To team or not to team

[Misu]

There are several people with small experience or professional experience on game developing who would love to have collaboration, profit, and/or to have that experience of cooperating, coordinating, and socially have fun within a group just like yourself. For that, game development teams is something many people would love to be part of. However, game development teams can come with its pros and cons.

I, for one, dont like being part of a team because the last time of joined one, it was very rude, mediocre, and creativity was very limited to me. I know many other teams arent like that but there are always a downside that makes other people believe that working alone is much better than relying on a group of other people working with you. That is why I decided to post this thread.

The purpose of this topic is to share your point of view on being part of a team; whether you are in favour or against, and why so.
Feel free to discuss and add your experience as well.

 

[Meowmere]

Cats can cure cancer.


I can't find teams. I think it's just way to much work to make a team, BUT... That's because I'm a lazy bum.

 

[Fanifacation]

Well, speaking from personal experence, a "good" team is rare. Regardless of member size, big or small, a team will crumble easily if these 3 things arent there.

1. A good leader. Probably the most important one is this. Yes alot teams have been formed with equal work on everyone's part but the leader orginizes everything together and sets the workers on tasks. If you also have a good leader but that leader is a jerk or not fun to talk with, it can sour the experence of everyone on board and even cause some people to leave.

2. The workers effort. If you find yourself in a situation in which you do alot of work but your coworkers dont do nearly as much, your most likely gonna stay like that to the end of this shindig. your esccentally playing hot tomato with super glue, duck tape, and handcuffs on your hands against a group of posh people dining on cheeses in their pent house while your outside. There's no winning if you do everything. Your moral lowers and your more exhasted than your wine tasting compadre's. Make sure work is equal and fair.

3. You. You may think your a great person to work with but your coworkers might not. Yes, you may get your work done on time and yes, you may give it your all while working but there still might be a problem. The problem can be anything really; a lack of interaction with the other people, no real emotion put in what you do, or even just the way you treat people. You may not have any of these problems but do you really "know" you dont have them. Ask a coworker or a boss "could you honestly tell me what i can do to improve myself?" you can learn if there "is" a problem with what you do and if this "isnt" the right way to do it. Simply put you dont know if you dont ask.

Always check for this stuff alright? Its not a healthy group if these sort of things are going on. Work to fix them and help your group suceed.

Anyway thats my advice. Good luck out there.

 

[Misu]

Anyway thats my advice. Good luck out there.

... Dude... you sound like as if I posted this for help. The intention of this topic is to discuss or debate. Im not looking for any help or team at all. I just want a good critical discussion and see other people point of view... but you have a good point though. However I feel like you are missing out on more things.

 

[Deleted member 467]

In my view teams can be good if you find someone doing some other part of the work. Like for one GMC jam I worked with two other programmers and I hated it because I just wanted to program without supervising the code of two other people.
I guess teams can be good IF you know who you are working with already so you understand how they work and such. I mean, working with a stranger on some project is pretty tough when you two know nothing about each other except maybe both of you code, one does art, the other music, and your gamedev names.

I have yet to find someone I like making games with but my friend wants to make a game with me soon - so who knows.

For now my views are teams are not a good idea unless you two know each other well to a certain extant.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

First time I worked with another person was during the last jam, and that was because about halfway through the jam I realised my sprites just sucked too much. I hit up a mate who I knew could draw and asked him if he'd be interested in helping me out. He'd never worked on games or drawn sprites before so I was a bit worried about it(especially considering I brought him on so late). There were a few miscommunications based on assumptions but the game was definitely better than whatever it would've been if I had continued by myself.
I generally don't look for teams because I don't think I offer enough as a programmer, but I do enjoy the collaboration when it goes well and am now a bit more keen to continue working in groups.
In the end I can definitely see the appeal of working in groups where you have vastly different and defined roles, but I'm wary of collaborating with another programmer or having two artists.

 

[kronnik]

I've always felt like a comic-book style approach would be best for smaller projects. One writes, the other brings the other art assets. So for a game you'd have the design vs art. Design could be broken into mechanics design vs programming and art could be sound vs visual. There's a spot in there for writing if it's needed, and really all sorts of other disciplines. It's like an opera, also; you have musicians, writers, actors, singers, set designers, etc., and rarely would any one of those people do another's job. Obviously massive AAA title projects are different, but that's not the relevant context (for me at least). I think it really depends on your own personal talents. Though you could debate the difference between collaboration and out-sourcing, there is no doubt a difference between a team and a temporarily contracted studio talent to shore up your own shortcomings. Very interesting and personal thing to ponder, really.

 

[HayManMarc]

I've teamed up a number of times with different people. I find it usually works best when there's only one programmer because people are usually pretty different when writing code. Coding styles, syntax, structure; when it's not familiar it can be pretty frustrating. You'd have to find someone who writes code very similar to yourself to feel comfortable programming together.

If you know someone who codes like I do, please let me know. I'd love to do some programming collaboration with a buddy.

 

[Misu]

I've teamed up a number of times with different people. I find it usually works best when there's only one programmer because people are usually pretty different when writing code. Coding styles, syntax, structure; when it's not familiar it can be pretty frustrating. You'd have to find someone who writes code very similar to yourself to feel comfortable programming together.

If you know someone who codes like I do, please let me know. I'd love to do some programming collaboration with a buddy.

Interesting. I too face that kind of situation before. I was participating in one of the gmc jams (one with comedy for theme) and I had team up with someone from this forum (who I am not going to mention) and this person was a pain in the ass because that person had a total different programming techniques and format that i am not familiarized with. I had a hard and long time trying to understand the code than working on the game. And to top it all off, my teammate lack of responsibility and had no care of working in the jam. I tried asking questions on how his/her code works and the person would only go on, over and over, saying "i am in bed and its warm. I dont want to get out."
Talk about one of the worse teammates you could ever have.

 

[Yal]

From my experiences, the main reason teams fail is because nobody in the team knows anything about project management... which makes it hard to find issues in time (before they actually impact the team). Rather than working with complete strangers, I'd try to get acquaintances and people you already talk to semi-regularly into the team as much as possible in order to ensure smooth communication... if you're working with people you know, it's easier to get properly invested in the project. Make sure you have scheduled meetings of some sort to synchronize and ensure everyone is getting things done, and get a chance to plan around unforeseen happenings as soon as possible. It might seem boring, but it's important... and you don't have to keep the meetings too formal either, there's no real point in just adding "rituals" for the heck of it.