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[Aloft]

Greetings again, wise TigSource forums.

I am coming with another question today: namely the topic concern of effective methods and tactics for recruiting qualified collaborators onto an existing and well-established project.

Our project in question is fairly well-represented in terms of media available, with around 200 screen shots out detailing various facets, several tracks from the starter soundtrack, a cinematic trailer, a tech demo, homepage, social media pages, and several well-placed articles in RPS and elsewhere. We have been in development for quite a long time (10 months+) and are nearing the time when expansion of the team is a necessary condition for dealing with the present workload. Despite the many forms of media we have at this time, and around 6-7 attempts over the past few days to begin reaching out to new team candidates through classifieds, forum listings, and social networking, there have been near-nil responses to the efforts. Clearly something is off in our approach.

Our needs are as follows: 1 Coding lead with management roles, and strong engine-module knowledge, and 2-3 mid-level coders with C#/ C++, and Unity3D experience. The roles are occurring right as we transition from unpaid work to contractual work, so they sort of straddle both sides, but we are calling them unpaid collaborations to be conservative, and clarifying in topic.

If anyone would like to chime in and offer advice for a team in our situation, it would be greatly appreciated! We have been contacted by a couple diligent students, but the management role is the lynchpin, and is required to be filled before we can reasonably start a dialogue with the others. The obvious elephant in that room is that the demands we are making of the management role are considerable, which in a fair world would come with pay from the start, but we are asking them to contribute a month or two of their time prior to when we project funding will be available to them. In a way there is fairness in that arrangement, considering we as professional-age adults have worked a full year of 80 hour weeks on almost no resources, but it is still a concern.

An example of a listing we have placed, for that management position, is here:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?38368-RPS-featured-project-looking-for-professional-coding-manager-(Tech-demo-Available)

Any advice on how to hone our approach or tactics would be extremely useful to us in this crtical moment. Also... if you know that guy, don't be afraid to say 

Thanks for your time!

[knifeySpoonie]

Wow... err as you acknowledge... you're asking for a lot... I don't know a single person who's any good, with 5-7 years expereince who would do an unpaid trial...

And I don't want to bring you guys down, so take this as advise not as the be all and end all... as it's a ballsy move being that demanding for a project that is currently a prototype from what I can read, the new guy will basically be doing the base engine for free in return for a share of the company and then an undefined amount of pay??

some of the reasons your getting no hits could be as follows..

1. people with 5-7 years expereince have life balance by this point, family, social lives, mortgages or rent etc... Dropping everything for a new indie IP that might not be worth anything in the longrun is a massive massive gamble... I mean what if they do a load of work then you guys decide they're not the right personality for the team, they leave with nothing, what if the studio falls apart as you grow and can't work together, the risk is entirely on their head. You're sort of asking for a skilled investor to invest their time/money on some vague promise of reward. You need to be clearer on what exactly is the reward for this role just to get people to even apply.

2. You don't mention your experience levels anywhere (well I couldnt see it easily), are you industry Veterans, have you released a full game before from start to finish? have you ran a business before? have you aquired some funding? basicaly why should someone very expereince trust you. I'd want to see this before applying, your not blizzard who's name alone gets applicants, your a small indie team, your personal expereince level matters a lot.

3. Your 80+ hours a week don't mean anything in terms of fairness... a lot of people sink time into a hobby, a lot sink it into games, but if you're going to spend 80+ hours a week surely your best off finding a team yourself and spending it on that, which is what you did.. you now need skilled people, they bring somthing to the team which you lack therefore their inherent value upforont is way more important now than just coming in on an equal footing... you need them, they need x, and currently this equation doesnt add up..

4. I have never heard of your game before despite being very active in the indie scene, whether lurking or working.. you have one website promo, but ultimatly Is this translating into a community who knows what your doing? would a kickstarter be successful for example because theres buzz around your game? people are drawn to successful feeling projects. Maybe spend more time promoting your game and building up a buzz so people want to invest free time into it. so many games come, stick around in a sort of limbo, then dissapear into the ether... proof your going to be around for the whole thing...

5. The scope of the game sounds... HUUUUGGGGGEEEEE 4 parts? wow thats a lot of work for a small team, not knowing your backgrounds I don't know whether it's a realistic goal or not, applying just to get an interview, just to find this basic info out for example is hassle that would stop people applying...

6. A month or two of free time is vague? is this a fixed term or is it anyones guess.. sounds like it could snowball into 3 months... or 4 months... or.. you get the drift..

They're some of my main worries, and would be what a lot of senior people with industry expereince see..

So in summary to improve your pitch

1. Clarify compensation available in the advert. People won't apply for a Job at an indie studio without knowing what is the potential compensation.

2. Detail the teams expereince level and projects you have worked on. People beleive in other people on small projects. Sell yourselves as much as you sell the game.

3. Clarify time scales and goals more clearly. When does unpaid finish, when is the games expected release,

4.. (alternatively) massively drop your "requirements", and look for someone with 1-3 year expereince who's looking to become a technical director in the longrun.. Expereince is great but it comes at a cost you're not currently able to able to afford based off the information..


Anyways sorry if this sounds brutal, and I wish you luck in your search...

[Aloft]

No, honesty and directness are what I was looking for- it is the only way to be helpful. Let me see how I can address the points:

1. Quite fair- we need to adjust our message to fit what is available. I was afraid of scaring people people off with a more involved explanation, and the wall of text that would accompany it, but maybe it is needed.

2. Chris is 30 now and has headed a team at EA for around a year, and worked for a stint at Blizzard earlier. He had been coding in C++ and several other languages since he was 17, and has seen several titles ship. While he has been heavily active in the project for the whole run, family matters are ensuring he can't serve as the coding manager due to intermittent schedule. He also wanted to construct the entire engine from scratch in a c++ environment, which I felt all along was too ambitious.

I am 28, and I am an architect. I practiced game art and design and as a hobby while younger, and again while underemployed in my field following a new killoff of small high-end residential firms. We did link to our homepage where our bios were found, although we should have made it more explicit when we presented that link, I'll give you that. Maybe we should also focus more heavily on the social capital our team is bringing as an incentive.

3. We have had a few conversations with candidates for our PR group at this point; a handful of them are confident that the project can bring in around 100-150 in a crowd-funding campaign with its current materials and demo (confident in the sense that they are willing to stake their groups' reputations against a failure in those cases); before we launched those campaigns though, we wanted to have a proof-of-concept in the groundwork of a stable engine environment, so that supporters could be assured they weren't supporting vaporware. We are focusing the major public leadup to the time when the pieces are in the place to ensure we can deliver an honest-to-god gamplay demo of our actual game environment, as opposed to our tech demo, which despite being extremely extensive, is presented as a prefabricated space.

4. Perhaps we should distribute the tech demo at this point, and use it for further promotion. I was thinking of saving it for the leadup to crowd-funding launch, but that is definitely on the table.

5. Yes, we probably should not have mentioned that apsect. It would have been better to stress that the last 3 parts will only be happening on the success funded by the first part. It would be better to rephrase that message to focus on the fact that the real project is the first phase only, and that our team's focus at the start must be that narrow foundation only.

6. Yes, that vagueness does sound dangerous to any applicant. 1-2 months is our projection for how long it should take a qualified manager with a small but appropriate team to produce the proof of concept. But it is a risk anyway you phrase it I am afraid.

This is all good advice. Perhaps part of the motivation for the demanding requirements is that Chris wouldn't feel comfortable handing control to a manager significantly less experienced than he is, however if he is unable to fill that role himself, it may yet be necessary. There are many things in the general message we should change as noted.

Do you have any advice on where to search for qualified team members for the project?

[SouldomainTM]

Do you have any advice on where to search for qualified team members for the project?

Hey Aloft,

to me it seems that you have a tech demo, but not really an actual game concept. I don't think new team members could even solve this problem.

You mention a lot of things the gamer could do in the finished game. But you never go into details. There is no gameplay video of any kind. And you also seem to want implement gameplay mechanics from, well, all genres in existence?

I think the reason why no one applies is that they can't see how you could do all this. This is no Flappy Bird what you are trying to achieve.

I read the bio page. It didn't mention anybody to have experience in game design, or just gameplay design, or at least level design. No examples of hobby projects given. Well, it seems that you are quite new to this. Which means, that like all new guys, YOU WILL underestimate the complexity of even simple game-play mechanics. And it doesn't even sound simple what you are trying to do.

To be a great gamer doesn't mean you can make a game. I'm afraid I made this shitty experience myself... 

[knifeySpoonie]

Cool you sound somewhere near to where I am (I've just Sega and will be full time indie in december after my notice period)

Well for a start I would push your qualifications/expereince etc in any pitch.. As an architecht I assume you worked hard on tight deadlines etc all the time, and understand "how to get a project finished" so make that clear... you are the project lead etc, you work your ass off to make sure it happens... Whilst chris has the gaming expereince... definitly focus on that, small teams are successful because of their individuals...

Personally I think your right not to write a whole engine from scratch... Why do all the ground work when you can hook an application up to an existing engines api much quicker and save yourself some headaches (mainly being the massive delays between being able to do things)

I think Chris will also need to take a back seat to any new guy coming in and be ok with that.. If he can't commit fully, he should answer to whoevers in charge whatever the expereince level, he needs to let any ego go, otherwise your destined for friction.. (which will be hard for him if he's a lead and been there from the start)

Crowdfunding is funny - be careful with any PR groups etc, they will promise a lot to get the customer, then bail early if it doesnt look successful after a short time and cut their losses.. (not all, but just be cautious) You project has the ambition to be good but I agree that it would be good to have the prototype engine in place before launching, cause then your saying "we need money to go full time to finish this" rather than "we need money to make this cool idea real" which is much more daunting.

I can see why you want to save a demo for the crowdfunding also... but if you make it available via job aplication boards it might still retain it's freshness as long as your not pushing it out far and wide.

As for finding someone...

Well my instinct is to tell you is to maybe not do it "fulltime" until you have funding. If chris is able to work part time, bring onboard extra lower level "hungry" coders and work 20-30 hours a week each on a collaboration... Forget getting a coding manager for now to work fulltime and aim for a prototype that will allow you to successfully crowd fund and allow everyone to go fulltime. Then worry about a manager...

If you do it that way you bring people onto the team whilst building up skills, and set up the project for the long term. also no one is quitting their Jobs or working for nothing etc.. But that obviosuly has its downsides of much slower development time.. If thats what you want to do hit up coding websites and do what your doing, but just make it less of a job role and more of an organised collaboration leading up to a crowd funding campaign...

Another option might be going to Indie dev nights and trying to meet coders you get along with. I've met a lot of developers just from socialising, it takes time, but if you've got a demo on a laptop you might recruit someone in person and that will allow you to get a bit more knowledge of what they're like etc than a random internet meetup.

The final suggestion is aim to get funding as soon as possible and pay this person if possible, having a budget will allow you to get the people you want.. see if theres any real funding options open to you?

[knifeySpoonie]

also Souldomain does make some important points... there are a lot of cool tech demos out there that don't have fun gameplay, maybe you need to focus some of your effort now on how the gameplay will be fun... why plan 4 chapters if people get bored getting sticks, and never make it to space...

[Aloft]

I read the bio page. It didn't mention anybody to have experience in game design, or just gameplay design, or at least level design. No examples of hobby projects given. Well, it seems that you are quite new to this. Which means, that like all new guys, YOU WILL underestimate the complexity of even simple game-play mechanics. And it doesn't even sound simple what you are trying to do.

Hi Souldomain.

We have actually addressed gameplay design quite throughly; intending to focus on the first phase as a unit, all of the assets produced have been designed around a fairly complex tech-tree; we have conceived of the bottleneck points and the skill/ gear hurdles that are placed along the tech tree to pace the player's progression, and addressed concepts such as how the psychological drives the motivate players to engage in various game behaviors can be integrated into the experience, while also not being exploited too heavily.
 
Because at the stage of work we are in now it seems best to focus on visuals and bullet-point ideas, and we have not integrated very much of these internal design-documents into our presentations yet. As you are closer to the development side of this industry than most consumers that promo site is targeted for, you instantly see the presentation for what it is- bullet points. I think it will probably be good to publish our design documents as a primer for those who want to investigate the project in greater depth.

While you are also right to say that no actual "gameplay" has been presented yet (primarily because the medium- the engine, doesn't really exist yet), very detailed discussions of game elements (around half an hour of voice narration) does occur within the tech demo, and that tech demo also gives facsimiles of many game environments and situations. If you are curious, you are free to try it in its current state here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/tj7rrd2ge8nfagw/Sticks&StarshipsDemoPart1.MuseumPrototype.7z

I think you are right to say that game design is a discipline in and of itself, and over and beyond what Game art and coding encompasses, however I would also point out that more-or-less every designer that is industry famous today (Romero, Miyamoto, Carmack, and Wright, etc) had their basis in hard development skills in coding and art. Those core skills often extend out into design skills over time, but the reverse is almost never true. I think it is essential that our team first assemble members to meet core concerns, such as base engine structure as is being addressed now; a design framework does exist, as you might experience in the tech demo. Starter GUI's for interacting with the assets have already been created, and details will quickly be added to that armature to flesh it out as an engine prototype allows us to begin to experience the internal game environment, rather than prefabricated facsimiles of it as we have now.

Thanks for your comments!

[Aloft]

rowdfunding is funny - be careful with any PR groups etc, they will promise a lot to get the customer, then bail early if it doesnt look successful after a short time and cut their losses.. (not all, but just be cautious) You project has the ambition to be good but I agree that it would be good to have the prototype engine in place before launching, cause then your saying "we need money to go full time to finish this" rather than "we need money to make this cool idea real" which is much more daunting.

Yes it is. From the few I have spoken with, I can see they can be slippery fish. On the one hand, they have demonstrated success with taking moderately developed projects, and making "superstars" out of them (this is both good and bad, good for funding, and bad for the reason of "overselling" expectations), and on the other, for groups demanding sizeable retainers, I would expect them to have more commitment to projects they have investigated themselves and agreed to ally themselves with. If you are going to take thousands of dollars from someone upfront, and you agree they are a proper professional fit for you, and you are comfortable with the relationship, I think that dictates a little contractual loyalty. If the patron isn't negligent in their affairs, then the PR group rightly deserves responsibility for its failures as well.

On the demo- yes, I think it is a good tool for helping others to investigate us and our work. It definitely isn't secret, just not for consumer distribution yet. Feel free to follow that link in the message above if you are feeling daring as well!

You are probably right about how to structure the startup as well. Coming from the background I do, I like to see systems where there is someone explicitly in charge, and that person is taking survey of what work needs to be done, what steps are needed to execute that work, and what their solutions are for delegating those tasks. As you say though, that relationship might not be found in the form of an individual from day one bearing that title, but as an emergent process of the group dynamic arranging itself into a work hierarchy. That concept is a bit scary to me, but maybe I need to just deal with it and recruit in the manner you say.

Good advice, as before.

[knifeySpoonie]

cheers, and absolutely no problem... I enjoy helping as much as I enjoy learning off others and I'm currently going through the process of setting up something similar to you right now. but the 3 main people are committed and have the savings/no immediate baggage to do this without pay upfront.. we're also all good mates with around 8-10 years experience each in aaa games or films.

One of the biggest mistakes non industry people make coming into the games industry is trying to run it "too" much like a real business... if that makes sense... They don't understand what makes people in the games industry tick... personally I wouldn't have any leads at all beyond a project lead until your team is more than 6 or 7 people... your just developers working on project together with one guy having a slightly more important vote...

Devs thrive on creativity and doing really cool stuff.. try to pigeon hole them, or give them tasks like they're on an assembly line and they get fucked off. run them like a big studio and they will leave and work for themselves or in banking where the pay is massively more for the same shit... gamers do it cause they love games. treat them like adults and give them good work, and they will often do more work than anyone I know and be far more creative and happy while doing it than most people in Jobs...

Anyways, good luck man, if you need any more advice or have questions feel free to ask, I'll try to drop some advice or answers.

[SouldomainTM]

The thing is that it seems to me that your engine is actually ready for gameplay testing. But you want to go further into coding and I'm not sure for what.

[Aloft]

Hehe, if you think that, then you have been fooled by an illusion of stagecraft unfortunately 

The tech demo we posted that you might have based that opinion on is prefabricated- meaning the chunks are built as meshes from our assets in modeling suites. I in effect simulated the environment a proper engine space would generate from referenced world data. I am not comfortable asking the world for 100k to pursue the implementation of the first phase on the merit of that alone. They deserve to see an actual working model that is the germ of the full game itself, not the simulation of the solution, and it is also the proof I require of myself to know that what I am proposing is honest to the line.

The project was originally conceived to take place in its own C++ engine. It is a tall order, sure, but several independent voxel engines have been created by somewhat talented individuals over the past few years. Chris, our coder as mentioned, has a history of coleading engine teams, (some projects shipped, a couple others shelved, but that is the way of the big studios) and over a decade of coding in several languages, so to us it felt like a manageable risk; Chris would spearhead that work, I would aassemble the art and assets, design mechanics and documents, and work on project management and public interfacing, and we would add more coders as the framework took shape. However due to family circumstances, he isn't able to currently put in the time necessary to work on a timeline like that. While his save format, world rendering, navigation, and simple generation are there, it seems he isn't comfortable with expanding the team with the core he has in that solution, and admits the code is still quite a mess.

Hence the investigation of an alternative route at this time- the more sensible solution to me of constructing our engine environment within Unity 3D's package, primarily in c#. Base Unity is obviously horrendous for this task, as loading and drawcalls code would have to be heavily modified, and an entire new saving and reference system would have to be devised. Even so, starting from the base Unity engine saves all manner of tasks, such as creating a .fbx importer, creating an animation system, creating a shading and lighting system, and all manner of other nasties from scratch.

[Polly]

Just wanted to echo the "where's the gameplay?" sentiment. These kind of offers are a dime a dozen, so you really need to grab someone's attention at first glance .. a bunch of screenshots & video of environment art won't do i'm afraid.

In contrast, when you look at the very first post in the Minecraft thread, Notch posted the logo, a in-game screenshot and a link to play the Alpha. The in-game shot explains to me that it's a first person game, probably multiplayer and there seems to be some kind of inventory. Also, within a couple of posts you see people having fun with the alpha and building various structures.

Now of course this is not the only nor even the right way, but i do think conveying what your game ( read: gameplay ) is about should be at the forefront of your appeal.

[SouldomainTM]

Aloft, I do have the same problem: No money, no reputation. Currently I'm working on a game for smartphones. I want to make a light weight city builder with warfare elements. Somewhat like tower defense plus Sim City, set into a cyberpunk sci-fi universe.

There are only two people on this project, me and myself, and my two great minds! :D

Anyways, I found Grey Boxing to be very useful. I use Photoshop CC to slap in place holders. For now I can already test my ideas with very little code and assets. Since I'm a new spawn to game development myself, I don't know much about possible money sources for my project just yet.

But I think it is reasonable to believe that a playable prototype, even if it is entirely in grey, may at least give me a good means to doge the problems of zero reputation and reduce the doubt of the game's success. This could make other developers consider to do stuff for free first and then get paid later.

[Aloft]

I agree Polly, the gameplay is the crucial element in the whole situation. Up until recently, it looked as though we were on track to deliver that at about the same time as the tech demo and the rest, so were content on our past solution. Granted that the past solution isn't going to work out for us in the long run, we are now back in that position of having to address an early and core concern, yet at a late stage of conceptual, design, and asset development- the project is quite a lopsided teeter-totter for that reason, with one side jumping way forward, and the other stuck in the rough.

We have had an extreme burst of talented individuals applying now, and hopefully we can assemble 2-4 into a cohesive team to start addressing the feasibility study and execution of our current planned engine solution.

For the sake of people with this same problem in the future, this is what we have found: classified sections on TigSource, Unityforums, IndieGamer, Reddit, and a couple other indie-game focused boards didn't really yield any fruit, but of all things, placing descriptive ads in the "unpaid gigs and collaborations" section for computer work on Craigslist yielded incredible results. I think the reason might be it is a place where thousands of people are already actively looking, so the chance that someone with the right skillset might get back to you after looking for related work turned out to be much higher. Hope that helps someone, and thanks for the excellent comments and advice given in this topic!