GCG: How To Pick Indie Game Collaborators

Author: by Staff

Gamasutra sister educational site GameCareerGuide has published a new feature that gives 11 guidelines that might help you pick your comrades when making an independent game project. When not working for Microsoft during the day or moonlighting under his mentor on the Gears of War franchise, Seattle-based game designer and programmer Russ McMackin works with indie game developer Toltec Studios. The studio is currently working on Phase 4 of The Ball for Epic Games' Make Something Unreal competition. For an aspiring indie, finding the right group to work with can be difficult, and one must be sure that his or her goals, talent, and ambition are properly aligned with collaborators. Otherwise, pitfalls await, McMackin writes: "If you've read any book on getting into the game industry, every single one of them will urge you to join a modding or indie group as the best way to get noticed and develop a portfolio. As the 'why' has already been extensively covered, I won't be rehashing that here. Unfortunately, books usually stop there at the "why", and don't talk at all about the "how". Having personally wasted a lot of time in indie groups that were bad for a variety of reasons, I hope to teach people new to the scene on some of the things to watch out for when considering a group. The indie world is chock full of wasted effort, and you will inevitably have a lot of your time wasted as well. For every shining pearl of a team out there, there are many pieces of coal... or worse." Some of the 11 signs to look out for when seeking out an indie team include: - Bad Management - Poor Organization - Bad Designers - Public Opinion About the Team There are seven more guidelines that McMackin fully explains in the full feature, which is now available on GameCareerGuide.com.