Hi there, I have been part, for several months, of a game project that is somewhat slow moving, but it has kept moving, I am glad to say. The person who was in charge dropped off the face of teh planet a couple of months ago and I, being the Writer of the Story, have been made into the defacto coordinator. I don''t mind this, as I enjoy the work and am learning a lot by going through the processes, but I have questions. We have a design document and a full overview of our story, characters, villains, plot developments, etc, and the "novelized" version of the story is in process. I am also working on trying to come up with an Engine design doc, and I have some help with this from a programmer, which is nice. I am having some difficulty getting people motivated, and a lot more responsibility has just been dumped on me in that our web guy gave up and disappeared. This means I have to do a website for us. I don''t mind, really, but it''s kind of a pain. Some questions I have are: How do I better motivate people? What are some things I can do to get people working on individualized projects? There are of course many more questions, but right now I don''t have the time to ask them; any advice is appreciated. Thanks! DragonMaster Alex

This is the way it goes with "virtual teams". You lose a few here and there as they realize they don''t have the time to contribute or they no longer have the desire to bother. At least the "dead weight" is voluntarily leaving and not hanging on and lending their inertia to the project.

If you remain committed the project, and keep moving on it, you''ll find that the other team members will too (in general). Sure you might lose a few along the way, but that happens even when you''re paying them. =)

On the web page issue, you could pick it yourself up for now. When you find someone else who''s better suited and interested, hand it off to them. Or maybe work it out with the other remaining team members and have one of *them* pick it up temporarily. Just don''t let the issue stall the project.


DavidRM
Samu Games

1st i advise u to buy Game Architeture and DEsign

about motivating ppl i saw if you do things small isntead of big (like instead of saying we need this engine done in a month, you can say we need the lighting done in 3 days, blabla done in 5 etc etc) this brings smaller objectives and ppl get motivated because they actually see some progress !

well that all )

felel fre to ask whatever you want, by this BB or by mail !

Why not just forget about the website until your game is atleast 50% complete. Doing one anytime before that is like the KISS OF DEATH. I always run into web sites for game projects, but nothing has been started on the game. Anyways, unless you actually have something to show people, forget about the website.

If a person on your team isn''t doing thier share, then don''t be afraid of droping them and finding someone else. Just one person can hold back an entire project indefinatly(sp?).

I''m sure that thier are a hundred other people on this board that would be more then happy to help you out.

I think you can tell quite quickly who is going to put effort in and who isnt. Its also important that both parties agree how much commitment is required (be it small or large). I am co-writing my second guy with a guy i used to work with. We communicate about the game daily by email but see no need to meet more than once every few months. I put probably 10 times more effort into the game than him, but this dosent cause us problems because we agreed at the start that he would only be taking a 10%(ish) share of the workload, and only expects 10% of the rewards.
The problems only occur when people say they are as commited as you by arent. The moment you have to start chasing people to get stuff done, you know that your two opinions of what stake they should have in the project are mis-aligned, and THAT is the problem.

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