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Coolguye posted:unless he's willing to give up equity there's no way you'll get talent without a salary though This is just one man's opinion but honestly I think this is the kind of situation where you have to decide, this is it, I'm making my next game, or okay I'm gonna keep expanding on Stardew Valley and put my other title on ice for now. It's not really the kind of thing you want to delegate--not necessarily for artistic reasons, but I'm talking from a strictly financial perspective. And the offering is in the Seattle area? Workers are gonna need somewhere close to six figures a year just to meet cost of living. Being responsible for the livelihood of another person is heavy, and it's very easy to get in over your head without realizing it. Well I guess I'm saying this more for the benefit of everyone else, iirc you're versed in this, and you can probably back me up in that hiring workers is expensive and it's hard life poo poo, huge responsibility. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jan 1, 2019 |
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Jan 1, 2019 22:56
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yeah dude i've owned my own thing for 4 years and i'm 100% behind you on that. being responsible for someone else's livelihood is a massive responsibility that only a fool rushes into lightly. i generally agree with you on path forward too, though i would handle it a little bit differently. what i'd basically do is plan out what my next game is going to require, and then do a roadmap to keep a small team (2-4 people, depending on what skills were needed) working on stardew for about as long as i needed to do my next game. then during hiring i'd be very up front with people - i am providing these bits of organization and direction to the team, you have this much of my time per day, and with the rest of my time i am working on my next game. you have such and such runway to get these priorities done and have stardew making money. if your updates turn into sales and revenue, the team will get profit share. and be generous on that, don't cheap out and give them like 50%, tell them if they put in the work and pull it off they'll get loving 80 cents on the dollar of net profit. that's still fair to you as the creator because all you're doing is showing up and providing some guidance, the vast majority of your time is free to do whatever and this thing you created is basically no-work income. then with the carrot out, tell them the hard truth of the stick: if you can't get all that done, i'll have to let everyone go and re-evaluate what i'm doing, i don't have infinite money. that lets you plan and budget everything to make sure you don't spend money you don't have, and makes it really loving clear what your limits and expectations are. ideal situation, it gets you the people that lets you build the team you want - 2-4 people that are personally invested in the quality and success of the product and are making you money without you thinking about it. worst case, you lose the money you budgeted toward the adventure and you never see it again. but you did the budgeting and poo poo beforehand so that should not be the end of the world.
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Jan 1, 2019 23:17
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I'm curious as to how Unknown Worlds Entertainment (Natural Selection 1/2, Subnautica) handled their community dev team for NS2? I remember them putting a volunteer dev team in place at the start of their Subnautica development, but don't know how well it worked considering NS2 was doomed from the get-go.
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Jan 1, 2019 23:29
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So who's responsible for thread titles, anyway? I'm just wondering why we still have the spooky thread title from October
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Jan 2, 2019 00:41
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i have both run and worked with multiple volunteer dev teams and the one that was both responsive and competent was the result of two hard core professionals doing hard core professional work for free and setting the standard for everyone else on the team. these were two people who could have easily walked out and made $60+/hr doing the same stuff but chose not to for whatever reason. unless you want to bargain on that kind of miracle happening you don't walk into volunteer dev squads with anything resembling high hopes.
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Jan 2, 2019 04:10
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Foo Diddley posted:So who's responsible for thread titles, anyway? I'm just wondering why we still have the spooky thread title from October Make up a fun title. Share with thread. Someone can PM a mod for the change if there's some laughs. No big deal.
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Jan 2, 2019 05:15
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The White Dragon posted:rip. bringing on a salaried staff is the best way to make your money evaporate He has like $20+ million dollars that he's doing literally nothing with iirc
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Jan 2, 2019 08:16
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Does cross platform multiplayer work in any capacity? A buddy of mine has a switch with SDV, and I've got PC with SDV and we haven't found a way to play together just yet.Prokhor Zakharov posted:He has like $20+ million dollars that he's doing literally nothing with iirc Have you seen the housing market in Seattle? He's probably got a tiny studio condo on lock for a few cool mil.
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Jan 2, 2019 08:30
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Also, there's a difference between having 20mil to budget a game and having that much to run a whole company. Even with only four or five people, that money can go poof a lot fast than you might expect without a regular source of income. Not saying it's probable mind you, that sounds like a more than a comfortable purse for a small team and Ape clearly has an aptitude for acquiring a broad range of skills. I don't think learning to manage a small business is at all beyond his horizons.
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Jan 2, 2019 09:23
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Well, if he's doing some content DLC/expansions for about $5 a pop I could see that easing it off a bit. Plus, he's already got SV under his belt so the whole early access thing would probably be a decent option for new IP.
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Jan 2, 2019 10:06
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Zesty posted:Make up a fun title. Well that's where it all falls down, isn't it I got nothin'
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Jan 2, 2019 10:27
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How bout Stardew Valley - Slut-shaming since 2018
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Jan 2, 2019 11:04
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Krazyface posted:How bout Stardew Valley - Slut-shaming since 2018 If this is a reference to the scene you get from trying to date everyone without the rabbit's foot, nah, I still wouldn't.
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Jan 2, 2019 11:11
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More like StarDON'T Valley amirite (j/k actually it's good)
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Jan 2, 2019 11:37
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'cuz I am most chill and I'm farmin' and sellin'
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Jan 2, 2019 11:40
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Tin Tim posted:These sheds are made for keggin Stardew Valley - These sheds are made for keggin
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Jan 2, 2019 12:29
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Stardew Valley - Still no weed
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Jan 2, 2019 12:35
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Stardew Valley - Insert gifts, receive friendship
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Jan 2, 2019 12:37
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I'm thinking I'll get back in to this game, and want to try the Forest layout but all my ideas for layout are based on the freedom of the default farm. Any tips for filling the forest farm in an aesthetically pleasing way?
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Jan 2, 2019 18:32
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Google mostly. People come up with neat ways to fill space. Wouldn't say it's super efficient, but it does look nice.
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Jan 2, 2019 18:47
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Well, just because you can't farm some parts doesn't mean you can't build on them. You can't get rid of the bushes and trees on the land so you can't just build anything anywhere, but you're not as limited as you might think initially. ...uhhh sorry that's all I got. I just build things wherever they seem useful or like they won't get in my way.
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Jan 2, 2019 18:47
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Having the item id glitch removed has actually killed my interest in the game, which is stupid, but I really like slowly developing the community center but there's no way in hell I'm doing the god drat fishing.
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Jan 3, 2019 09:15
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Mods? No seriously you can just go get a mod for fishing to suck less
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Jan 3, 2019 09:21
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I play on my dual handheld/console system, the Nintendo Switch. if I had modding available, I'd give myself the fish that way.  appreciate the thought, tho.
Bogart fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 09:26
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I used to hate fishing but once you get a couple of levels and better rods it gets so much easier. This time it was the first bundle I completed.
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Jan 3, 2019 09:35
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fishing rules get gud scrub
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Jan 3, 2019 10:53
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dont be mean to me posted:Mods? I laughed at this more than I probably should have. Stardew Valley: Joja was a mart that thought it was the good guy
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Jan 3, 2019 13:19
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Stardew Valley : Bribing your way to good relations.
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Jan 3, 2019 13:25
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Stardew Valley 2112: We Are The Priests Of The Temple of Joja
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Jan 3, 2019 17:01
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Bogart posted:Having the item id glitch removed has actually killed my interest in the game, which is stupid, but I really like slowly developing the community center but there's no way in hell I'm doing the god drat fishing. Still works on PC. I bought a chicken named something like [182][111] in December and got the two items I picked (I don't remember the exact numbers but it was a tomato, and a prismatic shard).
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Jan 3, 2019 17:30
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GotLag posted:I'm thinking I'll get back in to this game, and want to try the Forest layout but all my ideas for layout are based on the freedom of the default farm. Any tips for filling the forest farm in an aesthetically pleasing way? I've posted it before, but here's mine. I think it strikes a good balance between looking nice while maintaining decent crop yield. 
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Jan 3, 2019 18:00
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Coolguye posted:yeah dude i've owned my own thing for 4 years and i'm 100% behind you on that. being responsible for someone else's livelihood is a massive responsibility that only a fool rushes into lightly. The job posting says "other team members" so reading an awful lot into one sentence, lets assume a team of at least 3. Glassdoor says even entry level engineer salaries start around 100k in Seattle and he wants people with at least 3 years experience. You certainly couldn't get me to move there for less than $120k and I like Seattle. Cost to employ someone including benefits, equipment and overhead is double by rule of thumb (although I'd be interested on your take on that). So somewhere around 250k an engineer. That works out to a minimum of 3/4 of a million a year. His last game took 5 years to make and he isn't hiring on a one year contract so use that as the estimated duration and you're looking at out of pocket costs of something like $4 million. That's not an impossible number, but its also a huge leap of faith. Even if the expansions make half what Stardew did (Call it 4 million sales across all platforms for about $26 million in CAs pocket after steam/nintendo et all and his publisher take their cut). So half would be $13million revenue or 9 mill in profit. Lets call it 10million to make the math easy. At 80% equity to the dev team, CA would be spending 4 mill to try to make 2 mill. 50% return over 5 years is pretty good compared to the stock market but there's a lot of risk there too. On the other hand, his post didn't say anything about equity at all, and a predicted return of 250% return on investment would make the risk a lot more tolerable. It would make the risks higher too of course, since the developers won't be as invested in the project's success... Anyways, I think back of napkin math like this shows he can afford to make the gamble and I hope he succeeds. There've been several other farming game attempts on PC and none of them really come close to the same charm and polish as SV. He doesn't even have to charge for the next update although at this point he really ought to. We've more than gotten our money's worth at this point.
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Jan 3, 2019 18:10
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Fishing really sucks at the start, but if you stick with it long enough your catching bar gets considerably larger, and eventually you can start using the trap bobber which makes fishing a whole lot easier in general. Having the catch meter deplete 2/3rds slower makes a world of difference, especially if you're trying to catch harder types of fish.
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Jan 3, 2019 18:32
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LLSix posted:Still works on PC. I bought a chicken named something like [182][111] in December and got the two items I picked (I don't remember the exact numbers but it was a tomato, and a prismatic shard). Apparently CA left the glitch in the game on purpose but Nintendo made him fix it for the Switch version because of some kind of Switch-specific fuckery 
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Jan 3, 2019 18:58
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LLSix posted:The job posting says "other team members" so reading an awful lot into one sentence, lets assume a team of at least 3. It would probably take less time to expand on an already finished game though, right?
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Jan 3, 2019 19:12
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IcePhoenix posted:It would probably take less time to expand on an already finished game though, right? If you have competent leadership and a competent team, sure. Otherwise you'll get devs who want to recode random poo poo like the loot-system to give it an API like WoW's. Not exactly bad, but time consuming and may not be in CA's vision for the game.
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Jan 3, 2019 19:36
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IcePhoenix posted:It would probably take less time to expand on an already finished game though, right? Absolutely. CA did all the work for Shane and Emily in what, a few months right? That doesn't seem to be what CA has in mind, or at least not all he has in mind. If he only wanted something in the 6-month to a year range he should be hiring on a time limited contract. 
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Jan 5, 2019 06:28
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In future Stardew Valley updates every adult in town (and the desert) will be marriable.
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Jan 5, 2019 06:39
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Can't wait to put a ring on that big, sexy desert.
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Jan 5, 2019 07:09
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Skippy McPants posted:Can't wait to put a ring on that big, sexy desert. I'm sure you'll make it the happiest sand covered landscape in the world.
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Jan 5, 2019 09:19
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