How do I build a small team for serious games?
by Peter Martin Richter · in Jobs · 07/16/2006 (9:29 am) · 3 replies
Hello!
I want to do some serious games with torque. Which professionals do I need to have in my team? 1 programmer, 1 3D artists, 1 music technician and is an illustrator 2D enough? Which the medium time of production of a medium game with that team? 6 months? 12 months?
I know that those information vary the project accordingly, but I would like to just have an average. Can anybody help? Thank you very much!
I want to do some serious games with torque. Which professionals do I need to have in my team? 1 programmer, 1 3D artists, 1 music technician and is an illustrator 2D enough? Which the medium time of production of a medium game with that team? 6 months? 12 months?
I know that those information vary the project accordingly, but I would like to just have an average. Can anybody help? Thank you very much!
About the author
www.gamedesign.com.br
Recent Threads
#2
07/16/2006 (10:06 am)
I think it depends mainly on the type of game you want to make. A MMORPG needs a huge team, where as 3D breakout/arkanoid needs only 2 or maybe 3. A bit more information, and you can get a clearer answer.
#3
07/16/2006 (11:48 am)
... although there have been successful MMORPGs developed by small teams as well. It will really matter about the quality of the team as well. It helps if you have team members that are capable of wearing multiple hats, such as coder/artist/musicians (the ultimate combination)... then you can have a team of 4 that can adapt to current needs and will be more efficient. 
Associate Orion Elenzil
Real Life Plus
I'm not sure it's possible to identify an average game in any genre, definitely including serious gaming.
Serious games can be as simple as a gravity simulator or as complex as a disaster-preparedness sim.
Maybe identify a few games in particular ?
Project funding is also going to affect the mantime, via the quality of tools available to the team, the quality of the team itself, and the appropriateness of the platform to the project. - You sometimes get what you pay for, and even the brightest green kid out of college is just going to take longer to produce a product of the same quality as someone who's been doing it for a living for say a decade.
The team you've sketched out seems definitely smallish, and all the members are going to be stretched a bit thin, i think. I may be biased as a coder, but if this is intended as a salable project, the 1 programmer especially is going to find too many things on his or her plate.
Non-trivial roles you may want to think about:
* Qa, qa, qa. Including automated qa.
* Build-and-Release engineer.
- this may sound like an unneeded luxury, but i suspect you're implicitly assuming the 1 programmer will take care of creating and *maintaining* a robust installer, revision control, bug tracking, etc. Depending on the scope of the project, each of those can easily be a full-time position, and together they definitely are.
* Project Manager.
- this is probably you, but it should be an explicit role.
* Website, if there is one, and there usually is.
best,
Orion