45 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

I may be thick, but I don't follow this. Seasoned developers do not "recognize"  or perceive or believe that it's futile to make games or to make money from games. Seasoned developers have experienced the process of making games, and have seen them make money. 

This is interesting, I'm wondering how many developers helped other's make their games, I'm talking small time contract work here not working for a big company on contract, got paid via the contract, and then the person on the other end who contracted the work ends up making a profit, a profit that is regarded as 'make money'? 

I have absolutely no idea the answer to this question.  But I'm curious to know.   I think my doubts surrounding this question are what was driving my comment.

Like right now I would have major doubts about contracting work out for a game I'm working on, because I'd fear it's an absolute waste of my money because I don't even know if I can translate the idea into code the way I envision it, and If I was going to pay someone else to translate the vision I'd be highly sceptical.

10 minutes ago, Awoken said:

This is interesting, I'm wondering how many developers helped other's make their games, I'm talking small time contract work here not working for a big company on contract, got paid via the contract, and then the person on the other end who contracted the work ends up making a profit, a profit that is regarded as 'make money'? 

I have absolutely no idea the answer to this question.  But I'm curious to know.   I think my doubts surrounding this question are what was driving my comment.

Like right now I would have major doubts about contracting work out for a game I'm working on, because I'd fear it's an absolute waste of my money because I don't even know if I can translate the idea into code the way I envision it, and If I was going to pay someone else to translate the vision I'd be highly sceptical.  

Uh?

Well, in my experience, contracting out can be very profitable (both ways). Whether for assets (short term) or more involved work (development etc.)

I've worked for clients that have turned up a (significant) profit, and I've contracted people whose work ended up being profitable.

I think your skepticism may either be based on your inability to do the work or your general distrust of contractors in general, or even the actual ROI of the idea itself, but is certainly not grounded in the actual value of the work that could result from someone (the right person, of course).

It feels to me like your argument has more to do with the distrust part, and the perceived low likelihood you would turn up such a contractor, moreso than the actual value of the work, which is a bit outside the scope of what I was going for: there are a lot of frauds out there, few of which actually have a reputation to back their claims. Within my circle, dev recommendations are far from rare, and I've had several clients vouch for me on new potential assignments to date, so I don't think that, in my particular case, the 'rev-share first' part comes from a perceived risk on picking the wrong contractor.

57 minutes ago, Orymus3 said:

I think your skepticism may ... be ... the actual ROI of the idea itself

&

57 minutes ago, Orymus3 said:

It feels to me like your argument has more to do with the distrust part, and the perceived low likelihood you would turn up such a contractor, moreso than the actual value of the work

Yes, this is the category I fall under for sure.  And games like No Man's Sky come to mind.  Here is a case of a highly competent team that had a grand vision that in my opinion was a major failure to the intended vision.

57 minutes ago, Orymus3 said:

Within my circle, dev recommendations are far from rare, and I've had several clients vouch for me on new potential assignments to date, so I don't think that, in my particular case, the 'rev-share first' part comes from a perceived risk on picking the wrong contractor.

This is good to know.  Thank you.  This is all new waters for me.

3 hours ago, Awoken said:

&

Yes, this is the category I fall under for sure.  And games like No Man's Sky come to mind.  Here is a case of a highly competent team that had a grand vision that in my opinion was a major failure to the intended vision.

This is good to know.  Thank you.  This is all new waters for me.

 

I wouldn't got as far as say this is the majority though. I don't really have that much insight into 'my competitors' beyond what my clients tell me (why they chose to work with me, etc.).

On 2/28/2018 at 9:18 PM, slayemin said:

This just happened to me an hour ago.

Them: "hi"
Them: "are you a coder?"
Me: "hi, yes"
Them: "unity or unreal?"
Me: "unreal"
Them: "I need a vr programmer. do you have a headset?"
Me: "Yes, I have a GearVR HMD, an oculus rift, and an HTC Vive."
Them: "cool! Do you want to work on my vr project for rev share?"
Me: "Not interested, I strictly work on an hourly rate."
Them: "ok... how much do you charge per hour?"
Me: "$125/hour + $150 start up fee which is non-refundable"
Them: "i can't do that, i decline. good luck "
Me: "okay, good luck to you as well :)"

There was a bit of interesting underlying pretext to this conversation. First, he pings me out of the blue, doesn't capitalize letters, incomplete sentences, etc. This alone smells like amateur. Not even an introduction. I myself am in a position where I have plenty of paying work to fill my time, so I don't need more unless it's lucrative and the client has their shit together. Do they have a detailed statement of work? funding? an existing team of various disciplines to complement each other? a design document? a project manager, etc? In other words, are they a professional primed for success? The moment he asks me if I would work on his project for rev share answered all of those questions. I instantly lost any interest. I don't work for free. My time is very valuable as is my skill set. I decided to show that by charging high hourly rates, which is code for "fuck off, don't waste my time, come back when you're ready to be serious". A lingering thought sits in the back of my head, "Was I an asshole?", followed by "should I care?" and "No, I have paying work by people who respect my time and skills. Fuck this guy."

Been having trouble with the website (or with my brain?) lately and haven't been able to see either of your replies to this thread before (and I was kinda hoping you'd chime in!)

Note here though that my 'indie' rate is about half yours, and that it isn't uncommon for me to have a very similar discussion to the above except the second to last line looks more like "Are you crazy? People are starving in the world and it's your fault" type of stuff

Must be because I'm Canadian, people think they can throw pretty much anything at us.

22 minutes ago, slayemin said:

I have no problem turning down work, even if they'd pay me for it. Bad clients just aren't worth the trouble or money. If I'm going to turn down work, I like to get people to turn me down instead so that they think it was their own idea. Just make an outrageous demand for something you'd like, see what happens. If they accept, either they're desperate (in which case, cover your bases with good contracts and down payments) or they aren't so bad to work for after all. I was contracting in Afghanistan for six months as a dev, my initial contract was up, but they wanted to keep me, so I told them to 4x my salary... and they did! So I stayed an extra year. I was pretty happy and did good work.

My attitude is that it's 100% okay to leave money on the table if it means you avoid bad projects or bad teams. There will be more projects to find, and if you're stuck working on a bad one, you're not spending your time finding the good ones. If your name gets attached to bad projects/teams, it's bad for your personal brand and you're just hurting yourself working on them. What's the definition of a bad project? Any project that doesn't ship. Doesn't matter what the reason is, if it doesn't ship, it failed. When you get experienced with projects, you start to see the hallmarks which cause some projects to fail and some to succeed, so you learn to avoid the projects which don't have a chance at shipping. Usually, if you're hired as a contractor, you're pigeon holed into a role to fill and don't have much control over the fate of a project. If they give you control, that should be a red flag saying, "we don't know what we're doing, so we'll give control to anyone with any semblance of competence, no matter how little." 
If they hire you specifically to be a project manager, that changes the story completely, and then it comes down to fighting for time, resources and managing scope. Then, you have to assess how attainable those three things are going to be for you in order to successfully manage the project. If you can't get those three things, the project is doomed before it even started.

When it comes to "bad teams", it basically comes down to who you work with and who you work for, and how everyone on the team is treated. If someone says "Are you crazy? People are starving in the world and it's your fault" type of stuff, they're clearly not the people you want to work for, so just be professional and say good bye. I'm personally a bit picky about who I work with, so take what I say with a grain of salt here, but I won't work on teams which have toxic personalities. Some people may say, "Be a professional, suck it up!". I kind of take it upon myself to take a leadership stand and say that if one person is berated/abused, then we're all berated/abused and I won't stand for it. The other really bad thing to look out for is really poor follow up. If you need something before you can complete your work (assets from other team members, getting paid, admin/paperwork stuff, etc) and it's taking forever, it is another smell of failure which can have major effects on the chances for project success.

I'm not disputing any of that, what I don't get is when they say they were, for all intents and purposes, expecting you'd do this for free while they wait for you to get done with their idea. I can only imagine, if one agreed to it, they'd probably do some seagull management and come asking 'why isn't it done yet?' too...