I'm surrounded by idiots or how to work in a team

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Another working day came to an end. And so, sitting in front of the monitor with a mug of warm tea and reading the beloved Habr, someone is looking for entertainment posts, someone wants to learn something new and useful. There are people who are interested in how other teams work and what their organization is. And there are those who all day wondering - why I am surrounded by clinical idiots.

Worse, if all these people around you gathered. This is the case we will consider.
Is the question right? And who is to blame?

Let's understand


Teamwork is an important aspect in any business, the gaming industry, trade, etc. To recruit a team is only the first step, to establish communication within the team, this is a separate difficult process. This material is perfect for beginners igrodelyam who do not like the result of their work, as well as those who want to be more effective.

This is the beginning of a series of articles on speed, the correct HD, the creation of game prototypes, optimization and everything connected with them.

Together with you, we continue to build a powerful foundation for the correct, in my opinion, development team. We spoke

about the importance of the game prototype in the previous article .

We will discuss the methods and criteria for gathering a team, the right interaction and relationships within the team, even if everyone is working on enthusiasm.

Getting started.

Who am i?


This is the first question you must answer yourself before you assemble a team and do something. You need to know your role and position, what is your function in the team.

Understanding yourself and your role will help find the right people.

Why do I need all this?

You need to understand why you become a developer. Maybe you want to do this for the soul and as a hobby, maybe you want to break the whole world with your ideas, or maybe you want to make a lot of money. Any purpose.

How realistic is my goal and what is missing for me to achieve it?

Before you come up with a blue dream, try working out the development for 2 hours a day. Happened? Great, go ahead. You have to understand your weak points, maybe you are a coder who can't draw. Maybe you are an artist who does not understand programming, from the word at all. Or maybe you're a station wagon and you lack organization. Maybe you are just a marketer with an idea?

Now we understand our strengths and weaknesses, now we know who we need.

Where to find them?

On the Internet, on game forums, on the forums of a unit and anrial, on social networks and so on.

What are the criteria?


Character , you have to communicate with each other a lot of time.

Understanding , you need to understand each other.

The idea, you burn it and you understand it the same way you have a similar view of the project.

Responsibility , everyone knows their areas of responsibility and performs duties according to skills and abilities.

The ability to make compromises- the development of one big compromise, the ability to reckon and listen, without it there will be “swan, cancer and pike” (a very big problem for beginners). Another very important criterion, if you are not a developer, then you don’t need to set a task for the developer and the time frame per week, remember that it seems easy to you, does not mean that this is actually the case, it also applies to other team members. If you do not know the subtleties of work - do not bother with tips.

Adequacy - I think everything is clear.

There are many criteria, but when you know what people are willing to work with, you will find them, just believe, it works. The seeker will find.

I put together a team, what next?


The task is to form a vision of the ideas of the team and convey their thoughts, achieve understanding. For this, a game design document is made and edits are made to it BEFORE START; leave this business, have an idea write down and complete one project, and then switch to the next.

Everything is clear, great. Now you need to create a task for a technical demo.
You do not need beautiful objects, graphics and other things, you need to touch the gameplay and test. This is an important step for the final result. You need to achieve a dense and understandable gameplay, collect the focus of the group, show your friends, make an open test, spend 1000 rubles for advertising in the social network and attract testers.

Upgrade the demo to the result that suits you.

Is it done? Congratulations, you have already laid a solid foundation for the future project.

Now begins the most interesting and difficult.

How to set tasks and work with the team?


The experience of creating a prototype has already put everything in its place, if all participants took seriously. If not, then you should not continue to work, nothing good will come of it.

If you don’t use trillo, canvas, etc., use at least google docs, this is great and convenient.

You need a meeting / meeting in any format (at least in Skype) once a week, tasks are put on it, issues and problems that are discussed are discussed.

You need either a clear leader who makes decisions, or an adequate discussion with prioritization. This is your joint child, trust each other and be objective.

But I'm not crying to anyone?


If you read the points above and observe them, people will like to work with you, you will be pleasant to them as a person, this is a very rare property, I think you understand. They will receive their dividends, but they should know about it.

Sign a contract


This is done remotely without problems, spend your time, coordinate duties, deadlines (with a margin), enter your passport data and you will have obligations to each other. It is more necessary for comfort, a person understands that he is not thrown and focuses on the game and development.

As an option for screening inadequate and undesirable people, we can talk about the contract between the developers at the time of the first contact. So you separate honest people. But more importantly, you will understand those who are serious about developing games.

General tips


Be objective - you work with real people, they have problems, bad mood and so on. They may not be able to drop feelings and concentrate on work, this is normal.

You are to blame, but not everything around - analyze your mistakes, get experience, blame everything on others for a bad idea.

Say everything straight to the forehead - do not yulite and speak as it is, be honest, the team will respond to you in return, yes it can be rude, but a good team is built this way. Be

interested in the person - if you need an employee, hire, you create a team of like-minded people. If they are not interesting to you, then these are not the people. Get to know them, chat, maybe they are cool guys.

Do not interfere with the development and personal relationships- an example of a guy and a girl developer, it's just awful. Development, then everything else.

Solve conflicts immediately - do not wait until a person explodes, something does not suit? Ask, so you learn to work with each other the fastest.

Be open - go to meet, build communications, you will not just make good games, you will change your life for the better.

I am not an introvert and I cannot help closed people, but ... they make the coolest games. Introverts have created the best indie games for the last 5 years, they came up with interesting worlds and expressed themselves through their projects. This is a good way, it is easier than to put together a team.

Not everyone will try to assemble a team, especially not everyone will be able to use these tips by at least 30%. Try it, be pleasantly surprised.

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Thanks for reading.

The next article “I’m surrounded by idiots or how to build a production process.”
Let's discuss the methods of organizing, creating order and assigning roles and responsibilities, and consider the cases of deadlines.

PS The article is not very specific (in my opinion), so you can give a specific example and I will analyze it.

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