Being a Game Designer: How to avoid Scams?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
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@BantamBree – i think everyone is reading the post as YOU personally? I think you were simply asking a question to insight some conceptual discussions on the “pros” and “cons”. Am i right to think this was the point of the post?
@ambershee – i adore you, except when you post. haha, i joke, you are the reason i keep coming on here

@everyone else … guys i think the point was to say “how do you (as a person or company) trust those that you find on here?”. Furthermore, i would probably add “looking for some insight to avoid getting scammed on here”. I dont think the post was created as “pay me, im an ideas guy”.

I think the topic / replied have gone way left field as i struggle to answer “um, wait, what, what was the original question again?”.

I dont think the ideas aspects are worth taking. Thats not to say the ideas arnt good, just, they are yet to be even close to properly developed until much after release. You can make a 200 page paper idea, but, you may only use 1 page and re-write another 50 and only use 25 of those. It’s just not in the cards.

I think you are more likely to lose assets, and, code. Whos to say the code written isnt being re-sold to another contract? I know this because the first guy i had sold the spell system to me and another company making an MMORPG. If i knew who they were, i would have informed them. When i had my new team look at the current code (now scrapped and tossed) they noticed the code i bought over the last year was pretty much just mangled asset code from free sources (except the parts i knew were taken from other companies). Just my experience so far.

Will “legal paperwork” save you? 100% not. Unless you can invest the time and money into dealing with people that live thousands of miles away. Lets say i live in Brazil and you live in Dallas USA. Because nothing says 'merica more then Dallas TX! Anyway, I take all your assets and just stop working and have whatever source you had, and, you paid me. What now? I signed an NDA. A Non Disclosure Agreement. Now what? You going to tell who to come get me? The CIA? FBI? Report me to the Dallas County Sheriff? Those are honest to god questions to everyone. You going to phone call someone in Brazil and expect them to run off to find “programmer X” at “unknown address”? I am not saying dont get an NDA, im just saying, none of you have actually experienced needing one, or, pursuing someone over one. Its so easy to sit there and think someone will magically cover your companies butt, when you dont have a company, you have an imaginary “cool gamer title that my friends know on xbox”. I didnt make my original programmer sign one. I got hosed. Hes in jail. I did it from several thousand miles away with 1 phone call. Without a single legal paperwork signed by anyone, and, without leaving my office. Point is: NDA is the least of the worries. Really all it will cover is people coming out and saying “hey look at this” before your company is ready. NDA doesnt cover theft. Non-Disclosure Agreement.

dis·clo·sure
disˈklōZHər/Submit
noun
the action of making new or secret information known.
“a judge ordered the disclosure of the government documents”
synonyms: revelation, declaration, announcement, news, report; More
a fact, especially a secret, that is made known.
plural noun: disclosures
“the government’s disclosures about missile programs”

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Stop right there… This is the main reason why most game companies will only hire people who can physically show up to a “studio” or whatever place people can meet up and work. At least stick with people within the country if you’re worried about international laws and legal issues. It also might be a good idea to have an official application for temp/part-time/full-time work and run background checks on them. Needless to say, if John Doe has a history of fraud and embezzlement, then he’s probably not a great pick for your team.

Also, you get what you pay for. I mean just take a look at what happened with the latest Mass Effect game where they outsourced a lot of work; to save money. I mean come on, the facial animations, of all critical things to outsource, they chose THAT? As far as I know, that wasn’t the only thing they outsourced, it’s just the extremely obvious one that jumps out in your face. Moral of the story, it turned out to not only be a poor choice, that they thought would save them money, but a choice that probably made them lose far more money than they would have spent paying real employees to do the work and killed(likely) the franchise.

Outsourced workers have no loyalty or commitment to your project. Unless they are some big name contract worker or something, they only care if they get paid and that’s pretty much it.

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Alright, thanks everyone! You really gave me useful insights about international work and the advantages of having coworkers physically in reach.

Since I feel like I have to justify my position in this topic, especially regarding @ambershee s Post:

I find myself in the position of being a kind of fickle jack-of-all-trades. I started off with the Warcraft 3 World Editor back in the days and used Jass-Scripts, from there on I started trying many different things: I can write Java and C++ code, doing it for a hobby for like 6 years now, got some experience in creating UIs and slight insights into OpenGL, my math sucks though, what probably disqualifies me regarding the posibility of working as a programer in game companies. I did some music compositions and recordings for game music, yet I lack the creativity to come up with impressive lead melodies (use to play bass in a band, can write my own arrangements, but still, no lead melodies). I picked up some minor blender- and concept art skills, what was quite fun, but I wouldnt want to do it for a profession, regardless of my qualification for it. Sooo yeah, its not like I dont know about the effort artists and programmers have when creating a game. Neither would I be bothered by joining in at the programming tasks and minor environment 3d modelling. Its jut that none of my skills are on a level, where I can hope to get hired by a professional company.

On the other hand, if my game designs were great, and I could find a bunch of people willing to go for kickstarter or greenlight, maybe people who also struggle to land themselves a job, I guess I could be kinda useful as floater across the team. But as you pointed out, people tend to only work when they get paid, whats totally legit, I dont want to object to that. Its just that I am in a situation, where I try to gain a foothold in game development with the things within my power.

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Well I hope you don’t think I’m poking at you but as suggested we all have started out at the very beginning such as yourself so when someone comes along with the “BIG” idea it does represented a rather scary red flag to many that have been down that road.

Once again as a perspective what I see is not a cool 200 page game design but rather the expatiation that such a project is going to take years to complete before I even see any form of investment on my time unless your willing to pay for the work up front.

Since you did mention this.

Yes big or small the issues you will face as an Indy developer will be equal to the problems as to “management” requirements and just outright bad behavior that you will find at any AAA studio and the risk of being scammed is always there more so as an Internet based project.

My suggestion was more along the lines of start small with a reasonably smaller project that can be completed with in a few months to learn what happens “after” you release. That’s when the real scamming starts. :wink:

As to those who wish to work on the project get the paper work signed. It’s not 100% safe guard but in my experience someone out to “scam” you will will not make an effort to sign even a NDA and will run off before any damage even occurs. Besides Google makes it easy to do a simple background check. :wink:

That’s easy become a joiner. Experience is experience be it working for a paycheck or working for free and about 90% of the hiring opportunities occur with in what I would call the social network.

I’m willing to bet that there is not a single dev working over at Epic that did not start out by first working on a love for the game project. :wink:

Overall though it’s not THAT bad as in the world is out to get you. :smiley:

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@FrankieV

A joiner? How does this work? I mean… is it kinda common for people to ask “can I work with you for free?” ? Not that I am opposed to it, just wonder how the process usually works?

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Well there was a time that you could not go out into the gamer sphere with out running across more than a few mods to work on, there was even a site for just mod dev traffic, but is a bit harder to find. Since games like TF2 and Counterstrike went pro they are a bit harder to find but they are out there if you follow the bread crumbs as the good ones don’t always advertise.

First bread crumb

Yes “can I work for free” is a good ice breaker and you could post in the looking for work forums posting that your interested in joining or forming your own crew.

Another place is from right with in the UE4 launcher/modding section that is growing all the time. Another “where the pro’s hang out” is polycount.com

Be sure to take inventory of “any” skills that you might have to offer as most teams are not there to teach you. :wink:

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Found the link to the mod site.

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Modding is a good place to get started and many in the industry made their first small steps there. It used to be as easy as just picking a game and finding the relevant community, but these days games aren’t as likely to be moddable as they once were.

There’s also a lot to be said for just making some small simple game prototypes in order to gain relevant skills - even making something as simple as Space Invaders in UE4 by yourself will have you using a lot of the tools, and learning a fair bit about the engine.