Trophy Bass may just be the exception to the rule.
However I still stand by my previous statement, all be it with an exception. The quality or completed titles with GS on the whole is not AAA standard. This is not a bad thing, it is just a factor of development. Some things that looked like a AAA title in the making, never got further than a few screens, bcz some of the dev members left, or had no time or got better jobs....
In contrast I know of a company with 36 employed AAA standard programmers, designers, modelers and animators who sold a million+ copies of their first title, yet their sequeal which had a bigger budget, failed misserably.... So AAA isn't everything
There are a lot of very talented people here, and the potential to create a top selling title is there.... I just havn't seen it yet. But then, who am I to judge? After all I have no AAA title of my own to show!
Personally I think when you start out on this game development road, it is very lonely, and the thought of having a few others working with you on your idea is a comforting thought. Yet, if my company could afford to employ a handful of the experts here for a project we would. Why? Simply put bcz then its a job not a hobby.
If one of the team are not pulling their weight how can you change that if they are a volunteer? working for a far off reward that seems unlikely?
Finally, if your concept is good and you are a capable Production Manager, why would you want to hand out royalties or % of your money? I would sooner pay a fixed fee for a contract apon completion, than give away ownership of my titles.
What happens if you create an iconic game, get some of the expert character modelers to come up with some models, your game is very succesfull and the merchandise department wants to make figures of your characters.... who gets the money?
I write music as my hobby, if I produced the music for your game who would get the royalties? Performance Rights? Wouldn't I be paying myself out of my % of revenue???
Working for free is fine, but working for a % of revenue or royalties is bad business.
As several people here have pointed out, Work for % of possible sales is not something you see in a proffesional business plan, games industry or otherwise, and it would not make sense to embark on this road IMHO.
However, as far as I understand things, in most cases you would not be developing a complete game. The aim would be to develop a working demo to proove you can complete the full game, should it be picked up. To have 90% of the game code in place is a good start, but 100's of models and world environments is not. You should only develop what is needed to complete your proof. This is something easier to budget for and raise funding for. Produce your business plan, establish what is required for the proof, then work out what you need, in terms of resources and man power. Then and only then, would I look at recruiting more people.
Just my 2 cents
