Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Mojang was not a tiny indie company though, it already sold millions of copies before the release. Yes, he should have let his agent negotiate the contract. Do what you are good at and let others do what they are good at.



Size of Mojang is immaterial. If Apple or Microsoft hire a copywriter they'll still pay market rate. Any reason to believe the Author would have received bigger value with help of agent in 2010?


His agent would have told him to at least deal with the contract before doing the work, I think.


He would not have worried about it for so long, so yes I believe he would have help from his agent. I'm not talking about getting more dollars, he is buying peace of mind for his art.


One can both be a small indie studio and also have sold multiple millions of copies of their game. Indie simply means you don't have a publisher. And Mojan didn't.


Then Activision-Blizzard is indie.

You have to at least put a floor on that thing or you fall completely afoul of the common meaning.

My rule of thumb would be less than $1 million spent before the first public release ? (Which I assume makes Minecraft indie ?)

Now another question is whether you can even call indie those games being advertised and distributed by Steam (or any other platform) where developers are overwelmingly dependent on that platform for like 95%+ of their sales (including keys from third party websites still for that platform) - because dealing with advertisers and distributors was also an extremely important part of the job when games still came in boxes !


Indie is when the major investors are making the game, at least for me. So if the guys are making their own game without investments they are indie, as in the creators can be free of influences of outside investors.


The Empire Strikes Back was the biggest-budget indie movie ever. Lucas didn't want to be beholden to the studios so he didn't take their money.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: