How To Find & Manage a GAME DEV TEAM Online

one of my friends named Tolga managed to pull something off that I really didn't thought was possible he managed to hire an entire game development team via the Internet entirely for free he didn't pay any of them it is more real than you could have ever imagined and over the course of two years they made a point-and-click adventure called meta phobia so in this video I want to talk with you about what does it take to find and maintain a game development team on the Internet big thank you to the entire meta for your team for helping me to make this video please return the favor by checking out their game on H dot IO the game is completely free which is insanity for an awesome game like this and now let's dive right into it I think the Internet personally is great for game development I think over the Internet you can find someone who wants to work on the same exact project that you have in mind with the same exact style the best thing is you can focus on what you're very good at and my strengths are of course the art the graphics the animations then David wrote

me that the advantage of finding a team online is probably just the simplicity in finding people it allows you to work with someone far from your place who shares the same ideals I personally can only add that working in the team is so much more effective let's say your team consists of just three people that means two-thirds of your game are basically making itself you're in a constant feedback loop with all of the others and that makes it just so much easier to stay motivated and to actually make a great product the reason why I can say that with confidence is because I've made plenty of games alone I've made plenty of games and a team I've even made an entire game via the internet as well with a stranger I've never seen during the entire two-year development ratings to Melissa now how do you find a team online how do you find people to work with and how can you convince them to work with you I needed an author and the puzzle designer for an adventure idea and that's how I came in contact with Dave the writer for meta phobia David wrote I joined him because I felt like we had a lot in common we both lost the same adventure games

people movies I think it's important to have similar taste when you wish to work with someone I saw that Tolga had made a post in a message board for a popular point-and-click video game engine called adventure game studio he had posted a few screenshots of background art and he said he was looking for someone to write the music for the game and I thought the background images looked great so I messaged him there are obviously a lot of places to look for a team a lot of different forums a lot of different discord communities for example you can join my discord community link to that is in the description as well and no matter where you search for a team there are some critical information that you should always include the most important one is if it's paid work or if you're looking for free work that is super crucial information it's really important to just be like completely honest in everything like we could be completely honest with your own skill level like be completely honest with what you can and can't do be completely honest with your time commitments and constraints be completely honest about

your ideas for the scope of the project and also like the expectations for you know the people that you'll be working with one thing I know is a big turn-off for me and that I know makes a lot of other people shy away as well is if you say something like I calculated that this game will make 3 million dollars it will get 200,000 downloads do you want to join that feels really unprofessional to me one thing you could say is my last game sold X amount of times and my last game made that amount of money and that at that point is no speculation anymore that is definitely something that will make your project more attractive if you can say yeah my last project got 2000 downloads on each story oh great I'd rather personally work with someone who like for example has only released like 2 small games as opposed to someone who's worked on like 50 projects and like never released a game like to me that's that's telling me something about that person Vincent wrote I believe that the best way to convince people who work with me

is to show them my willingness to undertake something that I really care about and always try to prove them my intentions with something concrete and real if people want to work with me I usually show them a kind of portfolio so that they can check out my work you need to get your own skill level to a place where people say like wow this person's really good at what they do like I want to work with them when pitching your project online to find people to work with it is very important that you don't just focus on the things you want it's also important that you focus a little bit on the things other people might want otherwise your pitch will not sound very attractive most people when joining your team want to make sure that you respect them that you respect their opinion and that they have a certain amount of creative freedom in the project as well especially if it's free work then that is even more important you want to make sure that all of your team members feel a certain amount of agency and ownership over the project you can't just be the

boss director that decides everything that will either make nobody join your team or everybody will quit your team very early it was hard for me to let go of all the control you know the others also had a lot of input and a lot of ideas Vincent wrote I'd know that someone is the right fit for my team when they know how to deal politely with other people and constantly show their work as a sign of credibility I think the best way to get people to work with you is to kind of give them give them a reason to like have faith in you you know not being in person it's kind of hard to get like a good feel for someone online but I I think like honesty is one of the bigger factors that I look for and it's it's pretty often overlooked be very honest and polite show your previous works state exactly what you're looking for and find people who are very reliable and you trust will stick it through till the end the next step once you have a team what do you need to pay attention to when working together online first of all I'd really make sure that you have a lot of different ways of reaching your team members because that

is definitely something that can happen some of your team member just doesn't show up anymore you don't know what's going on I can understand that you don't want to share maybe your phone numbers with strangers on the internet you don't have to do that right away but once it's clear that you'll be working together for a while and once you trust each other I really recommend doing so just to make sure that you can reach each other fortunately for us like we chatted a lot during the process of development often like several times a day I feel like we would respond to each other like if someone messaged something and it wasn't like middle of the day then it would only be like an hour to when someone would would reply and then we'd all be talking communicating effectively via the internet is definitely one of the biggest challenges of working together online nothing can replace the immediate conversation with a person when you meet face-to-face let me quote David here again one person said something then the other understood something else and the final idea was just something completely different sometimes our code or received incorrect information so he implemented a wrong thing into the game and he was not happy

that he had to redo that part all over again I often asked Vince to put him just one pixel more to the right or two pixels more to the left it was very unnerving for him seems like Vincent agrees to that as I've wrote me I think that the one most difficult part was to work on the graphics department concerning programming because there was a lot of precision to deal with for me personally the obvious solution to that would be let the artists implement their graphics themselves let the sound designers implement their sounds themselves if there's any chance you can make that happen then make it happen otherwise the programmer has to deal with everything and it's just too much back and forth there are tools like git or SVN that allow you to all work on the same project at once so if possible make use of that communicating over the internet is is definitely a barrier it's not something that's smooth and easy in meta phobia there were some days where like I had spent hours sending files back and forth with Vincent our main programmer who lives in Italy and I'm in the USA like I remember a couple days

where I was like just waking up and starting my day I was making coffee that's my morning and for him his day is just starting to end right there like he had already in dinner and he's already thinking about that what definitely makes communicating in the team a little easier as well is if you have a certain amount of understanding for what the other people in your team are doing even if it's just like like introductory knowledge of those areas you know if you can understand the basics then you can communicate with a team then of course you need to make sure that you value each other's opinions you compromise in the right ways you know who's accountable and responsible for which parts of the game Vincent writes there have been a few times that we have been in disagreement on some aspects of the game but we've always managed to make compromises that were good with all of the team members personally when there's a disagreement I always try to somehow find an alternative solution and if it can't be found then I put aside my point of view the part the agreement of the other team members and of course if everybody in your team things like that then will not come to a lot of arguments David writes

naturally there were situations where someone did not like a certain idea someone else came up with however we have never argued that much we simply discussed the issue and voted for the best solution if you're working on the project then that your team members know because they'll probably be happy to see the progress that was made on the game that is always encouraging and it encourages them to do something for the game project as well of course lead by example is basically what I'm saying yeah so for me like I didn't really feel like pushed or like rushed from like outside sources but like from the inside I like I put a lot of like vague expectations of myself David also claims that no one stressed the others to work faster or harder and in my opinion in my experience that makes for a very pleasant work environment where people just work voluntarily because they want to and not because they have to finishing is one of the hardest parts in game development so you want to make sure that your entire team stays motivated and with that I mean intrinsically motivated whenever possible Vincent for example wrote I try to keep

everyone motivated by showing them my willingness to pursue the goal and by doing so to keep their interest high so often times the best thing you can do to keep the motivation level in your team high is to keep your own motivation level high another thing what keeps me motivated and especially for meta phobia are my inspirations my role models for example for meta phobia it was clock tower or Gabriel night one you have to find out on yourself what inspires you don't just imitate it I always say it's inspiration of imitation communicate effectively and in order to do so you need to understand the other roles in your team if you want to communicate effectively with the coder you need to have some basic understanding of coding and coding terminology compromise lead by example don't pressure your team too much and keep everybody motivated getting a team on line it's it's hard but I think it's doable and I think that if you make yourself an asset if you

make your skills you know like to a level where people see that or hear that here's something you can create and they say wow that's so good like that really is really really important and I think that if you can get to that level then teams will kind of just make their way to you big thank you to the entire meter phobia team for helping me to make this video you've made an amazing game and for all of you who want to check it out you can do so now link is in the description and all of you who don't you probably want to watch another one of my videos here ooh which one will you watch doesn't really matter they're all good they're all interesting they're all about game development this channel is about game development choose whatever you want until next time bye