At 10/1/08 08:01 AM, Luis wrote: Im doing the same. Also Tom is going to get rid of the mandatory 1% thing. I originally thought it made sense but most of the deals ive negotiated with audio artists are based on a lump sum rather than on a royalty system. So it doesnt make sense that im forced to give up 1% on every song they've done for me... when ive already paid for em. 1% aint much but when its a game with 10 tracks 10% starts to become a titty twister.

I asked Tom about this to. If you are going to have a mandatory cut, I'd say it' make much more sense to have a mandatory 5% or so total split between all audio contributers. With a 1% cut each, you're really penalising people for using a wide range of audio.

I made a really big game a while back with something like 20 different songs. Now, individually those songs would have had a much smaller impact on the gameplay experience than just a single song looping in a little minigame, but I'd be forced to give 20 times more for the big game than the little one. OK, 20% is more or less the cut I try to set aside for audio artists and their ilk anyway, but that's not the point!

Anyway, I don't think we should be penalising people for using a wide variety or audio portal entries. One 'audio cut' would make a lot more sense.

At 10/1/08 09:05 AM, Paranoia wrote: Anyway, I don't think we should be penalising people for using a wide variety or audio portal entries. One 'audio cut' would make a lot more sense.

Right. and thus the system will be fixed. The truth is tho alot of portal artists did complain about the royalty sharing, and so Tom had alot of pressure to try and satisfy that angry mob.

I think that one just doesnt forsee the microscopic issues it can have. Such as the multi track scenario. My suggestion to him was to delete the actual percentage aspect of it. And just put the reserve field there. All the audio artists I've ever worked with i paid flat fees to. Which is what they wanted anyway.
At any rate, its interesting / frusterating to make new features available and the new pandora's boxes that inevitably spawn from it. I guess its part of the process though.

At 10/1/08 09:05 AM, Paranoia wrote: I asked Tom about this to. If you are going to have a mandatory cut, I'd say it' make much more sense to have a mandatory 5% or so total split between all audio contributers. With a 1% cut each, you're really penalising people for using a wide range of audio.

Yeah, but then if it was a blanket 5% split equally amongst audio artists, and say you're using five songs from the AP, what'd stop you from uploading five "songs" to the Audio Portal and taking 50% of that? And the alternative's no good either, because then I could use fifty songs by one artist and pay them a pathetic percentage.

Automation really wasn't the way to go...

At 10/1/08 10:01 AM, KaynSlamdyke wrote:

At 10/1/08 09:05 AM, Paranoia wrote: I asked Tom about this to. If you are going to have a mandatory cut, I'd say it' make much more sense to have a mandatory 5% or so total split between all audio contributers. With a 1% cut each, you're really penalising people for using a wide range of audio.

Yeah, but then if it was a blanket 5% split equally amongst audio artists, and say you're using five songs from the AP, what'd stop you from uploading five "songs" to the Audio Portal and taking 50% of that? And the alternative's no good either, because then I could use fifty songs by one artist and pay them a pathetic percentage.

You're always going to have flaws in the system - generally admins could the common sense approach over what constituted abuse of the system.

I've always just seen a cut to audio artists as common courtesy, so making a mandatory contribution doesn't bother me too much. I don't really like the idea of audio artists being reduced to beggars. Here's how I'd outline a system:

o Basic minimum cut between all audio artists (say, 5%)

o The cut would be split evenly between any audio artists, or go towards some random charity if none are specified

o Any submissions by the creator are disregarded in working out the cut

o More advanced options, such as allowing the author to specify how important the submission was in the game, ('Epic', 'Added a fair bit', 'Incidental'), to determine what proportion of the cut artists would get

o Heavy admining to prevent abuse (e.g. alts and spam-audio submissions, failure to credit artists, e.t.c) and some kind of action taken against abusers

I dunno, anyone else have some better suggestions?

At 10/1/08 11:26 AM, Paranoia wrote: I dunno, anyone else have some better suggestions?

don't force it on people?

it was a pain for me to go through all my submissions and update percentages, especially when I already know that nothing has flash ads so it's not making any money anyway.

Anyone who's capable of making money off of their submissions should know how to handle it.

Like:
The new system, the balance of the icons/text, personal touches of having an icon.

Dislike:
Having to edit 55 submissions, but I guess it's a one-time thing.
Castlevania games.

As another note, I think you should be able to give songs custom identifiers (as well as 'Main Theme', 'Credits', etc). I was dreading getting into editing all my major submissions, but now I've got into it I realised how much I like naming things :P

The new features are pretty snazzy, all I think we need is the authors name mentioned on the front page alongside their submissions so I don't accidental miss HappyHarrys next masterpiece purely because I didn't recognise the icon.

Tom's latest post has been the most interesting and informative post in a long time it seems. I'm love the new features and if it wasn't obvious enough, your user-icon is becoming ever more important (which means I should actually make something I didn't copy/past).

I think the custom titles in the games are perfect. Not only is it much more organized, but it also helps people looking to hire programmers or artists that they like easier. Most of the time the title is given ingame in the credits or something, but just to look at it at a glance on the main game page is a definitely plus side.

I think we are having a great discussion about the pro's and con's of the mandatory 1% revenue share. It makes perfect sense why Tom would want a minimum revenue shared between all counterparts of the development, but it isn't a perfect system.

I have one thing to say about the +10 songs in a submission... So that makes 10% or the revenue gained goes to music, because you used more songs. Doesn't that...kinda make sense though? Sure you're not getting more of the cut, but you are using files that people worked hard on...it should make a difference whether or not you used one of their songs or 10. The more work put into audio and the more songs created for a submission deserves more money.

As for the flat rate payment compared to revenue gained...I think that still makes more sense. But if there is going to be a percentage markup then 1% is fair in my book.

Does it not make sense that 10 songs used should gain 10% of the profits?

Anyone got any ideas for the flash reg project?

I guess a game of epic proportion would be good as then both animators, coders and hybrids can have fun :3

I'm thinking maybe we made a bunch of completely different levels/minigames that follow a certain story or theme and string them together as a flowing game.... :P

New updates
I agree that it isn't perfect right now (I had to give myself a part of the cut because I used my own audio), but virtually no new system update (on a scale as big as this one) is perfect from the beginning. It takes some time and user feedback to get it right, and I have full confidence in Tom and the staff that that'll happen sooner or later.

I'm starting up a fairly grande collaboration. It's only for artists though, sorry coders :(. It would be cool if I could get some of you great animators to join. I'll post back with more details in a few weeks or so.

Vote for my friend's game
Duncan, a spriter/actionscripter has been crashing on my couch for the past two months after coming back from his game design course in Vancouver. In the meantime, he made a very, very nice game that no one sponsored because it was entered into the E4 Golden Joystick Flash Contest.

Turns out, he's a finalist. Gun Fu has made it to the top 10 entries. Congratulate him, play the other games, and vote for him at the Golden Joystick awards page.

At 10/1/08 03:15 PM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: Vote for my friend's game
Duncan, a spriter/actionscripter has been crashing on my couch for the past two months after coming back from his game design course in Vancouver. In the meantime, he made a very, very nice game that no one sponsored because it was entered into the E4 Golden Joystick Flash Contest.

Turns out, he's a finalist. Gun Fu has made it to the top 10 entries. Congratulate him, play the other games, and vote for him at the Golden Joystick awards page.

That's definately a fun game, I like how he has all the basic controls in it, to make the learning curve not as steep. But I do have one question, what happens if he wins?

At 10/1/08 03:47 PM, Alpharius120 wrote: That's definately a fun game, I like how he has all the basic controls in it, to make the learning curve not as steep. But I do have one question, what happens if he wins?

Then he pays me two months back rent with the winnings.

I voted for him :)

I like the way that flash games have gotten more press recently :)

At 10/1/08 03:57 PM, RyanPridgeon wrote: I voted for him :)

I like the way that flash games have gotten more press recently :)

Yeah, I have been noticing that. Alot of the games that sponsor Newgrounds are, as far as I can tell, Flash games. Then there's these big contests, and The Torture Chamber 2. Then when anything slightly controversial comes out Jack Thompson has to have a debate about it.

New features

I like the idea of the new features but it seems like it would be annoying if there's a collab with over nine people in and a lot of songs on. Everything would be pushed down.

1337 Page

DAMMIT!!! I MISSED IT. Big shame.

Gun Fu

I'm just going to play and vote now.

The Wire

Just finished watching the DVD set. Best TV ever made, right?

I love it so much I've been playing CS again for the first time in over a year with only a shotgun. Nothing beats kicking ass on a sniper map with only a short-ranged weapon. Against AWPs.

At 10/1/08 07:08 AM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: In unfun news, Nitrome don't want to hire me because I lack experience making games.

If it's any consolation, they rejected me too. They said they were too small to taken on an intern, although they did suggest miniclip, who just flat out ignored me =(

At 10/1/08 04:05 PM, Paranoia wrote: The Wire

Just finished watching the DVD set. Best TV ever made, right?

I love it so much I've been playing CS again for the first time in over a year with only a shotgun. Nothing beats kicking ass on a sniper map with only a short-ranged weapon. Against AWPs.

Everytime I play CSS now I just get wtfpwnt with AWPs.. it's just annoying coming out of a corner and then getting shot in the head with what is supposed to be a LONG ranged weapon.. so I just stick to other FPSs :p

Gun Fu

Someone posted a link to the contest earlier advertising their entry and i played all the games and definitely found Gun Fu most enjoyable so it already got my vote.

At 10/1/08 04:05 PM, Paranoia wrote: The Wire

Just finished watching the DVD set. Best TV ever made, right?

I love it so much I've been playing CS again for the first time in over a year with only a shotgun. Nothing beats kicking ass on a sniper map with only a short-ranged weapon. Against AWPs.

who wants to play online games with me? crysis, CS:S, TF2, half life deathmatch, u name it.

At 10/1/08 12:28 PM, Senti wrote: Does it not make sense that 10 songs used should gain 10% of the profits?

It makes sense and it would be cool. Its just simply problematic with deals that have already been made and you go back to retrofit the current features into it.

I sorted my terms out with my audio artist ages ago and paid out of pocket to buy out the songs, its kind of dumb that the system itself is now 'forcing' its way into my revenue to pay out third parties that I have already worked out deals with.

If I knew the system would pan out to work this way then I'd have negotiated different terms. Like ok I'll pay x amount of what was sponsored and then you can gain x amount off royalties from the api.

I think its a good system, but its just difficult to retrofit into past stuff. Atleast when it comes to money.

At 10/1/08 04:11 PM, Toast wrote: who wants to play online games with me? crysis, CS:S, TF2, half life deathmatch, u name it.

I would, but Virgin are a bunch of cunts whos internet speed is actually more like 0.24 mbps rather than 8mbps...

And yes, i'm talking bits, not bytes.

Basically I can't get on a server without getting kicked for ping :(

At 10/1/08 04:11 PM, Toast wrote: who wants to play online games with me? crysis, CS:S, TF2, half life deathmatch, u name it.

Devoured_warrior on steam ;D

At 10/1/08 04:16 PM, UnknownFury wrote:

At 10/1/08 04:11 PM, Toast wrote: who wants to play online games with me? crysis, CS:S, TF2, half life deathmatch, u name it.

Devoured_warrior on steam ;D

Kill3rTomato on steam ;3

At 10/1/08 04:28 PM, Wurmy1029 wrote: Kill3rTomato on steam ;3

cant find u

At 10/1/08 04:39 PM, Toast wrote:

At 10/1/08 04:28 PM, Wurmy1029 wrote: Kill3rTomato on steam ;3

cant find u

Try adding wurmy1029 instead.. that should work

Anyone else doing a calender entry?

Heres my WIP:

At 10/1/08 05:57 PM, adman1993 wrote: Anyone else doing a calender entry?

Heres my WIP:

I was thinking about it, and I might do it, so I dunno. I was thinking of outfitting Blockhead with a gun and have him and Pico duking it out.