Me and a few of my friends from school are trying to make a game for the Oregon Game Projects Challenge. The problem is that we all have the work ethic of an overweight house cat, myself included. We started working on the game in December and we've basically wasted the last 4 months by doing next to nothing. We don't even have the first level done and we have a month left until the main competition on April 23rd. Our de facto manger cares about anime too much to care about the game and our main programmer has barely touched the game and would rather play Skyrim instead. How can I motivate them to actually get work done, or should I just give up on the project altogether?

Welcome to every hobby project ever.

The truth is that, though all of you probably like the idea of making a game, very few of you actually understand and truly love what goes into making one.

For some, it's just too damn complex, and the satisfaction they get from progress they make simply doesn't balance against other pursuits.

You're likely to be the only one truly affected by this, possibly because you are perhaps more interested in actually making games, and (I'll assume), the process of building something is something that's enticing to you, not just the finished product.

The sad part: most hobby projects will end up this way. When I was younger, I've had the chance to see at least 20-30 projects die miserably this way. Flash forward, of all of the team mates I've tried making games with in this era, none actually ever finished one, and most have turned to other aspirations shortly after.

I think you could compare this to wanting to be a rockstar, but not actually liking to learn how to play difficult riffs on a guitar. Same exact thing.

It might then come as a shock though that my recommendation won't be to quit. I mean, sure, all of them won't care much, and they probably won't do much, but there's valuable knowledge in failing, and if you apply yourself, you're likely to learn a lot from this experience regardless of how the other team members behave.

There's a small chance that you might even inspire them if your reflex is to do more. They might feel bad when close to release to notice that you've done 80% of the work, and may collectively come together to get the remaining 20% done, who knows. That's how you may be able to motivate the team.

That being said, I believe you may not be asking the right question. To help you insure you're asking the right question, I'll ask you one of my own: what are you expecting from this project's realization?

The sad part: most hobby projects will end up this way. When I was younger, I've had the chance to see at least 20-30 projects die miserably this way. Flash forward, of all of the team mates I've tried making games with in this era, none actually ever finished one, and most have turned to other aspirations shortly after.

This is 110% correct in how these things tend to go. Frankly, many people (myself included) can't come up with the motivation/drive to complete full projects. Keep going ahead with what you can, though. Knowledge you gain while struggling is valuable/useful even if the project never comes to fruition. I learn more working on my hobby projects than I do during my day job, but it's surprising how much of that knowledge is transferable.

Me and a few of my friends from school are trying to make a game for the Oregon Game Projects Challenge. The problem is that we all have the work ethic of an overweight house cat, myself included. We started working on the game in December and we've basically wasted the last 4 months by doing next to nothing. We don't even have the first level done and we have a month left until the main competition on April 23rd. Our de facto manger cares about anime too much to care about the game and our main programmer has barely touched the game and would rather play Skyrim instead. How can I motivate them to actually get work done, or should I just give up on the project altogether?

Find out which of your team members DID do their work. Add them to your list of people you would like to work with again. Find out which team member EXCEEDED their targets by far and where actually trying to fill in for others above their own work. Add them to the shortlist.

Then bail out of the project as fast as you can.

Start your own project, see if you can motivate the good team members from your past project to join you. If you need to, find new people to replace the failures from the last project. Don't waste a spot on your project on them. They will most probably NOT change their way.

IF it is your project, and its just a single person that is procrastinating above a certain threshold (nobody can work 8 hours a day straight... SOME procrastinating can actually raise productivity), kick him out. If you feel bad about that, talk to him and explain how his behaviour is endangering your teams deadline and sapping away the motivation of the other team members. Then kick him if he does not improve.

Yes, that can be hard among friends... which is why it is often not so a good idea to work with friends on such a project.

Above all, respect that this is a hobby for all, not a job. Deadlines are good to have something to work to. Most hobby projects, without deadlines, will just carry on for years, and feature creep to death (guilty of that myself several times), even if the team members are really motivated and work hard.

But still, as hard as the deadline is, you shouldn't expect people working in their free time to give you 120% of their capacity.... everything above 50% is actually pretty good.

So plan in reserves, and scope your project with respect to that.

As for your current project: its most probably too late. Without some serious crunch, you will not get much done in that one month. Asking a team that is not motivated at all to do crunch is most probably useless, unless you want to force the slackers out of the project without having to talk about the real issue at hand.

End it, put it down as expierience, and move on.

As an advice, finding a hobby team that WORKS as a team is going to be quite hard. Your expierience there will be the rule, not the exception.

Usually, I am not that person who encourages someone to give up. So I'm not going to do that now. But I will encourage you to find another team.

I've been there. Several times. And after a while it becomes unpleasant to say the least to

work [unquote] endlessly on a game that will never reach completion because no one is actually working on it. Or even worse, you are the only person actually working on it. This is the primary reason why I myself am now quite hesitant to do an indie game with someone other than myself. I spent a lot of time that I'll never get back.

I say this with the knowledge and the experience of being in your shoes, not negativity or prejudice. At this point, you should either search for another team or try to do it on your own. Unfortunately, you can't make someone do something that they don't want to do themselves. Eventually, even you won't want to do it anymore. Find people who share your enthusiasm and passion. I didn't enjoy having to plead with my teammates to help me, so I am confident that you wouldn't find that agreeable either.

End it, put it down as expierience, and move on.

As an advice, finding a hobby team that WORKS as a team is going to be quite hard. Your expierience there will be the rule, not the exception.

Happy hunting! :wink: