Studio is composed of the following full time staff: (with the intention of hiring more full time staff as things ramp up)

1 senior programmer

1 senior animation/artist (responsible for creating game assets, environment/setting concept art)

1 writer

Game project has finished preproduction, overall story is set, characters detailed, and the programmer is currently laying the programming foundations - when should a character designer come into this process?

1) When should the character designer come in? Wouldn't game assets, such as enemy models and main character models be required? How can these assets be worked on without a character designer submitting finalized designs?

2) When will the programmer require the art assets?

• The game is an isometric tactical RPG
• Dialogue system with textboxes
• Different responses to dialogue will lead to different character relationships and endings

Or can the programmer implement the above listed charactersitics into the engine without any need for art assets in the early stages?

Game project has finished preproduction, overall story is set, characters detailed, and the programmer is currently laying the programming foundations - when should a character designer come into this process?

Well, it would be a good idea to already have all this pinned down, that is , have a design document, containing character design + concept art etc. , before starting the development (asset creation and coding), especially if you need to hire someone.

If you want to run a development studio (without burning money), I would recomment to avoid

1. Not starting development before having a solid GGD and a clear vision of the look and feel (conpect art)

2. To start development without a lead programmer and lead artist to define the development process, the overall game architecture and art pipeline.

3. To hire more coder/artist until you have a clear vision and technically working development environment/pipeline.

This is not really necessary for a group of hobby developers, which work for free, thought it would help a lot. But if you want to start a business, you need to think like a businessman.

Essentially, you recommend getting a portion of the character designs finished (or at least already started with a few completed characters ready to go) before hiring actual lead programmer and a lead artist to start development right?

In this case, perhaps the script of the story can also be completed at least completed to alpha before game development begins. The script will be done in a way that injects gameplay, and appropriate to the scope of the project.

To start a business, it will be best to get the above mentioned 2 things (character designs + story & script) started or at least completed to some reasonable degree before the actual hiring of full time programmers and artists.

Am I correct? Perhaps this is completely different to how established studios do things, but perhaps this is one good way to start up a studio efficiently.

I'm curious not to see these:

- Game Designer (original founding member) (who holds the vision?, is it an extension of the writer's role?)

- Producer / Floor Manager

- UI/UX Designer/Artist

Typically, I contract for my characters early, but only just a few. As soon as you get "one of everything", you can take a pause before hiring and rolling out.

That's one way to limit expenses, but it would also assume the character artist would need to be in by now.