Instructions for an indie developer who wants to build a team for his new project

Introduction

For the last two and a half years I have been actively involved in creating games as an indie developer. During this time, a lot of experience has accumulated, including that obtained by walking on a rake. In this article I want to share my observations on how to properly prepare for the creation of a new game, what pre-production is, what risk assessment is and why it is needed, how best to assemble a team “on enthusiasm”. I will also explain some of my ideas on organizing teamwork, the importance of having a manager even in an indie project, and will talk about some of the pitfalls.

About preparing for work

This stage is called “pre-production” (pre-production), everyone knows about it, but is often forgotten, not realizing its crucial role in the fate of the game. The overwhelming majority of people looking for companions in the thematic forums make this mistake time after time. If you are eager to create your own game project, then the first thing I propose is to create a “pitch document” or “concept document”. This is a short, on several pages, text, which describes the essence of the product. Here are examples of topics to be described: supported platforms, target audience, ways to monetize, basic gameplay, unique selling points, main competitors, and so on. This document will be your guiding star. If you unconsciously begin to drift away from him - you probably have problems.

However, I want to warn. While doing this work, constantly ask yourself the question: “Which of the written is an unverified fact?”. Suppose you say: “My 3d-shooter with giant humanoid robots and blackjack is designed for a female audience of 25-60 years old, and will be published first of all in Odnoklassniki. Here you ask yourself the above question, and go to the search engine to collect information to confirm or refute your statement.

The next step will be setting the estimated release date. As you know, the work takes all the time allotted to it, therefore the deadline should help avoid this trap. Think and decide how much time you are willing to spend on developing the game. By the way, “knowing myself, in six months I will get tired of this project, and I will want a new one” - this is a worthy rationale for the release date. If you want to complete development in 6 months, then there is no point in inventing a pack of sophisticated features, you still will not meet the deadline.
')
This brings us directly to an estimate of the amount of work to be done. Here you take the whole project, and start methodically decomposing it into its component parts. You need to get an idea of ​​how much code you have to write, how much art to draw, what characters to animate ... The more detailed and thoughtful your work plan, the more accurately you can estimate the time needed to complete the tasks. Do not forget that you are not a robot, you will need interruptions in work, either forced (for example, a disease), or just take a break, because you do not want to burn out. Keep this in your plans.

Risk assessment

Next, I propose to evaluate all possible risks. Frankly, I have never seen any enthusiast do this. Most likely, people consider this a serious approach, maybe even a bureaucracy? Of course, if the game is done solely as a hobby - do not bother. But if a successful release is important to you, I would advise you not to skip this step and think it over carefully. What are the risks? At its core, this is a list of what can go "wrong."

For example, at the pre-production stage you decided that besides you, the programmer, you need an artist in your project to draw pixel art and character animation. And what if you can't find an artist? What will you do then? Order graphics for money? Will you do it yourself, thereby shortening the time for programming? And if you find the artist, but he does not know how to animate? Will you look for another animator on enthusiasm, or are you ready to allocate money for this and hire a specialist? Another example: you plan to launch the game on Steam Greenlight, your entire marketing strategy is based on this. What if this service closes and is completely replaced by the Steam Curation system and samizdat? What changes do you need to make in your work, in particular, in the project promotion plan?

Thus, you need to try to foresee all possible problems and make a plan “B” in case everything goes according to the worst scenario. Ideally, have a plan “B” if plan “B” also goes to hell (although, I admit, for indie this is an overly serious approach, how do you think?). By the way, I want to share a curious observation: to find 3d-artists on enthusiasm is incomparably more difficult than programmers. For all the time I was looking for people in the team, I talked about 25 developers, and only with 6-7 artists (and they all wanted money for the work, although I indicated in three (!) Places in bold lack of budget). Programmers, oddly enough, the text was read much more attentively. In the context of risk assessment, the conclusion suggests itself.

About collecting the team "on enthusiasm"

This text is based both on my observations of Russian and foreign game devs, and on my own experience. I managed to assemble a team of 5 professionals, and noticeably more people showed interest in working together, but we did not agree on certain issues.

The first step in forming a team is a serious approach to pre-production. Suppose if you call to yourself a 3d-artist, then you should already be ready for clear tasks on which he can immediately begin work. You can’t just take a person to yourself and say to him: “Uh, well, we need a castle, a castle - it’s with turrets that you’ll do, no?”. You need to think in advance how many models of walls, spans, gates, towers, etc. will be needed in the castle. You will also need detailed terms of reference specifying the requirements for the number of triangles on the model, texture maps, UV, and any other relevant information. If you will give rash tasks, and God forbid a person will have to redo something because of your mistake - be in trouble. Most of all, people do not like to throw their work in the trash.

Enthusiasts who already have good professional skills (not) consciously assess the risks by viewing the announcement of the collection of teams. They study how much the author is interested in his own game, will he leave her halfway, can he do anything at all, or will he be a burden? If something confuses them, they will pass by, simply because they don’t want to spend countless hours on a stillborn project. Personally, I would advise (I did just that) first of all alone to do a significant piece of work to show a serious attitude. In almost every post about collecting a team that I saw, the author does not demonstrate absolutely any work, and if he does, then some insignificant nuggets. Will not work. I would say, depending on your level, for a start it may be enough to invest about 100-200 hours of quality work.

I would also note that the script / plot / dizdok themselves have no value. With rare exceptions, having only this in hand, the team does not assemble. However, if you are a game designer or project manager with real combat experience, then your chances increase dramatically. The truth for all the time I have seen only 1 or 2 such proposals, but they really stand out for their professional approach.

Choosing a team for yourself, remember that people are the most important thing in any undertaking. Processes and methodologies, documentation, even professional skills - all this is secondary (within reasonable limits). If an applicant for a certain role in a project is not good enough as a professional, but a really hardworking person with burning eyes, then this may well be just what you need. It is always possible to pump skills, but it is almost impossible to change the worldview of an accomplished person. At my very first project, which quickly failed due to lack of project management experience, and pre-production in particular, I worked together with a programmer who is now my friend, although we have never met in real life. We could get to work in the morning, chatting in Skype, and work together until late at night, constantly giving tangible results. Purposefulness, desire to achieve something more, internal drive - teamwork with such a person really inspires. If you managed to find such a person, hold him with both hands.

About the organization of work

Being a person who, in addition to directly creating content, was engaged in game design and coordination of the entire production process, I want to talk about it. Do not underestimate the amount of game design, organizational, administrative work. Its really a lot. I combine all these things in one section solely because you are unlikely to find a game designer and project manager in your team, but to combine these duties in one person is a very good option. To anyone who will coordinate the development, I advise you to read a couple of books on software project management. Good books are always in sight, finding them is not difficult. Now I propose to try to figure out what the project manager is doing in indie game dev.

In a nutshell, the main goals of such a person are to make sure that the tasks are carried out, and people are as happy and motivated as possible to work. By managing the project, you take responsibility for these areas. You are an anchor, everything is holding onto you. If you are lazy and disappear, then you can be sure that your team will also start to beat backlash. It is worth noting that this is the fundamental difference between the work “for the idea” and the work “for salary”. In commercial development, properly structured processes and correctly delegated authority allow the manager to avoid the fate of the only link, without the direct participation of which everything collapses.

Most likely, either you yourself do not want to, or you simply will not be able to find a competent manager in the project, but it makes sense to look for at least a consultant who can rarely ask for advice, this can help avoid gross mistakes. Both in Russia and in the West, many do not like managers, and for good reason, but if you had to work with a professional, you know how much he can simplify your work, make it more pleasant and efficient.

About the head

Here are some of the responsibilities that a manager can perform in an indie project. This will convince you that the work is really a lot, and if the programmer, for example, does it, then he will write significantly less code.

• Coordination of developers. From the side it may not be noticeable, but working communication takes away the abyss of time, especially if its main mass flows in a text chat. There is 10 minutes to discuss the issue, there are 10 minutes ... here it comes out - it seems that he didn’t do anything, but the time is gone - Mama do not grieve! Also do not forget that the more your team, the more time it will take to organize.
• Organization of the project as a whole, that is: maintaining documentation up to date, keeping track of tasks, tracking their relevance and priority, working with product backlogs, and so on.
• Doing scrum rallies, sprints, demos, retrospectives. I will write more about this below.
• Research. For example, you need to think about the strategy of monetization of the product. This will require searching and analyzing information - articles, statistics, video recordings from conferences. This, of course, can be done by anyone in a team, but not the fact that, say, a programmer is generally interested (“I am a programmer, I don’t want to read about f2p, I want to program”).
• Marketing. Black hole devouring all your time. This includes such things as: creating a press kit, communication with the press, blog articles, maintaining accounts in social networks, cross-marketing agreements with other teams, and so on.
• Search for new employees. It can take a lot of time, depending on the desire. Starting with simple recruitment posts in the forums and ending with an independent search for individuals with attempts to contact them.
• Mentoring For example, in my team there was a completely beginner 3d-artist. Countless hours passed in the discussions of the working pipeline, the subtleties of creating models and textures for real-time (for example, why the model has more vertices in the engine than in the 3d editor), on feedback, etc.
• Legal issues. Say, creating accounts in mobile markets, verification, taxes, and so on. Bureaucracy can take on a frightening appearance.

By the way, more about the timing. You can have strict deadlines for yourself, but for the team it is necessary to look for softer solutions. After all, anything can happen in life: today, after work, an actor must go with her daughter to a circle, tomorrow - at work a blockage, and the day after - a Friday rest in a bar. As a result, the week is not very productive, and if there was a hard deadline, then it would be a failure. And this leads to conflicts and a drop in motivation. Based on my experience, I would suggest a very soft scrum. You take 2-3 weeks to sprint, choose tasks that performers EXACTLY can perform, even if they walk through pubs, and work. In other words, you initially make a generous amendment to the adjustments that life brings. At the end of the sprint, of course, a demo and a retrospective. But there is no need for bureaucracy: no points, no velocities, only common sense, multiplied by the amount of free time the participants have.

About money

Most projects on enthusiasm are made with the expectation that participants will receive a percentage of potential profits. Here, in general, everything is simple and clear. But I want to discuss crowdfunding. Frankly, in the context of collecting a team, he annoys me, because it is pure deception. If the percentage of potential profits is a well-known topic, and your partners understand what they are going for, then crowdfunding is a relatively new thing, and it allows you to deceive a person who doesn’t really follow the events of the industry.

As is known, it is almost impossible to collect money on a bumstarter. Every day on the kickstarter it becomes more and more difficult - people are disappointed, many low-grade products and unscrupulous scammers. A real chance to collect enough money is exclusively for projects with an extensive base of developments, high-quality art, an incendiary trailer and beautiful music. In other words, if a person on the forum gathers the command “make a demo quickly and go on a kick”, then this is a default failure. Behind the promise of payment "as soon as we collect money or kick" does not cost anything. Please do not do this and do not be fooled by such offers. Exceptions, of course, are. The same Superhot, which came from gamejam, but the probability of such luck is infinitely small, that is, there is no point in even hoping (returning to the topic of risk).

On this round out. I hope that the article at least seems useful to someone. I am pleased to answer any questions in the comments.