Would you work on developing a video game but on a profit sharing basis? I would be skeptical if someone were to ask me that very question but the 15 or so developers in the Aussie indie game development collective League of Geeks seem to think otherwise, granted that they are industrial veterans, having worked on games for consoles and the PC.
The collective has just revealed their debut title, Armello, a multiplayer card and board game set in a fairy-tale animal kingdom. Touching a bit on the story, the King of Armello has become corrupted and insane, four animal clans compete in a race to claim the crown. The game would be completely in 3D with beautiful visuals, an expansive meta-game (sounds like another favourite of mine: HOMM) and a lot of content.
Given that the game will boast AAA production values, the economy model will be based on popular free-to-play titles, such as League of Legends. I wonder how they are going to share the profits in that case (purchasing item will result in money being split at least 15 ways? :P) but according to the developers, having a profit-sharing development model is possible due to a strong leadership team and a robust legal framework put in place before development started.
“It sounds crazy but we actually spent the first six months building the right legal and organisational structure,” commented League of Geeks’ Director, Blake Mizzi. “We wanted to do something really ambitious without taking on conventional investment and restricting our freedom. It was critical to get the setup watertight so developers would have confidence in it and it wouldn’t all fall apart if there were any disputes or someone left.”
Director Trent Kusters added “Since then, we’ve been able to attract an amazingly talented group of people who have been inspired by the vision for both the game and what we’re hoping will be a new model for enabling indie developers to tackle more ambitious projects. We want to be very open along the way and plan on providing our model to any other indie developers out there that want to follow our approach.”
