Collaboration Success Stories

Hey indies, got any stories of successful collaborations to share with us? Have you been able to find people to work with on your games here on the Unity forums or elsewhere?

I am very interested to hear about your experience and advice in finding collaborators/partners/co-founders/team-mates for indie dev. I'm sure there are others here who would like to learn from what you have to say, too.

How did you find other devs to work with? How long did your search take you? Were you able to complete and release any games together? Do you still work together? Any advice towards success, and warnings of pitfalls to avoid that you can share with us?

Thank you for your wisdom!

 

The snarky cynic in me wants to say "there is no such thing", but that isn't true. Afaik the studio behind Penumbra / Amnesia: Dark Descend started out as collaboration.

The one thing I'd like to see people try is a time-for-time deal where the individual parties retain sole ownership and direction of their products, and just do work for the other party like a contractor would, both investing the same amount of time. E.g. an artist / gamedesigner who can't code could team up with a coder / gamedesigner who can't make art assets, and they could agree to spend XX hours each week working on tasks from the other persons project. That's the most risk-free way of collaborating that I can think of. If anyone can think of an even better way let us know.

 

I worked on Project Resurgence as a programmer for two years as a collaboration before it got funded. It can happen, just needs good leadership and a eye for finding similar minded people that are dedicated. You're not going to get world class engineers or modellers, they're already got jobs. You need to be that expert person, and mentor others trying to make a name for themselves. We did this with around 20 people in total. I joined as a skilled hobbyist, took over the role of the expert after a year, and then left after a year. That's that cycle of collaboration.

I'm on mobile, but ask away if you have questions.

 

Does Crossy Road count as successful?

Of course that was a collaboration between a couple of industry veterans who already knew each other well.

I'm not aware of any successful collaborations that randomly met over the internet.

 

This is an interesting idea, Martin. Though I wouldn't call it risk-free, it does seem fair.

The main drawback I see for this approach is (for 2-man teams at least) is that the time to complete each game would be doubled. They could focus on one project until completion, then switch to the other, but that would of course be much riskier for the owner of project #2. Otherwise, I think an "Indie Dev Barter System" like this would be cool, and I'd love to hear if anyone has tried this.

I think the ideal relationship would be finding a team member who loves your game idea so much, or helps you conceive of it right from the start, that they feel that the game is just as much their own, and they are just as passionately dedicated to seeing the project through to the end as you are. How often does this happen? I imagine that this kind of relationship between life-long friends or friends from previous industry jobs is probably more common - but it's probably extremely rare among indies trying to meet people over the internet.

 

Not necessarily I'd say. Imagine a coder and an artist working together in this way, both their games in all likelyhood will need art assets and code. The artist is much faster at making art, the coder is much faster at writing code. Bottom line both projects could actually be done faster than if they both lone-wolfed it. That'd be the best case scenario. Of course it's entirely possible that the communication overhead eats so much time that bottom line they both are slower, however hopefully then at least the quality of both final games is better.

As long as both are disciplend professionals I don't see a problem if they have zero interest in the theme of the other project they're working on. Just treat it like a paid job where you funnel 100% of the earnings back into outsourcing work to another professional. They'll still want the outsourced work on their own project to be good and on time, that should be enough mutual motivation imho (for a professional that is - I'm skeptical if this would work out between inexperienced people).



I also think it might be worth a shot for two devs to make a deal of moderating each others steam forum. Toxicity there can be quite high and I could see how it would be much easier dealing professionally with people if it's not your game they are raging about. Of course this only works if the involved work is comparable, meaning size and toxicity levels on both forums are roughly the same. And they'd have to trust each other to still relay all important information and bug reports. Such an approach might have prevented some of those "steam dev meltdown" stories on youtube.

 

Good advice, thank you!
I'm "that expert person" in my fields of art and design, I've been working in games since the late 90s, including AAA studios. I hope to team up with "expert engineers" with equivalent skill and experience levels to my own. But you're right - most of those people have lucrative jobs, and the few entrepreneurial-minded ones usually seem to already have their own projects going on. A mentor approach, with lots of patience and tempered expectations, might be more realistic.

Attrition must SUCK on projects with small dev teams (it's less crippling at a company with 50-100 assorted devs.) 20 is much bigger than most indie teams, so at least you had that going for you. How do you handle important people leaving after months/years on an unfinished game?

 

Yeah, turnover is a huge issue. But it's something you have to expect. To put it into perspective, we would joke around that we were a "homeless shelter for the transitioning professional". We found that there were mainly three types of people - the ghost, the professional hobbyist, and the transitioning professional. The ghost is of unknown skill and disappears after a few days. We tried to find a solid balance of hobbyists, who would often stay for years providing decent work and transitioning professionals, those with schooling or experience whom are having trouble finding immediate work. The transitioning professionals provide leadership and training to the hobbyists for a few months until they leave. Then you either need to have a hobbyist of enough skill to step up or find another transitioning professional. Losing these people do hurt, so you always need to be looking for ways to alleviate the issues. Part of it is having a good business ethic - trying to help your volunteers find immediate paying jobs. Get the reputation of "polishing" people for well paying industry positions. Build respect with them. Build industry contacts. These will all help you find people, recruit people, and keep people. It may be demoralizing, but it's likely no-one but yourself will be there from the start to the end.

 

Yes, I'd say that counts: us pros count too! As long as it's veterans teaming up together and it's not an employer/employee relationship.

Do you know more about the story of how that team came about? Is there a post-mortem or blog article about it?

 

Google has some good offerings.

https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=andy sum matt hall

 

A little over five years ago, me and a group of guys from the IGDA DC Chapter met to game-jam and prototype a game about trains with guns on them in the Wild West.

Earlier this year we released our game, Tumbleweed Express, on Steam, to nearly unanimously good reviews

http://store.steampowered.com/app/372350/

Over the years our development team has gained and lost a couple members, but the core group has stayed largely intact and on good terms. Everyone who participated in the project was crucial towards making it a success. Some extra members we picked up through the IGDA, and others like our fabulous audio guys we met at conventions like MAGFest!

 

Nice! So you met at local game-dev meetings and decided to work on a game together?
How did you decide what project to work on? Did you form a company and plan out the development and release of the game, or did you just wing it?
I imagine having a project in development over the years, that you could showcase progress at local meetings, must have been a huge help in attracting new members to the team.

 

I worked on a collaboration game for many years. I learned a great deal! The experience was invaluable. We have several volunteers working for us now doing odd jobs here and there. The key to working with volunteers is making sure you remember that they are volunteers. If they are passionate about your game or are working for the experience, they can be fabulous help. We give them contracts that they keep what they make and they will get a share of the profits based on some fancy legalese formula. lol

I have loads of work I was able to keep after the game I worked on folded and that is time not spent doing it again.

 

The original team was made of people associated with the IGDA. The DC chapter decided to get together for an independent game jam event and the theme was "Tram Combat". The prototype we created was about trains with guns on them and we liked the concept so much that we decided to keep meeting up once a month to jam on it and see where it could go.

About halfway through development we started seeing the project as a seriously viable product and so we wrote up a profit-sharing and ownership charter and formed an LLC!

Yup! Showcasing the game was a very important part of our process. It gave us integral feedback that clued us in on what was working in our game and what wasn't, who our audience was, and what the perceived level of quality was for the product. Additionally, our entire audio team and some of our most talented developers were picked up as people who came to check out our project at showcases and conventions

 

Best collaboration success story that I have read is in the book "Masters of Doom"
https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155

 

Except for the part where "the games they made tore them apart". Not all such endeavors are so dramatic.

 

My previous game on Steam can be called 'success' as I gave it to another developer. I'm now hoping they will finish it.