Tips for Working Together in Groups (closed, thank you!!)

[AsHLeX]

Disclaimer: If any of my statements seem rude or anything, please know that I don't mean to be so. I'm genuinely curious and I'm only speaking from my limited experience.

Out of curiousity, for all the people who has worked together and has managed to complete a visual novel in groups before, how do you do it? In my experience, I've had group members either go missing completely or just take extremely long to finish something (e.g. a year). I understand that part of this is my fault, since I don't specify deadlines and I feel too guilty to rush people. I also don't follow-up as often as I probably should (because I don't want to make others seem like I'm being too pushy or anything - I've learnt to follow up more after one of the artists sent me a message saying "Oh, I'm so sorry, I thought the game was dead since you didn't message me at all." which honestly surprised me, because I didn't know at that time we were supposed to follow up with people. That was my first time working with a partner, so I know I was inexperienced so be kind to me.)

Also, when do you think looking for group members is a good time? Because i tend to only look for group members after I've finished everything that i can possibly do on my part (e.g. writing and programming) but I feel like sometimes that creates a disconnect between the group members (like we're always waiting for someone to catch up - either be the artwork or the programming or etc.) and it's demotivating possibly for the person being left behind?

And also, is it better if you're paying for your group members to be a part of your team? I haven't tried to pay for anyone's services on lemmasoft yet, (the ones I've tried are on other websites), but in my case there's one paid artist in which it's been 2-3 years and she hasn't had any news of the characters yet, despite me messaging her every few months (always something to do with tablet broken, family stuff etc.etc) And I get that, but at this point I don't think I'll ever get my characters anymore. What is your cutoff point for too much if you're a paying customer btw? I mean, I want to be understanding and stuff but sometimes a few years is just a little over the top and I've had to forgo a few paid artworks before because of these things.

Maybe it's just the way I work with others or maybe it's because I just don't know where to look. I've had a few good partners in the past (with my history of problems with partners, full on group work just sends me into a headache so I try to stick to as few group members as possible). The reason I'm asking is because I was thinking of remaking an old game that I did in the past (writing is 100% completed) but I'll need help with programming, artwork etc. Paying for services is definitely going to be expensive (by the way, how much does it usually cause for you guys to make one VN?) and I get that people are doing you a favour if they're offering their services for free, so how do we balance between not being overly pushy and still getting work done on time?

Basically my workstyle is "works as hard as possible and binge-completes everything that needs to be done in the shortest time possible" which I do understand that obviously other people who are lending their services to you won't have the same motivation as we (the creators) do. But how do I find people who are motivated and work fast (as in serious people who don't take a year to finish their part) without coming off as being overly pushy? And does it help if I pay for their services? How "pushy" am I allowed to be then?

I'm genuinely looking for advice and I'm sorry if this post comes off as a bit rude. I know I'm not the best teammate either and I'm looking for tips on how to be a better one too.

Thanks for reading this.

[Divona]

We had a virtual office on Slack for communicating with the group. We had the weekly meeting once a week to check on the progress of each department. Deadline is important. When you giving out an assignment, check with the department to see when can they deliver the product. Put that on the schedule, and don't nag them until the deadline come. You can then negotiate with the department if the deadline is too long for the overall production schedule. Usually, you will see the progress during the weekly meeting. With the deadline, make sure you leave some buffer time as well for those unforeseen events.

Best time to find team members would be once you have Game Design Document ready, where it outline and details all the plot, story, and core functions of how everything in the game would work. This will allows each team members to be on the same page of what you want, what these game is all about. It will be a point of references for each departments to follow through. If you're a programmer, you can make a prototype to further communicate what kind of the thing you want to create using placeholders.

There will always be waiting for each department to finish their work. It will be production manager who wrangling the tasks of each department to make sure there won't be too much downtime. Have a calendar and draw a line with colour of each department on them to indicate schedule. Make sure that each colour lines always overlap each other, so the work on each department never stops. Project management planning software would help also.

It is always better to pay the team member. They all have live and bills to pay. Even if they says they will work for free, get them to send you an invoice anyway with no date of when you have to pay. So you know what you own them, and you can repay them later in the future. A nice box of chocolate or a bottle of wine also appreciated. Heck, I even got a lottery ticket as a payment once. It is a nice gesture of appreciation that you do care about the team who help you achieve the goal.

If you want to work fast, you have to negotiate with each department beforehand. Deadline is the first indication of when the project has to be finished. Then it will be you, as the director or producer to decided what need to reduce or cut so the project can be finished on time.

[Morhighan]

I agree with the points Divona made.

Use contracts. Communicate.

Hello Bonsai has easy to use contracts. I recommend Discord for communication.

Use a task manager like Trello for your team.

[Mammon]

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=43612 Here's a thread with a similar topic, for reference. My overly long post of advice is in there, no need to bog this thread down with it as well.

[AsHLeX]

I've read through all of your answers (including the thread that you linked to, Mammon) and first off, let me say thank you so much for the insight that you've all given me. I've come to realise that being a project manager is a lot harder than I thought - especially if I'm working with a huge group of people.
I never thought about the box of chocolate part, I've always wanted to repay the people who've helped me in my games in some way or another but physical things never crossed my mind. Thanks for the idea.
Although I've read about contracts before, I've never actually considered using them simply because it felt too... Formal. But I can see now why they're a good idea and I'll definitely think about implementing them in the future. And it'll definitely help with the deadlines part, I would think, and weekly meetings would probably be a good idea. I've never done it myself, as I usually only work in pairs, or with 2 people at one time at most, but I can definitely see the benefits behind it.
Also, thanks Morhighan for the resources, they'll definitely be useful. I've only used discord for team gaming, but given it's lightweightness it's probably a better option then say, Skype for example.
Again, thank you so much to all of you for the advice and for taking your time to read this It is very much appreciated.