I work professionally in IT and my company has obvious conflict of interest concerns when it comes to their staff "moonlighting".
However, since games are not (so I thought) in their general area (corporate) of interest, I decided to mention my plans to the powers that be, to keep things above board and legit, thinking I would get their blessing. The opposite seems to have happened...
They responded with a vague "there might be implications" and now I'm left with my finger hovering over the launch button while looking over my shoulder, so to speak. Any similar experiences or advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Thx
However, since games are not (so I thought) in their general area (corporate) of interest, I decided to mention my plans to the powers that be, to keep things above board and legit, thinking I would get their blessing. The opposite seems to have happened...
They responded with a vague "there might be implications" and now I'm left with my finger hovering over the launch button while looking over my shoulder, so to speak. Any similar experiences or advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Thx
Comments
It's like a superpower, I swear.
[Edited: Link removed]
Please also feel free to crit it, i'd appreciate feedback good and bad. It's a windows 8 metro touch/mouse/keyboard game that I can "hopefully" get out the door in time for xmas.
You say you work professionally at and IT company, but what do you actually do? Depending on what your job description actually is will depend on what claim the company has. Feel free to DM me if you like :)
And that's even if a game falls under the things of yours that they own if you produce them.
It seemed really weird to me that companies owning all the production (even after hours) that employees produce is standard in contracts. Obviously it's about protecting companies from theft, so it makes sense 99% of the time, but in a creative industry where loose collaborations are common and teams are small (like independent gaming) it doesn't seem suitable (without some modification).
Just a thought. There seem to be a lot of negative pickups (some with interesting powers, like "cloudy"). Once the player has learnt what they do though they become obstacles to avoid. But it looks like avoiding pickups is much easier than catching them.
Maybe if the pickups were easier to pickup (like by making them travel slower) these obstacles would have more of an effect.
Though maybe if there was value in collecting ALL the pickups (and the pickups were easier to catch) it might be more interesting. e.g. Instead of time you are scored on points and every brick is worth 10 (for example). And picking up a pickup increases your score multiplier, while missing a pickup resets your score multiplier. So then players are trying to pickup ALL the pickups, good and bad, and have to adjust to all the interesting situations (like it going foggy... which I thought was really cool thematically).
What I mean is, playing under foggy conditions is an interesting challenge, but I would never choose to play under foggy conditions if it didn't help me in some way.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky Thank you for the feedback. I like the idea of forcing a player to consider taking "power-downs". Very interesting. It certainly does add a new dynamic and potentially alternate gameplay. Will give it some thought. Cheers :-)
Contract clauses like this are super shit, I would strongly suggest going over your employment contract to see if something like is in there in the first place - your bosses could just be assuming because they're greedy asshats... I'd personally never sign something that had a "we own your mind" clause.
If they really are going to try and block you doing something like this, I'd hit them with a bill for all the overtime I'd spent on it and projects like it since I started working there. But I'm an argumentative bastard. Bottom line - don't take it lying down, contracts are negotiations.
Also out of interest, what happens if you get a job at a different company half-way through developing something, and for both companies you sign contracts that specify that the company owns anything you develop privately?
And I worked in the game dev department, so no chance to wiggle out of that by claiming it was unrelated. :/
In terms of your second question the first company will still have the "best" claim, the IP ceded to them automatically on creation. There is an argument that any developments that happen at Co. 2 would belong to them, but that would be an unauthorized derivative work, so Co.1 could claim ownership of it (and sue Co.2 for royalties...)
"All software, documentation, data, files, software improvements, or other IT material produced or
developed by the Employee that is directly or indirectly related to the business of the Employer,
whether alone or in conjunction with others, during the course of his/her employment, and all rights
pertaining to such material and the information recorded thereof, are and shall remain the exclusive
property of the Employer.
"Any exclusion to paragraph above must be agreed to by the parties and be reduced to writing.
Where the Employee is uncertain with the regard to the ambit of paragraph above, the Employee may
approach the Employer for clarification."
I AM SUCH A FOOL for signing this... aaargh. My bedroom coding has been the only thing keeping me sane all this time and here I was thinking I was not going to be assimilated by the borg...
Contracts like this are really unfair. My girlfriend is an artist, and she used to work for FNB as an admin clerk. According to her contract there, anything she painted immediately belonged to FNB.
Perhaps investigating the potential for such a waiver from both parties is possible (as long as it is truly removed from the job you are employed for, in my case I am a programmer in the banking sector, and my game development is not in conflict with my work). It means you must truly keep your work and hobby apart.
Well that's how I understand it at least in my situation :)
"Why are you booking so much overtime?"
"Well, I keep thinking about programming, so according to my contract, that's job stuff! I can't help thinking about this stuff, I just do!"
"But why book the time?"
"It says that anything I do is work for you guys, so... You can't have it both ways."
Fuck em.
Your game would have to be a phenomenal financial success for them to ever hear of it again. At this point its a hobby, more than anything. And even when you do start making money, they need not know about it.
Back when I still worked for larger organisations, and was making and exhibiting art I ran into some brief problems around this. I treated it as a hobby until I started actually making money from it. Then when trouble arose I indicated that they were welcome to buy anything they wanted, which would have been great since I was working for the National Gallery at the time.
Commercial corporates are more draconian, but are mainly interested in control. They need to know that what you're doing after hours doesn't effect your delivery during work hours, that you don't have conflict of interest and that if you happen to do something amazing they can get in on that (this is obviously not a legal perspective).
I am not so concerned for that particular game I created, cause I only spent about 6 weekends on it, but my concern is for my bigger plans for the future. So I'm thinking of terminating the contract and trying indie dev full-time for a year or be very careful what I sign in the future. Thanks all for your advice and comments.
To play devil's advocate a bit, I do get where companies are coming from on the effect on work argument. I'm not saying I think they should have a say on how you spend your spare time, but I understand the concern that it might impact the work they pay you to do if you're not sleeping enough due to side projects. As a developer they also pay you to be creative, and if you're creatively tapped out because of personal work, they're not getting what they're paying for.
My approach to this whole thing has always been to deal with it before signing for a job and asking how they feel about me working on personal Dev projects. Some have had no problem and given me their blessing, some have said no way, but at least I knew where I stood and could make an informed decision.
http://www.makegamessa.com/discussion/724/the-emotional-tribulations-of-going-indie#Item_2
was shared a while ago by @Funtastic. Think it is quite relevant here.
This thread has seriously changed my perspective in a good way. For the first time my hobby and my career has been seriously vying for my attention. I'm at a crossroads.
Also, I guess life is short. If you had enough money to sustain yourself for 1 year and do what you love doing, or make a serious dent in your mortgage. Which one would you pick?
It's not always about the making/saving money aspects. To do what you love doing is sometimes just as important. That scale can tilt in favor of either depending on where you are in your life I guess. I'm not about to sell it all and live in a tent with my laptop (Although sometimes that thought does seem appealing). I play life too safe... but with risk comes reward they say.
Anyways I'm rambling. If the darn american economy wasn't sliding again, grrrr. I'd prolly already be lying in that tent coding the next pong clone while dreaming of indie stardom...
You don't have to do everything right now. And, like Elyaradine says, going all or nothing isn't the only option.
Either way you get to both keep being employed at the same company AND work on games in your spare time. Win?
P.S. I wouldn't worry too much about your company taking some potential million dollar game away from you - it's highly unlikely that you'll find something like that on your own our of luck (as opposed to after years and years of prototyping) AND 90% of a game's success is down to implementation anyway, if they're just a silly greedy company with no game development experience to speak of, chances are they'll flub the implementation and you get to be paid while learning first hand what not to do with that particular idea - then you can make a proper version of that gameplay or whatever on your own later.
I don't know where you are in your finiancial life, but I'm in the camp that suggests doing your own thing while it's still financially viable. Trust me It's much harder to take the risk of going solo once you have a mortgage, car, wife, kids, etc to pay for.
The same goes for time, the older you get and the more commitments you have on your plate, the harder it is to pour crazy hours into gamedev.
Of course @Elyaradine and @dislekcia both make excellent points. If you can pay the bills by doing part time contract work, great. If you can get your current company to pay you to do gamedev (and potentially work your way to running a gamedev subsidiary of theirs or something) that's possibly even better.
Anyway, I get what you're saying. I guess I'm a little different in that I would love to be able to earn enough to afford a bond right now so that I wouldn't be paying off someone else's through renting :P I'm not a risk taker, and I'm not an entrepreneur by nature, so I'm not likely to become a solo indie developer any time soon.
Wow, I never thought of that (my company also has the clause in their contract).
If I billed my company overtime for my personal projects I'd make a fortune! Actually, wait, they don't pay overtime... but they give leave for overtime worked. Doubt it would work though. Possibly a good way to get them to remove the clause :P
Honestly though, I suspect that such clauses aren't easily enforceable. I personally don't worry about it with my own on-the-side projects.
Some guy who worked for a company called Omgpop (who were acquired by Zynga) left the company rather than working for Zynga when Omgpop were bought out, partially because of that clause:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/
I found the comments very interesting.
1. Employ you full time to do the game(s); or
2. Give you permission to continue on your free time.
Let them decide which they want to do. Unless they see themselves being able to make money from it they are most likely to go the second route. If they decide the second route enter negotiations to get a cut of profits - it is in both parties interest.
Another idea might be to just do it as a hobby and make the game free. They cant make money from something thats free - in the end the most they can have IP on is your game dev framework you have built.
A small story....
Back in 1995 I ran an online (play by email) rugby game called Ultimate Rugby. The game was free to play for the full 5 years it was run. In about 1998 I was contacted by a company overseas looking for someone to build them a rugby match engine to go into a PC based rugby management game. I approached my manager for permissions and got permission to 1. Sell the engine, 2. get paid by the foreign company to visit them for testing (3 weeks) all costs covered. Total income was about R35000 for the 6 months of after hours work. (I guess that was 2 or 3 months salary back then)
Moral of the story - if you dont try you cant get what you want!
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This year, our introduction of Windows Store gift cards will make it even easier for users to purchase apps in the Windows Store or Windows Phone Store. As a result of consumer gift card purchases and promotional programs, we expect over $100 million dollars (USD) to be available to consumers using their Microsoft accounts to spend on app and in-app purchases. In fact, new devices available today on AT&T include gift card offers with purchase. Take advantage of this big opportunity and publish or update your apps for this holiday season. "
Edit: Will make games for food or beer. (Preferably beer)