Hi Ricardo,
This is a very good way for a team to get rolling.
The is one little hitch that may or may not come up. This is the fact that the publisher would only want a portion of your team. I.E. the coders, and not the artists, or the artists but not the coders. This occasionaly happens when publishers pick up new projects.
For Example, my artists had to take a back seat to the Disney artists when Disney was publishing my software.
You want to be careful what you can promise your team once you start pitching the game. Being a new team your leverage will be very small. The publisher will have ultimate control of what your team make-up will be.
A split of profits for team members is a fairy tale. It's just is not going to happen in the real world of publishing. Anyone offering that has no experince in getting projects published and should be avoided like the plague....
You need to think in terms of fixed costs.
6 programmer months @ $25 per hour = $24,000
9 artist months @ $25 per hour = $36,000
3 Producer months @ $25 per hour = $12,000
Project Development Cost Total $72,000
Maybe these can be converted into shares of ownership in the project.
Things get complicated if you have one group do the demo, then a different group does the actual full game production.
Additional costs to the group:
Now how much money would you pay to have an experienced game pitch man get you a deal. Many companies pay up to 50 percent of there revenue to the group that gets them the deal. 30 percent seems most fair.
Cost's associated with travel for face to face visits with publishers, purchasing skills not in the group, purchasing materials to create marketing materials.
Who is the "Bricks and Motar" contact person / company. Publishers will want a contact person that has a permanate mailing address, etc.
Bottom line the most succesful teams do this not for finacial rewards but other rewards. Like being part of a motivated team, reputation, resume upgrading, and just good old fashioned experience. A balance of an experienced and newbies is a good way to spread the knowlege wealth in building games with remote teams.
Ken
