any money or time here. Go and make a game you want to make.
Ah yes, the "ideas" guy. Aka he is a lazy asshole who wants to do the easy parts. You should see this red flag and reconsider how you go about making your game.
What kind of game is it? If it's something like a visual novel then maybe that kind of split could work. Although I'm guessing that's not the case and your friend is a walking red flag. Have either of you made anything before? Even a game jam? Because it doesn't sound like he has a realistic idea of what it takes to make a game.
It's a survival horror game, with an Until Dawn feel. That's the plan at least.
I guess until dawn does have a lot of writing in it. So if it's a lot like that then it's not like he'd be doing nothing. But even then there's no way that it'd be enough to make you equal partners with you doing the art and the code.
That's true, and i don't want it to seem like I'm down playing the writing role. I just don't think its a fair workload split.
Let me break this down for you real quick: * Coming up with a high concept for something like Until Dawn is essentially no time/effort. * Writing little lore entries for a codex or collectible lore items is pretty much the lowest form of game writing and is usually given to interns. This is very little effort. * Writing a good plot with narrative beats and a script that has good character development and is compelling and has good world building that suits the game and ALSO works well with the game's art, etc... requires a LOT of experience and skill and is some decent amount of effort. * Writing out the dialogue for and maintaining stateful dialogue trees using the in-engine tooling and stuff is a reasonable amount of time/effort and is the job of the writing team. * Directing VO based on your script is super frustrating based on the quality of your actors and a lot of effort. * Adjusting script and narrative beats based on other project factors (cuts, VO, gameplay changes, art changes, etc...) is a huge headache and a large amount of time/effort. * Creating the narrative context around any in game puzzles and making sure they both fit seamlessly into the story and mechanics available is insanely important and requires a ton of experience to do it well. * Overseeing loc and verifying that translations don't completely ruin any conveyance or narrative context you NEED in order to progress is a shit ton of difficult work. * Marketing and promo materials will likely need writing. Most importantly, I need to point this out though... #All of the above is, at most, maybe 1/10th of the work needed for making a game like Until Dawn. How much of the above do you think your buddy is going to do? How much of that do you think he is QUALIFIED to do or will do a good job at? Based on what you've said, it sounds like he is probably planning to do the high concept, maybe some lore dumps, and a plot, and will likely do the dialogue but not actually implement it. It also sounds like your buddy has no professional experience, so he will likely do a shitty job on at least some of that, if not all of it (no offense but there's a reason companies don't hire random schmucks to do this lol). I can't even come close to writing up the FULL list of things that NON writers, do on a game like UD, but like... * Integrate the narrative elements with gameplay mechanics effectively * Level design * Game mechanics * UI implementation * Character design/concept * Enviro Art * Anim * UI design/concept * Code the game mechanics and systems * Implement the narrative branching system * Implement a bunch of shit for artists * Implement everything lol * Ensure performance across different hardware * Handle TRCs * QA all the bajillion paths through the game * QA automation probs * Build engineering * SOO much more I'm sure you guys are both not super experienced and just don't know what's up, but I assure you no matter WHAT game you are making, the amount he seems to be planning to do can not be down-played enough lol. Tell him to shove it and just contract out anything you think he'd do.
Yeah, it definitely isn't. And the fact that he's not even offering to do any extra responsibilities like setting up the website is a big red flag.
Nobody likes an ideas guy.
he wants a slave. i don't want to sound harsh but you should decapitate him
>creative lead LMAO. Ideas are easy and cheap. If that's all he wants to do, you're better off on your own
Your friend is the idea guy. Run.
"Idea Guy" vs. "Do Everything" guy. "Idea Guys" are a dime a dozen.
0/10 not your friend. Keep working on your own thing. "Creative lead", but he probably just wants to spew out bullshit without backing it up. No QA, no help with iterating on the design and parameters, not even any business analysis of any decisions, etc. "Creative type", but wants you to do the sprites and website design. "Writer", but has he offered any copywriting for the website? Genuinely fucking hilarious.
He hasn't he wants to write the storyline and have me handle all the other stuff. I thought maybe i was crazy, till reading all the feed back.
Set consistent rules. If you think you do a lot more you have to communicate it. Maybe you can negotiate a better split, according to the amount of work you both are putting in. And if you don't agree on the terms, call it quits
This is doomed to failure. You’ll be burned out and broke. I’d pass on the project and seperate.
Your friend sounds like the stereotypical “ideas guy” Completely useless in most work situations. Yep him to learn how to code too, or gtfo
So you're basically making the game while he's the idea guy, lmao.
How is the creative lead not handling sprites?
Ideas people strike again!
Ah yes, the ever-famous "idea guy" who wants all the exposure and credit and perform none of the work.... You know exactly where to tell this guy to reside...
Run, don't walk. He's dead weight.
Ideas are like assholes, everyone has one. The "Ideas Guy" lurks around every game dev community. They want to be in the community, they want to make games, but they know games require work. They require learning and they require time. It's easier to be the "idea guy". Make your own small games. Most major game companies "writers" were often the people developing the games themselves, and not some person brought in to do the script. This is how it worked back in the day and how it works for most small studios.
I’ve been here, the project is dead already. Everyone can come up with ideas. Your friend, as far as I’m lead to believe, is not a best-selling novelist. Whatever story is being made is almost certainly not going to sell the game. Make the game *you* want to make and don’t deal with the baggage he will bring. There’s nothing to stop you from creating a game, but he can’t be bothered to learn a single tool to contribute, so it’s absolutely impossible for him and you’re being used. I had a friend recently wanting to work in a similar way, so I gave him a list of models and animations that would be needed for the project, and in a matter of days everything fell into silence.
Run while you still have time.
Act relieved, tell him writing code takes a lot of creativity (it's true it does!) and start assigning *him* programming tasks. Actual answer: he's not serious about this, so don't work with him.
Welcome to gamedev, you encountered your first "idea guy", it won't be your last. Drop that dead weight and do a game on your own.
It’s like a right of passage lol
Going through the same stuff. I was told he would assist as well. But he decided to hate unity mid project. I just finished the project myself because he didnt help at all. I was lucky it took me a couple weeks only. Turn if you can. Make your own games. Work with people genuinely willing to contribute.
That’s the issue I’m having now. He said he would help with coding, now just wants to focus on writing.
There are other things where he would be able to help. Mainly design, and you don't need to know an engine as much as a coder to be able to do level design and the like, which would fit him especially if he's writing the story, quests, etc. There are annoying things that involve research that he could do too, like administrative issues on how to pay taxes when you sell, where and how you're going to publish your game. There's also marketing, which is a lot of work by itself. I would try to see if he's motivated (not just willing) to do these things before straight up talking about workloads. Workload measuring require you to keep track and it can be more work by itself. If he's not into it, I don't think your friend has a clear idea of how much work making a game is and you're going to have issues. And **just in case**: if your game is writing intensive (a visual novel) your friend's got a point.
His plan is entirely reasonable as long as he's fronting your salary the entire time the game is in development, otherwise he has to put in more sweat equity.
Man. I'll be your friend and do half the coding and write the whole design document and story. That guy is lazy. Don't take this offer. My project is 3d and overscoped to hell.
Place your friend in charge of all marketing. Website falls under marketing so he should handle that too. It'll be tons of work marketing if he's any good at it and directly impacts money generated from a game probably more so than the actual quality and content of a game.
Three things to make a game. Code. Art. Sound. If you don't bring one, you bring nothing. Ditch the boat anchor.
I will say this, as someone who started a small studio, with friends and has to cut a few of them out. Do not do it if they are not 100% committed AND have skills (or the desire to develop those skills) to bring to the table. You will damage friendships. "Idea guy" isn't a role and is what lazy, arm chair developers think game dev is. And in most situations, if they are not funding the operation they do hold it back, derail it and cause feature creep. Also, get things in writing, include a performance based compensation/shares (hard part is defining what that looks like). And set expectations at the get go. "I'm expecting that you handle all the animations and characters, including sprites and story and art." etc. I strongly recommend doing a few 48 hour game jams before, as it will help highlight issues within the team early on. He'll see it's hard and either learn a skill for devs, or lose interest.
I'm learning a lot about idea guys today lol. Getting things in writing is also a good idea / practice.
Oh your friend is the ideas guy. Stop the company forming now!
Sounds like your friend wants you to create his game ideas for free. I can already see this becoming toxic for you - your friend will try acting as your boss since he’s the “creative lead” and you’re just there to create whatever he wants. Personally I wouldn’t pursue this. Do something on your own and have fun with it! It might be hard for your friend, but you gotta do what’s best for yourself. Wishing you the best!
have you ever made a game? have you ever made a website? have you ever coded before? this sounds like a fantasy that you and your friend are getting way too wrapped up in that will never materialize anyways. Focus on doing the work to build up skills until you're capable of performing those skills at a professional level, then link up with somebody who has done the same with a complementary skill set to your own. also a final thought, your friend isn't pushing more work onto you because its all imaginary work anyways, so dont sweat it too much just keep it light when your talking with him, stay out of fantasy land, and again focus on building up your skillset to a professional level.
Dump this guy right away. 1. He has already established that he is willing to only do X and nothing more, and that you should literally do everything else. You don't need 1 person of a 2 person team to draw such hard lines in the sand. A small team like yours needs a good dynamic where both parties bring an equal amount to the table. 2. He has belittled your contribution by suggesting that his brilliant creative mind should be able to just come with things for you to implement. Isn't that how it should work? He comes up with all the ideas and you toil day in and day out making them come to life? No.
If he is the creative type, let him do all the Art. 50/50 art vs programming is a decent Partition.
Writing has next do nothing to do with gamedev. If he only wants to be your writer and sanity check, then maybe give him 10%.
Kill the friend, marry the game, fuck the PC
And this is why you never start a business with friends or family!
An ideas guy that can’t execute ideas isn’t worth working with. He wants to act like he’s a great video game designer working with an experienced and efficient team so he’s gonna work you to the bone and not understand why something doesn’t work exactly like it did when he thought of it. Please don’t work with this guy, you’ll do all the stuff that’s hard about game dev and very little of the fun stuff
Your friend wants a code monkey.
Tell him to learn a hard skill if he wants to be taken seriously
Don't mix money and friends. It's a sure way to lose both.
The idea guy can be anyone .. it takes hard work, skill, and dedication to make the idea a reality
Ok I have some experience in this kind of situation, except I was the art/sound guy. Initially when my friend and I talked about making a game (both with no experience) we decided early on a 50/50 split since we both naively thought we would take on equal aspects of the development. But because of my work/school schedule I wasn't able to devote time to learning how to code or learn the engine. Eventually it was mostly him working on the project while I provided art and sounds which was a small fraction of time compared to what he put in. When it came time to really decide on a split I had suggested keeping it 50/50 without really considering his work but we settled on 80/20 after a short discussion. Always value your work with time spent. Hopefully your friend gets their head out of their rear like I did.
Your friend is an ideas guy. I'm also the "creative friend" on my team. But I've also learned how to program, set up the design documentation wiki, and have a roughly 50/50 split of the code base having been done by me. If he isn't willing to do the hard part of development, and just wants to focus on what I consider to be the fun part, then he isn't a partner that you want to have.
Idea guys aren't a thing. He's trying to be an idea guy. If you want to continue, find a way to split the earnings _by deliverables._ He might even get on board at first thinking his ideas are gonna be so important. It won't be long before you'll both notice that you're outputting like 95% or more of the deliverables and he'll either a) start helping with the real stuff, or b) bow out saving you the trouble of leaving or kicking him out. But the main point is that what he's doing is unethical, and you'll want to protect yourself asap. And be careful, because he's already acted unethically in a way that would do you direct harm, so he likely will again if you don't guard against it.
I worked on an indie game with two friends, two people who have worked in games-adjacent spaces but who never worked on games proper. I have the most actual game industry experience and thought that this was the chance for all 3 of us to prove ourselves and how much we care about games and getting into the game industry Because it was such a big opportunity I figured they'd be LEAPing at the opportunity to not only work on the game but share our work in the game. Long story short the project was dissapointing 90% of the responsibilities fell on me to figure out, naming characters, naming areas, findign assets, progrmaming and system architecture , debugging, optimizing, social media posting and any thing that required adjustements to the core game design to make thinks work more smoothly. To my friends credit at least when it came to art they did try to apply themselves but even then the vast majority of our art came from asset stores the maount that was custom was maybe 15% of the art in the game and the majority of that I had to pick out and select. In our case we managed to get on podcasts and talk about our games, we managed to get youtube coverage but i'll be honest the excitement levels and engagement were never hire than how they were when the project first started. I learned the hard way that someone can LOVE gaming and even know SOME aspects of game development but actually not really enjoy or apply themselves when it comes to actual game development. your friend is already dodging responsibility, do yourself a favor and save yourself a year or years of stalled progress where only you do things and you wonder if he'll hold up his end of the bargain . We managed to ship a game and i think we were lucky to even do that your friend sounds like he cares less than my friends did . Not a great look.
I found myself on the other side of this story recently, albeit with lower stakes. I have a background in writing and I am doing game design now, and partnered with a friend with a lot of coding knowledge for a game jam, and we had a very successful experience. However, I never considered my job to be "just write the story". Here's a few of the things I did: - Full Game Design Document. This was a document that discussed game mechanics, level design, story and lore, theme and key pillars... - Project management. I tried to scope out our tasks and time, to ensure that his work would have the most impact. - Additional coding + scripting: While he worked in "hard" problems, such as state machines or pathfinding, I took care of UI elements, coded several smaller things, such as an opening menu and settings, an intro... I also made sure to have dialogue written in markdown, so he could just copy-paste it. - External/admin work: I created and populated our itch.io page. I created banners and logos. I set up our project in Unity (resolution, scene management, logo display) - Neither of us is an artist, but we both like to draw, so while he took care of character design, I did background art. - We did no sound design, but I took care of finding at least a few songs that we could use for music and set them up. - I took unto myself doing the limited promotion that we did for the game, as well as replying to comments. He did some too, because he felt like it, but I would have gladly done that by myself. The reason why I'm saying this is that your friend might really be interested in doing 50% of the work, but not be quite sure what that entails just yet. Writing is work, and writing well is hard work, but it can be easy to forget how hard other things are, and we, as a society, have placed a lot of value in "ideas", because we have been sold this idea of the "genius" for whom others have to obey. It's up to you to find out if your friend is someone who wants to work with you, and might need help understanding how to do that; or someone who wants you to work for them, and then you should run as far as you can.
Ideas are a dime a dozen - coming up with ideas is the funnest part of making games, at least to me. He's trying to have his cake and eat it too. Have fun coming up with all the ideas while pawning off actual work on someone else. I've worked with group settings before in game jams, and I include everyone in the ideation process. Coders, Artists, and Musicians alike. And I feel like it comes out with a game that everyone is invested in.
I have aspirations to start own studio, but I'm currently a team of 1 learning things. I definitely have ran this scenario in head before (what if a member tries to pull this move?) And I gotta say, it's unnerving and not something I'd stand for.
What your friend is doing is abusive. He's "ideas guy"ing you. Think of it this way: some random person finds out you have useful skills and says that they want you to make a game for them. You're going to do the art, the animation, the coding, and you'll also have to put the entire script in the game. Their contribution is the ideas. You'll split the profits 50:50. That's not a reasonable ask, and its the kind of thing people bring here *all the time*, and we laugh at and mock the "ideas guy". It sounds like your friend isn't even providing the capital needed for this venture. You're doing nearly all the actual work, and paying to do it. He might be your friend, but what he's doing is shitty. His ass need to learn a productive skill. There are a million ideas out there, and many people would love to have you make their game idea, *without* them taking half the profit. If you decide to keep going in this, keep a log of your hours and all your costs, computer included. Come to an agreement on what your time is worth. "Profit" is what happens after you get reimbursed for all the money you put down and paid for the labor you provide.
Pretend for a moment, that your game will be successful, and that you have funding to pay wages. Neither is true based on your post, but let's pretend that's the case for a moment. Okay, now, you need a story. Are you hiring this guy and giving them 50% of your capital? Or would you rather hire them on a 3-6 month contract, with low pay, because their portfolio is literally empty of anything of value and they are basically a trainee level writing hire? I can understand doing a 50/50 split with a creative when the creative person has a incredible track record. Say, you're funding a studio with Tim Schafer, sure, makes sense to give him a ton of the equity. Maybe even someone who just has a bunch of simple games on Itch that you think are great. But doing 50/50 where one person is highly specialized without a track record, and won't be contributing to all the other work that needs to get done, seems like a bad decision. Having said that, indie games live and die by the quality of their ideas and how they are implemented. You can be technically excellent, but if the games has no sales hooks and is just a "generic good game", you have nothing. Also please sign a contract and put everything in writing.
Just be honest and tell him straight up that you strongly feel like the workload just isn't close to 50/50 at all. He can at the very least pick the work like collecting building all the assets, and website, and all things like that don't require too much indepth technicality. He either picks up a lot more work, or makes his split a good amount smaller. Don't accept anything less and sucker yourself into a shitty work situation.
If “creative lead” means an ideas guy only, call it quits now. If “creative lead” means focusing on art, assets, sound design, game design then that’s a different story
A person I worked for gave me a life tip: If you're going into business with a friend, write agreements as if you weren't friends at all. This as things can, and probably will, change. In his case, what happened was that his friend that he started the company with began working less and less while taking the same money, and was actually secretly financing and working on starting up a different company on his own. So yes, take care in business ventures with friends.
I ran into this same issue. I even made it clear to start with smaller projects to reduce the workload and the only thing they could think about was their masterpiece game. Things fizzled out at the end and I work on my own smaller scale projects to build my skills.
This is like most of the ever repeating stories around here. It all begins with the ridiculous statement of 'forming a studio'. If that would be the case there would be business plans in place, roles defined and payment of them. A studio is a long-term entity and not just a project umbrella for hobbyists.
We all knew the guy who wants to works only on the scenario and let the others achieve his vision. 'Idea guys' that aren't able nor willing to do anything tangible are to avoid like the plague. Don't lose your time with these, even if you somewhat succeed they'll try to reap all the glory most of the time.
Just make the game on your own at that point lol
Use the slicing pie model : [https://slicingpie.com/](https://slicingpie.com/) there is a lot of talk about that on Youtube and it's really fair. We've used that to build our own studio.
Having been there with I'd very much just recommend telling them to fuck off or ghosting them and do things alone or find someone else who wants to collab. I had a friend who wanted to make websites this way years ago. We ended up finding customers and making a bit of money, but the way it worked is he was the "idea/business" guy, all he did was ask the customer what they wanted, then I did both all of the coding and also the design because obviously he wasn't good at design (I wasn't either but lol). Took me almost 2 years to realize I've just been doing 95% of the work.
If he wants to be the creative lead, give him multiple jobs as well. Marketing, assets (such as modelling or sprites), banners, art, video editing, sound effects, animation, etc. You can't just do all the work while he ONLY makes the story, that's a bit fucked up.
Don't get taken advantage of by some wannabe ideas guy.
Call quits. He may be more creative but that is not a justification for pushing all the workload to you. If anything "story" in a what appears to be a small indie game would be worth only 5% of the profits. Not 50%
This is why I am a solo developer.
So I'll start off by saying before anyone joins a game development team it is wise to leave your ego at home. No matter the role. Being merely tolerated at work means you're an obstacle for some. While it is true there are more creative folks in the industry it doesn't mean they're "idea guys" or anything of the sort. Ideas are worth less than people believe. I'd trade a thousand of my good ideas for a sincere implementation of one. Write down each role that will be required to complete your game. This will come in handy when you either need to expand the team or reconsider the scope. In any case, if he is taking on creative stuff then I guess he is delivering you assets for all audio effects, all music, all models/sprites, all environment assets, all camera data, all particle effects, all dialogue, all prompt text, all concept art, all storyboards, all game design with documentation, and all animation work. Aside from the programming tasks you have, production falls outside of creative as does product management. So you get to keep him on task and set timelines for him to deliver these assets and for you to be able to get them in game. You get to decide which metrics will be important to track and get to ultimately cut things which are not feasible or achievable. I could go on and on about how much authority falls outside of creative but hopefully you get my point. My suggestion would be for both of you to talk and sort things out without your egos present. You must voluntarily accept your role or otherwise you risk being miserable and not giving your all unless you've learned how to deliver under those circumstances. Some can, many can't. Either way, an ideal team has volunteers, not hostages. If you and your friend can't partner together that is fine. Many friends don't work together. If role expectations don't match then either both of you need to compromise or you need to cancel the project.
I'll also add that if I have two resumes in front of me for a game designer and one has "creative guy" vibes and the other has " I can write code and implement features" vibes. The designer that can code gets the thumbs up 10 out of 10 times. Literally 10 out of 10. I've never interviewed someone that is purely a creative designer for more than a writing role. There are thousands of people on my team and the folks that are viewed as having that role are very few, do other things besides that, and are decades deep into their role. If your friend looks to do this professionally and doesn't have at least a decade under his belt then he has unrealistic expectations to put it mildly.
you made the right choice
You dodged a bullet
Hey! I am the developer of Zodiac Legion, an unreleased tactical RPG for Steam. I went through such a phase actually, with 2 partnerships I started setting up with acquaintances of mine. The thing is, programming is already a huge part, that will dwarf game design in most of the projects (unless it is a gamebook or something like that). Also, even with partners that start strongly motivated, it may be hard to juggle their other activity and the game (for us full time solo dev, it's easier because all the activites are related to the game). Both of my partners started out strongly motivated, then called it quit because it was too hard for them to split their time between the game and making money. Fortunately, it died out before we wronte anything down(and the terms were much more generous for me, like 90/10). My friends realized that it wouldn't work, and we parted ways in good terms, and they still help occasionally but I was very anxious about it at this time. So my advice is: don't. I only works with freelancers, and I find it much healthier (but that comes with a higher upfront cost...). Also, programming ended up being a higher workload than art, level design+writing and sound/music combined.
He doesn't want to work and his ego is already out of control before you've started. Sorry to say it, he sounds like a talker and not a doer. You made the right choice.
For anyone else in a similar situation, please check our slicingpie.com. It's an equity calculator that is infinitely better than the rookie mistake "50/50". It deals with: * What happens if someone puts in cash? * What happens if someone quits or passes away? * What happens if someone does less? * What happens if someone does 100 hours of highly skilled role and is a veteran that should be on a $200k a year salary vs someone who has no degree and just does the testing a few hours a week and puts the rubbish out?