pouët.net

Zest, pour le bien de l'humanité: suicide toi.

Merci.

Well yeah, I'm not surprised. However I lack cost references in creative businesses so I'm not sure how realistic this would be. Since it's pretty obvious a company's willingness to pay an employee "this much" depends on what kind of economic situation they're in.

However professionals (people with skills) in europe should be between 100€ and 800€ a (8 hours long) day. (Look up plumber's hourly rates ;)

I'd be interested to hear what cost estimates are (related to human resources) in the game industry, or in design shops, for comparisons.

Umm.. i think that's actually a really unrealistic way of pricing a demo. Sure, a plumber might charge that for his time, but you're paying a plumber to do a useful service. The demo isn't useful, so from that side it's worth nothing.

A better way of pricing it would be the art method: it's worth what people are prepared to pay, regardless of what effort went in. One guy can spend a year doing a near photo-quality oil painting of a famous scene, and sell it for a few hundred euro to a tourist, the next can spend 5 minutes painting a red square on a blue square, another 5 minutes inventing some bollocks about what it represents, and become rich and famous.

you'd rather have skilled professionals get paid by how well they can bullshit the customer instead of the actual service they provide because you dont feel its useful enough to pay for it? and me thinking IT salaries in the uk were more decent then in this shithole of a country..

well it's not useless here, and it's not made-for-one's-self, like art. it's commandited. It's paid for and it serves a real purpose: find and show off iPhone's capabilities.

they want to make a game, but prior to that they want to know if it's worth it.

Here (Quebec) a freelance graphics designer can earn 35+$/h. It's not that much. That makes ~300$/day, or 1500$/week.
10k$ means 33 days at that rate. But then you've got to split that amongst team members. say 3 person, it's already down to 2 weeks!

can a team of 3 make a decent prod on an unknown plateform in 2 weeks?
good luck! ...but it doesn't seem so profitable to me.

and that doesn't include the inevitable change requests...

No, IT has a 'use', so you want people to do a good job and make that use actually useful :)

But what's the use of a demo? It can show off the hardware a bit, which has some value but is a pretty small market, beyond that it looks pretty which puts it in with art. It's rare to see famous art these days that shows real skill and hard work, but quite common to see a room with lights that turn on and off winning an award. To me that's saying the bullshit element can pay at least as well as the hard work.

Ok, so that's a complete load of bollocks when you relate it to demos, but no more so than valuing a demo on how much a company would spend to get it made :D

Smash was on the button. Pitty it took a "scene celebrity" to turn the tide of this thread from the usual blind: "oh, yes, wonderful...we get money for creating teh demoz!!!", to realizing what I hinted at before: it's cheap slave-labour. And like ALL company's who profess alturistic interest in the scene, they expect far more back than they're prepared to give...in one way or another.

cheap slave labour, as in, getting a macbook pro for this?

you gotta admit that's more than you could ever win with it at a demoparty... ;)

If cheap slave labour is doing a demo for $10k, what would you call doing it only for the chance to win a comparatively small demo prize?

Which is the point really.. getting paid to make the demo has to be better than doing it for free. If you're making somebody else's demo, for somebody else's purpose, then it's work plain and simple and should be paid accordingly. Somewhere in the middle there's a whole lot of interesting places I'd say.

I have no idea how much you earn in your day-job, but $10/3+ (artist/coder/musician) IS a slave-labour wage for work which requires any degree of knowlege and technical skill. and when you consider that most demos are created during a person's most VALUABLE time (ie: weekends and evenings) it's even more laughable. they haven't said they expect a half-assed prod compiled and thrown together in a couple of days. from their guidelines and tone, they're obviousely expecting quality work...so to offer that kind of "price money" for a demo designed to sell their product is frankly insulting.

I have no problem with sceners with low self-value doing this type of "work". that's their choice. I just think that instead of the majority of sceners here praising this type of exploitative commercial intrusion in our scene, it should be looked on with cynicism. as Smash said, let these parasites know that quality scene demos do NOT come cheap. if they REALLY want and value the work of sceners then they'll have to pay not just time, but time and a half! But I'm pretty sure that if we gave them this signal, they'd run a mile. because these companies, generally, do not seem really value the demoscene, they simply see it as a cheap source of tech-demo and promotion.

this company is trying to use the talent in the scene for their own benefit, and they have the cheek to package the whole thing in the guise of some form of benevolent "competition" which we should all be thankful for.

actually, we should all enter this compo and hand them a standard of work comparable to havok's link and sit back and laugh! :P that would teach 'em

nice try, but i still don't think that macbook pro for a 30min codejob was a bad deal :)

ah :)

rephaim: my point is that if you're going to do it anyway, being paid even $1/hour is better than $0. If you're having to sell your soul in the process, then obviously a much higher figure would be needed, but if it fits somewhere in the middle (like this deal seems to do), then a lower figure is OK I think.

I mean, would you turn down $10k if you were planning to make pretty much what they want anyway, and it just means you have to add their logo?

im actually honestly tempted to try something. which is odd considering i dont even like the iphone. except i'd have to abort the altparty dynamic demo plans and not give a shit about organizing inercia. amazing what not getting any replies to a couple cv sendouts does for a person. but nah, i'd prolly fall in temptation of doing something too non-conformist out of the thing for the sake of avoiding the typical plasma, tunnel and cube clichés and end up wasting months on something that neither i nor them would be pleased with in a platform i'm not even particulary fond of.

it may seem idealistic, but actually, being paid $0 is better than being paid $10k for the scene as a whole. when you are paid or "sponsored" there will always be expectations and its those sponsorship expectations that will damage the scene permanently. an obvious example from this iPod compo is the expectation of interactivity. i don't care what anyone here says, but one of the basic features of a demoscene "demo" is strict non-interactivity. there are fringe exceptions, such as music disks...but a demo is non-interactive. yet we are in this thread all talking about creating "interactive" demos for our bosses over at apple. very subtle, but its a fundamental change influenced by commercial intervention and it isn't questioned because the act of creating the demos for this "compo" is now a JOB...despite the weak attempt of disguising it as a demoscene compo.

in the same way, once the total takeover of all major parties by the likes of Nvidia, ATi and Sony is complete, their "sponsorship" price money will slowly but surely influence the content of ALL major demos. by that i mean gfx-card/game companies have their own target audience with totally different tastes in realtime grphics to that of the scene. anyone who thinks hey're hereb to help nuture our scene and push us along in our own direction is kidding themselves. their audience certainly isn't into the unique abstract forms and nature of demoscene demos that has evolved naturally over the years.so guess whose going to have to eventually bend to get their hands on that big prize money (aka cheap slave-wage)? us! and we'll bend so far back until eventually, boring 3D environment fly-bys that showoff how great ATi's latest gfx card renders normal maps on brick-walls becomes the norm. ATi and Nvidia tech-demos will BECOME the scene due to commercial influence. it wont be long before the clever guys initiating this current "demoscene" outreach use prize money as a stick to mould the content of demos and have us all completely in their pockets. working as unwitting slaves creating tech-demos that they bundle on cds shipped with their latest cards, in a style that their gamer-lamer customers find cool! gone will be that uniqueness that defines the demoscene and we will simply fade into the oblivion of gamer-lamerness, alongside the likes of those hideous "game modders". they'll even have us using their own Sony Studio game-engines to create our demos and all kinds of lame crap like that!

^^ psonice

anyway, its all doomed so what does it matter

like the xna coding license for the xbox demos for assembly :D
machinima si teh future!!1

well, atleast we'll have alot more things to subvert ^_^

fook! i forgot about thta! :> ...they're further along their agenda than i gave em credit for. quick....run for the hills!!!

Exactly. Also I don't really care if someone does such jobs, if he thinks this money is worth it. That'S everyone's own decision. But please leave out the "demoscene" at this point. Someone should also really tell these guys at ng:moco that they didn't get the point of the demoscene and kindly should remove the reference and better have a call for freelancing multimedia artists for creating tech demos.

Yeah, I guess that's why "Texas" and "Stargazer" were the biggest hits of NVScene and even highlighted during the closing ceremony of the entire NVISION 08.


Not only are you being unusually paranoid, even by Pouet standards, but you're also being an idiot, and a bit of a dick as well.

Your whole series of unfounded posts (yes, unfounded - look to the past to see all the kinds of things the demoscene has survived) reminds me of anti-LHC websites and videos, such as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt1Yo610lG0

Where is Truck when he is needed? Ok, I'll do it:

IF I WANT TO RELEASE MY DEMO UP A SQUIRREL'S ASS, I DAMN WELL AM ENTITLED TO 'CAUSE IT'S LIKE _MY_ DEMO AND THAT IS WHAT THE DEMOSCENE IS ABOUT. DOING WHAT _YOU_ THINK IS COOL AND IGNORE THE NAY-SAYERS.

but of course, uncle Smash is saying that one shouldn't be naive about anything that involves selling your work, which is excellent advice and should be mentioned at least once every time these things pop up.

maali: as i said at the start, most demos are not financially viable. :)
i based my costings on what the two coders (both experienced videogame professionals) would expect from working on a videogame contract, and what the artists (experienced graphic design / animation professionals who have their own companies) would expect from taking on an advert. and assuming a required development time of around 1 month, given that we'd try and make something good and not just take the money and run. :) i think thats reasonably close to comparing like with like. im not comparing it to plumbing (or coding for a bank etc) here. :)
(fyi, a development team of around 5 experienced people in a game company would probably cost around $1million a year)



and that's my point in the first place. perhaps it's time to think about the possibility that it _isnt_ better. getting paid for something changes the game - it's not just for fun anymore, and it will probably increase the pressure, and decrease the enjoyment and the freedom - even if just a little bit. remember, they arent like an artist's sponsor who donates some money to support something and doesnt mind if it gets pissed up the wall - they want something back from their investment. maybe it's because ive been in this situation a few times that i speak from a different perspective, but for me the full enjoyment of my hobby is worth more than a few quid. :)

btw, im not saying getting paid for doing a demo is bad. just that you need to understand the downsides and weigh that up with what you're getting paid. that is down to everyone's individual assessment.



while i suspect youve recently taken the sleeper train to planet loony, there is one vaguely related problem that we could consider: a lot of major (and less major) demoparties rely on sponsorship and involvement from a small number of big hw manufacturers. if that ever dries up, it's going to be a lot harder to achieve the same level of quality that we currently enjoy with demoparties. there's something to be said for self-sufficiency.

i don't see how that adds up. or do you include the workplace, secretaries, cleaners, fact that the marketing department also needs to be paid, etc?

btw, what's common pay for gamedevvers anyway, in western europe, if i my ask?