Greetings everyone, I'm currently in the process of deciding about the future the current project I've been leading. As of late I've been having problems with keeping a voluntary team together. The project is a volunteer venture to create a freeware demo. The volunteer target in mind is for those wanting to get into the industry that wants a solid demo project under their belt. The project in question can be found here: Tower City However over the last few months of the following events happened: - Members have vanished form the project. They don't officially quit or give notice. They just stop responding completely. This is a real hassle because it's hard to know whether they have been cut off from the Internet or just have no more interest in your project. It's also impossible to recover work or get an explanation as to if they felt they were getting to much work or was dissatisfied with something. I always encourage team members to voice their opinions on tasks and workload so I could see no reason people fearing to come forward with dissatisfaction. This is even more annoying when programmers vanish, as I have to contact the engine provider I'm using. [unity] and tell them that I provide programmers with indie copies of unity and so need the product codes reset. Something I may need to stop doing as this has happened twice now. - A few members have quit the project officially. This I don't mind so much and as long as they give me some sort of written reason as to why they no longer want be a part of the project. I always ask as to why they left and if it was a problem in its management. However the answer has always been that they don't have the time to volunteer anymore. - Some volunteers don't get work in on time. And also don't update their work journals. It can take a few days to get into contact with them as well as some don't even read their e-mail. They usually give a real-life related excuse. Sometimes it sounds reasonable and real, sometimes it sounds like bullshit. The pattern I'm seeing here is that I'm having a tough time finding volunteers who can be consistent and dependable. From a lead position I've been trying to assist each team member with a detailed brief, feedback on their work and if the task calls for it concept art or design documentation. I've got a production manager keeping tabs on people. It may be cause the project is non-profit that members are discarding it so easily. This project hasn't been a waste of time. I've been able to produce design documentation and concepts that artists and programmers have used to create content. But where now in the 4th month of the production of this demo and it's not even near where I wanted it to be. This is due to people vanishing and not submitting work. I'll now need to do another round of volunteer call outs. And if past experience is any indication 4/5 of volunteers who put themselves forward end up having little idea of just how much work is ahead of them. And they'll quit/vanish when the time comes to produce assets. Or is it that I've just had a bad experience with volunteers and most of them are in fact quite productive and know making a game takes hard work? Should I continue to look for volunteers in the hopes that they'll stick onto the project and treat it seriously? Or do I cut my losses on this project for the fact that it's perhaps to big for a volunteer project and refocus my attention to perhaps a smaller project in scale and time that depends on only a very small team of 2-3 people instead of a team of 10-12? I still want to create a compelling piece of gameplay for my design portfolio but as it stands at the moment: Having hard working team members produce work and then having other team members do nothing isn't fair on me and the other volunteers who have been hard at work. What do you think? Have any of you here experienced similar issues like the one i'm encountering now?

I guess my experince in these matters are very limited compared to a lot of other people on this forum but.... Do you have a strong dependable lead programmer? In many cases I think this can help with motivation for the entire team a LOT. The team members will be able to see some real progress being made by the lead, and if they are at all interrested in getting into the industry they would be stupid not to try and follow the lead...
From the little experince I have in this field I know that I have found myself working a lot harder when our lead programmer was constantly making updates and improving things.

A team of 10-12 does sound like a lot. Wouldnt it be posible to produce the same game with a smaller team?

anyway.. I have seen your site before and I really hope you manage to finish the game/prototype

Quote: Original post by Oluf
I guess my experience in these matters are very limited compared to a lot of other people on this forum but.... Do you have a strong dependable lead programmer? In many cases I think this can help with motivation for the entire team a LOT. The team members will be able to see some real progress being made by the lead, and if they are at all interested in getting into the industry they would be stupid not to try and follow the lead...
From the little experience I have in this field I know that I have found myself working a lot harder when our lead programmer was constantly making updates and improving things.

That's a good point. We really don't have an official programming lead. The first lead we had was one of the guys who vanished off the internet. [And other peoples projects as well. He really did vanish!]

After that I allocated it to another guy who ended up doing absolutely nothing. :(

Bad luck I guess.

Quote: A team of 10-12 does sound like a lot. Wouldn't it be possible to produce the same game with a smaller team?

anyway.. I have seen your site before and I really hope you manage to finish the game/prototype

It's really easy to find how numbers of people needed can stack up over time. To give you an example:

I would estimate by what needs to be completed for this demo to be a fun and polished epxerience. For a 3 month period I would need on the team:

- 1 Designer [myself.]
- 1 Production manager
- 3 Programmers [One lead. Two gameplay.]
- 1 Character artist
- 1 Rigger/animator
- 3 Environment artists [Creating enviornment art is a time consuming process.]
- 1 Music composer
- 1 Sound and audio effects guy.
- 1 Concept artist.

That makes a total of 13 people. It could be done with a smaller team, but this estimate is taking into account that everyone bar myself is only working part time on the project. Which is the most I could reasonably expect from a volunteer.

[Edited by - DesignerWatts on August 10, 2009 9:03:19 AM]