Hmm that's a little weird cause they imply that, "Young men and teenage boys" are the only ones at the internship.... I'm an intern, and they interviewed me as well... and the last time I checked I am a girl... The computer with the pink case and orange juice on the right side of the last picture is mine.
I've never liked the premise of MakeGamesWithUs. I feel like they're exploiting young developers for the cash. Not paying them and keeping half of their revenue (and using their age for marketing) leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Hi, I'm Ashu, the other founder of MGWU. Just want to add a couple things to Jeremy's response.
As specified later in the article, of a 99c app or in app purchase, 29c goes to Apple, 20c goes to MGWU and 50c goes to the developer. Thus as Jeremy mentioned, we only take 30% of post Apple revenues, much less than most publishers. This explains why devs get 50% of the revenue from a 99c app (as mentioned in the article). Again publishing through us is not mandatory, and developers retain ownership of 100% of the code they write during the internship.
Our intention was not to use their age for marketing, we initially told them to mention it in HN posts to show the supportive HN community what amazing things they are doing at a young age. Our recent posts have not included age (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6093363).
It really pains me to hear we're coming off as exploiting young developers, and I'm hoping this stems from a misunderstanding of our model. I absolutely agree that making games is about learning, creating and making, and we're doing everything in our power to enable more students to have better experiences building games.
MakeGamesWithUs is about making, creating, learning. We teach them for free where many others would charge, then give them the option to publish with us if they would like to. It's entirely their choice to publish with us, they are free to publish their games on their own. We also only take 30% of revenues, not half.
Since many of them are minors their parents have to sign off on them attending the internship and publishing with us. The fact that 100+ parents have agreed to let their children intern with us and 30+ parents have agreed to let their children publish their games with us is a testament to how good of a deal we offer them.
I am aware of developers who have literally gotten their careers started thanks to us, as in gotten jobs as mobile developers by showing off the games they built with us. Nothing exploitative about it.
I have signed a publishing deal with these guys. They are sharp. They handle all the stuff an indie dev doesn't want to do. Their value add is the art/testing/promotion/analytics/social part of things. These interns are much more likely to profit if they can let someone else do that. It takes a lot of time and money to put that stuff on odesk and you might still get junk.
I am a current intern at this company and this company has been the best iOS App development experience. They only take 30%. And to us interns, the money does not really even matter. If "Making games is about making. Creating. Learning.", then MakeGamesWithUs is doing their job well because my purpose of interning here was not about the money, it was about the experience- money is just a plus.
Just like the person above me stated, I am also an intern at this program. I'm not going to lie - at first I thought the same exact thing as yourself. I was very hesitant, but realizing I had nothing to lose I jumped into the program and it has been one of the best decisions I've made. This program is very supportive to beginning game designers and helps us to refine our skills and ideas. The thing that really made this experience worth while is that when the time comes they take care of art and music. I'm not the most artistic person and that allows me to fully do the coding I want, to make the game I want. Without having to worry about how it looks and sounds. It is great.
What is stopping any of these kids from, I don't know, just staying home like a normal person and working on the game in their spare time as a hobby? Nothing indicates any of these children are homeless, fosters, or abused in any way, so one has to assume they're (presumably) regular kids.
Are we (and by we, I partly just mean the tech community, or whatever you wish to call it any more) seriously so introverted as a society any more that we have to encourage 13-year-old boys to sit with their headphones on, near-silent in a house with a bunch of developers potentially ten years their senior instead of going out and acting like a normal person?
There's nothing wrong with wanting to develop something, but come on. Why can't people simply engage like regular human beings any more?
We invite cool guest speakers and make sure they all interact with each other. The best games aren't built in isolation, feedback from peers is extremely important.
I couldn't disagree more. It's very difficult for younger and inexperienced people to know where to start and learn something as difficult as making a game. I know adults who don't even know where to get started with web development.
In fact I would say the opposite is true. Kids should go out and enjoy a collaborate learning environment like this, instead of being isolated in their homes trying to figure things out on their own.
I have two 12 year old cousins who are very interested to get into video game development. They have some great ideas and are thinking of ways to make games like Minecraft more enjoyable at a base level as well as new gaming modes and/or features. Not only that, but they are thinking about monetization and how and why people would be interested in this. Not only that, they aren't just thinking about Minecraft either. They have ideas for their own games, and games they haven't played yet (not old enough by the ESRB and their parents' standards).
On top of this, they play sports. Outside. Not the EA type. It's only after their homework is done and they don't have any sports activities or friends over playing a board game (remember those?) that they are allowed to play video games. These kids are smart and enjoy the outdoors.
I would definitely say that they are regular kids and extremely engaged as a "regular" human being (whatever that means). At the last family BBQ, when they found out that myself and two friends are making our own video game, let's just say I was bombarded with questions about how to start and what to do and learn ;)
Their dad was also especially happy to hear that there are free versions of Blender, Construct2, and Unity3D.
