Wednesday, April 6, 2011

One step forward, one step back.



Where to start?

Codename: EPIC:

Yesterday was a great advancement on the second game project. We have finally started digitally inputting all of the resources and started literally building the game.



Up until this point and for the last four months, we have been working out designs and writing out a plot to go from.


Unfortunately, it also called for a reshuffle of the leadership team on the project. We now have a new art director and character designer which will set us back quite a bit on progress. We're essentially taking five of the characters back to the drawing board to be redesigned by Fuego (new art director).

I'm being very cryptic about these details because I don't like to mention anything that's not set in stone yet. Tomorrow I'm going to get some help from one of my closest friends to start writing up some guidelines for the new team, such as:

1/ All submissions from team members become property of the group (as a whole) after x amount of time has passed.

2/ Members of the development team will be required to accept a non-disclosure agreement [NDA] about the project which states that they cannot freely talk to anyone about explicit details about the project while they are members of the group. (To save from people leaking details about it.)

3/ Members will be required to give a one week advance notice before official departure. If doing a short notice resignation, then we have one week to remove anything submitted by them that has not passed the x amount of time needed to become group ownership.



If I had these tentative rules in from the start, I don't think this would have been an issue. Now some people may look at these rules and consider it a little harsh, or a form of socialism. But I want to make this following fact crystal clear:

Not everyone is getting an equal share in the project. The project will be split in contribution percentages. (The more contributions to a project the person does, the more they will be compensated in sales percentage.) After an x amount of time (yet to be determined) the person will be unable to retroactively bring their resources out of the project, but they will get just compensation for their resources they submitted once the project goes live.


My Leadership Policy:


I've been criticized by many to be way too soft and accommodating. That's just the type of leader I am. Normally, I'm really not one for contracts and the like, but what happened yesterday was a big wake-up call that I need to have some kind of rules in place or I get walked all over by people who abuse my kindness.

I've said this once before and I'll say it a million times, I'm very fortunate to know very talented artists, voice actors, musicians, and writers and friends from all different backgrounds.


I'm also very happy to have Fuego working with us as the new main art designer for the project, and hopefully the project itself won't be set back too far because of these unforeseen circumstances.

We're also in need of monster artists! ^_^;



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