Does anyone have any experience with creating a offshore software development site? [Edited by - nuhusky on October 29, 2004 2:10:16 PM]

If you are really serious about this the gamedev.net forums are probably not the best place to ask this question.

I'd start by contacting development houses in Russia and India and any other place you want to work with. Find out the way they do business and ask some more specifics related to what you want to do.

In terms of starting an offshore development house, you'll first have to find an office in the country, then place an ad for a manager or a project manager/lead programmer to oversee the development. This person must be trust worthy. I cannot emphasise this enough.
As part of his first few tasks have him (or her) place some ads in the local classifieds or job search engines. You might even want to go through one of the many advertising agencies.

Before doing any of this you may want to ask yourself; "Why am i going offshore?"

Kooktroop is right on. It is best if you are looking at doing an off shore business to personally know and trust the man who will be running it. I am planning on opening an off shore studio in the future, but I have spent the past few years working with and getting to know the local developers, planting seeds about future plans and watching how they run their companies.

My #1 bit of advice is that the manager you put in charge of it all will make or break you. So I would recommend actually visiting the off shore location as much as possible if you havent already- and located some great local talent- and then be patient.

Or even easier- find a business partner you already know and trust and talk them into taking over the studio off shore.

That of course might be a more difficult option as I think about it. :)

Best Regards,
Micah Hymer
Reverie Entertainment, LLC
www.reverieentertainment.com

And why shouldn't they? Other nations have valuable cultural references to bring to the world of gaming. Many nations already make games and share their culture, why not India.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster hey nuhusky, thanks for trying to do your part by outsourcing jobs to another country. right on! Games arent becoming mass produced enough I guess , so we need Habeeb in India to make the next first person shooter or whatever.

Nothing wrong with that at all, if you can manage it. Nothing wrong with keeping it in the country, if you can manage it.

Mass-produced? How? They are made and they are published, and there is a long period of time inbetween.

When that "offshoring" or even "outsourcing" word is mentioned it sends a shiver down my spine. Because it's often fellow developers jobs in my own country that are put in jepody rather then the managers that make those decisions in the first place.

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Original post by paulecoyote When that "offshoring" or even "outsourcing" word is mentioned it sends a shiver down my spine. Because it's often fellow developers jobs in my own country that are put in jepody rather then the managers that make those decisions in the first place.

That's melodramatic. If offshoring didn't happen they'd only be "downsized" anyway; you're falling straight into the trap manufactured for you - akin to shooting the messenger, you're focussing on offshoring as the bad concept when what you SHOULD be focussing on is the financial and strategic management of the company that has led to the situation where they need to implement this kind of plan.

Get over it. Wake up, smell the roses, and realise that there's no such thing as a job for life, and that (as Lou Gerstner used to pound into people at IBM) "it's up to every individual to manage their own career, both for their own sake, and because they have a responsibility to their employer to keep improving and supplementing their skills".

There will always be cases where someone makes a poor strategic decision to outsource when the facts of hte case suggested to any analytical person that it was the wrong thing to do - but just like every bad business decision, only a fool tries to generalize that into saying that all decisions of that ilk are wrong or evil.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster And British workers are in some way more important as human beings and thus deserve these jobs more than other nationalities? Can't be bothered to log in.

coward.

I was just saying that it's good if a country invests in itself. I don't care about if India, States, where-ever employs more of its own staff internally. So what?

I'd say, sir, you have little empathy or understanding of many developers whom live in fear of their jobs going somewhere else through no fault of their own. Not because of the skills they can provide, or the quality of the job they do - but as a basic cost-cutting exercise made by management - taking advantage of exchange rates, tax and whetever else.

I don't mind jobs being created elsewhere - it's at the expense of perhaps my job, or another peer perhaps that it gets me worried. So take that chip off your shoulder, It's not that I don't want anyone else anywhere else to have a livelyhood - I want companies and countries to invest internally to fill skills shortages - and use offshoring and outsourcing sensibly.

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it's up to every individual to manage their own career, both for their own sake, and because they have a responsibility to their employer to keep improving and supplementing their skills

It's also up to the company to provide the necessary environment for doing so. Many companies don't. And then they wonder why people leave, or why they can't seem to attract the top talent. And then they go looking in foreign countries for what they failed to create at home.

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fear of losing their jobs through no fault of their own

Actually, if those people can provide better value for the money overall than the outsourced people, then they needn't fear from that point of view. There's always random chance, of course. But, in another sense, EVERYTHING that happens to us is our own fault, because we could at some point in the past have made a different choice (worked for a different company, another career, whatever). That's not a reason to treat people poorly in general, but this "no fault of their own" sentiment is a little over-used in a number of contexts, IMO.

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Original post by hplus0603 That's not a reason to treat people poorly in general, but this "no fault of their own" sentiment is a little over-used in a number of contexts, IMO.

For goodness sake - you can't control everything that happens to you. Someone crashing into you in a car cos they are drunk. MD selling off the company and the new owner laying tons of people off. Marketing guy deciding a third party product is better without tech consultation. Rape. There are TONS of things that are out of control, and most people do not have a direct control over their own jobs.