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FamiTracker
I am professional programmer with over 14 years of experience with a personal hobby of writing a video game. I need a talented and professional sounding video game music artist. What I need is a 4+ minute original piece of music for a "space robot" side-scroller.
The game will be "cute", so you'll have to keep it upbeat and bubbly. Keep the tempo relatively controlled so the player doesn't have a seizure. As it seems the case with everything I've seen so far, your bar will be Megaman, but with a slower tempo. Blend it with some Mario and I think you have an idea of what I'd like the sound to be.
There's nothing really special about this game other than the fact that I will play up the "classic" nature of it and have a professional artist create the sprites and backgrounds. It will have some of the most common side-scroller cliche's and maybe some puzzles. With that in mind, I'm thinking that it needs to be either 8-bit or 16-bit, depending on your comfort with one or the other.
If all goes as planned, it will end up on the XBox 360 Indie games section. I will give full credit to the musician and even promote your other work. This means that you have to be at the top of your game. Please be serious, if you wouldn't play a game with your music in it, then there's a good chance no one else will either.
I expect the game to take a year to complete, but I want to have the game assets ready in the next 6 months.
I will not ask you to write this music with some empty promise that you will get paid "when it ships". I know the reality. This game might never get completed. That's why I want to pay you. Then you won't have to worry about it.
If we can make a deal, then I will work hard to get you the first level of the game (with rough sprites and rough sound-effects) so that you can playtest your music with the game. I'd like you to have input on how you think the music should feel given the gameplay and having access to a playable level would greatly assist you with that.
I know most of you here have a passion for writing "classic" music, and it excites me when I hear the quality of your work.
If you think you are a good fit (or know someone who is), please contact me privately with your estimate for the first song and links to some of your existing work.
If we can work this out, then there will be plenty more to follow.
There is a catch, you will need to grant me exclusive rights to the music (meaning you can't make it available to anyone else). Keep that in mind as you consider your price.
Thanks for your time, I hope to hear from you soon.
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Michael Earls
http://michaelearls.me/
http://michaelearls.me/techblog/
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- A Czar Dolphin
[url=www.youtube.com/user/DukeOnkledNukem]Main YT Channel
[url=www.youtube.com/user/IroncladAlt]YT Music Alt
[url=http://chipmusic.org/ironclad]Chipmusic
If you want something done, you're better off doing it yourself.
If you claim to be a professional in the video game industry with 14+ years of experience, then why are you begging hobbyists for 8-bit music when you have access to more superior software & potentially even better (for-hire) man power to compose the music you need for your own, for-profit XBox 360 game?
And why should anyone grant you exclusive rights to anything we create, instead of your either hiring your own composers or learning to use the software yourself? You're smart enough to program financial software for a living; why not learn an extra programming language if you see it fit for your own use?
[quote=IroncladPhazon]Well this looks incredibly illegit.[/quote]
I'm with you on this; I highly doubt that he has 14+ years of experience in any industry to do with consumer electronics (considering that he works for a real estate company). If he did, his asking us was perhaps the most unprofessional thing for him to do, especially since his work is only on the software-based aspects of finance (& he's therefore trying to take advantage).
Cerkit; you can either prove your credentials (which still won't guarantee any of us jumping to your request,) you can ask your superiors to actually hire/assign your project some composers (that is, if you actually work for a company under license of Microsoft to produce XBox 360 games,) or you can do like the rest of us & learn to use FamiTracker yourself. That way, you'd spare us the trouble of putting ourselves down to the same unprofessional level as you.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Man, it's weird watching people here jump down someone's throat as soon it's for money.
Maybe this isn't the best way to get a contract composer, but he sounds reasonable enough to me. Polite even. Cerkit, I'd give you the benefit of a doubt, but I'm no composer.
Tech, come on. Maybe he doesn't want to spend months or years learning how to write good music? He's a programmer. He should stick to what he's good at, and pay someone else to do the rest.
Yes; while taking full ownership rights to the music that you create, without any real security to protect the endeavor from failing. On top of it, he doesn't work for a video game company (which begs the question; how will he market the game for the XBox 360?). In my books, a high-risk project where a contributor isn't compensated his worth isn't viable enough to contribute to.
That's business, buddy; you can't just go around doing people favors where neither success nor failure grants any recompense (this is besides my natural inclination to doubt internet users with online business proposals, as it facilitates a person's ability to mask their true intent).
I might as well hand-paint the words Free Candy on a Volkswagen minibus & try to legitimately sell candy to children in a park; their parents wouldn't approve of that. Chances are, they'd call the police & have me jailed as a child predator.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
I dunno, the presumption of bad faith seems a little out of place to me. And your comments read to me like you haven't really read Cerkit's proposal. What's the red flag here? Am I missing something?
(edit: also, I'm pretty sure this should be in a different subforum)
[quote=MrFTBN]Man, it's weird watching people here jump down someone's [/quote]
I'm pretty sure it's illegal to make money from this program in the first place, although don't take that as a for-sure fact (not 100% sure, as I'm only judging from the creative commons license).
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- A Czar Dolphin
[url=www.youtube.com/user/DukeOnkledNukem]Main YT Channel
[url=www.youtube.com/user/IroncladAlt]YT Music Alt
[url=http://chipmusic.org/ironclad]Chipmusic
[quote=IroncladPhazon][quote=MrFTBN]Man, it's weird watching people here jump down someone's [/quote]
I'm pretty sure it's illegal to make money from this program in the first place, although don't take that as a for-sure fact (not 100% sure, as I'm only judging from the creative commons license).[/quote]
As far as I understand it, selling the program is illegal, but selling your work using it is fine.
[quote=TechEmporium]a company under license of Microsoft to produce XBox 360 games[/quote]
[quote=Cerkit]it will end up on the XBox 360 Indie games section[/quote]
To publish to XBLIG, all you need is a [url=http://create.msdn.com/en-US/home/membership]membership to Microsoft App Hub. It's like the iOS App Store and the Apple Developer Program.
[quote=TechEmporium]I highly doubt that he has 14+ years of experience in any industry to do with consumer electronics[/quote]
[quote=Cerkit]14 years of experience with a personal hobby[/quote]
Never claimed.
[quote=TechEmporium]you can't just go around doing people favors where neither success nor failure grants any recompense[/quote]
[quote=TechEmporium]instead of your either hiring your own composers[/quote]
[quote=Cerkit]I will not ask you to write this music with some empty promise that you will get paid "when it ships". I know the reality. This game might never get completed. That's why I want to pay you. Then you won't have to worry about it.[/quote]
I'm pretty sure he [i]is[/i] trying to hire a composer. Only he's doing it in an unorthodox way. I'm fairly sure there are established freelancer networks, but going to enthusiasts may work too.
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[url=http://icesoldier.me]Website (includes FTM's of my covers)
Back to the matter at hand, icesoldier; if you approve of his business proposal, go ahead & do whatever you wish (it's up to you). All I did was state why I (& many others) wouldn't.
I usually make my music under the MIT license; do whatever the hell you want as long as proper attribution is made. But if I ever accept a proposal where someone makes a promise, I'd expect it to be kept; in a project that may not even fly, why bother? Worse still, if the promise is broken, then I'll lose out. Judging by the fact that the one who doesn't write the music is given all copyright to it, then I'd really be the loser (especially since that would force the music to be royalty-free, opening the possibility for him to profit from the product without paying me for my amount of work).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Well, this is why he's offering to pay, so that the success of the project won't be your concern.
As for selling the rights to the music away, that is an extremely normal way to do it for video game development. The vast majority of professional video game content is work-for-hire.
All this guy is asking is for somebody to sell him a tune. If he pays up-front, then there's no promise to be broken. The "legitimacy" of this request is a non-issue.
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