Expectations when working for free
polycounter lvl 5
Given that I work for like 2 years for free, on a very slow moving game project (given that team is consisting of 5 guys), as a Lead Artist on the project I could find additional help/man power for the project.
Now few guys came and left because of either life related concerns or lack of time to contribute in meaningful way, since than project simply slowed to a crawl given amount of work that needs to be done, and I am considering looking for people to help get this thing to finish line.
Here is the kicker, everyone involved is working for FREE. Since there are people that would work for free to get experience and such (like me), are there any expectations that people have, looking to join this kind of project? I am wondering on how to make people stick around on the project, any advices?
We are being working on this game for as I said in the beginning for around 2 years, and its still nowhere near the state of 'presentable to the public' due to various factors.
Now few guys came and left because of either life related concerns or lack of time to contribute in meaningful way, since than project simply slowed to a crawl given amount of work that needs to be done, and I am considering looking for people to help get this thing to finish line.
Here is the kicker, everyone involved is working for FREE. Since there are people that would work for free to get experience and such (like me), are there any expectations that people have, looking to join this kind of project? I am wondering on how to make people stick around on the project, any advices?
We are being working on this game for as I said in the beginning for around 2 years, and its still nowhere near the state of 'presentable to the public' due to various factors.
Replies
We faced similar problems like you did on the art team end for The Maestros, but that was a university project admittedly/
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120013
Such as if everyone's working on it for free, then is the game released for free? Honestly that makes more sense then the countless amount of projects where the person says so-and-so would work for free, but then the games supposedly going to be a massive hit and they'd get such and such % of the profits.
Those always seem a little fishy unless you actually know the person in real-life and it's a we've been friends forever let's make something awesome type of deal.
Otherwise the only way I'd see someone with experience working for free is if it was set up like a mod team and they basically love the project.
If you want a team to stick around and function as a team, then communication is essential. Set up a private forum where team members can post what they are working on, setup regular meetings on skype, and playtest your game with members on a semi-regular basis.
Create an online presence, acknowledge your team members on it, and make sure no one feels left out. Encourage helping each other and having open discussions.
Remember to have fun with your team since if it just feels like working for free then I don't see how it would work out.
/end general advice of doom
I've worked for free on failed projects in the past and I would not do it again without an explicit profit sharing agreement ahead of time and serious confidence in the projects chance of financial success. I could "work for experience" on my own bad game ideas, why do it for someone elses?
Plus, people are not going to flock to your project if you have had 5 people working on it for 2 years and still don't have anything to show for it...
I don't know what you've been doing but you probably should have focused on a vertical slice or something.
Never again..
It turned out very similar to yours, the project dragged on for years and we had a hard time attracting people. It was CONSTANT work for our main engine programmer.
Once you have something to show it might get easier, but without offering any compensation you're going to be limited to inexperienced people.
New projects pop up on a daily basis where people have to work for free and 90% of the time the project will end up falling apart due to one reason or another. Usually however, it is because the people in charge of the team bite off more than they can chew.
I've been asked to work on several free projects now, and some of them are awesome ideas that I've even dreamed of doing some day, but I always tend to back out of those situations because most of the time the person asking me to help them has no work samples to show me what skills they may or may not have, and a lot of the time the team structure is also very unprofessional (one person who may not know anything about leading a gamedev project might decide to be in charge of everybody else, for example).
I'm currently working on a free project, and I've learned a ton about game development in the process. My knowledge is nothing compared to what a lot of people here can offer you, but I'll just list some things I learned over the last few years since maybe it could be helpful:
1.) If you have nothing presentable after 2 years, then something could be wrong with the way your team is working. Getting your project done isn't a race, it's more of a marathon, so don't get discouraged if things are taking a long time. However, you should re-evaluate your project and your team, think about how your time is being spent and what can be done to get yourself farther along with the project.
It can be rough working for free since you have to find a way to pay bills or if you're a student you'll probably be exhausted after class and homework. Personally, whenever I'm feeling down about my own project, I just take a look at my team's roadmap of what we plan to work on in the coming days/weeks/months/etc. You should always break big tasks like developing a game into a lot of tiny goals, it is much easier to stay focused that way. I also love to look at what my team and I have already accomplished, nothing feels better than launching a build of a game you poured so many hours into making, even if it is nothing compared to the awesome AAA titles that everybody likes to play.
If you own a commercial license for your software, you could always take some assets you made for the project and sell it in different places like Turbosquid or the Unity Asset Store. Seeing some income come in for the work you've put in is always a great motivation booster, even if it's just $1.
2.) Unless you plan on trying to build up a fanbase and making money off the project when it's done, you may not even have any need to show off your project to anybody outside of your team. Showing off work to people outside of your team, especially people who don't have an understanding of anything that goes on in game development can be dangerous to your work ethic.
You could show off a WIP to somebody who has no idea what they are looking at and they'll say "Wow, that's really cool!" Then you can spend the next 4 months turning that WIP into a finished product and that same person probably won't be very impressed, because they aren't aware of how much time it took you to finish the WIP. This can lead to moments where you don't feel like working, simply because it will feel like nobody cares about your accomplishment.
This is more of an ego thing and I'm sure a lot of professionals don't go through something like this, but it is definitely something I had to work on dealing with. Keep in mind, it could also be dangerous to NOT show off WIPs to other people. Personally, I'd rather not show off my work to a large group of people until I'm 100% done, but I always show things off to a close group of friends who do understand how much work goes into game development.
3.) Focus on a specific task(that should not be too large in size, remember to break problems into smaller problems), and keep working until that task has been completed. The worst thing that you can do is to solve half of a problem, then leave to solve half of another problem before the first one was solved.
TL;DR: Get organized and make sure to be just as much of a professional as somebody who is getting paid to work, even if you are working for free. Once your project gets on its feet, people will come to you to ask if they can work with you.
Sorry for the wall of text, in case anybody actually reads this!
EDIT: Damn that wall is way bigger than I imagined, ain't nobody got time for that.
Anyways, I'd suggest you to revaluate the scope of the project. If you spent 2 years and only small portion of the game is done, it is definitely too big. Take your time, cut all unneccessary features, leave only the most important stuff. Then cut even more, leaving only the core feature. Get creative and find ways to reduce amount of art needed. Reuse assets, simplify some work, cut amout of characters or whatever is taking way too much time.
I had to do that with my own project. Twice. You can't work for free forever, you know.
Blubber Busters comes to mind
I think some things to look out for are:
Scope - Making an MMO with a team of 4 volunteers is not going to happen. Make sure that the project has a reasonable scope
Idea Guy -Beware the Project that is headed by someone who has zero stake in the actual making of the game, besides seeing it realized. Good teams are made up of people who wear multiple hats and do more than write a paragraph of their game idea and call it a design document.
RevShare/Kickstarter/ I'll pay you next tuesday for a 3d model today- Not all Revshare etc. is bad, but beware the guy that tries to sell you this to get you to work for them. This should be an after thought. It should never be misunderstood that you are donating your time or that some how you owe them that time because they promised phantom dollars...
I think you can learn a lot from working in a team, regardless if you are getting paid or not, but like anything else, it depends on the team, and the project. Overall trust your guts
At this time in the project there can be really small carefully done vertical slice of something that looks like a game, BUT, team lead that I work with is trustworthy (I don't know him in person, but his actions are good enough proof), he plans to put game on kickstarter when it reaches alpha state. BUT, would anyone try to give money to something that may be tone of concept art, and designs, with more or less gray-box demo of the game, without much eye candy and things. I have seen some stuff on kickstarter that looks bad but it is not made from free stuff, and at least it may deceive someone to give them money.
"I've never built a boat"
"The first boat I want to build is a war galleon"
"I don't want to buy parts. I want to make all of the parts myself"
"I don't want to buy tools. I want to build all of the tools myself"
"We have a team of five inexperienced people to build a war galleon"
"I don't want to pay experienced people to help me build my war galleon"
"People should work for free on my war galleon"
"Why are my unpaid labourers leaving my war galleon building team?"
"Why is this taking so long?"
Their are a lot of little considerations that go into game design they you will never know about till you try and make a game yourself. So try to make a game with small scope you can manage yourself before trying to do a larger team project.
The game project isn't just a game either - its an entire engine too. Now yes - obviously this takes a long time. We've just gotten to the point were we can start showing things off and also can start building our game. What I've found really interesting is how building the game engine has kept the team around for so long. Since were building a game engine with 1 programmer (the recent guy is our second one, ill get to him in a second), 2 artists, and a sound guy, you can see how that our situation has also inadvertedly affected the type of game we are making. The game idea is in and of itself a relatively simple adventure/exploration game, but it was no ones single idea. Everyone on the team (EXCEPT THIS NEW GUY) had a say in what they thought should go into it, what it should be like, and so forth. We took into consideration the time it took to get to where we were with the engine, our man power, how much time we had available to work on it, and so forth and we got to where we were now. The most important factor was that it was everyones idea, a collective thought, rather then simply someones single idea. This goes against alot of thinking thats present in the game industry I think, but as a small, independent team with no funding, no plans for a kickstarter, and a huge engine that they still need to finish, this is what really made the team stick together... we all have this collective thinking that we want to finish our project, not someone elses, that its our baby, ETC. if that makes sense. HOWEVER, with our new programmer, he was not around when we came up with this idea for our game. Hes a great guy, but I've found he lacks this collective thinking and motivational drive to work on the engine and project as much and slacks off compared to the other members, although shows great promise in programming. Perhaps if there was money involved he would contribute more (there is a promise of money at the end, but that's not exactly the most motivating thing at the present moment). So what I've found on this project is that to get people to stick with you, you need them to be motivated. Its the single most important factor for getting someone to work with you (note: with you, not for you). So some general tips to getting them motivated would be: a) have a clear goal in mind for what you want, a good GDD, and a hooker, just like you would hook your audience. Pull them into, make them want to work on it. b) give them simple tasks at first rather then something large and daunting. c) make sure they have a say in things in whatever "department" they are in. If they have no say this will discourage them. Compromise if you have too, don't be a dictator.
Overall if you can't get them to work with you, cant motivate them, or they are simply incompatible with the entire team then they aren't worth your time trying to work with - they'll end up being a hassle rather than an asset. Free projects are tricky in terms of getting people to work with you. A lot of times it simply just requires someone with a similar mindset, goals, and ambitions as you that wants to work on a similar project. Sorry if I'm ranting or things don't make sense :P
I know you're trolling, but
You get a grasp of how working as a team is critical.
And no, Indie Devs shouldn't buy assets. Unless they have an artist on board who can tell a good from bad asset as well as if it even fits the theme. But then, your back to artist shouldn't work for free. So your putting the developer in catch 22 with your philosophy.
With no artist present and just a programmer you end up with, well.. this.
[ame="