
GameCentral talks to the creator of Oddworld, gains insight into games industry - hansy
http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/08/oddworld-new-n-tasty-preview-and-lorne-lanning-interview-weve-become-triple-a-indie-4790351/
======
walru
I worked on a game that sold three times that and never saw one.

The parent company was 'retooling the royalty structure' for well over a year,
even had people come from corporate to tell us the progress of said monetary
division. Meanwhile we worked a forced six month crunch, 5-6 days a week -
most of those twelve hour days, on the first game and were in the middle of
the same for the rushed out sequel.

Said parent company no longer exists.

*Just as an aside, during said royalty meeting they made note of how the money they were spending on food each night was being deducted from our eventual royalties. :)

~~~
x0x0
It's not on the same scale, but I recently left a company. Part of the reason
is we got a talking to for expensing a $19/person lunch that was apparently
over the $15/person maximum... when we went out to eat on a Saturday that I
spent 9 hours at the office. I was just stunned the company wanted to bitch
about $4 when I gave them 9 hours of my Saturday. This was far from the only
reason I left, but it left me feeling very unappreciated.

~~~
walru
I've also had this pleasure. The, we bought you a five dollar meal, now
'please' work until 10PM (or later).

Instead of OT your hourly rate goes to $1.25/hr and your quality of life goes
out the door as you amass weight and no time for yourself, or activity. My
first year in the industry I gained (no exaggeration) 50lbs.

Funny part of this story, because I refused to eat the meals served for the
team, and went out for something more healthy, I was ostracized at the above
company.

------
flohofwoe
This is the harsh reality for most independent game development teams, except
for a few super-star-teams which are able to negotiate non-cut-throat
contracts. The publisher pays production cost in advance, and recoups
production + marketing cost before the developer sees any royalties, which
means the developer can be happy to cover their costs during production and
are then suddenly cut off once the game is finished. New money only comes in
after the next deal has been signed or when the last game becomes an
unexpected break-out hit and earns much more money then forecast (which is
very unlikely). If the team can't land a new project for 2 or 3 months it's
usually over. It was always hard for independent teams but since about 2009
it's a massacre.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Luckily, with the advent of digital downloads, publishers no longer provide
too much value. They don't own the channel. For example, a copy of FTL costs
$9.99, and I'd be surprised if the FTL team doesn't earn at least $7 of that
$9.99, if not much more.

~~~
xsmasher
"The publisher pays production cost in advance" \- The publisher is paying the
salaries of the developers while the develop. Digital downloads don't help
change that equation. Crowdfunding could.

~~~
jerf
I'd submit that's the wrong tense: Crowdfunding _has_ changed the equation. It
may not be done propagating yet, but it definitely has.

Further, the rise of channels where you can recoup the majority of the
incoming money is more helpful than this thread has yet shown, I think. When
you're making pretty much _all_ the money, you can use the income from your
first game to start making a second. If your deal with a publisher was that
you could make the first one and are given only just barely enough to survive,
you're not making a second one, except of course on the exact same terms,
never permitting you enough to leave the plantation (or at least that's the
goal).

Of course, you still have to make that first one, but, well, here we run into
the cold hard reality that nobody _owes_ a developer the money to make their
first game. So, yeah, bootstrapping is going to be hard and take some hustle,
but at least the hustle required is now closer to the fundamental amount of
hustle required, instead of being artificially added to by a gatekeeper
standing in the way. I can't guarantee success, in fact I can offer you
"probable failure", but at least now you've got a fair shot.

~~~
potatolicious
I'd argue this is premature celebration.

Crowdfunding seemed like a great solution to the publisher funding model, and
it has proven to be a great gain for consumers in some exceptional cases (see:
Prison Architect, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Annihilation, etc).

But it's also rightly lost a great deal of consumer confidence now that we're
seeing a lot of crowdfunded games burn out, crash, or just plain fail to ship
anything resembling the original promise (see: Takedown, H1Z1). The problem is
substantial enough that Valve has basically disclaimed their responsibility if
an Early Access game just absconds with your money.

IMO the next year or two is going to be critical for crowdfunding. The whole
concept launched with great consumer enthusiasm, but that's fading now that
the high-profile failures and scams are emerging.

~~~
jerf
Are we heading into the Trough of Disillusionment [1]? Sure.

Is crowdfunding going to generally succeed in more-or-less the way I outlined?
Yes. Even if Kickstarter totally fails, something else will tweak the model
until it succeeds. It's just a straight-up simple disintermediation-and-
aggregation play; it's virtually impossible that there exist no viable
solutions in this space.

Plus it's not the only thing; the more people who start with crowdfunding, the
more little companies and groups there are to join if you're not quite ready
to take the full risk yourself. And while the Hype Cycle is leading people to
Crowd Fund All The Things! right now I fully expect crowdfunding to more
frequently be used merely to bootstrap things, or for focused, specific
reasons, rather than for everything.

The explosion has only begun.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

------
callmeed
Oddworld was located here in San Luis Obispo and, back in the day, were known
as one of the only large-ish tech/dev companies in town (we have a much better
tech/startup ecosystem now).

Our local weekly did a cover story on Oddworld a few years back [0]. It paints
a slightly different picture. Stranger’s Wrath was a "commercial flop" and the
5 million games sold was over a span of several years.

I don't know much about the video game industry but I think there's more to it
than the Polygon story.

[0] [http://www.newtimesslo.com/cover/7058/the-oddysee-exoddus-
an...](http://www.newtimesslo.com/cover/7058/the-oddysee-exoddus-and-wrath-of-
oddworld-inhabitants/)

------
mmaunder
_Now fortunately someone told us to do that, and did the same thing, and that
's ultimately how we got the company back," he explained. "Because when we
were able to prove that things were not what they should be then it was ‘pay
us or give us the company back', very simple. And so that's how we got the
company back, 100 per cent."_

I'm really curious about the full story here. Did they sue a publisher to pay
them what they owned and they got paid back in their own stock?

~~~
danielweber
That paragraph and the one before it are the meat of the article, and they are
really confusingly written.

------
j_m_b
I had a lot of fun playing Munch's oddysee. I really felt sympathetic to the
creatures and wanted to help them. I wish they would make more games... I want
to return to Oddworld!

~~~
georgemcbay
Play Stranger's Wrath if you haven't; still my pick for best game that came
out on the original Xbox, and there were some fantastic games for that system
(eg. Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts, GTA: SA, KOTOR, Riddick, Halos).

I'm looking forward to what Oddworld does in the future, though my enthusiasm
is tempered by knowing it is difficult to virtually impossible to really
recreate the spark of some creative endeavour years later, especially with a
different team.

Lorne Lanning (as the public face/'director') is clearly the guy everyone
thinks of when it comes to Oddworld, but a lot of the magic of those games was
down to the sort of decisions that occur in the seams between technology and
micro-gameplay design (how the game "feels" to play second to second), which
is a completely overlooked talent (Carmack has this talent in spades, but
people generally only pay attention to the hardcore technical stuff) and with
Oddworld that was coming from Charles Bloom, AFAICT.

~~~
hyperliner
Would you consider the game appropriate for young pre-teens? (say. 10-12 yr
olds?).

~~~
georgemcbay
I would, but I'm not a parent so take what I say with a grain of salt. The
game is technically in the "shooter" genre but it is very stylized and
cartoony, not real-world violence ala Battlefield or Call of Duty or the like

------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/9/5883301/oddworld-creators-
so...](http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/9/5883301/oddworld-creators-
sold-5-million-copies-in-retail-and-never-saw-a), which points to this. We
also changed the title from [1] to the subtitle of the article (as much of it
as would fit).

1\. "Oddworld creators sold 5 million copies in retail and never saw a royalty
check"

------
gwern
Well, that was kind of vague... Perhaps such a sketchy summary makes more
sense to industry veterans.

~~~
cninja
The original article was more informative:
[http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/08/oddworld-new-n-tasty-
preview-a...](http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/08/oddworld-new-n-tasty-preview-and-
lorne-lanning-interview-weve-become-triple-a-indie-4790351/)

------
funkyy
There are always two sides of the medal. I remember reading article more than
10 years ago about fantasy writer. This guy wrote some story for one of the
largest fantasy publishers and he got $2K for it. Deal was made, all good. It
was that until 6 months later when his story turn out to be a hit and the
company published it again (they were holding the rights to it).

So this publisher came to those fantasy circles hating on the company why they
never sent him a cheque since they made probably millions from it. Even if he
said himself they had all the rights to it and he agreed on contract as it was
- he still was mad that he didnt got more. Instead of building business
relationship, trying to release more stories for better fee he chose to hate
on them.

Me myself as indie game developer I wouldn't sign contract that I am not
feeling comfortable about.

I am selling all rights to my games to publishers, so I can focus on game
development only. If one of the games will become next Angry Birds - oh well,
I wont be hating on the company, but I would try to come out with joint deal
for sequels.

I understand there could be mistake in accounting, but regarding some comments
- publishers are not charity company. They are profit oriented. So if you have
in your contract "you get paid $50K for exclusive rights" then you get paid
$50K and nothing else.

~~~
hyperliner
I agree with your point that people seem to always want more than the deal the
agreed to.

However, it appears this was blatant theft.

------
rakoo
> I don't want to be a slave to these guys who are making tons of money while
> the developers are not.

Heh, they even created games that mirror their own situation.

------
willvarfar
One of the oddworld devs, Charles Bloom, is a guru of compression and has a
really fascinating blog you should follow:
[http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com](http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com)

~~~
z0r
For some reason, Google wants me to be logged in to visit that blog - I think
I've visited before without logging in...

------
stonemetal
A pretty vacuous statement. Where they given 5 million or 50 million in
advance? Maybe 5 million copies wasn't enough to pay off their advance. I am
ready and willing to believe EA is trying to fuck over everyone humanly
possible, but what is the whole story? For instance: If they were given 50
million up front and had a royalty rate of 10% and an average sales price of
$30 then that would be 15 million dollars no where near the dollar amount to
expect a royalty check.

~~~
danko
Read the article. He mentions that "someone suggested to them to audit and
they found 'Millions and millions of dollars of error not in our favor.'"
Shady accounting practices were used to intentionally mask earnings that
would've contributed to a real royalty payout.

This is a common practice in Hollywood as well. It's the reason why royalties
as a percentage of net profits are called 'monkey points'. It's because you'd
have to be a monkey to believe that the studio's accountants would ever allow
that film to turn a profit in its official books.

~~~
reboog711
Perhaps I am misreading this, but doesn't:

"Millions and millions of dollars of error not in our favor."

mean they owed more than they thought?

If an audit is 'in my favor' that means you made a mistake and owe me more.

If the audit is 'not in my favor' then you made a mistake and I owe you more.

I'll add that this "Hollywood" accounting is also used in the music industry.

~~~
gms7777
It was the error that wasn't in their favor, not the audit. It means they
either already overpaid, (or themselves were underpaid).

------
jmount
Sounds like the publisher or studio was accused of being in turmoil back at
the time (such as
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Ex0abZ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Ex0abZy3ZQJ:www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2001/10/08) ).

~~~
teddyh
That URL is still valid, there’s no need for the Google cache:

[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/10/08](http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2001/10/08)

~~~
jmount
Original wasn't loading for me at the time, so I didn't feel good sharing what
seemed like a link to a site momentarily experiencing trouble.

------
hyperliner
This comes to confirm the old statement of those courses you see on airplane
magazines: "You don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate." (with
the slight addition of "... and we can still steal what you negotiate")

~~~
Liesmith
Except they negotiated royalties and EA didn't deliver.

~~~
hyperliner
Therefore, the addition of "... and we can still steal what you negotiate"

------
forrestthewoods
It's not like the terms aren't known up front. Are the terms shitty?
Absolutely. Are they a surprise? No.

Fortunately there's never been a better time to go indie. More opportunities
and more store fronts are accessible than ever before.

~~~
pessimizer
The terms don't include that they're going to use creative accounting and
outright fraud in order to not pay you royalties.

------
dreamdu5t
Reminds me of the scene from Bob's Game, "The Meeting":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrEakRSfSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrEakRSfSk)

Bob talks with a game company exec.

------
keehun
Is this where stores like Steam can really help indies?

~~~
minimaxir
Even with Steam Greenlight, indie developers still get a lot of exposure and
have a lot of incentive from working with publshers.

~~~
sillysaurus3
What incentive is there to work with publishers?

~~~
flohofwoe
Publishers serve mainly as a bank, paying the developer an advance which
usually goes 100% into salaries. But traditionally have been doing marketing,
and some production tasks like testing or localization, sometimes they have
more influence over platform owners (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, ...)

------
hoboerectus
See? Corporations are people - rapists, thieves and serial killers, but
people.

