The Outsourcing strategy

[JQuartz]

I recently just finished reading a book on outsourcing and I wonder if it could be applied for making RenPy games. So here's the idea

1 person who is good in Renpy and have came up with an idea for a game will find other people who can do the tasks required to create the game. So the creator will then outsource the work to the people (who I will call managers). The managers will the find noobs that are interested in learning RenPy and teach them some basic stuff and then the managers will pass the uncreative and easy but tedious as well as repetitive tasks to them to do.

The immediate benefits is the creator can finish the game faster with less effort, the managers get to be part of the creation of the game while the noobs gets to learn about making games.

Future benefits for the managers is they get to build a group that will be able to help the person in turn when he/she gets an idea for a game while for the noobs they might be get good enough to one day be a manager themselves.

I'm not sure how it would work because I'm a noob and I've never made a game before and so I'm not sure there is actually enough separated parcels of work to pass around.

So basically I'm wondering if such a strategy will work because if it does people can create games at an accelerated speed. Please comment.

[yummy]

Basically, Ren'py is not really a language that requires deep knowledge of programming issues. It's mostly a tool that helps you to set up your story, just like what they use in cinema for these scenes. You might even construct a baseline for a manga or an anime.

The problem is, no one will create ideas instead of you. Most of the community works in one man team, close contacts teams or in some exceptions with someone who's at some remote place.

In the first case, projects advance slowly because they are in charge of everything and they won't necessarily ask someone to help because sometimes that's just how they like to work. In the case they ask for help, there are few cases where that help will be consistent (depending on the project leader productivity). For these people, it's mostly a hobby.

In the second case, it's a project with friends so it's bound to produce something fast because there's motivation and proximity.

In the third case, it's a community activity, where several people show interest in a story and want to create something in common with people who have the same interests.

I'm really really dubious someone would just program something that is not only not rewarding but also time wasting than "uncreative things". Personally, it's something I don't like to do because creating a game is something that is meant to be fun, not an annoying task.

I still think that creating a game is fun so instead of making other people learn how to program, I'd rather teach people how to create a game (and at least finish a short project).

[DaFool]

I work in outsourcing.

Outsourcing is needed in really complicated things... for a Ren'Py game, not really. Except for really graphically-intensive games, such as commercial ones where you need multiple artists. It's just that people lack time or lose steam in their ideas which is the main cause of stalled projects.

So basically, you have this scenario

Expert ---> Novice
(Transfer of "Know-how")

and eventually, the Novice will learn and try to do things on his own. Case in point: the Chinese car industry.

But if you say you are new at this, you should be the Novice, the person who's outsourced to, not the one doing the outsourcing.

Which means, using this model, you won't be able to give life to your ideas until you become an Expert... you will be helping out on other projects in the meantime.

And that's exactly what I do until I can solidify something viable for a project... and by then, I am skilled enough not to need outsourcing anymore.

This reminds me of some other thread which linked to some great articles. If someone has a 'great idea', he should be able to put something substantial behind that idea. In professional circles, that means money. For hobbyists, it means he should be a proven writer, at least. Getting most of the credit for merely coming up with an idea while others do most of the grunt work is totally unfair. That's why we have the Ideas Dump thread...ideas are cheap. The copyright rightfully belongs to those who are able to make complete projects out of them.

[Alessio]

The immediate downside of the idea is that it means creating a three-level hierarchy (1 person with idea / some managers / plenty of noobs) and believe me, that is already hard to run in the business world, when people are actually paid for participating in a project.

If in this case people are supposed to participate just for fun, and at the same time receive "tedious as well as repetitive tasks", then, sorry to be frank, this is not going to work. Call me negative... it's a professional deformation.

[mikey]

This is a good point, three-level hierarchy is probably too much - I think one leading person is just fine - even for a (I really am starting to seriously hate this term) "commercial-scale/quality VN" this must be sufficient. It's not really necessary to have "line managers" in my opinion. If anything, it may even slow production down. The Katawa Shoujo forums are a good example of such a system, and even though the result is so far still ok, I dare say it's far from a breakthrough in collaboration organization. It becomes very bureaucratic if a decision goes several instances.

The other thing is that while the concept is indeed appealing, no question - there is still this unpleasant feeling that you're using the less skilled to make the dirty work for you. Another worry would be that you'd need some kind of mentorship or quality control (grrr, I sad all those consulting terms, I'm not going to be able to look into the mirror tonight!), so that in the end the work provided is consistent with the vision of the main creators... and that I imagine would take a lot of effort - in the end I think that it'd be much easier and more effective for the people who want to be credited as "lead artist" or "lead" something to roll up their sleeves and as DaFool said - earn their place in the credits.

So in sum, I think the idea is fine, but would be very difficult to apply in this environment - possibly causing more organizational effort and headaches than necessary - the result in the form of a quicker game *might* come, but then the question is how satisfied would the team members be in the end. I don't really see too many benefits of the "working" people. They could just as well start their own projects - as Ren'Py indeed is very easy to learn.

[Florian]

We created a visual novel with a core team of seven people (see http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =11&t=2494). We did not really have a hierarchical structure. We had one group writing the story, one creating the graphics and one creating sound. Each group worked very independently and it turned out quite well.

I think that is a concept that might work for other projects as well. It requires quite an amount of trust, though, because "the man/woman with the idea" can not control the result in detail. For example, if my group had produced crappy graphics, the whole team would just have to live with it...

But it worked and I don't know how we could have created our project any other way.

[Adorya]

We created a visual novel with a core team of seven people (see http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =11&t=2494). We did not really have a hierarchical structure. We had one group writing the story, one creating the graphics and one creating sound. Each group worked very independently and it turned out quite well.

I think that is a concept that might work for other projects as well. It requires quite an amount of trust, though, because "the man/woman with the idea" can not control the result in detail. For example, if my group had produced crappy graphics, the whole team would just have to live with it...

But it worked and I don't know how we could have created our project any other way.

While talking about your project Felix, was it a work study or part of a workshop? I didn't see the original motive of its creation neither on your release thread or in your website, but as you used university technical rooms and credited several professors...

I mean that because I think that the difference between a work study and a workshop (at least in my country) is that in a workshop you are assigned to a random team and are rewarded credits if you are successful. In the meanwhile, professors are giving you lessons and hints in order to achieve your objective for a specific theme.

I think it's a bit like outsourcing but the reward is the same for all, you have to get along with your random teammates but it's not like delocalisation.

[Florian]

Uhm... I think the official term in our case was "Seminar". I'm not sure if that equals work study or workshop.

Felix started in a course, which most of us had to take. The participants grouped themselves together for different projects, one of them being Felix (it was Dennis' idea, by the way). We then delivered the finished visual novel at the end of the semester. There were no additional theoretical lessons for this project.

The sound team did their work in another course, but I don't think there were lessons either.

[DaFool]

Florian >> was using Ren'Py / making a visual novel really part of the course, encouraged by the professor, or was it the group / yours?

If I remember correctly there was this digital media course where Ren'Py was part of the syllabus or something.

[Florian]

It was purely Dennis' idea. I don't think our professor knew what visual novels are until Dennis came up with it.

By the way, maybe we should move further discussions about Felix to the topic about Felix.

[JQuartz]

Thanks for all the comments. I never knew there were so many forces involved in making a game.

To DaFool:

But if you say you are new at this, you should be the Novice, the person who's outsourced to, not the one doing the outsourcing.

Which means, using this model, you won't be able to give life to your ideas until you become an Expert... you will be helping out on other projects in the meantime

Yes that's basically the idea. I am a noob so I'm the one hoping I can join in some good quality project. The creator should be someone who is good and have some projects under his/her belt so that the games he/she envisions will be a viable one/ do-able one.

To Yummy:

The problem is, no one will create ideas instead of you. Most of the community works in one man team, close contacts teams or in some exceptions with someone who's at some remote place.

In the first case, projects advance slowly because they are in charge of everything and they won't necessarily ask someone to help because sometimes that's just how they like to work. In the case they ask for help, there are few cases where that help will be consistent (depending on the project leader productivity). For these people, it's mostly a hobby.

In the second case, it's a project with friends so it's bound to produce something fast because there's motivation and proximity.

One of the point of this strategy is to allow collaboration between one man teams and see if the team can work together. So basically it's a platform for the creation of pseudo-close contact teams (there not really in close contact but the dynamics of the team are similar)

Here's an example
Arthur, Lancelot, Maid Marian, Robin and Batman are all one man teams. Among them only Arthur and Batman have actually produced games of quality before. (The others have created games as well but it either sucked or was not complex enough to be considered a quality game)

So Arthur decides to create a game and lists out all the things needed to be done and begin pitching his ideas to the other one man teams. Arthur who had signicant respect in the community managed to convince Lancelot, Maid M, Robin and Batman to become his managers for a demo project. The aim of this project is not really to see whether the game is do-able or not but rather to check whether the team is cohesive or not. So each of them does his own task (including Arthur though his work is more on keeping the game according to his vision). The managers then assess the leadership ability of Arthur while Arthur assesses the tech. ability of his managers. At the same time each manager will post a noob wanted along with the things the noob will be able to learn as well as the type of work given. So if some noob realize he/she can learn something from the "internship" then the person will be inducted into the respective managers' team.

So Arthur is motivated because it is his game that is being made (If the game sucks it is his fault). For the less capable managers they get motivated because they are getting involved in a quality project and can learn how to make quality game themselves. For Batman he can use this chance to build rapport with the rest of the team so that when he gets an idea for the game, he can pitch his ideas to them (Arthur included) more effectively. For the noobs they get to learn and might even have a team (the other noobs) when he graduates from internship.

But of course some problem is going crop up during the game making process so let's say...
1. Lancelot is not manager material yet (His tech ability is still around a noob's)
Solution- Arthur (being the leader) will have to take over his tasks but still give him credit(It's just a demo). Once the demo is completed and the real project starts, demote Lancelot to noob status if he really still want to be involved. Otherwise drop him out of the team.

2. Robin keeps stalling his work to save the world.
Solution- Again Arthur (being the leader) will have to take over his tasks (or find a new manager) but still give him credit. When the real project starts drop him out of the project. He' s too busy saving the world to be making games.

3. Batman wants to enforce his ideas into Arthur's game.
Solution- Here the ability of Arthur is really tested. He'll have to convince Batman to stop enforcing his ideas. Although he is free to express his ideas, implementing them is solely Arthur's job. Batman will just have to wait for his turn to be the King.

4. M. Marian ends up hating Arthur
Solution- M. Marian will have to finish her part (It's a demo). Quit the team when demo is done and never join forces with him again (or at least until he convinced her to join another demo project)

5. Batman takes Joker as his noob and Joker just absconded with his work.
Solution- Don't give your noobs access to your work unless they've already worked with you several times already. Remember the noobs are here to learn not make the (current) game. They should only be told how their part work not the whole game.

6. The demo is too huge.
Solution- Potential managers must ensure that the demo project is small enough to be finished over the weekend (10 hours max) so in case the game/team sucks, you can quit after you finished the demo.

7. The game/demo sucks
Solution- Blame King Arthur. Since he had absolute power(including the power to delegate tasks) over the creation of the game, if the game sucks it must be his fault. Even if the game sucks due to the team, it was Arthur's fault for choosing the wrong managers and/or failing to solve the conflicts that arose during development.

8. Arthur's a total dictator
Solution- It's good that he is a dictator because there is no right or wrong in the creative field. If everyone gets to vote then the game might not end up like anyone wanted. Steve Jobs is a dictator and he earns millions of dollars.

9. Noob thinks Robin is a lousy teacher
Solution- The noob should ask help from Arthur and just try to finish his part. When the demo is finished, quit the team and wait for the next demo.

To Alessio:

If in this case people are supposed to participate just for fun, and at the same time receive "tedious as well as repetitive tasks", then, sorry to be frank, this is not going to work.

Well tedious for the experts but for noobs it will seem exciting cause they never made a game before, at least that's true for me. Previously when I was learning another VN engine, I spend weeks just making images move around. It was exciting back then cause you're not really sure what will happen. But once you're good at it, these things become predictable thus becoming tedious and boring.

[DaFool]

You don't need that much bureaucracy, really.

The best way for someone to learn is by embarking on one's own project. I think about 50% of the insights I learned about gamemaking is from solo projects or projects where I'm the creator.

What if Arthur or Batman have little Santa Elves (in-house / on-location talent), thereby not needing the others?

There have been Arthur-Batman collaborations also, and sometimes those two are all you needed. Example 'quality' (really, this is a relative term) games from Arthur-Batman collaborations are T***'* T***, E**** R********, and M****** B*******

This is just my opinion, but I think all you really need are more Arthur-Batman collaborations who have more time on their hands. An anyone can become an Arthur or Batman through lots of practice or dedication -- but they have to climb the skillset on their own.

[mikey]

I once again agree with the argument that it's too complicated. It's also probably become more of a organizational structure discussion as well as mentoring/training issue, rather than being about outsourcing.

Outsourcing - at least as far as the understanding in my work is concerned, we are now managing a relatively big outsourcing project - is making the process/service more effective by working with people who have actually even more skill than we do in the given field - the outsourcer is responsible for the outsourced service and it's typically him who then manages his own interns and trains his newbies. But the actual delivered product/service of the outsourcer still meets the highest standards (or same standards with a lower cost).

Outsourcing in the case of making a Ren'Py game would for me therefore mean that for instance:
- the music would be done by an outside artist
- a programmer other than our main would provide a special Ren'Py framework
- a team of artists would do the coloring of all the character sprites.

The point is always that the outsourced is better (or same quality, but quicker or more effective) than what the team can do in-house. It's not a paradox - our main programmer can easily be much less skilled than the expert who does the framework, since that's the POINT - it's not just getting rid of the mundane tasks, it's getting help from people who are not core project memebers, but who can do this quicker and more effectively - and our programmer can focus on his overall putting together of the game's elements. Typically outsourcers have a defined set of rules and boundaries - it's critical to cooperate and help (not just put down requirements and wait) so that the product/service they provide is the best it can be - but the leading and main creativity stays in-house.

There is a very vague line of course, when you want to outsource things that have a certain amount of decision or creativity in them - what is outsourcing and what is already being part of the core project? For instance outsourcing character designs - I would have a project for which I wanted really cute moe characters, and I'd "outsource" this to some well-known moe-style deviantartist - he would provide me with a set of sketches of anime girls with distincive features - distinctive clothing, jewelry or similar... which my regular artist would then "draw for real". Of course you can see the problem - this is already design work, which typically (though not always) stays in-house. Usually the team doesn't want to hand out the control over the creative aspect - but of course there has to be a certain range of freedom for the outsourcers, especially those working on the artistic aspect - music or graphics.

So anyway... this is my understanding of outsourcing. In practice, this can be easily used for music, special programming and coloring. Other things... well, I can't think of a whole lot, to be honest - the examples with newbies training - I think this is really more a discussion about the team's work organization. I would consider the newbies to be a part of the team (especially when they's be mentored by my people), rather than being part of outsourcing.

[DaFool]

I am starting to think that that isn't really something that can be called outsourcing. I'd call that doing commissioned work.
Like for example GM licensing hybrid technology from Toyota, that sort of thing.

Outsourcing seems more closely linked to subcontracting, where it's the cost savings you're after more than getting the most expert at the job to do the job.

[mikey]

Well, can't argue with that - actually this started a discussion between me and my colleague, at the end of which (when we started to look for definitions of "middleware") we established that we have no idea what we are doing (terminologically) - we agreed on the fact that we look for "things we don't want to do/make" and "let others do/make them", so we made it into this one family of practices where businesses use the help of other businesses to create their final product/service.

Also a good point is that this is typically money-driven. I haven't yet heard of outsourcing in conjunction with freetime projects / volunteer work. I'm kind of still inclined to think that this is mostly a discussion about organization (hierarchy and competences).

I'll get back on topic actually - I've thought about the idea and I think a relatively big weakness can be the leader. The system may work, it certainly seems logical - but what about the leader? It's proposed to assess the qualities of the leader, but how do you do that? Certainly I can say I did X projects, but what does that really mean? Even my biggest projects were done by a handful of people - and to take Time's Tear as an example we had close to no deadlines at all - it was really only in the people - I could rely on lordcloudx and I suppose he relied on me. A few words, no weighty design documents, no complicated hierarchies - I really rely on self-responsibility and the fact that no team member wants to let the others down - and it's very similar with my other projects. Therefore I am often really astonished by the level of detail that others have their concepts done in - I usually have some scribbles and that's it.

SO - does the fact I made several games mean I'm automatically a good leader? Of course not, I think I'm actually quite bad in managing *many* people - my way or working is much better suited for people who like to work in a more closed team, with more personal input, without the bureaucracy. It's really completely clear to me that you don't want me for a epic internet collaboration project, I would not only IMO fail, but I wouldn't enjoy it either. And there is proof that several small completed projects don't mean you are suited for a big one - in this respect maybe someone who didn't complete anything has much more talent for leading a big team than people such as me, who like to work in smaller environments. The problem I think is that the true leadership qualities only ever show in a crisis - and by that time it's already probably too late.