Its not the mod or engine license that's a good or bad thing in itself -- the telling sign is that larger groups with industry-experienced members almost uniformly recognize that doing a mod or working with an existing engine is really the only viable approach once you start ratcheting up the ambition and head-count of a project. It comes with experience that "an engine" is really not just the runtime -- but is also the documentation, tools, workflows and pipelines that support it. Even looking at the AAA game industry, iD used to be king of engine licensing, but essentially no one licensed idTech4 (Doom 3) because Unreal's tooling and support was miles ahead, although the runtime components were more-or-less comparable. Choosing a mod or engine license is a "mature" choice that you simply can't do everything in-house without a big budget and years to burn. Large, ill-experienced teams often grow so large in order to support the notion that they can do it all themselves -- that or they have no "hiring" standard at all -- or both.

Simon explains it better: [s]As far as I'm aware, paid work always belongs to the payer unless there's a contract to the contrary -- at least if the work is part of a greater whole, or is meant to be productized in some way -- but I'm no lawyer, myself.[/s]

If an individual (not a registered company and no contract) pays another person for work, say a character model, would that be the same as the first example you gave? The payer would then retain the rights regardless of a change of heart from the second person?

That depends on the license the individual pays for. For something to be a work for hire there has to be a contract in place, without that the seller retains the copyright and the buyer gets what he pays for. (Normally one buys a license to use, modify, copy and distribute the work and derivates of the work), If there is neither a contract nor a license then the buyer gets one copy (Just as if he had bought a music CD at the store) and the normal copyright restrictions apply.

That depends on the license the individual pays for. For something to be a work for hire there has to be a contract in place, without that the seller retains the copyright and the buyer gets what he pays for. (Normally one buys a license to use, modify, copy and distribute the work and derivates of the work), If there is neither a contract nor a license then the buyer gets one copy (Just as if he had bought a music CD at the store) and the normal copyright restrictions apply.

This highly depends on the jurisdiction. In some places, simply by giving someone direction to perform work, they are legally an employee and you become obligated to pay for the work that you directed them to do, and the work that is produced becomes entirely your property, all without a contract or written agreement!
In some jurisdictions, this goes further any any "related work" that the 'employee' does (even when not at the workplace or during work hours) also becomes the property of the employer (e.g. making a mobile game as a hobby while working at a studio -- the studio owns your hobby project).

There's a big difference between the letter of the law and what goes on in the real world though -- it's possible for an unorganised group of hobbyists to form into a real legally bound company with unanimous agreement, and it's also possible for a completely by-the-book employment situation to end up in lawsuits.
For example, my current employer routinely violates federal employment laws with potential fines as high as $30K per instance, but the employees accept this practice. Even though they're not operating by-the-book and have the potential to devolve into lawsuits at any time, they still exist as a successful company.

As always, business questions need to be answered by a lawyer (and IANAL).

I would be extremely wary of any "hobby" team with more than about two handfuls of people (fewer than a dozen, for sure). In fact, I'd argue that the "optimal" size for an indie team is anywhere between 2 and 6. This does, of course, essentially preclude the possibility of epic undertakings, but that's not a bad thing.

I just wanted to second this particular opinion -- in my experience, the ideal team-size for hobbyist, or even smaller indie teams is normally only a handful of people who cover all required skills for the project. Unless you're a large commercial outfit with a proper management structure and properly paid staff the overhead and reduced coherency of a larger team just doesn't have the benefit a lot of inexperienced team-leaders think of when they recruit all these people.

I would be extremely wary of joining any hobbyist team which already has 10 or more members unless they can show you that they're making impressive progress on their current progress -- the exception to this potentially being open-sourced projects which have had many contributors but will usually still only have a small "core" team of regular maintainers and project leaders.


A larger team simply isn't needed or useful when working on a hobbyist project, and you'll consistently see smaller teams pumping out smaller and more realistic -- but still polished and impressive -- games while the larger (and usually less experienced) teams trundle along working at a larger project which often ends up abandoned.


Also look at track record when considering joining a team: has the team released games before?; have members of the team released solo projects or worked on other successful teams?; do they appear to be making real progress on the current project?
Importantly -- do they seem to have something specific for you to do, or are they just trying to recruit you with the vague notion that you will be helpful? If the people you're considering working with are skilled and experienced they should have a specific task or list of tasks in mind for you to complete -- and will usually be at the point where you can (need to, in fact!) get started on it right away -- otherwise they wouldn't be recruiting you.

Beware teams that claim to have been working on a project for x amount of time (often "over 6 months" or "over 1 year") but who don't have anything to show for the work -- they'll usually claim they were working on design and/or pre-production, but again this simply isn't how smaller successful teams tend to work.


Lastly, as already mentioned, small teams do not (successfully) take on large projects -- beware claims to the contrary. There are always exceptions to any rule -- Danny Green who develops commercial games "alone" (in quotes, as I believe he out-sources art) for example -- but if a team is an exception to the rule they will already have something impressive to show.



Hope that's helpful!

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1. A small game development company is one that employs fewer than 30. A large game development company is one that employs over 100. (In my opinion.) Medium would be in between. What difference does it make (why do you ask this)?

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2. One way is the track record. Look at the games they've made, see how many games they've made, see what metacritic scores they've garnered. Another way is to go drinking with people from that company, see if they grouse a lot or really enjoy their jobs. Not sure what you're trying to figure out here...? And what these questions have to do with funding your own company?

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1. I'm asking because several hobby companies that have asked me to join have said they are large companies (being only 50 or so people) so their ambitions are not unrealistic. I'm always wary when considering joining hobby companies that want to remake skyrim so I was just wondering what would actually qualify as a "large" team.
2. I'm just entirely clueless. I've always wondered how the big companies got started, and I figured the best way to figure out is to examine the companies that work, and ask get opinions from people who have actually worked the industry. It's mostly to satisfy my own thirst for knowledge. [/quote]

1. The term "hobby company" makes my baloney radar go "ping!" It's either a hobby or it's a company (IMO). 50 would be large for an hobby team, to be sure. I would want to see their collaboration agreement before I got involved. I'd want to know what all the members think they're trying to accomplish together, and I'd want to know if that's what I, too, want to accomplish. But if you're just in it to have something to add to your portfolio, then I'm sure you'd be learning a lot.

2. Big companies rarely started as hobbies. Your question may be leading you astray, if you're trying to learn about "companies" rather than hobby endeavors.

Maybe this all comes down to thinking some more about what it is you really want to know, and asking more-targeted questions.

I'd like to run a team (certainly not anytime soon but one day), but I have no idea the logistics or the business side of things. Cause right now being a student it seems like funding a team for a medium to large scale game is a huuuuge undertaking and I wouldn't even know where to begin. [/quote]

Instead of thinking about funding a game, you should be thinking about funding a business. Only publishers are interested in funding a game -- if you want to start a business, you have to think business instead of game.

I guess I'm mostly curious since I'd like to run a team (certainly not anytime soon but one day), but I have no idea the logistics or the business side of things. Cause right now being a student it seems like funding a team for a medium to large scale game is a huuuuge undertaking and I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Running a hobbyist team or running a business are two (potentially very) different tasks -- you should think carefully about what it is that you actually want to achieve.

If you want to work on games with a few other people as a hobby that's fine, and quite achievable if you can find the right people. Try to keep to a minimum number of people, and tackle smaller more achievable projects rather than something like a grand-scale role-playing game with current-gen graphics. For a hobby you can probably get away without proper contracts, but should absolutely still consider putting some form of agreement down in writing and making sure that everyone is clear on what is expected. Don't think you can start as a hobby and turn it into a profitable business later -- if you're planning to go in that direction you should sort things out properly from the start and avoid potential costly mistakes later on.


If you want to start a business making and selling games you'll need to approach it as a business -- the same books and classes that would help you start and run any other business will apply, and you should absolutely learn about things such as making a business plan, proper budgeting, which contracts apply and when you should use them (speak to a lawyer for this!), etc.


Hope that's helpful!

I use the term company loosely

If you want to go into business, you have to use the term the same way businesspeople use it. Seriously.