Is a Agency/Work society with friends a bad idea?

miguelnarayan

As title says, I ask this because I'm at college and I sometimes find myself with considerable amount of time to work.
The idea is to get contracts, then share it with a friend or two and we both work on the contract, we finish it in less time, less effort and we share the profit.
Do you think this would fail and possibly lead to break a friendship? Or would it be ok?

thomasp

depends on you and your friends really. things can get tricky when money is involved or someone is not pulling their weight. but it can work - and be a pretty cool alternative to working a regular job as an employee somewhere.

Neox

miguelnarayan said:

As title says, I ask this because I'm at college and I sometimes find myself with considerable amount of time to work.
The idea is to get contracts, then share it with a friend or two and we both work on the contract, we finish it in less time, less effort and we share the profit.
Do you think this would fail and possibly lead to break a friendship? Or would it be ok?

Thats how Airborn Studios started and operates mostly still. Just make sure you are open and transparent to everyone, don't bullshit people.
It's not that complicated

lotet

Yep, thats how villains for hire works too, to ad on what NEOX said, make sure to discuss how you will share profit BEFORE you start a project,  and stick to it.
be clear who does what, that way you cant end up in the situation when someone wants more money because they did more of the work. you agree on everything before the project, not after, that way everyone is on the same page and know how much time they should spend on it.

I ended up in a situation once when one team member spent a lot of his free time on the project. and demanded more money because he invested way more time then anyone else did. it became really messy because we had no clear definition on what was "freetime" and what was "project time". he interpreted what he did as being more dedicated to the project, thus deserving more money.  we interpreted it as freetime, thus what he did on his freetime should not get him extra money. it all became really messy.

be clear and NEVER think that some things are to obvious to discuss. also make a quick contact. even if its just on a post-it or an email conversation or something, write it down and pray youl never need to use it.
good luck!

Tobbo

Put it all in writing too. Just so you can go back and really see what was agreed upon in case disputes arise.

Even if you're really good friends disputes can still arise.

 

Add3r

Tobbo said:

Even if you're really good friends disputes can still arise.

 

This.  100%.  Always have everything in writing from the get go.  Seriously.  I cannot stress how important contracts and legal binding documents can be for us as game artists/developers, its business and should be treated like so, even if close friends.  

miguelnarayan

Good points guys, thanks for sharing

Eric Chadwick

We have some good things here about contracts if you're interested
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Game_Industry#Employee_Rights