Building a Team

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If you’re a jack of all trades, great! But most people don’t know how to code, compose, design, and model. If you fall into that camp, you’ll need a little help creating your game.

Here are some places you can find it.

Where to Look

Discord

If you’re unfamiliar with Discord, you can think of it like Slack, Teams, or other group messaging apps. If you’re unfamiliar with those, Discord is a platform that allows communities to communicate in closed circuits. It’s widely used across the video game industry.

Most major metropolitan areas have Discord communities of devs (and artists, and composers, and writers). Here’s a general list of Discord communities. Since I’m part of the Austin and Philly communities, I’ll link those two directly:

• Austin: ATX GameMakers

• Philly: Philly Game Mechanics (PGM)

Most gaming Discords have specific channels for jobs/work/hiring. You can post opportunities there and see who bites.

If you can’t pay, that’s okay. It’ll limit your options, but there are plenty of postgrads and new entrants who are looking for work to bolster their portfolio, and there are hobbyists out there looking for ways to stay sharp. You’re also gunning for a publisher deal, which means that the money will come if you’re successful.

I do recommend setting up a profit sharing system with these early-stage teammates, or offering them equity in your budding studio. It’s another way to create a financial incentive to work on your project, especially when it’s just getting its feet.

Of course, if you can pay, that’s much better—people deserve to be compensated for their work. You’ll secure far better talent, and they’ll be dedicated to your project.

ArtStation

If you’re looking for artists in particular, you can shop ArtStation. ArtStation is a portfolio aggregator for video game artists.

Contractors

Sometimes you’ll that doesn’t necessitate the addition of a new team member. Concept art is a great example. You can find contractors on typical freelancer sites like Upwork and Fiverr. You’ll certainly need to pay them for their work.

When working with contractors from these two sites, be very specific with your requests. Give examples when possible, and specify the number of revisions you're allowed to ask for. It's very easy to end up with subpar work if you go this route, so tread carefully.

Recruitment Prerequisites

Before you start recruiting people, make sure you have enough of your game or concept developed to pitch people on your idea. Especially at an early stage—and especially if they’re unpaid—you need to convince potential teammates that your project is worth working on. Concept art, an early prototype build, and a short Game Design Doc article featuring Creative Pillars are all good resources to have in your back pocket.

Make sure you’ve also nailed the elevator pitch. The people you’re recruiting need to understand your vision, which you should be able to communicate in 15-30 seconds. Use comparisons to speed things along.

Running a Team

Make sure you’ve familiarized yourself with Production before starting recruitment. Early momentum is essential, so you should really only start recruiting people when you know how you’ll deploy them.

It’s useful to have an intro task for new team members to complete. The big benefit here is that it shows you how they work. While high quality requires great talent, commitment and work ethic are equally essential traits. You need to gauge both before bringing someone on full-time.

An intro task allows you to see how someone works. Are they communicative? Do they set and meet deadlines? Do they deliver what they’ve promised? You need to know these things about someone before going to war with them—particularly on a small team.

I highly recommend talking to existing team members before adding new ones. No one likes seeing a new name pop up on the team out of nowhere. It makes them feel out of the loop and undervalued. Let them know who you’re bringing on, why you’re bringing them on, and ask them if they have any concerns. It will make them feel valued and essential, and they’ll work harder for it.

Finally, as far as communication is concerned, I recommend building a Discord server for your game and adding team members to it. It’ll act as your information hub and the main way you communicate with the team.

This is the last article in the pre-production series! Next, we'll talk about how to organize game development. Get started at Intro to Production.

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