How excatly game development process look like in organized studio?

Hello Everybody.
I'm an Indie developer, creating in Unity. I 'm thinking about creating studio with team consists of 15-20 people, but I have never worked at organised company and I really don't know how this work looks exactly. I would liketo know how exactly game development process look like in organized studio? I mean bigger studio with team consists of more than 3 people. I guess that every game studio has it's own strategy, but maybe some of you could tell me some examples from your own experience or from other sources? From what stages project consists of? How long have these stages lasts? The cost of every stage is rather similar or not? Do you know maybe some examples?

 

You just need an office (it would be hard to organize a big team remotely), a good project manager with years of experience in the industry (if the manager doesn't know what his man are suppose to do then the project wont get far) and of course founding and lost of it.

Although since you're an indie who's posting for the first time I can't help but be just a bit skeptical about the likeliness of you opening a 15-20 person studio.

 

The office is already prepared, and the team is going to be completed in few weeks so as the team leader. In fact I'm helping the guy who is the sponsor. So I know everything you mentioned. I was asking how the development process look like in other studios, not what I should do to open it.

 

I'm working for a company right now without leadership in the programming department.
The code is organized; oh yeah... Organized chaos! It makes me cringe everyday I look into that VS project... And the asset management. It's pretty disgusting; then they asked for help... I did some basic guidelines and at the same day 2 made a show about it, wanting to resign rofl.
(thank god I don't need the money to force myself stay and work here, so I didn't sign any long duration contracts and will leave soon).
If they had proper management from the start, the company wouldn't waste half the million dollars they did last year.

 

Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Why are you the team leader if you've never worked at an 'organized company'?

Why are you starting with 15-20 people? Unless you have a very specific project/task that you know requires that many people then it seems a very strange way to approach it. And if you have never worked at a larger company how do you know you need 15-20 people.

Then you have the issue of hiring the 15-20 people. Hiring good people is hard work, just finding 2-3 good candidates can be a challenge for an experienced recruiter. Finding 15-20 with very little experience at hiring (I assume you don't have this experience given you haven't worked at a large company) is nigh on impossible. Whats more this 15-20 will be the ones who establish your culture: the mistakes you make now will be amplified and likely persist for a long time.

Read what @BrUnO XaVIeR wrote above. Do you want your company to look like that?

- - - -

I''m going to assume that you are a very competent developer and you have a strong professional or personal relationship with the sponsor. In that case my advice:

• Tell the sponsor that you are equipped to be the most senior engineer, but that the next hire needs to be someone experienced in running a small to mid sized studio.

• Strongly consider starting smaller, and getting a strong and solid core: highly skilled AND able to work well together. Potentially supplement this core with outsourcing until you hire the right people

• If you want to be the most senior engineering person you are going to need to:
  • study your arse off so you can at least be conversant with the theory, no substitute for expereince but it will help
  • be ready and willing to explain that you want help with establishing the SDLC/pipeline; don't try to pretend you know the answers, your staff will know you are bullshitting them
  • have the chops to back up your position; if you are not only a less experienced leader than your staff, but you also have less technical knowledge its likely going to lead to bad times

 

Hi Clay,

I would be happy to help walk you through things. I've been in the game industry for 16+ years working on triple-a titles (large teams) to small indie projects (few people). I've been consulting with companies for over 10 years, helping them setup their studios, work with management on defining systems and structure, and develop the team members for success. Let me know if you'd like any assistance with it before things get rolling.

 

You have got me wrong. I am not the team leader. I'm aware that we need very experienced person who are going to oversee the whole project. We have many candidats, just have to choose the most appropiate one.

The project is very specific in fact. As I have said before, I'm only supporting the sponsor. I have to advice him, not taking any decisions.

I'm going to be just a member of the programmers team during the development process.
You can wonder now "So why you are authorized to advice anyone?".
The answer is: sponsor asked me to do it. So I'm trying to do my best. I'm trying to know and analyze as many examples from "behind the scenes" of development as it is possible.

It's great to hearing it. I'm going to send you a private message in a minute.

 

I always figured it was basically a lot of pizza, gaming and parties all of the time in the beginning. Then they fall way behind schedule and complain about crunch-time working long hours to meet the deadline.

 

Hah okay, sorry for my long rant then. I think most of the advice applies although its much less relevant

 

As the sponsor s/he is presumably going to be the product owner in an agile sense, or the executive producer in a publisher-studio style relationship. What experience does this person have in games design and financial management? If it's not the sponsor, who will it be and where will they sit in the relationship chain?

What shape is the GDD in? Who determined the work effort involved, team size, and therefore budget? How did they do that if the team (and therefore specialists able to estimate work) isn't in place? What contingency funding is there to cover scope drift and unplanned iterations?

If you're in the process of putting a team together, we can only assume you're unaware of each team member's productivity level and therefore budgeting is likely to be wildly inaccurate. A team's ability to accurately forecast improves over time as the team leader becomes familiar with the team. As it's a new team being formed, that's a big red flag right there.

With a team of 15-20, what HR provision will there be? If you have an office full of employees what are the local health and safety requirements?

Who's managing legal? Team contracts, trademarks, distributor agreements, third party suppliers such as localization and voice acting, insurance (professional indemnity, employee liability)?

What's the distribution plan, marketing strategy?

Who's handling the accounting function? What is the tax situation? Are they employees or freelancers (in the eyes of the local revenue service, not you as the company)? Who's doing the tax planning - both pre and post launch? What local market tax breaks are there (e.g. creative industry tax credits) that you should be taking advantage of?

What tools are you going to be using and what are the licensing requirements? Are the coding conventions documented? Who's the configuration/build manager and how will you distribute development builds? Have you determined your team workflow including file formats? Source control (e.g. git)?

These are just some of the questions the team should have answers to before you begin.