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Ah bless
have signed only one nda myself, but am buddy-buddy enough with some folks in the local scene to get called over to tables to chat by a producer type. post-covid lockdowns theres a smaller set of folks who are still around so weâre often some of the only folks who still recognize each other. its cool to be able to be friendly about it but also completely alien because i cannot connect whatsoever when it actually comes to talking about âthe bizâ like that. but in my early 20s getting to whisper a bit or go âfrieNDAâ for the sake of conversation felt like a glimpse into something cooler than it really was. or like i was somehow gleaning some sorta âoperational insightâ that i now realize was never going to be relevant if you resign to never be a âdeal makerâ. in retrospect getting to hear about how, like, stadia rugpulling you before release, while i can be sympathetic to, never really put stars in my eyes. in my case it didnt feel so much about ego/status as it did (charitably?) cluing me into those things just because i (the formative âincrowdâ youth) might find it interesting. i can absolutely see how ladderclimby that kind of talk would be in other circles, though
it seems precarious (and genuinely unfun) to be this type of guy because they only bring that single skill as a value proposition, and as a studio the actual projects being signed, and their scale is something that can only exist via that dealmaking. and its just a cycle of being locked/beholden to one group or another, so im not sure how one really gets to that point in the first place. and the end result is just seeming like the only focus is to âbe in gamesâ in a way that feels totally detached from actually making them.
this is someone who came to games after running an indie music label, too, which reads to me as requiring an entirely unique kind of self-reflection to pull off
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in a more fair system the kind of information that these people happily hoard would be widely shared and younger and more desperate/less well-connected people wouldnât be in the position to be as constantly exploited like they are. what really bugs me some of these NDA lovers talk about supporting the indie dev community or whatever but theyâre pretty useless without hoarding their dumbass trade secrets. it definitely feels like the high school preppy kids table, even as the group involved is aging.
this is what it is, and itâs becoming increasingly untethered from the development side - even as a lot of these people also still want to be creatives as well (presumably that is why they got into the space in the first place). but if you donât want to be in the position to be playing the lottery with directly selling/marketing indie games to people and possibly putting yourself at great risk it makes sense that youâd find other ways to be useful if youâre that connected. thatâs why thereâs always a rush to attach for a lot of people to find whatever ways to attach themselves to what is successful. thereâs little sense of greater coherence and like⌠a more centralized nurturing of talent, even as people try to constantly read the tea leaves of the market. so itâs natural to just wait for the cards to fall as they do and try to attach yourself to whatever comes out of that as best you can.
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I once had someone email me asking âhey Iâd like to hire you to work on my game but you have to sign an NDAâ and that seemed very silly to me but I did it cuz I needed money. Though it took me a few days to send it cuz I was at one of the SB Meetups at the time and couldnât figure out how to sign a PDF on my phone and was too busy having fun to likeâŚask anyone about something so boring. Anyway I got home and sent it off even though I was hesitant about doing such a thing and, of course, they never followed up. Made me feel like a real markâŚthink maybe Iâm not cut out for video gamesâŚitâs a shameâŚ
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was this for pixel artwork? ime its nightmarish to go through any sort of hiring process for that area because project leads tend to assume its a âcheapâ type of art, and almost nobody involved can discern differences in style or quality beyond saying âhey this looks like a combo of [pokemon/zelda/final fantasy/metroid]â (imagine they are plotting you on a political compass with those on each axis). its just very impossible to communicate any sort of intent with the format (to potential gigs) because the literacy for many is very sparce beyond being able to say pixels look âretroâ.
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my latest experience in weird dev coldemails was this âofferâ
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this is why i stopped trying to do music for games. even in situations that were more beneficial to me because i knew the person making the game it didnât work out because people got cold feet or just didnât take that side of things too seriously. and forget about it when i was just trying to do stuff cold without knowing the developers in some way. at least a couple situations where people just suddenly abruptly backed out. there was absolutely no way they were gonna hire some trans woman who makes weirdass music and doesnât work for absolute dirt cheap there.
the only things i ever successfully did music for were basically all niche games for queer people because of that. just not worth it tbh for me personally beyond very specific situations. the people i know who have been able to successfully navigate that space have to be more malleable with what theyâre doing and treat it like a full time hustle business, and i just had way too many of my own interests. i didnât have enough passion for committing myself to doing music specifically for games vs. just doing it for my own purposes. it is frustrating that it feels like itâs really hard for anyone who has a very specific creative voice to carve out a space though because it tends towards favoring generalists. unless youâre the full-on creative director of a thing who also happens to be doing the music.
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tbh even when itâs indie stuff it gets messy from what iâve seen.
i remember a certain someone who made a particular lofi fencing game we showed at our first exhibits back in the day. he lived down the block from us, and so did the gameâs composer, a mutual friend.
they used his music in all the promo and in every demo of the game until its official release. they even accepted an IGF award on stage together, dressed as the main characters! such buddies!
but wouldnât you know it, things got messy when the subject of âpaying for the music and labor involved in making the musicâ came up
and suddenly, a new, arguably less interesting soundtrack was inserted in its place
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sometimes I think about the music show after the fallout where a certain sword games wife yelled at the performer to turn his set down in the middle of a concert while tripping over an ottoman someone left in the middle of the crowd (I also tripped on it)
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that week was such a blur in so many ways, but this memory also distinctly stands out for me lol
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this happened to me on a game that i did some music for for someone who i was at least somewhat friendly with. and the dev continually promised so much shit, then the demo with the music i did in it actually won an award. and then yeah after two years of lots of promises from them they abruptly kicked me off the thing with no warning once they solidified a publisher and basically told no hard feelings like they hadnât spent the last two years making big promises. that was kind of it for me trying to do music for any bigger indie project.
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Iâve always wondered how youâre supposed to like, compensate someone who does music for your indie game. Say Iâm making a game what am I supposed to offer? Flat fee for the project, royalties? Both?
1 Like
others here probably know better than i, but i think the general thing is a flat fee for the project, which has its ups and downs, i guess, depending on where you are in your career as a musician.
i think the nice/cool/right thing to do is let the musician retain the rights so they can make $ off sales of the OST
i remember this biting my friend in the ass with the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, although i think they were able to renegotiate that deal when it was re-released
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yeah imo, folks should lose their awards if they do this lmao
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i talked to someone who is like a Professional Composer about this back in 2013 and he said he charged per finished minute of music. he gave me his like absolute bottom barrel rate (200$ per minute if youâre curious) and i told that to people when theyâd ask. almost without fail it felt like every time people acted like i was crazy and charged way too much. most of the stuff i ended up doing successfully where i was paid was for friends who i know had limited resources so they just paid me like 500 bucks, up to 1000 for the whole thing depending on how much i did. with Crypt Worlds and Dys4ia those were done for no money because they were free games. itâs not a way to make a living unless you get lucky and are super aggressive about it.
with music you can at least sell the soundtrack on bandcamp, which iâve done vs. art or sound fx. so i think thatâs part of the reason people are less willing to pay much at all. but still - obvs there are no guarantees the soundtrack will sell well at all. and iâm sure that with bigger games rights issues come into play vs. indie stuff.
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Honestly, makes sense.
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music is one of those elements that just always gets the short end of the stick for indies because the musician is usually not considered a core part of the team, until the scale where being an actual âstudioâ is justified. its absolutely very common for musicians, who even have several credits, to feel like they arenât actually part of the community at all because of that persistent viewpoint in many teams. most indie projects tend to just insert completed tracks into the project either as they get made or all at once towards the end, because the programmer sets up the âhooksâ to play music ahead of time. one friend i have constantly rips the osts of other indie games for placeholders to âestablish the tone for the composer down the roadâ that they may never actually find
there is also the heretofore unspeakable concept of ârev shareâ that is often offered up but has never once been effectively utilized by anyone in the scene to my knowledge. historians to this day debate the validity of supposed photographic evidence of revenue share
i have always struggled with the concept with friends or anyone id consider an actual peer just because the moment money starts changing hands something becomes fundamentally poisoned there. ive had to turn down opportunities before because i know i wonât mentally handle that sort of shift in dynamic/power with folks id rather continue to be personable with, even if itâs not for âlivableâ compensation in the first place
and it truly sucks because there is nothing more that i want then for people i care about to be able to make things and live sustainably, and it just feels impossible to take part in that or facilitate it without twisting the knife
and even the strategy of âlets come up with something together to work onâ which skirts the issues of one member being âin charge ofâ the labor of others is also subject to issues with one side falling to burnout or life circumstances, and when you realize a project is just not sustainable it feels kind of empty even when you stay on good terms
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Perfect
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especially considering he feels like one of the only directors left on the planet who is still allowed to make a movie with actual physical cars in front of camerasâŚ
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I mean it would be nice if it wasnât made by an unhinged right wing weirdo who has somehow managed to avoid being the kind of unhinged that makes good movies.
Itâll be fascinating to see how he justifies 10 minutes of car driving before packing the remaining two hours of Respecting The Troops, but thatâs not something I wanna watch.
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