I woud like to ask the medium and bigger studios, How do you handle hiring artists as a yearly wage in an office? Do the artists ask for percentage of game sales for the artwork?, or do employees just pay a yearly wage? This question could possiby be for hiring programmers and audio people too as employees!
My advice, don't hire anyone, just simply find some good freelances to do the job, less problems and usually cheaper than hire someone for a long contract. At least here in Spain
OH please, give details and websites? To be honest there are a lot of pretend outsource people in this world who could not even program a microwave oven. Its a nightmare for the individual to find quality,or even get a reply.
I'm available and all my clients are happy with my job, ask me for a quote There are websites like odesk or elancer to find freelances, but you need to judge by yourself the quality of those people looking at their previous job. There's no guarantee, usually it's better to start with something small to see how that person works and if you are happy with him, hire him again for the "big cheese"
Coming from the animation industry i can tell you that for the most part the easiest way to judge somebodys work is to perhaps have a consultant look through the list of candidates. Then together you two can find the right person for the job. This of course would be if you don't have the right person in your network already. If you should off them percentages or salary: It think it depends on the relationship you have with them. If you just offer them a percentage then then you are basically saying - i cannot pay you now but if you wait then you might get something. You have to remember that a percentage out of nothing is still nothing. Personally i would only take a job like that if i have worked with that person before and that came out well. At least with the salary i know that my time wasn't wasted. At the moment i am actually working together on a game: Captain Nemo's Legacy. I won't go into the specifics but feel free to check out below. We are doing a percentage sharing scheme. But both of my partners are previous colleagues that i have worked with for a long time. I think knowing somebody and experienced working with them is invaluable and choosing the right people is very hard.