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LOL. TEAMS.
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CashmereCat
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CloseI think there should be a rule that you should release a completed game before you ask to hire a team.
I think there should be a 'form/join team' function of some sort in the site.
With this, no one is running away :D
With this, no one is running away :D
You can't leave RMN. It remains a part of you forever. It's the curse of the thousands of unfinished games, reaching out and dragging you forever in a vicious cycle of gam mak and release.
That said, we do have events that lead to some team-ups. In fact, most events allow for such a thing and usually a few people find each other in the event page comments.
And here, have this:
I wrote this an Age ago and will forever quote it when newbies ask for team-ups. Maybe I should make an article out of it, one of these days.
That said, we do have events that lead to some team-ups. In fact, most events allow for such a thing and usually a few people find each other in the event page comments.
And here, have this:
ON TEAM CREATION WHEN NEW
If you want to take the short-cut route - and let me tell you, it's not much of a shortcut, but hey! it's freer than paying someone to work for you - try making smaller games, helping others out with their projects, doing some of the small community contests and learning what you can. You'll get your name out there and if people know you they'll feel better about helping you.
Of course this can backfire quite a bit if you don't have the better connection that getting to know others over a longer period will give you. Of course, just because you are close friends with others doesn't mean that you'll get a finished product out of all of your work. Some people don't like taking orders and like to be in charge, some may disappear for a time and others may just not care as much as you do about the project you're creating or create problems among the team. Sometime things just go wrong and you're left with a project that you can't finish because you don't know how to do whatever the other person was doing.
This is why it's important to cultivate your own skills.
Your skills are your selling point when it comes to creating a team, and the more skills you have (or more skilled you are in one area), the more likely it is that others will take you seriously enough to consider aiding you.
It's not just mapping, spriting or scripting, either. There's music and sound, the other graphical areas (like battlers, faces, resource management and menu design), story/plot/character development/script-writing and gameplay.
Of these the written areas are the least wanted, whilst the graphical and (in the case of XP and VX) script side of things are the most valued. Mapping and sound tend to fall between, depending on the game, though music can sometimes be just as sought after as graphics. This means that you'll find a lot of people who are willing to write the story for you, but not as many that will do the full soundtrack or create original graphics - especially when they have no reason to believe that you will actually release the game, as they don't know you or your track record.
The graphics and scripting/systems are the tangible things that people can see and are usually the first thing a person looks for when they check out a project. It's what gets people excited for a project and actually look at the story. Sometimes people will overlook this if they know the person who is making the game (for example, I would play anything made by Lysander, Kentona, Strangeluv, Legion, etc... because I know that I've enjoyed their previous games before and don't need to look at the graphics to know I'd probably find any others of theirs enjoyable.) Most of the time, though, if someone wants help they will show them something that will draw that person to the project.
It's not enough to say that the story is wild and the character designs are amazing. You have to show them that they want to be a part of the project. Usually this is done with a well-presented topic, filled with pictures of characters and areas, some sprite work and maps, a concise but well worded explanation of the story and characters, perhaps a few tunes or a small trailer so that people can get a taste of the game and decide whether or not they want to be a part of it. Of course, being know helps, but a lot of people will respond well to someone who seems to know what they are doing and what they need.
You need to sell your idea to the public, make connections, prove that you're dedicated to game making in general and your own game in particular and learn how to do things so that if something does fall through with one of your team, you can pick up the pieces so that the rest of the team doesn't just leave.
And I'm all over the place with this but hopefully you've learned a few things. :P
If you want to take the short-cut route - and let me tell you, it's not much of a shortcut, but hey! it's freer than paying someone to work for you - try making smaller games, helping others out with their projects, doing some of the small community contests and learning what you can. You'll get your name out there and if people know you they'll feel better about helping you.
Of course this can backfire quite a bit if you don't have the better connection that getting to know others over a longer period will give you. Of course, just because you are close friends with others doesn't mean that you'll get a finished product out of all of your work. Some people don't like taking orders and like to be in charge, some may disappear for a time and others may just not care as much as you do about the project you're creating or create problems among the team. Sometime things just go wrong and you're left with a project that you can't finish because you don't know how to do whatever the other person was doing.
This is why it's important to cultivate your own skills.
Your skills are your selling point when it comes to creating a team, and the more skills you have (or more skilled you are in one area), the more likely it is that others will take you seriously enough to consider aiding you.
It's not just mapping, spriting or scripting, either. There's music and sound, the other graphical areas (like battlers, faces, resource management and menu design), story/plot/character development/script-writing and gameplay.
Of these the written areas are the least wanted, whilst the graphical and (in the case of XP and VX) script side of things are the most valued. Mapping and sound tend to fall between, depending on the game, though music can sometimes be just as sought after as graphics. This means that you'll find a lot of people who are willing to write the story for you, but not as many that will do the full soundtrack or create original graphics - especially when they have no reason to believe that you will actually release the game, as they don't know you or your track record.
The graphics and scripting/systems are the tangible things that people can see and are usually the first thing a person looks for when they check out a project. It's what gets people excited for a project and actually look at the story. Sometimes people will overlook this if they know the person who is making the game (for example, I would play anything made by Lysander, Kentona, Strangeluv, Legion, etc... because I know that I've enjoyed their previous games before and don't need to look at the graphics to know I'd probably find any others of theirs enjoyable.) Most of the time, though, if someone wants help they will show them something that will draw that person to the project.
It's not enough to say that the story is wild and the character designs are amazing. You have to show them that they want to be a part of the project. Usually this is done with a well-presented topic, filled with pictures of characters and areas, some sprite work and maps, a concise but well worded explanation of the story and characters, perhaps a few tunes or a small trailer so that people can get a taste of the game and decide whether or not they want to be a part of it. Of course, being know helps, but a lot of people will respond well to someone who seems to know what they are doing and what they need.
You need to sell your idea to the public, make connections, prove that you're dedicated to game making in general and your own game in particular and learn how to do things so that if something does fall through with one of your team, you can pick up the pieces so that the rest of the team doesn't just leave.
And I'm all over the place with this but hopefully you've learned a few things. :P
I wrote this an Age ago and will forever quote it when newbies ask for team-ups. Maybe I should make an article out of it, one of these days.
Dang, I like that summary a lot, Liberty.
Yea, as far as making teams goes, it's difficult to find people you can rely on (and who are willing to rely on you) and it's even harder when you don't have a good reputation for finishing what you start, or at least something to point to and say, "I've finished this".
Yea, as far as making teams goes, it's difficult to find people you can rely on (and who are willing to rely on you) and it's even harder when you don't have a good reputation for finishing what you start, or at least something to point to and say, "I've finished this".
I probably wouldn't form a team/find a team member online. The one guy I work with on a regular basis was my IRL friend for a year or two before we had talks of gam mak, and now we're best teambros after about 4 years.
Online forums are a good way of meeting contacts in the industry, but not somebody that you're going to stake a piece of an indie company on.
Online forums are a good way of meeting contacts in the industry, but not somebody that you're going to stake a piece of an indie company on.
author=CashmereCat
I think there should be a rule that you should release a completed game before you ask to hire a team.
I've felt this way for years; also something inverse is true. Even as someone who had finished several complete games largely by myself (but not entirely; I had fans that voluntarily and unsolicited pitched in with things like better graphics, sprites, title screens, character art, etcetera, but the important thing is I never tried to recruit a team in the early days), I was never able to finish one with a team afterwards. Relying on other people is a huge handicap because other people are, at least on the internet, hugely unreliable.
Now that I run a company that employs dozens of creative freelancers? Well, the promise of a paycheck when the work is complete tends to make internet strangers much more reliable. Out of dozens of randoms not one person has outright disappeared without getting the job done. But that model would never have worked for me for something ostensibly not-for-profit like RM.
The other thing that seems to work well is dating/being engaged to/married to someone whose skill set complements your own, like an artist if you are a writer and so forth. I can think of a few RM power couples who are also game making power houses, and for me, effectively being able to employ my talented girlfriend as unpaid "artmonkey" labor is really really awesome. Being BFFs like Pizza said would probably work too.
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