Do teams even exist in this community?

I am just wondering why I see so few teams here, ever?

Probably cause other engines are better for that I think. I see gs3d mostly as a lonewolf engine or ~2 people working together.
Cause of the editors, tools, debugging and probably some more stuff I can't think of right now.
In general it also is alot harder to pay whole teams (commercial) or to get people together regularly (hobby).

Though there was that Turkish (?) developer that is creating a prof. counter-strike like game, I think that was a whole team of people.

I just find it odd that a team can build a contest game in a weekend but doesn't spend a few months putting out a major effort.
I have been here since A5 and watched so many lone-wolves fall off because they were unable to do all the needed work alone. There just way never a good team idea here.

That's exactly what it is though, a major effort (in the sense of work) for everyone involved. Motivation, time and common interests and opinions are all highly problematic in such a case. A game built by a team with paid developers and one or multiple guys in charge who dictate the game is something completely different.

Yes that was my team experience, everyone wanted to make there own game, everyone wanted to be the boss. Worse was working for newbies, who had little idea of how to achieve the ideas they wanted and totally lacked the ability to communicate their designs. I was totally rewriting code sections over and over to add,adjust and extend a play effect because the "designer" had no clear idea of it before it was written and seen.

However, I assumed this would be less of a problem with the high level vets, we have in the community now. I have been corrected.
Thanks



It must be very difficult for creators to assume a role of just following a single(set) of lead(ers).
It seems to me if a team achieves a selling game, then each member earns more money to fund that "developer" dream.

And everything comes down to the design document If it is a full explanation of the features, theme and mechanics, nobody would be the boss, but just do what the document says...But, design documents are rarely extensive.

There have been times when I was looking for help and people laughed at me, some because of my design document (or lack of), some from arrogance...

A bulgarian was looking for help, years ago, on a project with 3DGS. I offered my help (I was the only other Bulgarian with skills in 3DGS) and he said I was incompetent, before actualy seeing anything... After two months he dropped his project. I published mine a month ago...

My point is, that, many people are arrogant these days. No body likes to work for free. And thats one of the reasons teams dont exist here.

But, I'm hoping that if I get a good playable demo I will be able to attract a free good modeller & animator some day... Until then, I'm constantly browsing YouTube for tuts on 3ds

These are two different kind of beasts. When we meet each year, we are fully committed, drunk, willing to hack something together, and to make it fun, and beautiful to look at (in this order, and oppinions vary). The commitment is very strong, and nobody cares if it his/her "dream game", it is more about the experience. And the beer. Ah, and the fun to do something "complete" with lots of people in parallel and OH's and AH's, when something new is added to the game.

The year before last year, we had to add AFTER THE WEEKEND for the contest 2-3 additional levels to complete the game as we imagined it ... and almost no one was available and committed anymore. Real life took over...

So what is missing to keep the spirit alive for a longer time frame? Maybe a gathering that lasts a week? That might be possible, but most of us are now employed and would have to spare vacation days.. this is difficult. That is why almost all startups / new indie games from teams emerge from college or university, because you have so much free time.



Hm, in my opinion there is only a maximum time frame of 10 years available to people to be willing to work for free - that is inbetween the age of 13-16 and 23-26... because afterwards you have a regular job, girlfriends/wifes, maybe children, interested into travel/building a house/riding motorbikes and/or you have become a professional. Until then, during school, college and university you have an awful big time to spend, you get more experienced and see all those experimental/creative stuff - and this is the big chance that you eventually become able to make your own game(s). And because you know people around you or on the internet that are in the same situation, you will likely become friends and work together.

After that, it is more likely that you don't have enough time to do so... and I think that the most experienced users with Gamestudio matured along with the product and now have difficulties to find time to work on their games, or even play with it...

On the other side: why should anyone do something free for another one? Again, my theory is that people are willing to do so, because they are improving, still learning and want to show off their work. But in the moment it is for you just "something to work out" which only requires planning, coding and time... well... you want to be paid for your time to do so. Sure, there is the Open Source movement and those people are very nice that they give out open source software.. but for single persons, well.

All I can tell is that time is money and if you want something from me, I definitely would let you pay the free time I would have to sit in front of my computer instead of having a beer with my girlfriend in the moonlight - and I am sure you'll understand why.

On the other side: Why don't we take the risk and fund ourselves a self-owned, independent studio?

Hm, because it's business and drives you away from creative/fun coding and stuff. Then, it is not about time, but about money, which you have to generate for yourself and your employees, so that they can afford their girlfriends and that cold beer and maybe the occasional trips to the beach. Doesn't sound easy? Yes. And I highly suspect that most professionals here regard their regular job to be more paying than any of the risk you would have to take to fund at least 1-year of game making. Too bad!

Maybe this is the reason why only students start a business (because they have already no money and no work experience, so it doesn't matter and the risk is smaller)... OR: you are already a long-year professional and fund a new studio with other long-year professionals, because you know how to do stuff and make a business - also because you have contacts and standing at your clients or in your industry.

And to be honest, I know only very, very few people here in this community that I would regard to be able to start a successful game business in real life somewhere in Europe, including moving to another place.

Well said.
Apart from that, this question was part of the last AUM interview - where the reasons why there is no AckCon Team working on some big thing could have been found as well

I like the idea, I love the people - and I am sure we have a chance to create something great - but there is a good risk that by doing so we lose what we loved so much and what everything got started: Freedom of choice to do whatever crazy stuff we want!
Still I would love to try... being aware the dream might become a really bad nightmare pretty much immediately.

Wow, well written. Unless there are any other opinions. I am satisfied with the answers given.

Now where are the college kids???? Lol

my little sad story:

I tried to build up here a team last year, lived from June to Dec, without too much result. it went slowly, and members came and fell out unexpectedly, what was very hard to me to control. the target was to make a complex strategy game, so it would have been at least a 2 year long project, based on my preliminary works developed within MapBuilder.

at least the game concept and a basic documentation was established in the summer with another member, and made a project management site at trello.com with to do lists, some concepts, and basic design rules for artists. since the other programmer disappeared early, I had to do all the programming, and to reorganize everything, resulting in the total rewriting of MapBuilder, which required months.

when it was ready in the beginning of Oct, I started to work on the new RTS AI using formations enabling a more flexible battle AI system than my earlier tests, because it heavily determined other parts of the game. it required Oct-Nov-Dec, went fine, including a formation editor, but game AI development is normally slower than expected, because of the many fine tuning subsystems required after implementing the main system, which was relatively fast (but also required some research among pathfinder systems because my first idea was not good enough). also developing the proper visual debugging tools of the game AI required time.

by this time every other members became inactive, only a basic character was made. the disappeared programmer returned, but I could not know what job to give him, so finally I cancelled the project as I saw no chance to complete it in this form (target plans and members).

---

in Jan I worked further on it, having a lower scaled RTS battle game in mind, and in Feb I rewrote again MapBuilder, because I wanted to make a version I am really satisfied with.

in March-Apr I did nothing with 3dgs, I focused mainly on the possibility to move to UE4. after I was able to finally update my old GPU driver, and the significant performance improvements of UE4.7, it immediately became a near future target. it is much more difficult on the programming side, but from the artist side it is much more developed, and helper material is more widely available, so probably a nearly similar game can be developed with it, if I learn more, more, and even more C++, and dig deep into UE4 API. hopefully there I can find more artists and experienced programmers to team with, but there are still a couple of things I want to develop with 3dgs, because it goes faster, e.g. I mean AI system prototyping, or maybe even a little RTS demo.

@sivan, yeah people suddenly leaving out the team is very common (I heard it alot with big teams/groups on e.g. moddb). I just have seen it to much, big mods/games with lots of potential and already some quality work made that went dead. As a lonewolf, I have also had some dead projects (less with modding, mainly with gs3d ) but in those instances/cases I still have access to all code and models for recycling purposes and time is not wasted since the time invested was mostly in content/code learning or debug experiences which is always usefull for lateron.

Building up pure "online" teams is ridiculously hard.
I can tell from a project where I was part, that communicating via Teamspeak or Netmeeting (and the like - it was back in 2004) can be very exhausting and contra productive for getting some sort of "team feeling".

And this one was pretty well thought out. A lead developer who already had worked on successful projects, picked specific people for all the different roles to be filled, prototypes, task management, gameplay videos... completely different to "hey let's make a team and the next big MMORPG - who's in?"

It is due to the reasons already mentioned by HeelX and the fact that online conversation simply cannot replace or even out do the classic worker room where you meet all your team members real life.
Yeah there are successful online collaborations, I know - but it for sure doesn't make things easier.

Ask George Pirvu about the AUM project which started great and then it all of sudden disappeared. And he had some pretty good guys on this project.

And hopefully this explains why we manage to be productive when we meet real life at AckCon but the rest of the year we sort of fall asleep (or work hard on other projects)

yeah, next time I should probably find some people through friends locally, or I should be picked by someone if once I can make a cool little game demo... fortunately I have a friend working in the industry who might know people who know people who want to do similar crazy stuff in their spare time as me.
unfortunately he found my early works (MapBuilder1 era ~3 years ago) having very basic graphics, and asked me why I don't use UDK instead? the answer was simple, it was too difficult for me.

moreover, good artists (even if doing as a hobby) would not prefer 3dgs over other newer engines, despite 3dgs is suitable for RTS games, as this genre does not require so high graphics details. and I will mainly need artists.
probably if I would do exactly the same with UE4, they would find it more attracting and promising, despite it should miss some features currently impossible to implement with UE4 (e.g. runtime terrain deformation), but would look visually nicer than what I could ever create with 3dgs (e.g. terrain, vegetation, and lighting in general).

I had no success of being hired either
But I had some talks to people who left the industry and it surely didn't sound like the holy grail. So I'm very unsure what to do. I like what I can do with private projects which usually turn into non designed hack almost instantly, but working in the industry is not like this (for very good reasons).
All I miss is a small team. Doing all alone sometimes leaves a dull "I didn't arrive yet" feeling. If you know what I mean.

to be honest I want to keep it as a hobby, but a serious one. I worked a lot with my editor and the corresponding game, and now I can see my future of development (most things are planned step by step), so it would be great to make a completed game within a few years, but I can't do all the graphics and programming... without a team I need to do a lot of simplifications and should use stolen graphics

I started with stealing by using free mocap animations. Now after setting up the movement animations in Unity I found out, the walk anim I grabbed is some girlie walk... argh

, if it's only artists you need I would say just build a simple prototype/demo of your rts and use placeholder models (free/stolen whatever just so long your project is still non-commercial). Place it on some sites with some pics and videos (or only pics and videos). Than I think you will have a larger chance attracting modelers/artists since people already see that progress has been made (compared to asking people to join right from the bat).

I don't really see why it is a big deal than to work with GS3d. Stuff like interface can be kept simple with mainly some icons and bars. And graphics can still be good as long as the models and textures are decent. Lots of flashy shader stuff etc. is irritating anyway in rts games (it mostly distracts and makes everything so unclear), just some good hdr and good shadows (and perhaps gore) would be suffice I think. Just keep the camera fairly high with screenies and videos and I think it will do fine with a nice clean and clear graphics style.

Speaking as someone who actually DID put together an unpaid team to build a long-term project (2 years), I can say in my case, it required several months of prototyping work to set a firm foundation of the game for everyone else to go off of before I started looking for a team to help develop the game. Most people take the opposite approach and try building a team before there's a firmly established look and concept. At least on the internet, this does not work.

But once I had those prototypes and prealphas, all I had to do was locate interested individuals with free time on their hands. This was not hard to do.

Once I started bringing on more team members I was required to write a fairly extensive design document that covered as many mechanics in detail as possible, and the team did rely on this to some extent to figure out where the game was going and what needed to be done to get there. Still, the usefulness of this document lessened as the months passed and everyone on the team got a feel for what the game was about.

The other thing is: we kept in contact all the time. As a team, we never met in person, but the fact that we all regularly used skype was invaluable in keeping the team in touch.

What some people don't realize is that being the leader of a team, particularly one that is underpaid or undermotivated, you HAVE to be the one who performs the brunt of the work on the project. People are motivated when they see things getting done, and this is where Barony's design was key: aside from the music, I had made the game such that, if necessary, I could build it entirely by myself. And when team members were sick or lacked drive or were too busy to contribute, I picked up the mantle and did the work myself.

That's not to understate the contributions of my team members, because they all contributed greatly to the project in various ways (my programmer ended up putting probably 20,000 lines to the finished codebase, my composer wrote nearly two hours of music, my modeler created a dozen different voxel creatures... this is hard work)

BUT, all that being said, I'm still responsible for probably a good 50% of the finished product. Other than music, I touched everything, from models to sounds to textures to code and so forth.

Barony got a lot of help from others but it is very much my game.

So in the end, the strength of a project and the strength of a team really boils down to the capabilities of the one who's leading it. If you're having leadership problems, the likely cause is that the person who is meant to be in charge isn't doing their job and isn't working hard enough. I really can't stress that enough.

Of course that means you have to be well-balanced as an individual to do all these things... and I am not claiming in the least to be perfectly well-balanced. For example, I don't have a lot of skill artistically, which is why I chose to go with a low-res voxelly style for my game, only now my game gets a bad rap for looking like Minecraft. During the last 10% of development we put an easter egg in the game lampooning this criticism, but that is absolutely our biggest weakness and it is something I'm going to work very hard to not repeat in my next game.

The bottom line is: leading a team requires you to be honest, to take responsibility, to work harder than anyone else, to have a clear vision, and to have no question that you're going to finish the game. If you don't have those things you're better off just working on little projects by yourself, or joining a team that has good leadership and doing the little work that falls to you. That's about all there is to it...

@Redeemer Thank you for the information and relaying your experience. I didn't want to rip a bunch of quotes, but your advice is very welcomed by me.

probably it was my 1st big mistake.
the 2nd is the email only communication (I couldn't solve skype from job and no time at home).
so decided to do it again if will have something working.

From my own experience I'd say that unpaid online teams only really work if they consist of not more than three persons, as it keeps the communication simple and it will always be clear who did what.
The alternative is paying the people working with you, which won't give you any real guarantees either, but is an additional motivation for everyone to actually work on your project.

This is really interesting, because my team totaled six people in the end, but I considered our "core" team to consist only of three people. These three people (which included myself) easily contributed the vast majority of the work done on the project in the end. Also, I was always really wary about bringing on new hands for the reasons you mentioned. Going back to the point I made in my last post, I do not recommend bringing on anyone until you are sure you need them for the project... most projects do not need more than one person working on them until construction has begun in earnest anyway.