Rather than being the "leader" in the sense that you take the responsibility of checking in on everyone, try being a leader in the sense that you take initiative to sit the group down and work out the artistic/marketing-ish stuff together. Rather than saying "I'd like to know what this website is going to be before you go ahead." say "Great, lets sit the team down and you can tell us about it." have them do a little presentation, some rough sketches, it can double as a brainstorming session. You'll find that all sorts of good ideas will come out of these little sit-downs. Probably this is happening already on some informal level, just formalize it a bit while reassuring them that you don't have any sort of final say, its just a team input and review session.

On any game project there needs to be a common vision of the end product, regardless of whether its free or commercial. Theres nothing worse than playing a game or watching a movie with identity issues. These little meetings will help solidify the team's vision. While its wrong to bow to the whim of a single leader, its just as wrong to give each person 100% autonomy.

WHAT you're building is a team decision. HOW you build it is a decision for the implementor. That is, the BIG IDEA is a team effort, the DETAILS are left to the individuals.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster But it is justified from their point of view. I think that when they say "it's a passion" they mean "I'm doing this for fun, not for money" but you're taking it to mean "I feel like I'm going to burst unless I make games" like a musician who feels an overriding urge to write songs. This second is probably how you feel (although sometimes it sounds like you're hoping for money? or maybe that's just a last ditch effort to get them to work?). Your motivation is the game, theirs is the fun of making the game. When the going gets tough (i.e. not fun) your motivation is still there but theirs isn't. Also, when you push them, you're taking the fun out of it. This isn't bad, it's what needs to be done to make the game.

Almost anyone who does this is doing it for the fun of it at all times. Money is just a motivating factor in the end. I could do without doing the game it would give me so much more time in doing other things I like to do but I prefer to do that instead because I feel I'm doing something useful for me in the end whether it's for experience or personnal satisfaction.I do think that personnal satisfaction and experience are not enough to motivate a lot of people on huge projects unless they have to do it for school marks or for their work.

They way i feel about it is simply to put in the amount of time I said I would, work every week, keep the pace and interest backed by my passion and eventually add more and more hours to my project if what I did allows me to do so which would imply some monetary comeback in the long run. Going full time with this in 5-10 years would be great but I don't assume anything I simply want to get to there and will work for it. Obviously for them this is too much so it's justifiable for them to feel pressured by my goals.

I don't want to push them to work because the only reason I do so is because they can't work without relying on me for a huge part of the job because when the feel lost they stop and wait for me to get them back on track. I'm trying to get things working in a way that they can become independant team workers that do rely on each other to get the work done but that don't rely on each other to have them guide their littles hands where they should go like in preschool.

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Original post by Ravyne Rather than being the "leader" in the sense that you take the responsibility of checking in on everyone, try being a leader in the sense that you take initiative to sit the group down and work out the artistic/marketing-ish stuff together. Rather than saying "I'd like to know what this website is going to be before you go ahead." say "Great, lets sit the team down and you can tell us about it." have them do a little presentation, some rough sketches, it can double as a brainstorming session. You'll find that all sorts of good ideas will come out of these little sit-downs. Probably this is happening already on some informal level, just formalize it a bit while reassuring them that you don't have any sort of final say, its just a team input and review session.

That's what I try to do. But even simply having them tell me what their idea is just because i'm eager to know is considered by them like a lack of trust on my part. How can I lack trust in people who dont even what to explain me their ideas so we can work it out and adapt it as a group to the project. As far as the artistic part goes, only one of us likes to draw and his skills are amateur at best but I admit he can still do things better than I would do them. For the marketing side, no one wants to hear about it at all because they don't intend to do anything when this game is finished other than ask themselves what's next.

Formalizing everyone's idea is exactly what I want. You have an idea and you think it's great, come on down! Let's sit and talk about it and see what we can do with it. I know everytime I get a new "cool" idea I want to make sure everyone knows and what they think about it. Most of the time it gets shot down by the others cause it's yet another one of my famous ideas and they don't want to formalize anything and sit down and find out what we could do with it like I would do with them even if their idea wasn't perfect. Nobody's idea is perfect but it not perfect means bad and the process is stopped here, no work will ever be done to fix potentially good ideas from coming out of these.

So Being formal and acting as a team seems to be too much since it limits their level of freedom on get ideas and working on them without any kind of approval from anyone as if they were alone. In my opinion, when you're in a team, you have to share everything with the people you work with when it's about getting the work done.

It's none of my business how you get the work done as long as you know exactly what to do because you took the time to discuss it with the others to ask them how it could be done.

If you do it without any guidelines or approval you have a huge chance of getting things wrong and waste your time. You can also get it partially right and do too much work or not enough which in these two cases you need to fix the work to make it what it was suposed to be which makes you waste time again. If you're really lucky you can get it right on the first time but since they don't want to work with exact guidelines and only work with what they think is good it might require a lot of time waste to get things done right.

The biggest problem is discussion. If it doesnt go their way, they whine and back off because they are pissed. They don't even try to get an agreement by negotiating. The only arguments I get are : Obviously my ideas are always better or I'm jumping the guns.

My ideas seem to them like they are always better because I back them off with as many arguments I can and they have nothing to destroy them and when they have their own ideas they have no arguments to back them off and when I ask them questions on their ideas they almost always admit defeat right away if I want to know what it's all about because they always assume everyone will say yes right away or in try it because they know "I won't like it" and be pissed if I don't say it's a great idea without even knowing what it's about.

If they could be formal about it and come on the discussion table and have arguments to back them off from research they made it would be so much more interesting and I would be happy with everyone and I wouldnt have written this thread in the first place if that was happening but it's not. They refuse to do so. Can't do anything else I guess.

Doesn't this belong to the "The Business of Game Development" forum?

"they don't want to formalize anything and sit down and find out what we could do with it"

RUN, do not walk, RUN away from a team like this. The website incident should never have happened. Even if you arent the leader, you should be able to ask about anyone's progress at any time (as long as you arent interrupting or being bothersome) and have them be excited to tell you.

Even a one-person game-making project needs to have a plan. The more we do our project which I felt was very documented, the more I learn that. If your group doesnt want to come to a concrete decision....if they dont want to have a) a voting process or b) a manager who decides...you will never get anything important accomplished that the group will truly be happy with.

If they all have the "you're not the boss of me" type attitude when you are just sincerely excited about your project...thats not the good will and togetherness a team needs to make it through the hard times. Sure they may be very talented and able to produce a photo-realistic model of the Terminator, but that doesnt put them above the law of the project.

I feel for you man. If you can be strong enough to cut the cord dont feel guilty if you do it. If they try to say you just wanted to be boss...they were'nt your friends anyway.

I wish you luck. You have the enthusiasm and the organization necessary to get somewhere. Keep goin for it!

Oh...and make sure to retain any IP rights to the project you have now :)

It sounds like your very decicated and willing to do what it takes, which is quite good and will take you far if you go with it. Alot of people think it would be cool to make games, but often don't realize just how much work is involved to complete it. Since you all got together without knowing anything about gamedesign, i wouldn't call you a "bad team leader", especially since your trying to foster communication and alot of teams and projects die from a lack of it.

I would suggest disbanding the team though, it seems there's hard feelings abound and there will be other teams down the line. Seeing as you formed the team not knowing much, i would write it off as a learning experience for you all, but if its going to destroy your friendship or build bitter resentment i wouldn't see it being worth it to keep going. Take what you've learned and try going solo for awhile, and when forming another team, interview their goals, their personalities, skills, past experience, and see if their willing to work at the level your setting.

It can be just as important to know when to stop, as it is to know when to start.

[Edited by - Gyrthok on August 26, 2005 1:48:51 AM]

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Original post by XVampireX Doesn't this belong to the "The Business of Game Development" forum?

Yeah I would have put it there and it looks like it belongs there from the point of view of many of my posts but it is suposed to be oriented on team efforts regardless of any business plans. But you might be right. I don't know what the others think.

I am very dedicated to what I want to do and I know they don't want or get the same kind of fun and comebacks as I would. But do you seriously think that if this was just for fun and nothing else that the way I would like to work with them would then be too much asking ? The way I see it is that even for fun only, working without any kind of method would have gotten us to do work for nothing and eventually get fed up of not seeing the end of it by wasting time on trying hard to get things done but getting stuck because we wouldn't be working in a proper way. We would end up stopping work on it due to lack of organization and conflicts.

This ain't a school team project here, it's a lot more difficult than that and I know that even for a small school team projects, proper work ethic is required but we all know from experience that this is never possible because everyone in the team at school wants to be leader and do the things their own way regardless of the others. It's still working because it requires hardly any planning and everyone can do what they want since the guidelines were prodivded by the teacher.

But now we don't have a teacher and the guidelines are decided by everyone and we need to know everything specifically according to plan so that we get the best working experience out of it. They want fun and experience then it's a good idea to work while incorporating everything that would be in a real business situation because it would give them even more experience and something more valuable out of it all while providing a bigger challenge. All of this is very exciting for me and I don't understand why it would be exciting for me only and not them if they want the same thing than me eventually.


I was wondering if it would be a good idea to send them the link of this thread so that they can read everyone's opinion on the subject since they are concerned after all. They wouldn't know about it otherwise since Gamedev.net is almost useless and uninteresting to them you know :P

I want the best for everyone of them because they all have the talent to do the work and work as a team. I care for them since they are my friends but it's very hard to do anything, especially with friends when in the beginning we don't see things alike.

If I understand this correctly, I am guessing that you are the center of this group. You have the knowledge and the ideas, but nobody wants to listen to you or your idas. This is very bad.

Every group member has to have the same goal in mind.
This might look as a simple assertion, but it is not.
Imagine a group of people walking in the forest. If the team leader decides to walk north and the others go in any other direction, the group will dissolve; and quite quickly!

This is exactly the problem you're facing. Everybody has too much control over the project and everybody wants to do what the hell they want.
Either You take control (Or somebody else), or leave the project. You could also wait until the group decides to break up on its own, after everybody's walked their own paths and all the work they've accomplished is incompatible with the other's (This is exactly what's going to happen).


This sort of democratic method you're using works well if and only if everybody is contributing to make the project advance in the same direction.


Here is what I propose to keep the project going. Since you are an important person in this group and desire change, you need to send them an ultimatum.
Something in the lines of: "I either quit or we are going to make some radical changes to this team because this is going nowhere".

I realize that these people are your friends, but this is eating you up from the inside, you need to quickly remedy to the situation.

As a final thought, you seem to be taking this project very seriously while your teammates don't. They consider this as a hobby. Am I right?
If you consider this, it's very well possible that you may never be able to turn the project around. The project might have been doomed from the moment it even started.

Browsing through the verbose comments quickly, I generally come to the same conclusion. Communication is the most important part of teamwork, and the rest of your team wants nothing to do with it.


I recommend you don't waste your time trying to alter their views. If they want to work totally independantly, thent hey shouldn't be working on a team in the first place. No matter how talented they are, leave them right now and find people whom with you can work with openly and honestly. I have turned down applicants to my own team in the past not because their talent was lacking, but because they showed no communication skills. My team and I talk and give feedback to each other multiple times a day, and we're all fine with it.


I hope you can find some new partners that work well in a team. That is the first step to getting a serious game off the ground IMO. Good luck! [smile]

I see that pretty much everyone has the same opinion on this issue and I guess that it seems fairly right an obvious.

As I stated earlier, Do you think that it would stir up some major shit if I was to send the link of this thread to the team members or if it could pass?

I would like to make them think about all this stuff. But obviously they won't like it and they will most probably tell me that all the things I said are blatant lies and that I tried to fix things up to reverse to situation in my favor as a "victim" to have everyone support me and be against them. I have described the details to the best of my memory anyways so sometimes it might not be EXACTLY like it has been but very close to that.

I don't want to take all of their credits because they were of great help to me when we worked of the things I had them work on but it's all this difference in opinion and behaviour concerning the group that discourages me.

Well I guess that sums it up. So I have decisions to make and everyone was very helpful because I'm sure your guys are right and that I do need a new team or to go alone at the very least for a while.

Thanks a lot for your time and this discussion it was greatly appreciated.

I will probably keep you guys informed on what has happened even if nobody really cares because I'm not known enough on the forum :P