Contracts of Employment
A contract is a legally binding contract, in this contract you can find things such as hours worked, holidays and also things like if you get paid for suck leave and if you have to stay late if you are asked to. In a typical games design job role you will get roughly 35 hours a week Mon-Fri (unless asked to come in on the weekend to meet a deadline or just stay a couple of hours later.) Usually you will get 5 weeks holiday on top of bank holidays, Some workplaces will have extra holidays such as Hanukkah and other religious events. Depending on your contract you may get sick leave, this means that if you have a sick day you get payed your basic hours for that day, but if you have a lot of time off then you may start to get paid half or no money at all. Some contract s will require you to stay behind if asked but if nothing is mentioned then usually you can be asked but not required to stay. If a family member was seriously ill then you would get compassionate leave and this can be paid or unpaid this is up to what your contract says.
Benefits:
According to Game Developer, 96 percent of game designers received some form of benefits in 2012. Roughly 84 percent received medical benefits, 80 percent got dental benefits, and 70 percent had access to a company-sponsored retirement plan. In addition to benefits, 79 percent of game designers reportedly received income other than their salary through bonuses, royalties, stock options and employer contributions to retirement plans.
Confidentiality:
You are not legally allowed in most spread around what you company is doing while you are working there as they need to keep their ideas a secret form their competitors.
Inventions:
If you make a game while under the terms of a contract then that game is legally the companies property and they have all of the rights to that game. It is up to them to decide if you get any royalties or not. So it is best to make a game as an independent company and have it as your own.
Development Agreements:
A development agreement is a contract which states the terms and conditions of a partnership between a development company and a publishing company. The whereases, is a paragraph where the word whereas is used too much, In simple terms it is clearly stating the intent of the development agreement. Saying that the development company will make a game and the publishing company will publish it, also confirming the name of the game and such. The terms of the a development are where the contracts will state the amount the money the developer will be paid by the publisher and how long the developing company has the make the game. Also if royalties are involved then that will be negotiated between the parties and the final decision will be in the terms of the contract. In the development agreement it will also clearly state which party will own the game and/or IP. This will show which party owns the what, to see if the developer owns the IP or owns the source code. In the warranties part of the contract is both companies are covering themselves from being sued. An example of this is the publishing company will make the developer swear that the code they use is purely theirs and is not stolen from another company. Next there is a termination section where it will state the protocol if something happens to stop the deal happening before the game is fully finished and released. In the legal part of the contract it has a lot of legal language but sometimes includes a "work for hire" clause. This is to ensure that any work made by the person hired in from the outside (music, code or art) is passed to the one hiring the contractor. The end of the contract usually has a lot of the important stuff, these are referred to as appendices these important things consist of money plans; payment schedules, royalties or if the developer gets a bonus at certain milestones. Publishers do this so that they don't lose as much money if the game does badly, so if it does do well and the publisher makes money then the developers will also make more money for the good job. Confidentiality agreements signed by all employees of the development company are included with this contract. And finally the IP is signed over to whoever was assigned it in the ownership clause of the contract.
License Agreements:
In this contract it will state what is being licensed; certain characters maybe off limits to the game as they plan to do something with them in the film, it will state everything that they are getting out of the contract. You only buy a Licence agreement when you're making a game about something such as a film which IP is owned by someone else and you have to buy rights for them. The publisher generally gets to pick what platform they want to publish on but each console costs to do that, so it would cost more money for the more consoles you wanted to release on. The publisher has to decide what regions they want the game to be released in, again it is the same problem of the licencor charging more money for the more regions you want. Obviously the best scenario is being able to publish global to maximize sales but sometimes it is not possible. Also there is usually a time limit for the contract, the average is between 3-5 years as most publishers get bored with a product after prolonged periods of time. Next it also states how much the publisher will be paying for the license, as a guarantee they usually have to pay an upfront fee and then get payed on how popular the game is. This gives the publishers an incentive to make a good game and also a fall back for the people selling the license. Another example of a license agreement is what you always click without reading when doing a update for computer software, this is known as a E.U.L.A (End User License Agreement.)
NDA:
NDA stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement and is also known as a disclosure agreement or confidentiality agreement. This contract is between 2 or more parties, where all of the parties will give each other a secret about there company, if this secret is to get out then there will be a court case about it. The contract will make sure that these secretes are disclosed to the public.
Collaboration agreements:
In a collaboration agreement it will state the intent of both/all parties in the allocation of materials, facilities, research and data. It is setup to cover small indie developers for compensation and such. In this contract it will also cover which party ownership, finance and most of the things that are included in a development agreement.
References:
http://work.chron.com/pay-benefits-becoming-video-game-designer-22151.html
https://keenaro.wordpress.com/contractual-legal-and-ethical-obligations-in-the-games-industry/
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=14076&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
No comments:
Post a Comment