Specifics about creating a team

[marmerjen]

Hey,
I have been lurking on this forum for a while and am currently working on a game idea. I am now writing an outline for my game, however in order to make my game the highest quality possible I'm going to need a team. I do have a few questions about how this would work exactly.
1. First of, I'm a poor High school student so I'll be unable to pay the team, however since the game will be pretty big I want it to be commercial. So I was thinking of paying them with a kickstarter and the profits of the game. In order to do so I'll need something like a contract right? How would that go exactly, and how big should the percentage be on average?

2. When would it be a good idea to try and gather a team? At this moment I'm thinking of asking after I finished the outline, and after I finished writing at least the prologue. Is that a good time?

3. Because there are going to be minigames in my game I'm going to need a programmer. How exactly should I write the text so that it would be the most comfortable for the programmer?

4. Lastly, I've never worked in a team, and I would be the team leader. How should I make sure that everything is going to go smoothly? I was thinking of weekly updates. And how would I make sure the deadlines are comfortable enough for the other people in the team?

Thank you for reading this entire post! I'm hoping that if you know one or more answers to my questions you'll respond to me in this thread. Thanks in advance!

[papillon]

This may sound a little harsh but: You have no money. I am guessing you have no experience even slightly relevant, either. You say you've never worked in a team. (Really? Not even for a school project?). I'm guessing you've also never run a small business, either (yes, some high schoolers do this). Have you ever written anything novel-length before? Have you ever been published? Do you have contacts in the game industry? What do you have to offer that would make anyone want to work with you?

So I was thinking of paying them with a kickstarter and the profits of the game.

Why would anyone agree to do work for you on the grounds that you MIGHT pay them later, IF your kickstarter/game is finished and successful? Many, many projects fail. Many never even launch. How do you expect to convince someone that instead of getting paid actual money for their skills, they should work for you for free on the hope that someday in the far future maybe they'll get paid something? The only people likely to agree to this kind of setup are the ones who don't actually have any skills and experience that would allow them to get hired by a real team... and you're not going to get very far if no one you collect for your skills actually knows how to make the game.

You have dreams, and dreams are good, but it takes more than just a dream to get anywhere. If you make a kickstarter and promise everyone the biggest, most beautiful game ever, MAYBE you'll raise funds... but then shortly you'll find yourself with all the money gone, no game, and a lot of people extremely angry with you. And that's a really painful thing to deal with! Please don't do that to yourself and any potential minions.

If you really want to do this project, write the entire script first. Not an outline, not an outline and a prologue. Because if you have a complete game script and it's good, then you actually have something to offer, and you can use that script to get other people on board. If they read it and like it, they may get excited and want to be part of your team.

Alternate approach: Save up enough money to at least pay people to work on the demo/kickstarter with you. While it's wrong to expect people to work for free and hope that a kickstarter eventually covers it, it's fine to have them do only a small amount of work and pay them for exactly that much. If you build a very small nice-looking playable demo, it will give you experience in a lot of game-making aspects and make it much easier to raise funds for a larger game.

[SundownKid]

Hey,
I have been lurking on this forum for a while and am currently working on a game idea. I am now writing an outline for my game, however in order to make my game the highest quality possible I'm going to need a team. I do have a few questions about how this would work exactly.
1. First of, I'm a poor High school student so I'll be unable to pay the team, however since the game will be pretty big I want it to be commercial. So I was thinking of paying them with a kickstarter and the profits of the game. In order to do so I'll need something like a contract right? How would that go exactly, and how big should the percentage be on average?

2. When would it be a good idea to try and gather a team? At this moment I'm thinking of asking after I finished the outline, and after I finished writing at least the prologue. Is that a good time?

I was in your shoes once, but odds are, trying to make a team to work for free will fail. It is a fact of life that the vast majority of artists will want SOMETHING in compensation, not just the promise of future bucks.. maybe. If they don't then it's likely they will either decide they will fairly soon or just quit the project when they get bored- or leave you hanging for months.

Also, as said earlier, a Kickstarter is NOT the be all end all. You are NOT home free when you fund a Kickstarter, because delivering is even harder than raising the funds in the first place. Even with cash, things can go south real fast.

Ultimately I think the best option will be to try to make whatever you can on your own, limitations be damned. If you suck at art then make the art in monotones or black and white. As long as the story is good people won't care if the art is quickly made or sketchy. It's not going to be a fancy pretty live2D game but some people appreciate story more than art. As long as you learn the basic tenets to avoid looking poorly done, you can do more with less.

By far the biggest example of what I have just described is Onepunchman. The original webcomic's art is horrid, especially in its early stages. It's obvious that ONE was just learning about art. But the story is so engrossing that he garnered a tremendous following, so large that it got picked up as a manga and then an anime. It's an edge case, but it demonstrates what you can do with a good idea and the bare minimum of artistic skill. The thing about it is, despite his lack of details, the actual execution of the panels is good, so your imagination takes hold and does the rest.

3. Because there are going to be minigames in my game I'm going to need a programmer. How exactly should I write the text so that it would be the most comfortable for the programmer?

If you can't program a minigame then don't bother unless you have the game itself down. Most people won't care - it's really just a bonus unless you can really integrate it with the story in a way that provides an extra selling point.

4. Lastly, I've never worked in a team, and I would be the team leader. How should I make sure that everything is going to go smoothly? I was thinking of weekly updates. And how would I make sure the deadlines are comfortable enough for the other people in the team?

You can't really "lead" a team if you have nothing to motivate them with. It's like a dictator trying to command a nation without an army backing him up. So again, I would avoid that unless you can make enough money to compensate people.

[Mammon]

More to the topic of how to lead a team, there's two quite recent threads about it here and here. But considering that you are more worried about whether to lead a team than to leading it, these are probably better to be saved for once you've actually get one, if at all.

since the game will be pretty big I want it to be commercial. So I was thinking of paying them with a kickstarter and the profits of the game. In order to do so I'll need something like a contract right? How would that go exactly, and how big should the percentage be on average?

I'll have to agree with Papillion, know your limits and prospects. If you're saying that you've got no experience and no projects to show for, then I'd say change that before you go commercial and teambuilding. Kickstarter is not really a viable option here considering that you'll probably won't even get the minimum required amount of what you were going for. Even first-time projects that look good and enticing can fail their kickstarter simply because they're first-time projects.

So I'd say; if you call your project big and want to make it commercial, start realistically with a small project that you solo-dev so that you can scrap 'no experience' and 'no pay' from your introduction. Or for realism to strike when your tipjar doesn't get filled to the brim after you release your game. But just like a large story that will have many dozens of routes I'm saying 'get an actual project out before you go on such an impossible task' because you haven't even overcome the most rookie of mistakes yet.

Start a project of your own. Just like Sundownkid suggested, this doesn't need to be a pearl in anything that isn't your forte. If the writing is good, then it'll be good. It's a project that needs to show your worth and your dedication, if you make a large project yourself over a half year or more this will be speaking volumes of your focus, as will a one-month story that looks unfinished and rough around the edges. Let it be your credentials.

2. When would it be a good idea to try and gather a team? At this moment I'm thinking of asking after I finished the outline, and after I finished writing at least the prologue. Is that a good time?

Absolutely not, especially if you have no previous projects then there's no guarantee that your outline will suffice. While I do always lobby for everyone to make an outline first, it's only step 1. And the prologue is only step 2. Things won't get hard until step 4; the part that's either slow or filled with writer's block or step 5; the rewrites. That's when most writers not meant to be writers stop their writing either to go to a new project that's not yet at step 4 (because it will totally not happen with this project!) or who think that their first draft will do. Unless you get that first project as adviced in 1., at least 80% of the script should be finished if not completed with rewrites also done before you go out recruiting.
P.S. When you're saying outline, how many pages and how much of it dedicated to the actual events (character outlines don't count!). Is is about 5% of the length of what you expect your eventual project to be?

3. Because there are going to be minigames in my game I'm going to need a programmer. How exactly should I write the text so that it would be the most comfortable for the programmer?

Know your limits, try not to add such difficulties to the story until you can make a regular VN. I wouldn't even recommend new GUI and voice acting for a first project unless you've got team mates who know how to do such things properly, so stay far away from stuff like minigames when you're still new to the basic stuff.

4. Lastly, I've never worked in a team, and I would be the team leader. How should I make sure that everything is going to go smoothly? I was thinking of weekly updates. And how would I make sure the deadlines are comfortable enough for the other people in the team?

See links above.

[SundownKid]

Know your limits, try not to add such difficulties to the story until you can make a regular VN. I wouldn't even recommend new GUI and voice acting for a first project unless you've got team mates who know how to do such things properly, so stay far away from stuff like minigames when you're still new to the basic stuff.

That is actually something I forgot about. Minigames require GUI art, and GUI art requires a GUI artist. However, the default UI is free and isn't terrible as long as you apply some basic customization to it, like different fonts to give your game a unique feel instead of just using the default DejaVu Sans.

Of course, the best thing you can do is learn all this stuff yourself. Some of the best indie games I've played have had some of the smallest teams of one or two people. As a high schooler you have plenty of time to learn a bunch of skills.

[Ghost of Crux]

Everyone else with actual commercial titles have said it all, but I kinda want to say this:

Working on any project is a big commitment. Have you proven yet, to yourself, that you have the willpower to push through for months if not years?
Not trying to come off as harsh-- I myself am pushing back some commercial ideas in favor of trying out shorter stories because I admittedly haven't trained my muscles yet for long-term. But this is really important no matter if you're paying off your teammates out of pocket or through Kickstarter. Learning your thresholds as a creator is an important part of being in any long-term creative endeavors. Burnout is very likely, and boredom is a real threat. Finding out the rate in which either of those things set in proportional to the intensity of work is something you can only find out through trial and error.

Work done on the project will probably be 100% wasted barring anything you did yourself if you end up cancelling it after any progress is made. Most artists wouldn't consent to the arts done for one project being used for another. Actually, this is probably true for all parts of the VN. Unless you have the capital to pay people enough that they'd be willing to let you use their assets for beyond their original intended uses (eg using a sprite art for a project on another project), the only thing that would result out of a cancelled large-scale project would just be experience you could have for effectively zero cost (other than your time).