Pixelation

Work => Job offers => Topic started by: adrian_seeley on May 27, 2014, 02:01:59 pm

Title: [HIGH PAID] 2D iOS Monster Raising / Mini-Grinder
Post by: adrian_seeley on May 27, 2014, 02:01:59 pm
Hi WayOfThePixelers,

My name is Adrian Seeley (http://adrianseeley.herokuapp.com/) and I've been working as a full stack game developer and machine learning researcher for close to 15 years now; as should be somewhat apparent from my Github (https://github.com/adrianseeley) and LinkedIn (http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/adrian-seeley/1b/765/a19/) accounts.

I'm currently programming a joint single and multiplayer experience targeted at iOS, supported by the 'Ejecta' framework to bring JavaScript canvas code to native iOS. The backend is written in NodeJS atop Redis for lightning fast database operations, which is massively scalable to over a million users. This isn't my first time at bat, more like the 16th or 17th; I'm looking for an artist who can keep up.

Market research has shown our most viable target audience to be 8-23 year old males, with a possibility of a strong following from 13-17 year old females if you believe Facebook's analytical insights.

The game borrows most heavily from the 'Chao Garden' (pronounced 'chow', like to chow down on food) experience in 'Sonic Adventure 2 Battle', whereby the player, by playing the regular Sonic experience collects the items needed to raise 'Chaos'.  Chao's are small cute and somewhat ineffectual looking creatures (or monsters if you will), that can be levelled up, battled and raced against one another.

After talking to a number of fans of the game itself (and the genre as a whole) it seems that no one really liked the Sonic part of the game, but they were willing to suffer through it for the enjoyment they got from the Chao portion of the game.

The current design I'm working on sees the player raising creatures from an 'egg', and training them to compete against campaign and multiplayer challenges; evolving them into new creatures with different looking features and unique advantageous attributes along the way.

Creatures can compete in the form of a 2D side on race over various terrains (exactly the same as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle), or in a 2D side on physical battle (again straight from SA2B). Other forms of competition are still being considered, ideally there will be three competition types to provide players some room to explore.

The competing of creatures is almost fully automatic (controlled by AI) but the player can 'push' their creature causing it to sprint for a short time as shown by an energy bar. This way the stats of the creature are the king of the ring, but the player still has enough engagement to feel like they are making a real difference in their decisions of when to push.

Instead of the Sonic experience to raise creatures, players instead participate in a number of training minigames or 'MiniGrinds', which are intended to be 30 second to 5 minute experiences each of which raises a different stat;  For example one MiniGrind is similar to the popular 'JetPack Joyride' (a cave flying style game), where the player has to try to make it as far as possible. The better the player does, the more impactful the stat boost will be.

Some Planned MiniGrinds include:

-A JetPack Joyride Style Experience
-A Bejewelled Style Experience
-A BarGauge Timing Experience (Similar to old golf games)

I'm currently exploring the Pokemon Stadium MiniGames, as well as crawling the iOS and Android stores for simple but popular games to replicate (ie. angry birds).

As the real meat of the game will be the MiniGrinds, a great deal of time will be placed into the progessability of each Grind; plenty of levels to unlock, bosses, challenges, daily quests, etc. This way a stronger creature could take on a stronger Grind, and has the potential for a better payoff, but at a greater difficulty.

New players will be strongly encouraged to explore a large portion of the single player experience before entering online creature competitions (races, battles, etc.) and ranked competitions. Similar to the new trends being exposed by very successful games like League of Legends (start versus bots, work up to players) and Hearthstone (start practising versus bots, work up to players). Online should prove to be the main gathering point of the game, although new studies have been showing that up to 20% of players never want to play online; so there will be a strong enough single player experience available for them.

The game will naturally be free to play forever which has been proven time and time again to be required to amass and keep a regular player base; and will harness micro-transactions (NOT FUCKING ADS) to realize income potential. No not the Facebook crazed everything ever is a micro-transaction lets try to milk you for every penny and let you be a million times better than everyone because of it; but again more following the trends of League of Legends and Hearthstone, where purchases aren't necessarily that advantageous, but still hold enough meaning to drive a large number of sales.

So where do you come in?
You are an experienced artist who can deliver high quality content, while understanding the importance and critical need for efficiency and content iteration.

You understand colour theory, colour design, character design, landscape design, seamless textures, effective low frame count animations, and most importantly you understand how key it is that everything works together tightly and cohesively; leaving us with a highly polished AAA quality product.

You have fucking balls (lady, trans, bi, whatever balls are welcome), and you know how the fuck to get the job done without someone holding your hand or coaching you. You aren't looking for someone to tell you how great you are, and you can handle endless criticism in the name of making an incredibly high quality product that you will tell your grand kids about because of how awesome it ended up being.

I am offering the artist a choice in payment, equity or salary; I firmly believe in transparent business practices and fair equity distribution, and I know how much it sucks to get screwed out of payment for all the hard work you put in.  This game has the potential to reach the US iOS top ten (based on trending games over the last 3 years), which means it could realize a daily income of upwards of $5.4 million USD. Yes that is the daily value of a top ten spot.

The smart money will take an equity share, biding their work effort for a potentially massive and continuing payout (profit sharing); but I have no qualms with paying a very high artist salary to produce the content for my ownership, leaving you with no equity.  I don't believe in hedging these kinds of deals, as it leads to sloppy work or loss of dedication (just working for the paycheck, or poor arrangements where no one wins).

Compensation is based purely on:

1) Number of years, titles, and projects of experience.
2) Number of man hours per week dedicated to the project.
3) Quality of work and rate of iteration.

The right candidate could easily secure a $70-110k salary arrangement, but if you have never made close to that total before - you probably aren't the calibre of artist this project demands.

Closed beta of 1000 users is already slated for the end of July 2014, with a full release to follow for the end of August 2014, and follow up iterations and patches after that.

Interested candidates are asked to apply by sending a resume, or links to your work along with why you think you are the ideal candidate, and your initial salary or equity expectations (which will be up for discussion and negotiation) to: art_careers@gatosomina.com

Thanks for your time and the lengthy read, I came here because you folks are some of the best - don't let me down!
Title: Re: [HIGH PAID] 2D iOS Monster Raising / Mini-Grinder
Post by: Robo Pixel Games on May 27, 2014, 02:41:20 pm
Hi there,

I saw your post about needing some high quality work done for your game, and was just wondering if this position is still open.

We sent you an email and hope to heard back from you on the matter, so please email us back on eoldham@robopixelgames.com

Kind Regards,
Robo Pixel Games