Tips for a Successful Collaboration

Hi Everyone!

In the hopes of getting a good thread going, I wanted to post my thoughts on what would help in getting good collaborations going.

Please add/comment as appropriate:

-Have a working idea of what kind of game you are making.

-Outline major characters, plotlines, or themes you will need before you post

-Start small. Start with the dev team. In addition to yourself, you will need a programmer, an artist, and a writer. Remember, this is just a development team. Going bigger than this makes people wait in the wings for something that takes forever to do.

Become a project manager. This is a person who is in charge of communication between all parties. They are not the boss, they are not "in charge" they are there simply to communicate and ensure everyone is on task. Sure, you assembled the team- but you are not the team by yourself.

-Know your limitations. You may be good in flash, but there is always someone better. Having redundant abilities is going to help you in the long run.

-Once you have a drafted version of everything you need, get another artist, programmer, and start incorporating the sound elements you may need. Get a sound designer based on what you have heard of their music. Get voice actors based on their quality of work, and the ability to adapt to different voices. Give them a test script to work off of.

-Don’t take every first responder. Be selective about who and what you want. Tell people whether they fit this profile of your ideal person. This goes for programmers, artists, writers, sound, VO, etc.

These are only suggestions. Everyone does their own thing how they want to- but- I will say that if you follow these steps you will be in a much better place as a team, than you would be individually.

im good artist i think but in half – year i didnt find any programmer that want to work with me? whats my problem?

Originally posted by kosmo_mishka:

im good artist i think but in half – year i didnt find any programmer that want to work with me? whats my problem?

artist – its mean animations too?
or just special photos art?

animations too

Is your work showcased? Are you replying by saying “I’ll do it,” or are you offering a resume?

Keep in mind, that the best way to approach this is as a job. Likewise, people who are trying to get people for their project should be actively seeking out talent.

Tips for joining a collaboration.
-Look at the rating/quality of a topic starter’s pasts games
-If the topic starter wants to be a writer/idea thinker this is a big key to a NO
-If the first post is very small and does little to outline the idea, then NO
-If the topic starter does not post an idea saying “I’m afraid someone will steal it”, then NO
-If the topic starter excepts people with little or no good work or without proven examples/list of work experience, then NO
-The writing language of the first post(Note: This does not apply to those with English as a second Language), then NO
+if the first post has proper grammer and spelling
+if the first post has ‘i’ instead of ‘I’
-If the collab has over 5 people in it, don’t go in it!! NO!!!!

These are some suggestions of how to get into a collab and what to look(and not to look) for.

UnknownGuardian

Perhaps the mods may sticky this?

and a writer

Epic failure. Writing should be done by the whole team so they all agree with it. Everyone can write and there is no need to have somebody to that.

get another artist, programmer,

Why?

Perhaps the mods may sticky this?

Give good advice before it gets sticky, that post is full of fail.

---

How colloboration should be done:

If you search a team:

+ Give examples of your work what you’ve already done or a prothotype of your current project
+ Tell what you want to make
+ You have to be a programmer, artist or a musican. If you are an idea person or writer won’t you get a (good) team
+ Be sure to check peoples skills, or you’ll get an artist that can only draw onanimated stickmen (or a programmer who can only program a click the button game etc.)
+ Plan the revenue split in your post
+ Keep your team small, try to have 1 programmer, 1 artist, and optionally 1 musican (optionally because there is lots of (free) music to use (legally) in your project)

If you join a team:

+ Show an example of your work
+ Do not join multiple projects at the same time
+ Check if the creator of the project is serious: an example of his work included, the people he searches (if he wants a witer/idea thinker/lots of people, then don’t join), did he tell what sort of game we wants to make (including detain, not just “I want to make a TD”), etc.
+ Be sure you have time for the project

If you game needs a background story or something like that, you do need a writter. Unless you are making tetris etcetc consider writter dead weight in the team.

and a writer

Epic failure. Writing should be done by the whole team so they all agree with it. Everyone can write and there is no need to have somebody to that.

So, you’re telling me that an artist- a person who does nothing but draw pictures should write the script? Sure, they should have input, but they should not be the person writing the script. Is your grammar perfect? Hello- that’s what writers do. Calling the suggestion an epic failure is quite crass btw.

get another artist, programmer,

Why?

You will need someone, naturally depending on scale, to assist with these things. To lay all programming on one person is, again depending on scale, ludicrous.

Perhaps the mods may sticky this?

Give good advice before it gets sticky, that post is full of fail.

I invite you to re-read my original post. Then, if you don’t like what is said after you have actually read it, and you still feel the need to flame me, kindly go play a game. This is the collaborations forums, not the “let’s all be jerks to each other” forums.

Oh, another thing a writer could help you with? Spelling the word prototype.

By the way, I must commend you on your suggestion to keep the team small. I said that in my first post. Oh, and any discussion of a “fee split” in a post breaks the rules of the forums- so kudos there too.

Actually bitterirony, writers are unnecessary and actually should be done away with. Plenty of people(meaning the team) can come up with ideas by themselves and a game plan before getting a team/working on a game. Most professional games do not have writers as they turn out to be a drain on money, and just and extra “useless” person.

Programming should be done with a single programmer. Why? Because there is not any perfect programmer that has offered their skills on the collabs, and having people combine code is very bad, because each programmer does things differently. Trust me on this, I’m a programmer, and have taken a programming class. Everyone works different, and some are smarter than others.

Recap: 1 programmer, no writer

Also, Vara is giving genuine input and not flaming you. And the comment regarding Vara’s spelling is really irrevelant(not sure if spelled right), and unnecessary. So please keep the not so nice(not to mention the things I already said about it) to yourself.

Oh, and any discussion of a “fee split” in a post breaks the rules of the forums- so kudos there too.

What??? How old are you to these forums. Not very. A fee split does not break the rules. Only discussing pricing. A percentage split, which was what Vara was talking about does not have anything to do with real pricing.

Recap: 1 programmer, no writer, Vara is not flaming you, don’t comment on mispelling of one word(unless major error), percentage based revenue split is not actual pricing.

Just to quote a statement made by arcaneCoder, that might be useful in this thread(Parting shot, XD)

Know your place. If you’ve been playing a few Flash games for a couple years or have opened the Flash IDE a couple of times, it would be wise to have more of a listening ear towards those who have been professionally making them for much longer. Being a hotshot among your friends at school because you are a little more tech-savvy does not make you a hotshot in this forum or above anyone in the game development industry. This is not a forum for egos, but awareness of experience levels should remind us to be gracious with our words and respectful to our members, since developers create Kongregate’s content for us.

bitterirony, despite having started this topic and making quite a number of valid points in your original post, you seem to either have a romanticized/naive view of game development, or have never actually participated in any project so far.

Vara is quite right that a “writer” for a flash game collaboration is an epic fail. Remember the scope and place of this discussion. We’re talking about FLASH, CASUAL game collaborations. More specifically, people that either have no, or little dev experience/past projects. The only way you would EVER need a dedicated writer is you are making a large scale RPG with tens of thousands of lines of dialogue (AD&Ds, FF, Kain, etc) or a game that has hundreds if not thousands of snippets of text (like the quests in WoW). Such projects are well outside the scope and possibilities of 99.99% of the people here. Even in such a case, this writer person that you are talking about would NOT be part of the core development team, their work being ultimately dictated by the game designers.

So, you’re telling me that an artist- a person who does nothing but draw pictures should write the script? Sure, they should have input, but they should not be the person writing the script. Is your grammar perfect? Hello- that’s what writers do. Calling the suggestion an epic failure is quite crass btw.

Describing an artist as “someone who does nothing but draw pictures all day” as an argument against their ability to write something creative is just plain daft. Granted, working in a visual medium is infinitely different to working in a verbal one, but between someone who actually has something creative to show for their time and effort and someone who says “I can write good” the artist is a safer bet always.
Flash games do not need a script, and the proof is in the pudding, 99% of them don’t, and the ones that do could do just fine if you removed it. This is testament to the fact that “setting/decorum” created by said script enhances the gameplay, but it is not necessary, while conversely a game with heaps of script and no gameplay is still a POS.
The entire notion of “writers” is a total fallacy. These people are NOT writers. Most have a few tens of pages written out, the best of them may even have something resembling a full story written out. Taking a few snapshots of one’s friends at a party does not make one a photographer, and being able to put your thoughts on paper does not make one a writer, at best it make you literate.

The issue of grammar is a ludicrous one. Having a writer for the purpose of checking your grammar is akin to having Dali drawing the stickmen for your sniper game. Also, do bear in mind that this is an international community, and ragging on Vara, who is obviously not a native speaker for misspelling prototype lacks class. I doubt you would do as well in his native language.

Last but not least, stop asking for a sticky, it’s just bad form.

I applaud Leguma. Thats a 5/5 post.

L3TZZ M4K3 A MMORPG! I can’t really help you with the game! but guess what Im an idea thinker! yeah!

This topic needs a polished version to be considered as sticky. And I don’t think this persons intend to call themselves “writter” as if in a person that writes book or something proffessional but as someone that can take the job of giving a story or sense to the game.

What you may not be realizing is that they DO intend to call themselves a “writer”… they might not be writing a book or a novel or a newspaper article, but “a story or sense to the game”, which is a work of writing. This in itself is not something bad, however in the given context it is an EPIC FLAIL.

Let us be very clear on one thing: necessity creates function. A writer does not start putting words together with no idea of what they are going to write, much like a programmer does not start writing lines of code with no idea of what they are supposed to do, and an artist does not randomly scribble lines without some sense of what they are trying to accomplish. If you want to “write a game” or think you need someone to do it for you, you have no idea of where you are and where you are trying to go. Games begin, continue and end with GAMEPLAY. Story and all that is an afterthought in all but the most select cases, and those cases are excluded from the scope of this discussion as NOBODY here is capable of making a Final Fantasy. If you have your game prototype, and some mock-up graphics, your story, setting and plot will already be apparent.
There is one exception I can think of: text adventures, which while dated are something that a writer could really do. And that is the entire “game” right there, but you don’t see anybody making one, since it actually requires work and effort… And the proof is once again in the pudding. I see quite a few programmers and artists actually showing samples of their work, proof of their competency, whatever it may be. Not ONCE have I seen one so called “writer” offer up anything even remotely resembling “writing”.

As for the “idea people” that everyone rags on more than the “writers”, that really is a sad state of affairs. Game design, TRUE game design requires no special skills, and it is what drives a game. Tetris, Boomshine, Bejeweled, none of these games require any special ability to think up and detail in a form that is easily understandable by others. The craft a game designer is as esoteric as it is rare, and it is a real shame that we have reached a point where “lets make zomby gaem KK” is considered an idea.

To the above two categories of people, I beseech you:
- read up on the craft you aspire to. there is a wealth of information, both about creative writing and about game design on the web, just google it.
- practice every day, either writing or thinking about game mechanics. take inspiration from your life, either for characters, situations or plot, or for activities/situations that can be translated into interesting game mechanics.
- prove your worth, with proper, thought out and lovingly crafted samples of your work.

For the record, I have collaborated on many games- none of which are flash driven, so yes- the medium is new to me. That said, I asked for input, which I may not agree with, and I got that- what I did not ask for is “EPIC FAIL LULZ.” Your argument, while lucid, loses all validity when it is promulgated by inane memespeak. Writers are used in more than 1% of games as you would suggest, and I would invite you to look at the game Sonny or Gemcraft for examples. No, not all games require a writer. If you have a plotline, then yes- you will need someone who knows what a story arc is, and the way to execute it.

Look, if you want all of your games to be Fancy Pants adventure, that’s fine. Just keep in mind that some people may want to go beyond that. If for nothing else, yes, having a clean copy is worth having a writer. Mistakes in writing lose the suspension of disbelief inherent in gaming (or any entertainment medium). It is your choice, as a developer, as to where your priorities are. This was meant as a thread for suggestions, and though again- I may not agree with all of you- it is good to have some discussion as to what makes a dev team “good.”

As to the artists- I didn’t say that they are “someone who does nothing but draw pictures all day,” Specifically I wrote that their expertise is in images, not in the written word. Would you have liked it better if I had said “So, you’re telling me that you would have your musician- someone who does nothing but make sounds- should write the script?”

Art is art. To say that anyone can write is like saying anyone can draw, or make music. Truth be told, they can’t, which is why you need someone who is good to do that sort of thing. You will probably find that most writers do other things as well- which is great for collaborating- but I still hold that they are a key component to making an “o.k.” game “great.”

Now, if I can just rid you of the words “epic fail,” in lieu of something else; we’d be golden.

From a programmers point of view…

Advice to the ‘managers’:

Get a small team. Less arguing, less time sending emails. Fewer people to split the profit with. A large group gets the ‘someone else will do it’ mentality. Ideal time size is one person. Two or three people at most. Keep the team size down by recruiting multi-skilled people who can do several different jobs.

Consider ‘contracting out’. If you’ve got a job that takes a few hours, like the writing or the music, and no-one on the team can do it, ask for help. But they’re just helping with that one thing, they aren’t part of the ‘team’.

Make sure you’ve got a copy of Flash, and you know how to use it. If you don’t, the programmer will have to collate all the files, send back the ones that don’t fit, and generally doing your job. And the programmers know it, and won’t join a project if the manager can’t compile.

Recognise that the programmer will be doing 50% of the work. Maybe more. Without a programmer, you’ve got nothing. If your ‘team’ has 3 managers, 5 artists, 4 testers and 19 writers, a prospective programmer takes a glance and thinks ‘Yay! 50% of the work, and 3% of the recognition. No thanks’.

Contribute. If all you can do is ‘manage’, you don’t deserve to be part of the team. Team members should be multi-skilled to keep the team small. That includes you. If the programmer and artists are spending 100’s of hours on the project, they won’t be happy taking orders from someone who does nothing but ‘manage’.

Advice to writers: Sorry, but you’re a really small part of the team. A game like Gemcraft has about 2 or 3 hours of writing work in it (6 or 7 medium paragraphs, if I remember correctly). The artist and the programmer spent 100’s of hours working on it. A game can be made without a writer. Consider yourself very lucky if you contribute to something that gets published. Never expect to get paid.

Advice to ‘ideas men’: Your ideas will always seem much better to you than to other people. You’re going to have to really sell your ideas. Explain exactly why your idea is so good and what is special about it.

Be multi-skilled. Team members won’t like being told what to do by someone who does no work. If you can contribute, the team will still need you when the project starts. You won’t need to hide your ideas, and you’ll be able to sell them properly without the fear of having them stolen.

Specify your ideas clearly. ‘It would be well cool if there u could buy boiling oil to pour on the invaders’ is not an idea. You have to explain how many hit points of damage the oil deals, and over what area. What is the downside to buying the oil? Why does the choice make the game more fun? Sketch a diagram of how the oil would look on the game screen.

Advice for artists: A lot of your time will be spent on drawing boring stuff. Landscapes, buttons, backgrounds and menus all need to be drawn. Be prepared to put in some hard graft, you won’t be able to draw knights and spaceships all the time.

Choose your editors and filetypes carefully. Make sure they can be loaded into Flash before you draw 400 icons. Flash can swallow most things, but has issues with semi-transparent backgrounds and importing animations. Flash uses vector graphics, and importing .pngs or .gifs can bloat the filesize and cause blockiness if they get resized. You may want to consider getting a copy of Flash as well. If the long-suffering programmer doesn’t have to convert all your files, he will be much less grumpy.

Great posts everyone, I think this is really helpful.
Artist to artists; DO NOT join multiple projects at first you’ll think, “this looks pretty simple I should join other projects too” You’ll end up with a lot of work even if you are up for pac man and final fantasy XVIIIIIIXV. At the extreme case you will ultimately leave both projects

First off, let me start by giving a big shout-out to bitterirony… EPIC FLAIL. It is NOT worth having a writer just so that your game is free of spelling and grammar mistakes, you’re better off mastering literacy for yourself. This idea of “getting someone else to do it for me” has NO place if you want to actually get anything done.

Now that we have that out of the way, a good way for people who do not actually have any skills to break into the dev scene is: BE AN INTERN. You may not be able to do anything, and have no idea of what making a game implies, but you can start learning by doing. Every flash game project out there has at least one or two grunt-jobs. It may be resizing all of the frames in an animation sequence to something else, translating drawn maps into 3D arrays so that they can be loaded as maps into the engine, making sprite sheets out of tens if not hundred of separate images, or whatever. These are menial tasks that require NO special skill or knowledge, and as CuriousGaming pointed out the people that actually have skills HATE having to do this sort of thing themselves, as their time is better spent elsewhere.
It may suck, and you will get no compensation for it, but most teams will gladly have someone do these things for them and in turn will teach you about what making a game is all about. If you actually get things done more than you get in the way, and keep your eyes and ears open, you can quickly learn everything about game development, even if you can’t actually do it yet. And after a project or two, you will start having skills of your own, not to mention the people that you know and that you can work with again and again.

And you know what the best part is, once you break bread in this manner with a team, you will most likely end up getting saddled with doing things like writing dialogues, descriptions and the likes, and whenever people are stumped for ideas they will ask. So you’ll likely end up both writing and coming up with ideas.

Originally posted by bitterirony:
Writers are used in more than 1% of games as you would suggest, and I would invite you to look at the game Sonny or Gemcraft for examples.

Just to remind you. GemGraft + Sonny does not equal 1% of all games. It actually only equals less than 0.0125 percent of all games on kong only

Originally posted by bitterirony:

Look, if you want all of your games to be Fancy Pants adventure, that’s fine. Just keep in mind that some people may want to go beyond that.

Nothing was wrong with Fancy Pants. In fact it scored very high. Also, higher than any games that you made, or will make(99% guarantee).

Originally posted by bitterirony:
You will probably find that most writers do other things as well- which is great for collaborating- but I still hold that they are a key component to making an “o.k.” game “great.”

Proof? I have never seen a game where the writer(if there ever has been a game with one) has made an okay game into a great game. That is to big a gap. They might(note the doubt on might) make an okay game into a okay+0.0015 game.

Nice to see fruitful discussion.

I mentioned 2 of the more popular games on Kongregate just to show that they actually did have writing. That’s all.

As for your incorrect assumption that I said that FPA was bad or wrong- I didn’t. You inferred that I did.

I say you need one- that’s all, just my one opinion. Is it “OMG PWN 1337ZorRZXXX?” no. It’s a suggestion. You suggest that people don’t need one. That’s cool too. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter how wrong you are :D

Originally posted by bitterirony:

Nice to see fruitful discussion.

Fruitful is indeed the word. :) There has been 6 “epic fails” mention so far in this “fruitful” thread, lol.

Originally posted by bitterirony:
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter how wrong you are :D

*Applaud*5/5! and Favorited!

Having just done a fairly story-oriented game a couple of months ago, I have to say…

Seeing what I ended up with, I wish I’d gotten a few hours of time from a writer.

I think it was an OK game, but there are places where the story doesn’t flow well, there are problems with some of the text not having the emotional punch it should have, and one common bit of feedback I’ve gotten is that the ending is weak.
If I’d sat down with someone who really knows how to write, and worked through the storyboard, scrubbed the dialog, figured out where the real climactic moments should have been, it would have been a better game.

That said…

I wouldn’t have had a writer join the “team” (which was just me) for months on end, only for a few hours or days.

I wouldn’t have worked with someone I’d just found online, unless they had some really spectacular writing examples that matched the style I was interested in. I would have tried to find someone I know who was up to it.

I wouldn’t have treated it as a piece-work job (go, get me 17 paragraphs of text by Tuesday) but as a collaboration where one of the big things I want is a consistent sense of what the game should feel like.

Would it have made my game “great”? Probably not. But I think it would have made my game better.

There you have it guys, thanks miacid.

I’d agree with miacid. Don’t try to find a writer before you start or have one as a permenant member of the team, instead wait until you’ve finished your game and then ask for someone (doesn’t matter who, ask your mum if she’s got some spare time) to look over it and correct any obvious mistakes. If your mum gives you really bad feedback about your story/writing quality you can then consider asking for someone here to spend a couple of hours helping you out and polishing your script, but I wouldn’t consider it a collaberation.

Some more general collaberation tips: make a start on the project yourself before looking for team members. If you’re an artist draw some characters, a backdrop, a title screen and a few other items that can be used in the game (not just sketches), put them in your opening post and ask if there are any programmers who are interested in using them in a game.

Conversely, if you’re a programmer you should be able to completely code your game before asking for an artist/musician. Use graphics.drawRect to make squares and rectangles of the same sizes as your graphics or if you lack imagination use mspaint to make some crude placeholders. When you think you’ve nearly finished compile a demo version of your game (a single level say) that shows off the basic idea and upload it to megaswf, put a link in your opening post and ask if there are any artists/musicians intrested in helping you finish your game.

I’d also like to reiterate what others have said here, don’t accept people because they were the first to reply. Wait a few days to gather a decent number of responses, then check everyone profiles to see what games/art/music they have uploaded. If they don’t have anything on their profile and haven’t offered any proof of competency in their post then they probably know little of their field are were hoping to bluff there way through your project.

One final thing, I’ve never seen anyone here mention subversion. I assume most projects are being organised by email or forum postings but subversion offers a much better collaberation management system. Basicaly the project is stored on a server and everyone in the team uploads changes to it as they’re working. It has a system where members can set tasks and report faults and other members can accept them so you allways know who’s working on what. I’d even reccomend it if you’re not in a team and working on your own as it stores a copy of every revision of your project you make in case you lose it or irreversibly mess it up some how.