RE: Publisher payments (was Re: [GD-General] Prices of well-known 3D engines)
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RE: Publisher payments (was Re: [GD-General] Prices of well-known 3D engines)
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From: <mdr...@cy...> - 2003-06-08 09:51:47
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I think that many times you hear about studios in this case (milestones payment) but that's for games being published by big publishers. I'd like to give a different sound of bells. The company I'm working for has shipped three games. The first game was started in april 2000 and shipped in June 2001. The project cost was about 500k, so that that's not insane. The game was a cycling management game, with interative races. You can call it niche market, but it sold more than 100 000 units, just in Europe. We had agents, we didn't find a global publisher, so the project was self-funded. We had some royalties advances two months before the game shipped, and we signed nearly a contract for every country in Europe. So the game sold well in Europe ( including a Top3 on PC in France) and didn't find a publisher in USA. The royalties rate was about 4-5 to 10 per game sold (and it was sold cheaper than other games), which is quite high, but you must take into account that it's a PC game (no royalties for console makers) and it was sell funded so there was no risk for our publishers. The second game was the sequel to the first. It was done during July 2001/ June 2002. No global publisher found, still it sold more than 100.000 units. In fact we had propositions, among others from a one of the two big french publishers : 100 k of advance + 5 per copy + we still self-finance till completition. Not really appealing... So, the game was shipped by the same small publishers. The third game was a horse racing/management game. This sport is very popular in UK / France. The game costed 400k to make, by another team as the cycling games, during Dec 2001 / Dec 2002. The best deal we found was, 3 months before completition, 300k for UK+Germany+France+Benelux in advance ( 30 000 copies with 10 per copy). We worked with other publishers for the other countries. The main publisher was not very active, so with those 4 countries we expect to sell just a few more copies than 30 000. Other countries did quite well considering the sport is not very popular, and with our previous two games we had good contracts, up to 12-14 per copy. So the game, who shipped in europe, and soon in USA, has made so far about 525k in royalties. We now have 3 games in developpment (2 sports managers, one innovative strategy game), and for the two sport games, we don't even try to find a big publisher. Especially if you consider that our partners made some good mareketing in their own countries, and we have good delas with them. My conclusion is that you can make interessant games, deliver them on time, have a proven quality track and sell many copies, you won't necessarly find a publisher that will pay you to make your game. And the milestone system is more targeted at middle to big products, especially console games. For a game done by 5 people ( we are 6-8 per project), it's really difficult to find that scheme of agreement : your game is not big enough for a big publisher... -----Message d'origine----- De : gam...@li... [mailto:gam...@li...] De la part de Paul Reynolds Envoyé : samedi 7 juin 2003 02:42 À : gam...@li... Objet : RE: Publisher payments (was Re: [GD-General] Prices of well-known 3D engines) It's truly dependent on the project (scope, genre, platforms, schedule, etc.) and the resulting negotiations. So everything below this line is conjecture based on my experience (as a programmer, not exec) in the industry. Typically, everything is paid on deliverables (milestones). The contract is usually considered the first milestone. The "pure" thought is that the milestone payments just cover your development costs while you make a game for your publisher. Then you receive payment (royalties) once the publisher has recouped their expenses (your milestone payments). But, in my experience, the studio can pull in a little profit from the milestone payments as well. The terms of the royalties can vary wildly. So your milestone payments should at least keep your studio going since that's probably your only incoming cash. So, back to your question, a 5 man project could have 1 producer (~$100k), 2 artist's (~$50K ea.), 2 SE It's (~$70K ea), and 1 SE III (~$100K ea). ($440K)/12 months = $37,000 for a milestone just to cover salaries. Throw on another $30K for administrative staff and offices. As an incredibly rough estimate, say you manage to negotiate an $80K milestone payment (which, I believe is reasonable for a low budget title), you could conceivably have a positive cash flow of a few thousand bucks. Which isn't bad considering you've already made payroll and paid rent. I won't even get into on time delivery bonuses/penalties and contract amendments. But, the reality is a five man team is going to have a rough time putting out any sort of commercial game in a reasonable time frame. Factor by 0.75 for Spain, 0.5 for Ukraine, and 0.25 for China ;op -----Original Message----- From: gam...@li... [mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of Frank Davis Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 12:28 PM To: gam...@li... Subject: Publisher payments (was Re: [GD-General] Prices of well-known 3D engines) Hi all, (Sorry if this comes through twice) >Obviously publishers won't gave the same ammount of money to develop a game >in spain as int USA... at least i don't think you can fool them that way :) >So perhaps we will get a 1/15 fraction of the ammount of money you (USA) >can get from a publisher... >I don't know it for sure, as i don't work on games directly I'm not sure if this off topic, but i would guess it isnt so here goes.. Is there anyone that can give any information about how much a game should earn a small developer team? I understand not too many of you are willing to share details of your financial situation, so dont use game names if you dont want to. Lets say you have a team of 5 people working fulltime on a game for a couple of months. What would be a reasonable payment? I suppose you would receive a sum on signing of the contract, a sum on delivering a master, and royalties for each sold product? Does anyone have numbers? Regards, Frank _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Etnus, makers of TotalView, The best thread debugger on the planet. 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