Starting an Indie Team

#1 So if you lack time how will you be able to run the indie team? Im not making fun of you or anything but i was just curious.

#2 I would suggest finding an established team and join them. If you have little experience working on a game team, I'd suggest starting at the bottom, not the top. It will be difficult to earn the respect necessary to run a team if you don't have the experience to lead.

I'm sure you'll be able to find plenty of teams in this community eager to have you.

#3 I HIGHLY suggest NOT to start your own group. Not to phase you, but to save you from the crushing defeat of it all. Heck it's hard to work on a indie team when you have a good amount of time, how much more time would it take to RUN one?

#4 Those are all valid points the team I will be dealing with will all have the same amount of time. Or from my stand point have the same amount of responsibilities ie Full time job family and children. I hoping to only build a small very small game like a top down shooter and then judging by the experience I will take it a step further and devote more time to it. @Weston thanks for the advice that is what I was looking for although since I have my own ideas and I want to see those come to light.

#5 Those are all valid points the team I will be dealing with will all have the same amount of time. Or from my stand point have the same amount of responsibilities ie Full time job family and children. I hoping to only build a small very small game like a top down shooter and then judging by the experience I will take it a step further and devote more time to it. @Weston thanks for the advice that is what I was looking for although since I have my own ideas and I want to see those come to light.

#6 Well, here was how I did it. I'm not saying it's the only way to do it, but it's one road that can work if you have the skill, discipline, and bullheadedness to succeed:

#1 - I put in six years in the videogame industry as a professional programmer for several console and PC titles, including some AAA games that went on to sell well over a million copies. This step is OPTIONAL. But aside from giving me some small amount of street cred, it did help me gain some understanding of what goes into building a game from start to completion. It's impossible to overstate the importance of that last bit. If you don't know where you are going or how to get there, how do you expect to lead an entire TEAM of people there?

#2 - I started out all by my own little lonesome. That's right. I had near zero art skills, but I trudged on ahead, doing the whole thing myself. I had a vision, and I was gonna see it through. My game looked like utter crap. But I was also 100% productive, and knew every bit of code that went into it. To show you how awful it looked:

#3 - However, at that point I did have a game up and running (and at a smokin' framerate, too) and people could take a look at this early prototype and catch the vision of what I was trying to do. I showed it to a friend who had some modeling skill, and he said, "Dude, can I create ships for your game?" I stammered a bit, because I didn't have an importer from any format at this point. But I told him okay, and started working on an importer so he could model things in his professional tool. Then he said his brother was even better at modeling, and wanted to help. I told him, "Sure." The next thing you know, I had models coming out of my ears. I also ended up going to a few other people I knew who had some skills in various areas (like my brother, who does awesome music) and SLOWLY added them to the team as needed - once I had some fairly SPECIFIC tasks in place.

#4 - That still wasn't enough --- I had to shell out some bucks to purchase some non-exclusive content, and then I had to put some real money behind a help-wanted ad here on GarageGames. That worked, and I got some sound effects and some character portraits. I HIGHLY recommend outsourcing very specific tasks. It doesn't have to be expensive, though it can be kinda risky. Still, for a bunch of odds-and-ends type stuff, it works well and helps fill in holes in your team's skillset.

#5 - I joined forces with another team, and we combined resources a little bit in the form of putting together a focus test of our games, cross-marketing, and so forth.

#6 - This didn't happen for Void War, but I'm experimenting a little bit with it now - horse-trading work with other people. I help you with your game, you help me with mine. That kinda thing. No money changes hands, which has some tax advantages.

Anyway - there ya have it. Maybe NOT what you wanted to hear. There's no magic trick to assembling a team - there's a hundred people a month setting their flag in the ground and saying, "I'm gonna make the greatest game EVAR who's gonna help me?" and nobody answers but the crickets. You need something else to inspire them rather than just words. The easiest way to do it is with money. Barring that, cool screenshots of a prototype in progress may also inspire - you are helping people catch the vision as well as inspiring confidence that there will be something tangable on the other side.

Good luck!

#7 I'm all about making the prototype first and giving people something they can play with. Once you've got that it's not hard to get people to come on board to split royalties. I think it's much harder to assemble the team first because then the game becomes a design by committee project ... and in my experience that's not a good thing. You need one clear concept and then you need people to help you focus that concept and make it shine.

#8 I would like to see someone like GG have a set of internet tools that let
indy's do better co-op projects for profit.

#9 @Jay Thank man that is what I was looking for. I wanted to see if and how it could be done. I know it could be done but I wanted to see how some people approached the idea. Thanks for shedding some light on it.