Philosophy, Art, and Contracts

We are excited to welcome Stephen Nickel (SteveSketches) to the team as our illustrator for Nut Hunt! A Game of Territorial Squirrels.

Steve will be tackling the project over the summer-fall, and the best way to follow along will be his twitch channel where he streams his process (twitch.tv/stevesketches). You can find more of his work on Instagram and ArtStation.

I planned on writing about all the reasons we’re excited to have Steve on board, about our process of hiring him, and what was important to us in a contract – and I will – but first I want to touch on something that’s been on my mind.

The Philosophy of Pine Island

Steve mentioned that we were refreshingly reasonable and fair in negotiating our contract with him. I told him that we want everyone we are working with to have buy in. “Sure,” he said, “but most Kickstarters want emotional buy in, not monetary.”

I don’t think that we over-paid Steve, and I think the terms we worked out are very reasonable to all parties involved. But, I think Steve’s comment strikes at something that has been on my mind – defining what Pine Island Games is, and what our values are.

We didn’t create the company with a formalized vision. We wanted to make a game, hopefully make some money, and make more games. But it has never been just about making money – there are much easier ways to make money than starting a games publishing company.

We created Pine Island because we love games. That doesn’t mean that we don’t want to make money, or that we will just fund money losing endeavors – but it is an important cornerstone to the business. We want to earn income doing something that we love, by giving people games and experiences that they love.

While the company is still young (pre-revenue young) – our ultimate dream is that we could support ourselves from the business alone. This means that we aren’t trying to scrape by making a few thousand dollars here and there from a Kickstarter. Rather, we want to maximize the potential to have a game (or a few games) that are outsized successes and recurring streams of income.

That means that we are focused on high quality production, on bringing on top notch partners and letting them work their magic. That means a large upfront investment from us. We’ve spent north of $6k so far on the business and expect to spend another $30k or so before we see a lick of revenue.

Not everyone has the savings to start a business this way. And I am not trying to diminutize their dreams or process. A game can be launched for less. Development and art can be pushed until after a kickstarter, graphic design can be done in house, equity in the business can be shared with illustrators and designers. These are valid options. They just aren’t the path that we are choosing.

Lastly, we want to be equitable and treat everyone with fairness and respect. This means contractors for illustration, marketing, and design. This means operational partners in manufacture, freight, and fulfillment. This means customers, fans, distributors, and fellow designers. I don’t believe that business needs to be cut-throat. We want to make money by providing a good product at a fair price, while paying a fair price for high quality work from our partners.

I think that the best way to ensure that we succeed as a business is by creating something great that people want to buy – not by saving a few hundred dollars here and there on the margin.  Maybe I am being naïve about all of this. Maybe it really is about squeezing every last drop of value out of the people you work with – but if that’s the case, then this isn’t a business I really want to be in.

All that said, we don’t have an unlimited budget. We do need to make decisions about where to spend our money - intelligently. We need to pay the right people to do the right things. And that brings us back to Steve, and what we value in his work, and what we needed in our contract.

What we love about Steve

First and most importantly, we love his art. Nut Hunt is a little a-typical in terms of the art we are commissioning because most of it is landscapes. Places like: Muckville Marsh, The Pine Barrens, and Briar Run. We needed someone that will hit it out of the park with an array of unique looking places – that are readable on a hex board.

Second, Steve’s values line up with ours. He is open and frank about his business. He treats his viewers with respect, and he gives back. It isn’t uncommon to tune into his stream and see him giving in depth feedback on viewer artwork, advice on how to improve it, and hands on editing to show what he means. He wants the community to thrive and grow and wants others to succeed. It is uplifting and refreshing.

Third, Steve is a gamer. We’re a games company. It seems like a good fit. It’s a project that he can be passionate about, and that he understands what is important.

Fourth, he has a following. This wasn’t a consideration when we were pouring over portfolios (quality of work and fit of style is most important), but is a nice bonus. Steve has about 12k followers on twitch and 68k followers on Instagram. Since he streams his work process, Nut Hunt will be introduced to an entirely new audience during its development phase.

Rights and Negotiation

I’m not going to get into dollars paid (that’s Steve’s business, and he can share the details as he sees fit (he’s pretty open about that stuff)), but I wanted to touch on contractual terms and what we valued as a company and were willing to pay for.

Before we dive in: I am not a lawyer and none of this should be taken as legal advice or as a stand in for advice from a legal professional.

That said, here is a (link) to some great templates to start with if you are drafting your own contracts.

In terms of specific rights, you need to define what rights you are buying, and for what time period.

Use & Resale Rights: As a publisher you need Use and Resale rights to all of the artwork you commission. This must be explicit for the uses that you are seeking. Or you can negotiate broad use and resale rights for flexibility if you want to print t-shirts, or playmats. At the very least you should lock in use and resale rights for a physical board game, a digital board game, and marketing materials. We wanted these rights in perpetuity.

We locked in use and resale rights for a broader product suite through 2023 (so at least a full year after the kickstarter). Our reasoning on this front was so that we would have flexibility to offer things like enamel pins, playmats, art-books etc alongside the kickstarter (and then to sell excess inventory of said products). I don’t know what, if any, of the added products we will end up using, but we wanted the flexibility.

Exclusivity: When you commission a piece of artwork, you are paying the artist to create it – ownership doesn’t automatically transfer over to you. Unless explicitly agreed to, the artist can post the artwork, sell it, re-use it. In fact, a substantial income stream for an artist (or time saver) can be re-using their back catalogue.

Exclusivity locks in your rights to be the only user of the artwork (without permission otherwise). Exclusivity is expensive and typically adds about 50% to the cost of a commission.  

I spoke with a number of people in the industry and consensus tended to be that designers over-value exclusivity. If you have a moderately successful board game, and your card art is re-used in a table-top rpg rulebook three years down the line, it is unlikely to affect you.

However, there are instances when exclusivity can be important. If you have a piece of artwork strongly associated with your brand, you want to protect yourself from it being used in off-color or offensive content. I hope you trust your artist enough that they won’t do so, but if they sell rights to the artwork later, they might not be in full control of its use. In industries like independent book publishing you may also want to protect yourself from the cover confusing consumers by being used on another book.

After a lot of thought, and some honest conversations, we decided that we really only needed to be protected by exclusivity if 1) the game is success, 2) only in the case of our box cover (as that is what will mostly be associated with the game). We structured exclusivity rights (on the box cover art) such that we have them through 2023, with an option to extend them into perpetuity. That way we can protect our IP if the game is a success, and can save money if it is less successful.

With that said, we like Wizards of the Coast’s model of allowing artists to use the artwork in things like prints, playmats, and art-books that they sell directly. It creates buy in, and adds to the community. I expect that we’ll give Steve Use and Resale rights to the box art for those types of products.