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New Licensing Idea – matiu

matiu

Junior Member

Posts: 7
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 01-03-2007
Myself and some friends are working on a christian 3d game and movie. We'd like some help from like minded netizens. I'm a bit of an open sourcer, but from what I've seen, open-source and quality game development don't go too well together.

Please comment on this idea for a business model:

Summary:
1. A charitable trust owns everything
2. Contributors are awarded money as sales of the game are made

Details:
1. A charitable trust "dedicated to evangelical electronic entertainment" owns copyright to everything
2. A bug tracking system is set up to show what things are needed for development.
3. Each "ticket" when created is given a certain value in "contribution points" and a time-limit
4. If someone accepts a ticket, and completes it to the satisfaction of two peers (or perhaps a steering comitee), those points are awarded to the person/organisation.
5. Once the game and movie start retailing. Each contributor is awarded profits proportional to their contribution points.

Other things to think about:
1. There will be a clause in the trust saying "if the trust can't award any money within 8 years, it will be released as open source".
2. If no-one accepts some ticket, perhaps the points value can be increased, and if no-one accepts it in time, the trust will pay cash for the fix.

I know it needs a bit of filling out. All constructive comments appreciated...

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Blessings
Matthew Sherborne

Realm Master

Member

Posts: 1971
From: USA
Registered: 05-15-2005
*open jaw*


First off Let me have the honor of being the first to welcome you to CCN! You'll love it here, and there are some really intelligent people (HanClinto, Lava, two name a few of the more frequent visitors) here, and then there are people like me, who are pretty new and still just mostly toying around.

Secondly..

I have only the faintest idea aobut what your talking about...

this isn't Christian Lawyers Network, or Christan Licensing Network. I think Han would know more about this... or maby MastaLama... i Dunno... They know alot definetnly, but thats because they have like a 10 year drop on me... or its just because they know alot.

Try PMing them, or soon eought they'll respond to this thread...

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Check out my crazy sig that I made:

bennythebear

Member

Posts: 1225
From: kentucky,usa
Registered: 12-13-2003
i think it sounds like a really good start. just fill in some(ok, a lot) details and i think it would work. hopefully some of the experienced guys in here will post to give you some advise, or better criticism.

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proverbs 25:7
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buddboy

Member

Posts: 2220
From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S.
Registered: 10-08-2004
that's a pretty good business model there.

so, a "ticket" is something that needs to be fixed in the game?

so you can get money 1 of 2 ways, game sales, or fixing stuff?

ok, I'm hoping I'm right with that assumption, because, only thing, what happens when there's someone who can't fix anything other than art, and there's only like one thing to fix?

just a ?.

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that post was really cool ^
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[|=D) <---|| me

Mene-Mene

Member

Posts: 1398
From: Fort Wayne, IN, USA
Registered: 10-23-2006
Alright, Welcome to CCN, not sure if I'm intelligent, but I know that I'm frequent.

Keep in mind i'm not usually this harsh. When I see something where its model was after different rules, I get a bit frustrated.

Yes, open-source, and quality game-work don't go together, why? Because people put more time into quality, and they want something guarunteed out of it.

Is this going to be incorporated? Where's this trust coming from? What form of corporation is this going to be?

Business Model
Summary:
1. Who owns the charitable trust? Is this like a democracy, where the top/trust owns all, but everyone owns the trust? This is business, not politics or partnerships. Trust is easily exploited, I'm not saying don't trust, but I am saying use models which protect you, and protect yourself.

2. Who awards the money? The trust? Who controls the trust?

Details:
1. Sure it owns it, but who owns the trust, and controls it?
2. It isn't going to automatically know whats needed. In some technology corps they create tickets, in which if the admins see something going wrong, they'll create a ticket to let others know, such and such needs work.
3. In other words an IOU, this seems very unstable, and unsuitable for employees.
4. In other words your saying that they must finish it if they start it? This may cause problems if he goes in too deep.
5. Making the IOUs, it might be better if you contributed interest to make them realize that their wait is having cause. I disagree with the IOUs, if you're serious, get funding, sell shares. Otherwise YOU'll be in deep trouble if it fails. Your fish uncaught, promises broken, bread not harvested, and you continue your hoping.

Other things:
1. If it comes to 8 years, the people are going to have left the company, shorten the time for one. For two, atleast give them some interest regardless if it sold.
2. If no-one accepts it, 1. Ask what for, 2. If nothings done, Hire somebody.

Just some initial thoughts. By the looks it seems like a partnership/brotherhood than a business.

Where is this going to be incorporated, who is the board of directors, are you going to hire management? How are you getting people in the company. Read this book... http://secure.richdad.com/product.asp?id=E172&cat=Books&keyword= It requires patience. How much do you want this business? How big will this be? Also read some more of rich dad's products.

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MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto

matiu

Junior Member

Posts: 7
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 01-03-2007
Thanks for the awsome quick response guys.

I looked around and saw a lot of people and companies making christian games. What I would like to see is a large proportion of us working together on a one GOOD game. This is an idea for a business model that I hope will help enable this vision.

Let me clarify some points:
1. A trust (in this case) is a legal entity governed by a set of rules, and run by lawyers and accountants, who must govern the trust by the rules or go to jail.

** A lot of care must be made in creating these rules. As the only way to change them will be via voting process **

I don't think it should be a unit trust (where beneficiaries own parts of the trust). I'm not sure if we can say no beneficiaries or "beneficiaries is the global christian community".

2. It won't be a "company". There won't be employees. Contributors are like contractors.

3. It will be as democratic as possible. So no-one can seize either power or money.

Perhaps some systems like: If you help decide on the points value of a "ticket" you can't apply to do the ticket unless no-one else applies within 6 months.

Everything should be as peer reviewed as possible.

4. The "IOUs" will be conditional on the game making a profit because you'll be receiving a proportion of the games profit each quarter or each $1,000,000 or something.

I guess you don't get an IOU but more like a "Big trust promises to pay out a proportion of the profit from the game equal to the proportion of points you hold compared to the total points given out"

5. As a contributor you can choose to be payed in IOUs OR one off cash payment. (The cash payments will come initially from donations).

6. If a ticket is just some art that needs doing, that's cool. You still get points for art. A ticket could be anything needed for the game. eg. email support for 50 "incidents", set up a forum, code, document, 3d model, animation, etc.

7. If we run out of tickets, that means the game is selling nicely and every one who has contributed should soom be getting paid.

8. Should the game never sell, the only option I can see is to transfer the copyright (ownership) to the Free Software Foundation, and release the game under the LGPL, and upload everything to sourceforge.

This way some of those who have invested time in learning the code could make their own add-on modules and perhaps win some money through them.

Thanks for bearing with me so far. The deeper one goes the more complex it gets. If I get a general well feeling for the idea, I'll start a website and a wiki where the trust rules can be hammered out.

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Blessings
Matthew Sherborne

HanClinto

Administrator

Posts: 1828
From: Indiana
Registered: 10-11-2004
Hey Matiu! Welcome to CCN!

I don't know how much I can offer as far as intelligent input, but I think this is a very intriguing idea that definitely has potential merit.

As far as high-quality open-source projects -- you're right, there aren't many. Many of the high-quality projects that come to people's minds when they think of "good" open-source didn't start as open-source, but rather were open-sourced after they flopped as commercial projects. Mozilla, Blender and Open Office, just to name a few.

However, there are many projects that started as open-source and are very high quality products that hold great standards of quality. Such things include the Ogg codecs, the Linux kernel, and the GIMP.

But you're right, it's very tough to have good open source works, especially when they are of the artistic nature such as movies and games.

The closest thing that I know of to an open-source developed movie was Elephant's Dream, but from what I understand, the Blender foundation paid several Blenderheads with donated money to basically camp out and create this movie over the course of a number of months. It was an open-source effort driven by financial backing, which is very similar to what it sounds like you're suggesting.

In fact, what you're proposing sounds very much like a bounty system, except you're making two substitutions. First, you're substituting cash for stock, which is perfectly fine (I'm currently working under a similar bounty-type arrangement for a Christian-based computer game). I think that's a very good option. From what I understand, the Christian-based MMO Visions is doing a sweat-equity sort of thing, where your payment at the end will be according to how hard you work on the project. I like how yours is specifically deliverable-based -- that puts more pressure on the designer to have a solid design doc with detailed deliverables though, and might make it hard to be flexible if things don't work the way you expected them to (if you try to make the deliverables too terribly specific). It'd be a tough balance.

The second substitution I see you making with a standard open-source bounty system is that you're not opening up your source right away under a free license, but suggesting that you close the source (or at least restrict it with licensing) unless the project flops. This is all well and good, but I wonder how it would work in practice. It's hard to give people source code (let them see it and work with it and see if they want to claim a ticket), but not let them take it and use it how they see fit. There's the very real possibility that someone would take your source code and create a commercial project with it and not give you credit -- are you willing to play the part of Free Software Foundation lawyers and track down violators of your open-source license agreement?

An alternative, of course, is to make individual developers sign an NDA (what I'm currently under with one of my projects). That lets people know you're serious, but it's certainly removes a lot of the welcome mat from it feeling like an "open source" project anymore (as well as the casual-ness of fulfilling tickets when and if you feel like it).

The last option is to just make it open-source from the get-go, and if you use a license like the GPL, let the FSF track people down. Or, use something like a BSD/MIT style license where you have hands-off and you don't care what people do with the source, but then that could make it harder to sell.

You could count on the honor system (especially since most ppl interested in these projects would label themselves as Christian), but as the value of your project goes up, so goes the risk/temptation. And Christians certainly aren't immune to sin.


Tough licensing issues aside, I think the idea sounds really interesting. I've seen the whole division-of-work / bounty thing be really good for projects, especially low-budget ones. It helps people take a sense of ownership, it lets them feel like they're investing in something even if there aren't any tangible returns, and it helps divide up the work into smaller, achievable chunks (otherwise, how would you have any objectivity in scoring people's productivity?) -- so all in all, I think it has a lot of merit! Perhaps you've already thought through the issues I brought up, and I just didn't read your post thoroughly enough -- if so, please straighten me out.

Thanks a lot!

In Christ,
clint

[This message has been edited by HanClinto (edited January 04, 2007).]

HeardTheWord

Member

Posts: 224
From: Des Moines, IA
Registered: 08-16-2004
Hi Matiu,

Sounds like a pretty good start. One question that came to mind is how to keep people working on bugs/enhancements. You mention in the third bullet under Details that there would be a time-limit and if it is completed to the satisfaction of two other peers that the individual would receive a set amount of points. What will happen if a bug has been sitting in the tracking system for several months and was not tended to? Does the point value decrease and eventually get to the point where no one wants to fix it because they won't receive points?

Also you mentioned that a trust is setup that owns the copyright to everything. I'm assuming you are including intellectual property with this as well or do the individual contributors own the IP to their assets?

The last point I want to bring up is about the monetary rewards. At what point does a contributor start getting royalties? Is it based on when the individual wants to "cash in" or whenever a product is sold? I like the concept, but I want to get some clarification.

Welcome to CCN!
Matt

GUMP

Member

Posts: 1335
From: Melbourne, FL USA
Registered: 11-09-2002
While your system seems interesting and all what it amounts to is the creation of yet another new project and the further division of the limited talent pool. Considering you're in New Zealand I'd suggest giving www.rebelplanetcreations.com a call. I know they need committed developers and, who knows, perhaps you can convince Peter to adopt your system.
matiu

Junior Member

Posts: 7
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 01-03-2007
quote:
Originally posted by HeardTheWord:
What will happen if a bug has been sitting in the tracking system for several months and was not tended to?

People should be able to offer to fix for their own price. Also as the trust is a chrarity, and will hopefully receive some donations. Some fixes will be paid cash instead of points.

quote:

Also you mentioned that a trust is setup that owns the copyright to everything. I'm assuming you are including intellectual property with this as well or do the individual contributors own the IP to their assets?

One of the conditions of contribution is that the contributor would either transfer or share copyright, meaning that the trust would have ownership of the whole code base and be able to release under any license.

If the contributor shares copyright, the above is true, but also for that single contribution, the contributor also has owner ship and may release/incorporate how they like.

The only advantage in transfering copyright, is (hopefully) total disclaimership of responsibility,

quote:

The last point I want to bring up is about the monetary rewards. At what point does a contributor start getting royalties?

There would be clear contracts stating when payouts happen. Depending on how much profit the game made, it could be paid out quarterly, or for every 1,000,000 profit or something.

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Blessings
Matthew Sherborne

matiu

Junior Member

Posts: 7
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 01-03-2007
I see these two companies are doing quite well:

http://www.visionsgame.com
Progressing slowly

http://rebelplanetcreations.com
Looks good!

Thanks for the links.

I'm trying to contact them to catch some of their experiences.

Perhaps they could be encouraged to join in a collaborative effort.

I found this bunch of news links about christian game development. Very encouraging.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8869881/
http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2004/11/christian_gamer.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4534835.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Beliefs/story?id=1042784&page=1

And good old wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_video_games

So in summary:
1. rebelgames seems to be doing allright on their own.
2. A lot of people think there's a viable market for christian video games
3. visionsgame seems to be struggling, I think because it is a private company (correct me if I'm wrong). And if I donate to them, it's like donating to Microsoft!
4. I think some sort of democratic system, protected with a legal framework, could produce a profitable environment of collaboration.

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Blessings
Matthew Sherborne

[This message has been edited by matiu (edited January 05, 2007).]

matiu

Junior Member

Posts: 7
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 01-03-2007
There are two holes in the system that need filling.

1. What if some copntributor steals all the code and sells the game. (The trust may not have enough legal power to chase them through court).

2. With a large amount of contributors, and a small market, the payouts may be too diluted.

Ideas/comments appreciated.

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Blessings
Matthew Sherborne

GUMP

Member

Posts: 1335
From: Melbourne, FL USA
Registered: 11-09-2002
What you're probably not aware of is that there pretty much is a limited set of qualified people with free time interested in Christian game development. I won't get into details but many Christian developers, including Rebel Planet, are struggling to get by. So if you start asking people to join your new group you're likely to get a lackluster response. Instead, I would suggest that you and your group pick an already established group that you can relate to and join them.

And if you're interested in doing a small title with a limited budget I'd suggest licensing Gamebryo Element:

http://www.emergent.net/index.php/homepage/products-and-services/gamebryo/gamebryo-livearcade

The exposure of getting on Xbox Live would mostly ensure a decent return on investment. Problem is convincing M$ to let you on.

[This message has been edited by Gump (edited January 06, 2007).]

matiu

Junior Member

Posts: 7
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 01-03-2007
Collaboration

Thanks gump for that advice. It was my original intent to join someone elses project; unfortunately I haven't found one that I'd like to yet. The closest would be rebelgames or visions game.

I haven't contacted rebelgames but I imagine, if they're strugging to get by, they wouldn't offer me a job, and they're probably not set up to offer shares in exchange for volunteer work.

Also I don't want to contribute to visions because there's no legal pressure for them to pay me if the game profits.

Perhaps they could both benefit from a system like this.

Skilled people
I already have two sound engineers, a project managers, a modeller/animator guy, a programmer, an artist and myself ready to commit at least some time to this. And I haven't even put up a web page yet.

I think the reasons to contriubute under this system are:
1. Christian game
2. Possibility of getting mega rich
3. Safety from being ripped off

Other comments
The most successful christian media seems to have been produced by purely corporate systems: Left Behind, Rebel Planet, Veggie Tales.

I believe the troubles with the coroporate system are:
1. The need for a $50 million dollar outlay up front.
2. The tendency to try to make the project be profit based instead of minsitry based. Perhaps it should be a mix...?
3. The high risk involved with investors and bankruptcy etc.

But still, so far the corporate system has produced the best media.

I don't think anyone's tried a profit sharing, legal trust protected system yet. I'm curious to see if it would work. First I want to iron out an awsome system though.

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Blessings
Matthew Sherborne

[This message has been edited by matiu (edited January 07, 2007).]

David Lancaster

Member

Posts: 276
From: Adelaide, Australia
Registered: 05-22-2006
quote:

So in summary:
1. rebelgames seems to be doing allright on their own.


Even we are still trying to figure out how well we're doing, the only reason we do so well is because we have been able to do so much with very limited resources.

quote:

2. A lot of people think there's a viable market for christian video games


I think so too, problem is that it requires money to market a Christian game, and the game will only sell well if marketed lots.

What people need is finances, it's all about money. Unless you are capable of doing what you'd normally pay others to day, developing a game is the really easy part, the nightmare that erupts when trying to get the game on shelves of stores, or even to sell on websites, get interest from publishers, follow procedures, it's insane. I think it's the make or break stage. It's really tough, and in the end, it's all about believing in something, following and taking to action something you're passionate about and desire. It's about faith, it's a part of your life and God's purpose. Game development is a huge commitment...It's a lot easier if you have financial backing but if not handled correctly it can all crumble. And it's also probably about knowing the right people and having the right connections and having built the reputation and spent the time to grow.

[This message has been edited by David Lancaster (edited January 10, 2007).]

matiu

Junior Member

Posts: 7
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 01-03-2007
Originally posted by David Lancaster:

quote:

I think so too, problem is that it requires money to market a Christian game, and the game will only sell well if marketed lots.

What people need is finances, it's all about money. Unless you are capable of doing what you'd normally pay others to day, developing a game is the really easy part, the nightmare that erupts when trying to get the game on shelves of stores, or even to sell on websites, get interest from publishers, follow procedures, it's insane.


Thanks for sharing your experience here David, I hadn't thought that far down the track yet. My mother's in marketing and she's started quite a few businesses. I've seen the trouble she's had trying to get products on shelves.

quote:

I think it's the make or break stage. It's really tough, and in the end, it's all about believing in something, following and taking to action something you're passionate about and desire. It's about faith, it's a part of your life and God's purpose. Game development is a huge commitment...It's a lot easier if you have financial backing but if not handled correctly it can all crumble.

And it's also probably about knowing the right people and having the right connections and having built the reputation and spent the time to grow.


Thanks again David. This is true. I know that we'll need a lot of people including good business people, marketeers and more. I also know that they are out there in the body of Christ. With His overseeing and a lot of prayer, I'm sure it could ciome to fruition.

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Blessings
Matthew Sherborne

Mene-Mene

Member

Posts: 1398
From: Fort Wayne, IN, USA
Registered: 10-23-2006
Just looks like politics to me, and honor systems rather than a business.

1. Where do you decide jail? It most likely would be a fine.

2. I see you mean contractors.

3. Remember, this is business, not politics. Besides if you look at the U.S. there are parties in control.

4. So its more like you have a chance at getting money. Seems very unappealing.

5. I would definetly want cash payment.

6. Ok.

7. Huh? I thought the tickets were people getting paid. Shouldn't it not be a line of people?

8. This seems like the people who asked for cash now would get paid as oppose to the IOUs would be promises broken.

Its a nice idea, but is more like a democratic partnership, easily exploited.

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MM out-
Thought travels much faster than sound, it is better to think something twice, and say it once, than to think something once, and have to say it twice.
"Frogs and Fauns! The tournament!" - Professor Winneynoodle/HanClinto