Possible future plans for developing games on BGA

[Dr Strangegame]

Hello team,
The BGA platform is an excellent site for millions of people to learn and play board games, and I spend lots of time here (as many of us do).
Besides playing games, I also develop games for the platform, and I do this when I have free time as a hobby (as many of us do).

Developing games, although fun, can also be a painstaking process that requires hundreds of hours of programming, testing, learning, etc.
Ex: My first game that is in Alpha took me MONTHS of difficult coding to finally get right.

We know that BGA has it's own developers that get paid for programming games, and that is fine. However, it would be so much better if, when a volunteer developer develops a game and then it is released on BGA, IF, when the game reaches production release, the volunteer developer can then qualify for a small percentage of revenue each month depending on how many complete games are played each month (along with other factors, of course).

Does this make sense or sound reasonable? We know that the publisher of a popular game gets a small percentage of the revenue each month if they request it, and that of course is fair.

Since volunteer developers like myself work very hard on a game in order to get it on the platform, which can ultimately make BGA more popular and lead to more membership sales each month, is it not reasonable to see if a small percentage of revenue can also go to the developer of that specific game?

As I mentioned, it would all depend on how many times the game gets played each month. Of course, I know that other factors would need to also be considered (such as who is playing the games, how many members are playing vs non-members, etc).

Is there any possibility of this becoming a reality in the future? This post is not intended to create any issue, as I merely suggesting something that I feel other developers also have had questions about. I would just like some feedback on this and appreciate the professional responses from the team.

Thank you team for this excellent site.

[SiRan90]

I don't think there are developers that get paid by BGA, I could be wrong on this but I thought all the development was done by the community. Yes some publishers may pay a developer to make a game for them, I don't think BGA do.

Anyway, for this to work all games would then need to be made premium, as the game would have to earn revenue for you to get paid. Not sure how well that would go down.

[Kayvon]

Yes, you can do that. It would need to be on a case-by-case basis and you'd need to work it out with the publisher first.

As SiRan90 mentioned, there aren't any full-time developers, just volunteers and freelancer. Asking for residuals wouldn't be much different than what the freelancers are doing.

[Tisaac]

Hello team,
The BGA platform is an excellent site for millions of people to learn and play board games, and I spend lots of time here (as many of us do).
Besides playing games, I also develop games for the platform, and I do this when I have free time as a hobby (as many of us do).

Developing games, although fun, can also be a painstaking process that requires hundreds of hours of programming, testing, learning, etc.
Ex: My first game that is in Alpha took me MONTHS of difficult coding to finally get right.

We know that BGA has it's own developers that get paid for programming games, and that is fine. However, it would be so much better if, when a volunteer developer develops a game and then it is released on BGA, IF, when the game reaches production release, the volunteer developer can then qualify for a small percentage of revenue each month depending on how many complete games are played each month (along with other factors, of course).

Does this make sense or sound reasonable? We know that the publisher of a popular game gets a small percentage of the revenue each month if they request it, and that of course is fair.

Since volunteer developers like myself work very hard on a game in order to get it on the platform, which can ultimately make BGA more popular and lead to more membership sales each month, is it not reasonable to see if a small percentage of revenue can also go to the developer of that specific game?

As I mentioned, it would all depend on how many times the game gets played each month. Of course, I know that other factors would need to also be considered (such as who is playing the games, how many members are playing vs non-members, etc).

Is there any possibility of this becoming a reality in the future? This post is not intended to create any issue, as I merely suggesting something that I feel other developers also have had questions about. I would just like some feedback on this and appreciate the professional responses from the team.

Thank you team for this excellent site.

You are missing a crucial part here : a game generate revenue only if it's premium.
The very vast majority of premium games involve money during the developpment :
- either an usual freelance fixed contract
- in some rare case and under very specific conditions, a share of revenue as you suggested (for a limited amount of time)
- in some other cases where the premium status changed and the audience of the game is "small": the dev is rewarded with board games (this can happens if a volunteer make a free game for free but then later the publisher moves the game to premium)

So just to make it clear : most premium games are already done by external freelance devs that do get paid for their work.

[Dr Strangegame]

Thank you for these replies. I understand the situation better now