Roger, got it. First thing is to get leads for the major programming departments.

The team will have to be recruited on vision. The vision is there is a desperate need for this title in this one specific genre because so may developers have delivered up titles that didn't even come close to meeting the needs of the community. The developers really don't understand the community, especially that it's a split community, with each segment wanting something different. And they don't take the time to really find out deep down what the community wants.

Anytime you find a niche in the marketplace that is being underserved, there's money to be made there. I could try to make the next Call of Duty, no way, I'd never even get close. I could try to make some simple mobile game, no to that too, that market has too many different options / way too many competitors. But in this one genre, because of what the devs have done to the gaming community, there is a vast unmet need that could be filled.

The no money thing is a problem, that's for 100% sure. But when there is the promise of earning a large market share "in this one niche", there's also great rewards to be had. So people will be doing some "free work" for the chance at "great rewards". The structure of the company won't be "salaried" positions. It'll be based on profit sharing. Get more people in the game, get more money.

My biggest fear isn't finding people to help. I know there are a lot of programmers that may have tried or may want to try to accomplish a survival title like DayZ.

My biggest fear is keeping them working on it, getting it accomplished in a reasonable timeframe, and what to do with the "this guy worked 5000 hours on the game" but "this other guy worked 50 hours on the game". When it launches, we can't bring everyone on board. 5000 hour guy is obviously in. But what do you do about 50 hour guy? I have to find a way to structure it so people know up front that if they put the full effort in, they're in for the full rewards. But if they're not in it full time, then they get some money and are sent on their way?

I'm thinking that the leads of each department would determine who gets the positions once the company launches. So the lead art guy would choose X number of artists, and we bring those on staff. Everyone else just gets a smaller payout and moves on.

What do you think?

Yes, I've been in a very similar situation. Here's your problems:

Without money you cant hire people fulltime, which means anyone you try to get to work on this fulltime will be paying out of their savings. Most good engineers are already working and wont quit their jobs to join you, even if this were best-case scenario, which it's not. They dont know you or your vision. And they probably have families to feed and mortgages to pay.

This means that your pool of people who might work with you full-time is very, very small.

Then you have the option of getting people to work with you on their spare time. I can also guarantee you that if you get these people you cant really rely on them to produce that much. Working on your own personal projects on your spare time is bad enough. Working with others on someone else's project is harder.

You also have the problem that if you gather a group they'll most likely be scattered around the country, or world. This is another major problem for game development. You could certainly do it, but having a team that's all together on-site is your best case situation.

I hate to be the one throwing the wet blanket on your hopes, but without any money you're chances of getting anywhere with this are very small.

The structure of the company won't be "salaried" positions. It'll be based on profit sharing.

What you're asking people to do here is commit some non-trivial amount of their time and effort into building this game, purely on the hope that they recoup a significant amount of that investment once the game is finished and has generated some amount of profit (two things that very well might never happen). That's a huge risk on their part. Generally the kind of people who shoulder that category of are called entrepreneurs, not employees, and are working for equity, not profit sharing.

Of course it's still possible for that equity to be worthless at the end, but an unfinished game generates no profit. By contrast an unfinished game does still consist of IP and work that holds some to the owning company, and thus some value through equity to a partner. So the equity bet is the better one, generally (I still wouldn't do it, personally, but that's me).

The smart, safe developer will probably want the salary, because the smart, safe developer probably has a family, or hobbies, or rent that he or she needs to pay for and recognizes how frequently game projects fail to produce watershed profits. The smart, lives-on-the-edge developer will probably want the equity (or at least accept it) if they can be convinced that you have solid, workable plan and that the project is a good investment of their time.

The developer who is suckered in by the vague promise of "profit sharing" without really understanding the massive risks that involves taking on, without the ability to translate that investment of their time into ownership of results? That's not the developer you want picking out the rest of your developers.

You may want to read this thread and this thread for related discussion.

My biggest fear is keeping them working on it, getting it accomplished in a reasonable timeframe, and what to do with the "this guy worked 5000 hours on the game" but "this other guy worked 50 hours on the game". When it launches, we can't bring everyone on board. 5000 hour guy is obviously in. But what do you do about 50 hour guy?

Talk to a laywer. If you go into this without establishing agreements pertaining to that for people to sign, you've already failed. Here is a good place to start.

(If you don't have such agreements, which generally including assigning the rights to an individuals work over to a company or whatever, then when that 50-hour person leaves, if he wants -- such as if he's unhappy that you have decided 51 hours was the cut-off for profit sharing after-the-fact -- he takes all his work and work derived from it with him. All of it. Because he still owns the copyright, since you didn't have him sign an agreement that assigned you or your company the rights. Then you go down in a legal firestorm and that's the end of the that.)

Shannon you actually made me laugh out loud when you said Forgelight 2.....lol I would not want any engine even remotely associated with H1Z1 :)

Good insight on the Unreal Engine. I'm looking at Ark too. While it's not my cup of tea per say, what they've done with Ark is amazing, and their customers like it.

And you said it perfectly:

Man I think you are right though - my buddies and I try all the zombie games out there and frankly (mod'd) Minecraft has the most staying power. The rest of them are trainwrecks.

That's the thing about that market, all the developers are taking a "stab at it", but they're not doing the customer focused research to actually produce what survival players WANT :) Hardcore players want substantially different things from PVE players. That's the simplest part of the process, just go ask people. Ask a lot of people. Keep asking people what they want until they won't talk to you anymore.....lol THEN go build your game based on that information.

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OrOd:

I agree with you that I can't get people to do it full time for free. It's going to have to be part time. It's going to be hard.

Don't worry about the wet blanket. Since I've started wearing a wet blanket full time 24/7. I've got myself 50% convinced this is a complete failure before I even start, and 50% convinced we're going to make a game so successful that will make DayZ look like a flop. If I were betting though, I'm betting on the 50% fail :)

Second, 51 + (3 x 29) + (7 * 20) is 278%, so I don't understand your equity numbers. Similarly, 10 + (3 x 10) + (7 x 8.5) is 99.5%, so I don't understand your profit sharing numbers.

The equity number was total, but the profit sharing was each. I'll put it out as all each:

Me = 51% Equity, 10% Profit Sharing

3 Programming Leads = 9.6% Equity, 10% Profit Sharing

7 Programmers = 2.8% Equity, 8.5% Profit Sharing

I can do the profit sharing easy. I've done that with employees I've had in the past. There wasn't much issue with it.

How would you do it? I can't afford to give away the equity, because I don't want to get put out of the project that I started. But I want to make sure I'm taking care of the people who did the heavy code lifting. I think the coders should have a big stake in how well the game does AND benefit from it.

My ideal end state would be.

1. Happy me working for the company earning a decent living

2. Happy programmers working for the company earning a decent living

3. A game that the customers REALLY enjoy, leading to future value for both the brand and subsequent titles.

The equity number was total, but the profit sharing was each. I'll put it out as all each:

Me = 51% Equity, 10% Profit Sharing

3 Programming Leads = 9.6% Equity, 10% Profit Sharing

7 Programmers = 2.8% Equity, 8.5% Profit Sharing

All programmers and 1 business/vision guy? You need some artists and at least 1 designer in the mix. Also I'd suggest just 1 programming lead. You need one person in charge of your tech, not 3 that will fight with each other and come to you to make decisions, because you're not able to tell them what tech decisions are right or wrong. Also finding 3 senior-level engineers to work on this wont be easy IMO.

I can understand the instinct to keep 51% for yourself, but first answer this: What do you bring to the table that warrants 51% of the equity? If you came to me and asked me to be your lead engineer (and I had the time, interest, and belief in the project) I would probably not jump in for anything less than 20%. The reason is that you really cant make the game without me (or someone else like me), it'd be a big time investment for me and I'm assuming I'd do most of the engineering work early on, and lastly I'm not sure why I couldnt just do the project on my own and recruit my own team.

What I bring to the table is industry and customer base knowledge. How to draw additional knowledge from that customer base, translate it into actual game development, and make that the profit driver for the business. How to make your customers happy, and make more money doing it.

Before you say that's not worth much......WarZ Devs (failed)....DayZ Standalone Devs (failed)....H1Z1 Devs (failed). So you've got the gambit from CCC to AAA development companies, full of devs, full of marketing people, full of various other support people, that all failed. They didn't fail because they were bad coders, artists, and level design.

By all means, the combat in WarZ was actually pretty good. DayZ Standalone was really beautiful art. H1Z1 was a mix of the two. Coding wasn't why they failed.

What about this:

Me = 20% equity, 12% profit sharing (with overall 100% control for business decisions)

Lead = 20% equity, 12% profit sharing

9 x Coder, Art, Level = 6.6% equity, 8.4% profit sharing

So I still have control, but you own more of the company?