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lunarkreaturesI have a very weird story of someone trying to ask me to join their gamedev team for free and proceeds to question my morality when I ask if he would be ok with me selling the assets since this was an unpaid job. So lets get to it.
So This happened to me a while ago and I think it's a good thing to talk about so more artists can be aware of this kind of behavior and be careful. So, I am in many gamedev discord servers and its very common for people coming out of the blue asking if you want to join their team and "make this amazing new game that will be very successful" as they put it. Most of the time I just dismiss this kind of thing cause first all all the offers I received are unpaid jobs, and second I don't believe the project will be successful at all.
But then, one day this person came to me out of the blue asking if I did pixel art. My first reaction was to be careful, since last time someone tried to drag me into making a game and kept begging me even after I said no, so while being direct but polite I said that I did pixel art, and told them that I was free at the moment to take in a project but first I would like to know what the project was about.
So he talked about the project saying that he wanted for the work to not be just for one game but for me to fully join the team into making more games. Now, I was already a bit suspicious cause he haven't asked to see how my work was at all which is weird, before you propose someone with an offer like this you kinda need to know how they work is like. So I made sure to say that my experience was with characters and that i didn't have much experience with tilesets in pixel art but I was learning and already had a good knowledge on how it works. His answer was:
"Well, the main thing for us right now is characters anyway
Tilesets are much easier to draw
But we also require backgrounds and props, so I hope you can handle it"
After reading that I thought "dude you have no idea what you are talking about" saying tilesets are much easier to draw is absurd, they can be very complex depending on what you are doing. So once again I made sure he understood that I had no experience on what he was asking by saying:
"i have more experience in digital illustration than pixelart, many concepts can be easily translated but i lack the experience in pixel art, i am trying to get more experience tho. i like to put very clearly what my level in art is right now"
I know it seems like I was selling myself short but I wanted to state as clear as possible that I had no experience on what he was asking, in a way to protect myself from things like me deceiving him somehow on my skill. And maybe for some this might sound a bit like paranoia but I need to remind you he didn't even ask to see any of my work so far. Only after this he asked to see, he seemed satisfied with my work on characters so we continued.
He then asked if I was ok with vulgar humor, cause the project had this kind of humor, which I found a weird question since I would just do the art, but I thought that maybe the guy was being considerate to if I wanted my name associated with this so I let it pass saying that as long as it wasn't offensive humor I was ok.
And now that everything goes downhill, he said he needed to ask some things before letting me join the project, to which I said I also wanted to ask things too. Now to make this clear I wasn't very into the project already and I was certain it was an unpaid job, so I had an idea. I could do the things for him, get some experience and if he let me I could sell the assets on places like itch.io or gamedev market. Where you can license assets for people to use in their games and it had no problems like exclusivity deals, so he would get the assets for free but I could get something from this exchange, which for me seemed fair. So I had in my mind if he was against it i wouldn't do it, these were my terms. Free work sure, but I would be able to sell it so I could get some compensation from my work.
So the first question was if it was a paid job, which I was sure it wasn't by reading the signs, so this was the answer:
"Well, we're a very newly formed team, so we don't have budget to pay right now. But if the game succeeds in any way, you'll get RevShare"
so "IF" the game succeeds, I get RevShare, this basically means nothing to me, first of all I don't even know this person, this is the first time I even talk to them, there is always the possibility they will give me nothing. There is nothing that makes me trust this. So I propose what I had in mind:
"for second question, would i be able to sell the assets i make on places like itch.io , or would you be against that?"
Tbh, I could have worded that better, or even explained better but I really didnt care much but I was expecting for him to ask if I could clarify what I meant or something along those lines but the answer I got was this:
"Well, legally, we're not a company yet (I'm planning on that, though), so technically you'll have the right to do it. But as it is a released game, I don't really wanna anyone copyrighting
So, that's a question of your own morality
Tbh, with such questions comes suspicion"
So lets see this, what does "I don't really wanna anyone copyrighting" even means? and then says that its a question of my own morality and that it raises suspicion? I don't know about you but for me that sounded so much like he was trying to manipulate me in some way, targeting my morality over the matter, he didn't even ask about my proposition nor tried to argument about it, he went right to questions of morality and how my question raised suspicion. At this point I was done I wouldn't work with someone like this but I went on talking maybe to amuse myself so I responded:
"well i am not well versed in legal terms but, you need to understand that i cant really rely on revshare on if the game succeds.
i dont understand how it can raise suspicion?"
His response was:
"You see, you don't trust me
So I cannot trust you as well"
Well yeah of course, asking me to do free work and then promising payment in a what if situation, even more a situation where it would be easy for him to not give me anything and then questioning my morality without second thought? Like this was way beyond sketchy for me, to be honest if he said something like "there will be no payment we are doing this for fun" it would be 10 times more believable, but all this talk about creating a company and RevShare....it just raised red flags in my mind. So in the I finished with this:
"i see... well thats why i had to ask that cause i dont like doing things behind the back of others. like i said i need to have some sort of return and it cant be if situation. sorry if this may sound iffy to you but i have my own bills to pay. so i guess it is better if we just stop here."
After all this I asked some people about this behavior and all of them agreed it looked a bit sketchy. My wording was probably not the best but I wasn't feeling well that day. I tell this story cause it is just weird, it's necessary to be careful with jobs like this where people promises you something they don't have full control over it, maybe for some it might sound I am a bit paranoiac over this but this whole thing was just weird.
So This happened to me a while ago and I think it's a good thing to talk about so more artists can be aware of this kind of behavior and be careful. So, I am in many gamedev discord servers and its very common for people coming out of the blue asking if you want to join their team and "make this amazing new game that will be very successful" as they put it. Most of the time I just dismiss this kind of thing cause first all all the offers I received are unpaid jobs, and second I don't believe the project will be successful at all.
But then, one day this person came to me out of the blue asking if I did pixel art. My first reaction was to be careful, since last time someone tried to drag me into making a game and kept begging me even after I said no, so while being direct but polite I said that I did pixel art, and told them that I was free at the moment to take in a project but first I would like to know what the project was about.
So he talked about the project saying that he wanted for the work to not be just for one game but for me to fully join the team into making more games. Now, I was already a bit suspicious cause he haven't asked to see how my work was at all which is weird, before you propose someone with an offer like this you kinda need to know how they work is like. So I made sure to say that my experience was with characters and that i didn't have much experience with tilesets in pixel art but I was learning and already had a good knowledge on how it works. His answer was:
"Well, the main thing for us right now is characters anyway
Tilesets are much easier to draw
But we also require backgrounds and props, so I hope you can handle it"
After reading that I thought "dude you have no idea what you are talking about" saying tilesets are much easier to draw is absurd, they can be very complex depending on what you are doing. So once again I made sure he understood that I had no experience on what he was asking by saying:
"i have more experience in digital illustration than pixelart, many concepts can be easily translated but i lack the experience in pixel art, i am trying to get more experience tho. i like to put very clearly what my level in art is right now"
I know it seems like I was selling myself short but I wanted to state as clear as possible that I had no experience on what he was asking, in a way to protect myself from things like me deceiving him somehow on my skill. And maybe for some this might sound a bit like paranoia but I need to remind you he didn't even ask to see any of my work so far. Only after this he asked to see, he seemed satisfied with my work on characters so we continued.
He then asked if I was ok with vulgar humor, cause the project had this kind of humor, which I found a weird question since I would just do the art, but I thought that maybe the guy was being considerate to if I wanted my name associated with this so I let it pass saying that as long as it wasn't offensive humor I was ok.
And now that everything goes downhill, he said he needed to ask some things before letting me join the project, to which I said I also wanted to ask things too. Now to make this clear I wasn't very into the project already and I was certain it was an unpaid job, so I had an idea. I could do the things for him, get some experience and if he let me I could sell the assets on places like itch.io or gamedev market. Where you can license assets for people to use in their games and it had no problems like exclusivity deals, so he would get the assets for free but I could get something from this exchange, which for me seemed fair. So I had in my mind if he was against it i wouldn't do it, these were my terms. Free work sure, but I would be able to sell it so I could get some compensation from my work.
So the first question was if it was a paid job, which I was sure it wasn't by reading the signs, so this was the answer:
"Well, we're a very newly formed team, so we don't have budget to pay right now. But if the game succeeds in any way, you'll get RevShare"
so "IF" the game succeeds, I get RevShare, this basically means nothing to me, first of all I don't even know this person, this is the first time I even talk to them, there is always the possibility they will give me nothing. There is nothing that makes me trust this. So I propose what I had in mind:
"for second question, would i be able to sell the assets i make on places like itch.io , or would you be against that?"
Tbh, I could have worded that better, or even explained better but I really didnt care much but I was expecting for him to ask if I could clarify what I meant or something along those lines but the answer I got was this:
"Well, legally, we're not a company yet (I'm planning on that, though), so technically you'll have the right to do it. But as it is a released game, I don't really wanna anyone copyrighting
So, that's a question of your own morality
Tbh, with such questions comes suspicion"
So lets see this, what does "I don't really wanna anyone copyrighting" even means? and then says that its a question of my own morality and that it raises suspicion? I don't know about you but for me that sounded so much like he was trying to manipulate me in some way, targeting my morality over the matter, he didn't even ask about my proposition nor tried to argument about it, he went right to questions of morality and how my question raised suspicion. At this point I was done I wouldn't work with someone like this but I went on talking maybe to amuse myself so I responded:
"well i am not well versed in legal terms but, you need to understand that i cant really rely on revshare on if the game succeds.
i dont understand how it can raise suspicion?"
His response was:
"You see, you don't trust me
So I cannot trust you as well"
Well yeah of course, asking me to do free work and then promising payment in a what if situation, even more a situation where it would be easy for him to not give me anything and then questioning my morality without second thought? Like this was way beyond sketchy for me, to be honest if he said something like "there will be no payment we are doing this for fun" it would be 10 times more believable, but all this talk about creating a company and RevShare....it just raised red flags in my mind. So in the I finished with this:
"i see... well thats why i had to ask that cause i dont like doing things behind the back of others. like i said i need to have some sort of return and it cant be if situation. sorry if this may sound iffy to you but i have my own bills to pay. so i guess it is better if we just stop here."
After all this I asked some people about this behavior and all of them agreed it looked a bit sketchy. My wording was probably not the best but I wasn't feeling well that day. I tell this story cause it is just weird, it's necessary to be careful with jobs like this where people promises you something they don't have full control over it, maybe for some it might sound I am a bit paranoiac over this but this whole thing was just weird.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-16 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-21 04:03 pm (UTC)