“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
Leonardo Da Vinci
Has someone had experiences of team memebers getting discouraged and looking for ways to get out of the project?
I want to correctly handle our teamwork and avoid that situation at all costs, so I asked every mate to stick down his list of skills (ordered by preference), time limits and availabilities (we are all university students and one of us already have a job).
Now I know exactly
- what they can do for the project;
- what they want to do for the project;
- how much time they’re going to spend on the project.
This enables me to always assign calibrated tasks, improving final game quality (because everyone do his best in his own competence area), and hopefully avoiding team members leaving the project halfway (because everyone have fun working on the game)…
This is our first project together, we want it so simple and low-risk, so I decided to keep the team minimal: a programmer and an artist will work on the game; another programmer will work on engine design and scripting and editing tools.
We already have a suitable concept for the game and we are naturally looking at similar games already on the market to discover how successful have they been and how to make our idea more original, but this first time we chose not to focus and waste an extreme amount of time on market research in hopes of estimating potential financial rewards; we chose fun and a subject we care about as motivating factors.
Holydays ended and I’m back to study, game production, gymnastics, etc…; 24 hours are not enough for everything, again…
My development team is slowly growing: I found an artist and a programmer among my friends and I’m waiting for other answers.
I think starting with friends is easier than finding team members on the net: we have the same times of work and timezone, we speak the same language and I don’t need to be formal when I search for them, screen them (I know them, their skills, their motivations and their passions) or assign tasks.
We live in different cities so I created a Team Area for us to virtually work together on the project. I set up
- a hosted Concurrent Versions System (CVS), so programmers can collaborate on source code and documentation writing;
- a project manager, so I can handle our teamwork, coordinate team members and assign tasks;
- a forum, so we can talk about everything, categorize discussions and keep them forever (we will also use MSN, Skype, e-mail or phone, of course, but I think important discussions can always be helpful and must remain available for ourselves and future team members);
- a wiki, so we can share our knowledge and tutorials (for ourselves and future team members), and create our design document (we’ll work together on the story, while everyone will work on his own design component of competence).
Now, what about you? How do you find your team members (if you do it) and how do you manage your project?
Ok, ten exams left before the end of my academic journey and… then?
I have to find myself a job and what I really, really want is having my own games done.
Yes, I could send my great idea to publishers or to my favorite game development company to let them make something concrete out of it and become rich; yes… but while you’re reading this, millions of people are having great ideas, because it costs nothing… Publishers and game development companies are also realizing the great ideas they already have, because they have money and people, so I really do think they both are uninterested in the little would-be designer and his great ideas.
I could send them something concrete, a demo, but if I can create a demo, I can create the full game and publish it myself on the Internet.
The mother of all networks is filled with articles telling you that there are two ways to make your own dreamgames come true:
- you can try to get a job in the games industry, work as a programmer, animator, musician or anything else (not designer) on others’ projects and wait (maybe years) for your chance to propose your own idea;
- you can try to realize your own dream now, betting on yourself, even if you already have another job and even if this means learning everything about business, marketing, team building, leadership, communication, time management.
I often hear people complain for their jobs and their missed opportunities, so I think I must take this chance to transform my passions into my job and make a living from doing what I love to do. I need to do it now! That’s why I choose the second of the above points.
The alternative is to find myself whatever job in whatever industry and complain for it and my missed opportunity…
Yes, I want to be an independent game developer.
I’m a 24 years old lazy computer science student from Italy, I was born in december (18th) in Catanzaro, but I study in Rome at “La Sapienza” university and I’m specializing in HCI (Human Computer Interaction).
I still live with my parents and we have a dog who peacefully shares the garden with an army of cats that seems to never end…
In my life I have and had a lot of interests and passions such as playing guitar in a rock band with my friends, playing synthesizer, programming, Tae Kwon Do practicing, reading sci-fi books, watching sci-fi movies (especially those set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….), playing and studying all kinds of videogames (especially those set deep in the Caribbean), and so on…
I love to stay at home but everyday I go out with the woman of my life and my friends. They always ask me what I do when I’m home alone and I passed so much time studying gamedev that what I can answer at the moment is not yet enough. Well… I’m not so good at speaking to people, it takes me hours to write these few lines, so I hope screenshots, videos and demos on this blog will speak for me, will be worth a billion words and above all, finally, concretely answer my friends!
Well well well… Welcome to my games development blog!
I started it because I feel the need to show you (…and myself) what I’m able to do. I’m going to talk about my experiences and keep you up to date with every step I take on the path of games production, my greatest passion. I hope you’ll find something interesting or useful, feel always free to share your thoughts.
If you want to know how the story goes, just stay tuned…
ANewProject | Daniel | 
January 30, 2009 1:08 pm | 
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