Looking for expert advise regarding large project.

Elo boys and girls.... long time reader, first time poster

Some friends and I have been working with unity since 2.6 and have made mostly small self sustaining games and a few mobile titles all being solo projects but now it feels like the timing is right to undergo a larger project we consist of a group of 2 programmers and 2 animators and 2D/3D artists and are busy creating a road map for a multiplayer survival game concept very different from your traditional ROK, Rust and Outlaws... my fear though is not really knowing where to start or if its maybe more than we can handle....

As we are all self taught and mentored right here on these forums I would like to know if there is any advise that some of the more seasoned developers could share as far as management, stages, goals and expectations etc... I guest right now I'm mosting looking for some moral support and a few tips so we don't lose our heads.

I look forward to your thoughts

 

Hmm, well you have a right-sized team, and some completed titles under your belt; that's a huge leg up, even if they're small. But still it sounds like this might be a big step from those.

My suggestion is: take a few extra weeks to really think deeply about your game. What is the central fun? The core game loop? Sure you have zillions of ideas you all have to make it even awesomer, but if you were to pare it down to just the essentials, what would that look like?

Then build that first. Make sure it's fun. If that's not fun, adding bells and whistles is probably not going to salvage it. If it is fun, then you will be motivated to continue to extend it, and add some of those other features you dreamed up. You'll probably also have some newer, better ideas, based on having played the core game a bit.

Finally, it's an unpleasant topic, but have you thought about financials? Because you're probably not going to be able to make any significant money from this game. Almost certainly not enough to recover the time you all put into it. Make sure you're all OK with that before you begin. Nobody should be betting their mortgage on going viral. If you get onto Steam, you can probably make some money back, but don't count on breaking even... it's a very hard business, especially without a $10M marketing budget to make people notice your game.

 

As part of planning, you'll want to come up with a somewhat official scope for the game. Everyone probably has their own ideas, but most likely if you try to fit everyone's ideas into the game it will be too big or might not make sense with everyone else's ideas. So have everyone work on their ideas, and then get together and figure out how much work or money is involved with each, and what priority those ideas are (from "must have" to "not that important", etc).

Once you've gotten that far, you've got an idea of how much work the game will be and how long it will take. (Most likely it will actually take double or triple the time estimated when adding everything up, so pad that in as well) You're then likely to want to need to cut some features from the list in order to get the game done within a reasonable time frame, or to cut costs. At the end of the process you should have the scope of the game fairly well laid out, and can start working on a rough schedule for what should be worked on first and by whom.

I skipped over how you all actually make these decisions, but that is probably the most important part of keeping the team together. Conflict and disagreement between members is likely to result in the project failing and team members walking away prematurely if there isn't a clear method for making important decisions. Ideally 1 person is really in charge of the project and can unilaterally make the final decision (a Product Manager role basically). A democratic process could potentially work, but it is less efficient and can result in a project with a designed by committee feel to it or unlimiting scope creep as people keep voting for adding more and more to the game.

Have fun with your project though, and good luck.