Motion Twin and a potential new model for developers

Since we have a trashfire of a thread here seriously I thought the end of summer would mean better threads, not worse I thought this would be an opportune time to bring up another topic on the economics and business of vidya. Namely, a new standard that could ACTUALLY change the industry.

I don't know if any of you fags have heard of Motion-Twin or Dead Cells, given that I don't see any discussion of the game. Maybe a webm or two in the usual threads, given that the latter is Early Access. Maybe >>>/agdg/ would be familiar with FOSS Haxe and OpenFL, since one of the Motion-Twin people, Nicolas Canasse, is basically responsible for them.

Anyways, doing the math for sales at an extreme lowball and based on Steam numbers, disregarding regional pricing, they've made at least 3.6 million dollars. So what's notable about the revenue they've made?

They're a worker's cooperative, and they split it evenly amongst ten employees. Dead Cell's been out for three and a half months now.

Assuming that europoor taxes and operating/living costs aren't an issue, as well as costs spent on developing the game, Motion-Twin's made a killing and the average employee makes more than three times what you'd expect a senior software engineer to make in a quarter of the year. Certainly not bad for a developer that actually *moved* from F2P web games to B2P PC to AVOID mobile development. And that money got me wondering: Why don't we see more worker's coop structures in video game development?


If I were truly Holla Forums I'll be bawling about promoting a business model that still prioritizes profit and private ownership.

The most obvious reason would be the lack of awareness that such a model exists in the first place, but why do we need to pay the psychopaths in suits that don't give a shit about making the game in the first place? Shouldn't the people who love the craft and actually invest their time in improving their skill at it be compensated by performance instead of being exploited and shunned endlessly?

It seems video games and entertainment in general are perfectly suited for workers coops. Making a game might as well be a business venture at that point, as both have high probabilities of failure when starting out. Video games don't require a lot of capital in themselves to begin, only that the creators be able to sustain themselves. And a lot of creatives already work as freelancers in the first place, which can transfer nicely into worker's coops, not to mention they won't be beholden to outside forces (aka shitty moneygrubbing producers). Equal equity means that every employee has a vested interest in being as successful as possible. This advantage would be diluted by the number of employees, hence encouraging a highly efficient workforce. A caveat is that members would have to handle sales, management, and advertising, all expertises that they aren't renown for. Still, with indie games proliferating all over the place, I see no reason why worker's coops could hurt the industry thus yet.

Thoughts? Castlevania?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_business_entities
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Whelp I guess this proves I am awful at writing threads that elicit discussion.

When a SU thread gets more talking I know I'm fucked.

Equity based employment isn't exactly revolutionary even if you give it a fancy name.

Because developing vidya much like making a movie is a gigantic risk you undertake. If you're a professional developer, why bother with that if you can earn good money just working for a publisher? Picking out the success cases isn't a good strategy to evaluate the situation, these guys could have just as well flopped hard and worked two or three years for nothing.

Did it really take you all that shit just to say that everyone in their team gets paid the same and their roles in the team aren't corporate-tier strict?

The same reason we don't see more of it everywhere else: the easiest way to get more capital for your business is to already own capital. It can be done, especially if you get a large pool of initial workers and work with a credit union–but it's an uphill battle. That's why most worker cooperatives are in retail and other low-risk, low-margin businesses.
I am Holla Forums as fuck, and I'm absolutely fine with worker cooperatives. I think it's the best alternative there is, and definitely better than economic planning. There are dozens of us.webm


Worker cooperatives aren't really "equity-based." There are no shares to buy or sell. If you leave (or get fired), you don't get paid anymore. It's income derived from work, not ownership.

Why are good multiplayer zombie survival games never made or updated anymore? I loved Die2Nite when it came out but now it's full of shitters. Wasn't Dead Cells supposed to be a spiritual successor? I'm glad it's a good game, apparently, but I need my fix.

Pretty much this, though I think it could be done if the players and creators combined forces against the larger development companies.
I didn't think there were any others on here

Go back to your containment board you insufferable faggots

No.

Dude, what the fuck? I can't believe that shit. It's not even out yet and it's not like it's amazing. Sure, it's pretty fun, I tried it, but Jesus, over 3 million dollars? You shitting me? Must be some bad math.

According to SteamSpy, Dead Cells sold 458,862 copies (with a margin of error of 23,536). I don't know where OP got $3.6 million, but it's plausible. Steam takes a 30% cut, so that would come out to an average price of $11.21.
Of course, they may have taken a loan in order to keep paying rent while they made the game (not to mention all their other expenses), so we don't know how much (if any) of the $3.6 mn is profit.

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Either way, fuck me. I thought that game made like 500k max, considering it's early access and a pixel platformer. Well, good for them. It's a fun game. I have to say that I am incredibly surprised they managed to make it. I actually looked at all their games and all of them are pure shit before this one, and they looked like shit too. They must've changed their team. Also, they received funds from the government of France, says right on their page, so bank loans were not necessary.

That doesn't sound like real communism

You're retarded.

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Its called flat corporate structure, no need to reinvent the wheel by introducing marxism-derived language patterns.

Fact is flat corporate structure tends to work better for creative folk IN SMALL STUDIOS but absolutely DEMOLISHES production pipelines in bigger studios.

That's just a management style, not an ownership structure.

if everyone works the same amount for the same result, and one has his name on a piece of paper and thus claims tenfold in pay, its called being a dickhead regardless of political system, and not a reason for the world wide proletariat to unite, gommie

DO IT.

Nigger, there is a difference between managing and owning.
"Flat structure" is what Valve does, where everyone reports to a single manager.
Worker cooperatives are a different thing; they're a one-person-one-vote system in the workplace. Beyond that, you can have any kind of policy you want, including flat management, if that's what the people in the company want. Also, most worker cooperatives don't pay everyone the same. Motion Twin is kind of unusual in that regard. The point isn't the outcome, it's the power–everyone has an equal say. These French guys happened to decide that they should all be paid the same. Most cooperatives (for example, all the Spanish ones that I know of) do it differently, and you get paid based on hours worked or overall productivity.

they are too easy for normalfags to get into, so they're always flooded with shitters, feels bad man

Fuck commies, have a monster girl to make this shit thread less painful.

It is, but not because of management. (Maybe they do have managers, I don't know. There's nothing wrong with management in itself.)
It's because they don't have shareholder fucks who profit off of the developers' work.

Unless you count the funds they received. Which I do not know if they have to pay that back or not.

That's not a big deal either. It's common with small indie teams but you're a massive newfag so you haven't figured this out yet.

thanks but no thanks

You guys have to realize that the only reason for equal pay in start up companies is because they are all not experienced enough. If you first make a game and have no artist and musician, the only way to get them to work for you when you aren't a cashcow is to split the pay. When you have a company and you have money for yourself, because you already got some experience, you choose who gets how much based on their experience. This has nothing to do with communism, really.

In what universe is making white children heresy?

in the universe where those children aren't human

Yeah, I don't know. If it's a subsidy, they don't. It could just be a low-interest loan, though. Who knows.


There aren't many worker cooperatives in gamedev, even among indies. But hey, if you know any others, feel free to share.
Also, the model itself is a bigger deal than this particular instance of it.

Bullshit: there's an assload of them, usually just friends working together on stuff and giving all team members an equal say. Most of these teams don't make a big deal out of it and aren't pretentious enough to call themselves a "worker's cooperative."

Name one.

Worker's collectives are like gender neutral washrooms: both are used by really small teams who can't afford or have no room for bloat and don't publicize them.
Here's your example: Teagan Appreciation Club
Get off your ass and look at some fucking developer websites. If their staff list does not include any management positions, you can safely assume they're a worker's collective.

Yeah, that's definitely what this is. It's definitely not me saying you're full of shit.
Wasn't that just one person? You need multiple people for a cooperative of any kind.
I never said that. Although, if it doesn't try to generate revenue, then it's not a business, and wouldn't count.

TRUE GOMMUNISM WAS NEVER TRIED

It's grown a lot. Right now there's several programmers, multiple musicians and animators, and some autist dreaming up an imaginary religion about 3D projections of higher-dimensional geometry.

Are they a business?

Valve is owned only by Gabe, and has no managers.
What happened there?

So? A worker cooperative is owned equally by everyone in the company. Gabe is just the sole shareholder at Valve. The two models aren't even remotely alike.
It has one manager: Gabe. Valve won't shut up about their flat management structure even though it's probably why they stopped making games.

Meant it doesn't have shareholders making demands for increasing yearly profits, which ideally would mean they don't get grinded into dust and actually make good games.

Dude, I'm starting to think what the fuck this thread is about anymore. What the fuck are you trying to do here, are you trying to say that small teams = communism? Wtf?

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I mean, Gabe probably does demand that, just in an autistic, indirect, neckbeard kind of way. Even if he doesn't, the fact that it doesn't happen in one particular company doesn't really matter. The structure is the important thing.


No. Just saying that it's a model that I like, and that is rare in general, and especially in vidya. For some reason these statements seem to annoy retards.

No, it's not rare in small teams. That's just how it works in every small company. People are fewer therefore more important. In a corporation there are many resources so they get paid less. It's really too easy to get it.

Maybe it did well because it's a good game and people bought it?

A quality product bought by people who can afford it, and discuss it freely with others.
No wonder communists don't get it.

I've worked for many small companies. None were worker cooperatives. You don't know what you're talking about. The informal influence you might have in a small team is not the same as the legal right to the profits of a business, or to making decisions which are binding.
A corporation is just a legal entity. Nearly all businesses are corporations, and that includes worker cooperatives. If you're using "corporation" as shorthand for "joint stock companies," that's wrong too.

Nobody said otherwise. Read the thread.

Dude, just shut the fuck up. I had a team, I paid my other members what I get because I don't have the experience to be super picky about my members. Stop making this so complicated. People share the pay in small teams because you aren't just a clog in the machine like in a company with 100 people. Just give me a break. Anyway, I don't think Dead Cells is worthy of being a ideal game to us devs. It is funded and they had a 7 man team to make it. I call that quite a decent company.

Good for you. If that decision was yours alone, and not the decision of everyone on your team, by law, then you weren't in a worker cooperative.
Business is complicated, you fucking child.

The simple answer is that just because it works for one developer, it doesn't mean it will work for every developer. Dead Cells was just as likely to be a total failure that makes no money as it was to succeed.

Fuck you, communist piece of shit. Your thread is fucking ass, you are being overly pretentious about an incredibly simple subject, and Dead Cells is just a fun game. You're so fucking thick that you cannot understand why there's a bigger sharing going on in small teams. What the fuck is wrong with you?

I'm not the OP, just an autist.
No, you just continue to ignore the difference between structure and outcome. Just because a dictatorship and a democracy occasionally do the same thing doesn't mean that they work the same way internally.
I have a compulsive need to correct other people when they're dead fucking wrong.

Also, try giving this a read:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_business_entities

You're kidding yourself if you think I'm gonna bother wasting any more of my time talking about such a non important and simple thing. Find another autist to waste your life with and stop being a filthy communist.

What a shame, you might have learned something. But if you insist, go on thinking that the world is a simple place where things just make sense and everything is understandable at first glance.
How badly did your little team project fail, by the way?

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Congrats on your first role as a Game Director?

What a shame, you might have learned something. But if you insist, go on thinking that the world is a simple place where things just make sense and everything is understandable at first glance.

There is literally nothing wrong with co-ops. They are basically the one decent thing about socialism with all the crap ripped out and fully capable of working within a capitalist system alongside traditionally structured businesses instead of toppling it and starving everyone. If Holla Forums was only pushing for more co-ops to be created instead of instituting another social planning nightmare yet again doomed to fail miserably then I wouldn't mind them at all, unfortunately they are brutally retarded.

Also, procedurally generated games suck a fat dick.

And people told me you couldn't make money as an ideas guy
Too bad the distribution Jew takes 30% of every sale.

What kind of game was it?

It's the perfect plan.

Where's the music?

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Well it looks like my gambit to spark Holla Forums-Holla Forums bickering worked, not that I'm Holla Forums in any way.
Still I'm glad to find some depth to the conversation, even if some anons can't grasp how flexible the concept is.

Thread?

I keep fucking forgetting that fact.

My math was basically picking the lower bound of Steam sales and then assuming the lowest price of ~$12 to hold true for all copies sold, before taking about 70% of it to form the lowball total.

I like.

Survivorship bias is a real thing that needs to be acknowledged more, but at the same time I would like to see more experiments examining just how coops work in creative atmospheres. Video games coops would also intersect a lot with the tech coop trend going on right now.

Agreed, and the first thing I thought of. How the heck did Motion-Twin work out the pay as they expanded?
Kind of why I advocate it for indie game startups, but not for the triple-A shitdios.
Cases like Mondragon, when they're competing with MNCs, really show the model stretching and breaking apart in a competitive environment as workers are forced to retract the usual benefits to new contractors and part-timers, etc. once the typical practices like outsourcing come in.

The trait that helps keep it capitalistic in nature.
Yeah, coops in general aren't going to end up better than traditional top-down structures if everyone's still an asshat. The thing that appealed to me about Motion Twin was how Canasse was able to be financially supported enough to develop Haxe and OpenFl for the online community, and I thought about the structure as a way for the artists and actual devs to, you know, actually make money.

Holla Forums is not 4chan.

why even bother?