Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Smell of the Money Can Make You Blind...

Hi all
this time i'v some "bad" news.
last post i wrote about a project i'm about to expose, unfortunately this isn't going to happened.
i turns out that when "my friend" saw we have some real thing in our hands he smell the money, and that make him do what he did this week.
i wont get into details (numbers and stuff), but i feel i need to share what went wrong so if you will be in my position you know what to do.

i got to know this guy from a good friend of mine, so i trust my friend that this guy is ok.
from day one our working model based on free time only!
i gave him X percent for starting, and he began to work on some models, after working for a while, i rise it 1.5X and eventually he got 2X percent, even that the work he did stays the same, average of one model per week! (for the simple ones!, complex ones could get to one month)

2 weeks before exposing he told me that he wants more and told me to think very careful about what i'm going to say, so i though and even that there was no good reason to rise it up, i want him to be happy, so i give him another 25% of the 2X he got and told him i want him to sign on a contract i will arrange about everything we agreed on.

this week he told me that he doesn't want to continue, talking a little bit with him i realize that he wants 25%+, and he told me that i can't use his models in anyway... for the record, i can use them for non profit use, but i decided that i don't want to, i don't want him to have anything with my projects not now and not ever...

after checking out what he actually did in almost 2 years i saw its less than 50 models! including the simplest one (cans, bottles, barrels etc), so giving him 25% is giving him 0.5% per model!

so the bottom line of all this little story is:
don't trust anyone when doing this kind of thing, make a construct from day one, i did one and gave him but i didn't insist him to sign it, bad mistake.
i will be happy to hear what do you think, did i do the right thing? did i handled it correctly?

i always knew that money can blind wise peoples, but now i know that even the smell...

i will continue to update this blog, hopefully more recent...
cya

5 comments:

vspyder said...

Yes you did the right thing. About the only wrong thing you did was give him a bigger share of the profits.

I have experienced a similar situation to yours and have found a solution that I will share with you.

Outsource all your artwork to a "professional" development house. Preferably one that has worked on high profile games and can show an extensive portfolio.

Now you don't have to worry about profit sharing or whether the work gets done or not. Most of the professional outsourcers know that if they don't deliver they don't get paid.

There are many places you can hire to do your artwork and not have to deal with "friends" who generally don't have your best interests in mind.

Of course you have to have $$$ to hire these artists, but depending on the project I have always gotten reasonable rates and top quality work. As they say, you get what you pay for.....

MarmAmic said...

I am truly sorry to hear this my friend.
As you know very well I have been trying to push my own projects and get help from people in this industry for the past 2 years and had many disappointments.
People just don't see the big picture and always think they know better then everyone else.

I do hope your project sours up again and I do hope you will find the right people to do it with you.

I have always been and always will be your friend - Anything I can help you with - Just let me know.

Amichai

Anonymous said...

Well, this is only one side of the story.
where is the other side?

orenk2k said...

hi vspyder
thanks for the advise...

hi Marmaic
thanks dude, from you mouth to god ears :)

hi sabulba
this is my blog so i write what i have in my mind and not in other people minds (sorry, can't read minds, if i could i didn't had this issue...)
as for the other side? can't tell you where he is, for me he is less than air now...
i will be more than glad if some how he wrote his side or whatever, but believe or not, i'v nothing to get by not telling the whole story as it was (not getting anything from that), i didn't even needed to tell this little story, but i did, so take it where you want, true, false whatever, i'm sleeping well, my conscience is more than clear...
cya all

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