People either want to be in charge and have other people do all the work, or they want to sit, quietly, in the back and do nothing but still get credit when it’s all said and done.
But almost nobody wants to actually contribute anything of value, other than their opinions on what everybody else is doing. I have seen this time and time, again and it seems each and every time, teams fail.
This is why paying people to work a job works… because they don’t want to lose their job, and so there are consequences for acting like a total horse’s ass, and so they suppress all of that insanity and behave like a human being. But someone who has no real financial burden or reason to stick with something, has no compulsion to reign in their obstinate behavior. They can quit at any time.
So I think, if you wanted to make games with a team, you have to take it as seriously as any other business endeavor. You need to pay people. People are just not capable of behaving reasonably when they aren’t financially trapped into doing it. It’s sad to think that the only reason people do their jobs is because the price of being a complete retard is greater than the price of just doing what they agreed to do in the first place.
Too many people, it seems, are just bored and looking for an opportunity to create a little drama and feel important for a while, while relishing in the misery of other people who make the mistake of taking things more seriously than they do.
And one piece of advice: If you ever encounter someone who says, “I have worked with other teams before, but none of the games ever get completed” that’s not a good sign. If you ever have the chance, work with the guy that says, “Everything I work on gets finished, even if I have to do it myself.”
Edit: I mostly agree with you. I don’t believe people are intentionally entering these commitments to demoralize others - but it certainly feels that way at times. I’ve had several people tell me they want to work and then they’re so incredibly flaky, I never hear from them again.
You’re either working with the wrong people, or the team is being very poorly managed, or both.
They’re “the wrong people” if they don’t have the skills and motivation to get stuff done. I work on games because I want to work on games, and in a small team you need to find people who also want that. Chances are that any given indie game is going to earn less than if you’d just gone and got jobs using equivalent skills (people who get more are very skilled, very lucky, or both), so the maybe future financial benefit isn’t a motivator. (And motivators that far removed from action aren’t the best anyway.)
The team is “being very poorly managed” if people aren’t working due to a lack of organisation. Do they know what is expected of them? Do they know what they need to be doing? How it’s meant to be done? What to do with it when it is? Many small teams expect this stuff to just happen or be known, but that’s usually not the case. In short, working in a team incurs a bunch of overheads which need to be properly managed, otherwise they can cost more than you gain by having other people.
In short, if there was money involved then how would you want the project managed? Even in the absence of money all of that same stuff needs to happen.
Definitely this, or you have to all agree and genuinely accept that it’s a hobby project and therefore not be hung up on progress and completion.
To speak more generally, you need to all agree on what you want to get out of a project and then make sure you’re all consistently working towards that. If what you want out of it is a fun evening jamming together each week then finishing and selling the thing are irrelevant. If what you want is to finish and sell something then obviously it’s a business and should be treated as one.
++ What the penguin and the hippo said. Find better people.
Or, and I hate to point this out, but it is possible that if you are constantly finding it challenging to work with other people… it may not be the other people that are the toot of the problem. Just something to consider.
Could be me, or more likely (and accurately) personalities like my own. I’m not disagreeing. As @angrypenguin said, I think if the benefits of working with a team aren’t weighed against the complexities and lost efficiencies of trying to manage people, then there may be no purpose to it. If I took into consideration the time I spent just in the last few days trying to get something out of people, trying to build an environment that they feel inviting and comfortable and listening to ideas, I could have done it myself.
I think maybe I need to improve my own value so I can work with a higher caliber of people, so there’s certainly some inward reflection here.
I think you overestimate the compulsion of a paying job. I’ve worked in the corporate world for the past five years. You still get people who are lazy, unreasonable, or after drama just as much. You need to be just as adept at playing politics it the corporate office as you do in the indie studio.
It’s also worth noting that the loner can be just as damaging to getting things done as any of the other personality types you’ve maligned. “Everybody else is incompetent, so I’ll do it myself” is a pretty destructive attitude.
Been there, done that. Had to provide some disciplinary council for someone in this situation. He’d managed to be on the victim side of half a dozen hostile environment cases, about half of which resulted in the other party leaving the company.
While the guy was never actively in the wrong, the fact that half a dozen normally reasonable guys had felt the need to blow their top at this guy did indicate problems.
Teamwork is very much a skill or set of skills that is learned. I wasn’t upset when I wasn’t rockin’ like Bono after a “few days” of having a guitar. Similarly, you shouldn’t be upset at not getting anything out of a team after only a few days of having one.
Also, you could have done what yourself? Again, I look at the words “few days” there. Teams go through stages (to use a common set of labels which you can Google, “Forming”, “Storming”, “Norming” and “Performing”), and in “a few days” you might at best be in the second stage there. The first two, by the way, are where performance is lowest. Even experienced teams managers don’t expect to be getting a lot out of their teams in those stages, so their focus is instead on getting their teams through those stages as quickly and efficiently as possible, which also relies on the team members themselves having experience with that.
If a job is small enough that you could genuinely have done it yourself in a few days then I doubt that there’s much point having a team work on it. Even in a well oiled team the overheads might outweigh the benefit there.
My reason for wanting to work with other people in the first place I have suspected is part of the problem. I want to work with other people for social reasons. But, I have been thinking about that and perhaps that is a recipe for disaster. Any place I have seen people mix business with pleasure or take a very unstructured approach to work, I see problems. Such as, not selling when they should be selling–rather, trying to help potential clients find the cheapest way to get something (even recommending against using the company’s product/services) in order to earn their outside-the-office friendship.
Work is work, hanging out is hanging out and I haven’t been able to successfully merge the two and perhaps I should just accept that it’s not going to happen.
Indeed. I am not suggesting that you (or any one person) is a ‘problem’ per se, more that a team’s chemistry is about the right combination of personalities.
A few years ago when I joined a team, nearly everyone on the team warned me early on that “John” (not their real name), was brilliant, but a nightmare to work with. But, it turned out, for whatever reason, I got along with him great. I ended being a bit of go between for others and him. And I have been on teams that worked and didn’t work, even though they had many of the same people.
Over the years you build up relationships with people you work well with, and often find yourself working them again and again successfully. Cultivating those relationships is pretty critical in this type of environment.
Well I think that pretty much sums it up. When trying to team up with other people everyone has their own ideas even their own games they want to make. So that means a lot of back & forth just talking sharing but not necessarily coming to any real agreement on anything.
And then people view time very differently. It seems like you are wanting results quickly. Going by the part of spending a few days trying to get something out of people. Maybe a few days to you seems like a lot of time. Maybe to them a few days is almost no time at all.
I am definitely not faulting you for any of it. In fact I see time the same and quite likely have even greater expectations on what comes out of a given amount of time.
So I think it is not an easy thing for sure. To make a good productive team that gets along well and has fun you probably have to find people who first want to make almost exactly the same game(s) you want to make. They are as excited about it as you are and aren’t continually trying to change it into something that no longer meshes with your vision of the game. So that is a biggie.
Then the people also have to view time & output expectations very much the same as you do. Because if 2 out of 4 people are showing results every 3 days and the other two people are showing the same amount of results every 2 to 3 weeks sooner or later the first two people will start viewing the other two as not taking it as serious, not invested as much, not pulling their weight, etc.
Of course, maybe you could try a project similar to the way the one we did. Have one person start it and work on it for a while. Then pass to another person and have them work on it. Then on to another, etc. And that might better support the social aspects as well.
Just some random thoughts. Might all be junk but maybe some tiny tidbit be helpful.
I certainly don’t think it is specifically you. In fact, the time you and I teamed up that is the only time a completed game ever came out such a collaboration and was much better for it as well.
Also you can take a look at the Collaboration forum and see some of those folks posting in General Discussion from time to time about not being able to find anyone. People say they want to make the game. Seem all excited. Then never really participate.
You are actually hinting at one of the elements of successful team management. Which is to find out what each team member wants, and then to chart a path where you can give each member what they want and at the same time meet the team goals.
Very few managers can do this successfully. But those that can are absolutely awesome to work with.
This is true. I think I had such a manager only once or twice in my life. I also basically see it the same as @Master-Frog about paying people. I’ve considered more than a couple of times that maybe as much as I enjoy game design and programming… just maybe the real key to making the games I’d like to make is to hire out the work even the programming.
Then I can just be the director / PM and keep the game project on track without getting buried in all of the actual work that needs to be done. It does seem like it might be the best way to go if a person can afford to do it.
The hardest part for me, is when no one on the team is as experienced as me. Having to worry that a game wont look good because im not doing the art, and worrying that the game wont function how it should if i dont code it…
And then they want to convince themselves that it’s not that they are lazy or unmotivated or not clear on their own goals, it’s your fault for not giving them x/y/z or doing a/b/c.
Another thing that drives me nuts is how everybody who has never made a game before absolutely refuses to make an ordinary game… everyone wants to make some revolutionary, mind-blowing product that the world has never seen before . . . or nothing at all.
It’s not surprising, in that light, that most of the time the result is nothing at all.
Truly, if you’re serious about having good game design ideas, then hiring a team is just an investment in a business. And in the same light, if you’re not sure about hiring the team, maybe it’s better not to. But doing the work yourself to save money, or trying to find friends to work with to save money . . . it’s like trying to thread a needle.
I think the biggest problem with getting a team to function is mis-management. It’s an incredibly hard skill to be able to manage a lot of different people in the same place, to deal with problems before they arise, to not only sniff out when something is festering but to deal with it in a way that doesn’t bring it out to the surface.
Despite what everybody puts on their resumes, very few people in life actually have the ability to lead others without sabotaging themselves. Throughout university and work, I’ve seen time and time again, people who believe that leadership is simply an assertion of oneself over others, to put on one of these textbook “calm, composed and somewhat distant” expressions and then proceed to ignore half of what people communicate to them. They quickly get everyone in a semi-competitive state with them and eachother, and destroy the unity of the team.
What many don’t seem to realize is that as the manager, you have to elevate the goal of the team, you have to be a representation of the mission and what everyone is working toward. When you can communicate a concept very strongly and impressively, and get everyone to focus on that concept and feel the desire to create it - almost as a moral imperative - a lot of things take care of themselves. People begin to feel not so much part of a team, but part of an event that is happening, which takes the focus away from personal issues. And at that point, the main goal you have as a manager is to validate people’s work and make them feel like they are playing an essential part in that event.
So if your team is not working properly, I would take a good look at the manager (is it you?) and decide whether that person is someone that knows what a team needs, or is simply trying to play the role according to what managers are ‘supposed to do’.
Yeah that is very true. It would be fine if the revolutionary, mind-blowing game was something that was in good part so mind-blowing because it was such a tiny scope. But I think so many people have ambitions of making something almost like what the AAA companies are doing.
It’s not very common that several random people team up and successfully finish a game.
It’s even difficult that a single person has the commitment (and time) at that moment of their life, never mind several people together. The chain is as strong as the weakest link.
And even if that team occurs, there’s a matter of whoever calls the shots knows what he or she’s doing. It’s very easy to misjudge the time it takes to make a game, and dive into an unfinishable project.
Paid work helps in that matter. Because whoever pays now has big reason to do better planning, just playing around suddenly would become very expensive. And who gets paid has more reason and short term incentive to deliver.