Hey,

I am currently following a course as game artist. Myself and other students had the idea of creating a project outside our school hours. When we talked about it everyone was very excited, but i find myself doing most of the work. How do you motivate people that only have intrest in partying but little ambition towards the future.
Long ago i once had a project (www.goldenoakdesign.net), yes it was too ambitious, i didnt have the experience, but hell, most of our team were very young people who learned most of their skills in their free time, they put down a unbelievable amount of work, and they were very motivated.
I want this project to work, its a simple concept, we have a decent amount of pages in our design document, we figured out it is very do-able in a decent amount of time. But people just dont seem to realise that you need to work for it.

Im thinking the best way to motivate them right now is not with words, but just do alot of work myself and hope they pick up and follow once they see that the project is making progress.
and the simple agrument that they dont have time outside our studies isnt really valid when i can find time for it while taking evening courses besides my day-school and other activities like sport and volunteer work..but i guess i have no life.

I am sure some of you had the same problems, so let me know how you solved this problem!

This is not the proper way to handle the problem. If your team has lost interest in the project this early into the game, you have serious problems. Or more accurately- they do.

Some things that I would suggest in order to boost productivity-

• Create a mandatory "check-in". Something they have to write once a week that says what they have accomplished over the last seven days. The fear of having nothing to write will keep everyone moving.
• Talk to them every day. Ask what they are working on. Find out if they need help.
• Create a list of short-term goals. For an artist: "Character design finished by the 20th of February". But make them set their OWN GOALS. Use shorter times if you want to get a feel for how serious they are. If they fail to meet THEIR OWN goals multiple times, it's time to let them go. There's a lot of talent in this world, there's no reason to hold on to people who don't want to work.
• Accomplishments motivate. Anything that is done by any member of the time needs to be immediately hoisted up the flagpole and paraded through the offices. LOOK AT WHAT HAS BEEN DONE. WE ARE THIS MUCH CLOSER TO MAKING A GAME.

If you just keep working and waiting for them to come around, you are going to be disappointed. They mean well, but if their hearts aren't in it, their hearts aren't in it.

I feel like this post came off sounding accidentally too harsh. I don't mean it to be. Everyone is different. There is a possibility that your guys just are in a lull. Who knows? What has worked for me might not work for you. Anyway, the point is, I hope it gets sorted and I wish you seriously the very best of luck!

You need to understand what motivates each member of the team, and use that knowledge to boost their interest in doing the work.

Maybe they were all enthusiastic about your idea at first, but later came to see that they'd be doing a lot of work for no personal gain.

First off: Motivating people is very dependent on a lot of factors, your personality one of the big ones, and it's hard to learn this from books or over the internet. There is a lot of experience needed to be a successful motivator or leader for a team. However, one of the good books about this topic is Team Geek, which might be worth a look or two.

Im thinking the best way to motivate them right now is not with words, but just do alot of work myself and hope they pick up and follow once they see that the project is making progress.

I think you doing all the work in the hope that the rest of the team gets motivated doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. In my experience, you most likely only succeed in keeping people in the project and tagging along, but not in getting actual work out of them.

how do you motivate people that only have intrest in partying but little ambition towards the future.

...
and the simple agrument that they dont have time outside our studies isnt really valid when i can find time for it while taking evening courses besides my day-school and other activities like sport and volunteer work..

This sounds like there is a bit of frustration from your side. Beware of painting this as a black and white picture, just because the other guys like to party doesn't mean that they have no ambition towards the future, but by telling them otherwise you imply that they are leading a "wrong" life, which will make most people mad. The same goes for telling people how much of their free time they should spend on a voluntary project.

Thanks for all the replies!
I will try a different approach. Although it wont be easy. Today for example we had a meeting planned, one of the older students who works besides his studies even took a day off just so he could come to the meeting (announced the date a week ahead). In the end, out of 9 people, only me and him show up. As friends my classmates are awesome, but as working partners...its hard. They all said they would commit to this project, and then after today, its disrespectful towards the guy who took a day off for this (although i have to admit we did more work as when we would have with
9 people around a table). If i can make them realize that this is our project as a team (not just my project) and that we are doing this because of a dream to someday have a fully functional game (or whatever motivates them!)..and approach them as friend and not as project leader..ah well, lets try it, nothing to lose. And of course reminding them of the progress we make from week to week is a awesome idea!
Out of the 9 people i know at least 3 are really committed to this project, but perhaps that is enough to make a prototype of the game (in worse case scenario).

If i can make them realize that this is our project as a team (not just my project) and that we are doing this because of a dream to someday have a fully functional game (or whatever motivates them!)

Right. Do you know why your one dedicated person wants to do this?

Do you know why each one of the other people might (or might not) be interested in doing this?

If someone's motive is "to have a portfolio piece" (to have a game he can point to and say "I worked on that")...

If someone's motive is "to make money when the game is selling"...

If someone's motive is "to make Shadowhunter not be disappointed with me"...

If someone's motive is "to experience working on a game team and hone my skills"...

Each of those different motives needs a different response from you. And some of those motives might not fit with your project.

Alright, thanks again. I simply made a poll on our facebook page presenting them with the question of what motivates them and giving them some options (might not be the most subtle way to present this, but im just going to play open card with them). Will probably take it up with each of them individually afterwards. Good advice!

Alright, thanks again. I simply made a poll on our facebook page presenting them with the question of what motivates them and giving them some options (might not be the most subtle way to present this, but im just going to play open card with them). Will probably take it up with each of them individually afterwards.

The Facebook poll sounds about as subtle as a sledgehammer. And about as impersonal as an M1A2 Abrams tank. Dude, you need to have personal conversations with each one to find out their motives, and you don't phrase it "what motivates you," either. You probably have to start recruiting all over again.

From my experience - find a new team. It's just waste of time to try to motivate people to start working. It's absolutely mandatory if you want to build something to waste time only for that what matters. Let's say if you have 100 points of energy and you waste 50 of them for motivating others, you'll launch in 5 years.

I've worked with teams that I had to motivate, i.e I was the locomotive they were the wagon. It's feasible but we moved so slow with our work it was insane....

Now I'm working with teams that I don't waste time to motivate and everything is perfect :)

It goes to say thats its best to have the "right people" than "skilled people".

Recently, I've worked on a project with driven individuals with sub-par technological knowledge and I can assure you that motivation goes a long way.

Without being as extreme as altras (I do like the challenge of motivating / empowering teams that are not necessarily up to a task and bring them to a level where they are in the zone) I'll agree that have the "right people" (those motivated to work on a project) can really go a long way while having a team of "skilled people" can be quite stagnant and inefficient at times.

That said, I'm not sure what's the easiest for an indie: try to motivate team members already found, or seek for new partners out there...