How do I build a great game development team?

Question

Gamasutra has a couple of very interesting articles

Hiring Game Designers and Building A Great Game Team: Measuring Progress

Neither of these talk about the hiring process of building out the team as a whole. I believe that great development teams, no matter what you are building, are like rock bands. You can't have a band with all guitarists. I guess you could, but the music wouldn't sound that great. Instead of having 6 guitarists, it's better to have 1 drummer, 1 singer, 1 bassist, and 1 guitar player, other things are options like a tambourine or rythm guitar.

The way that this applies to programming teams is that you can't have a team full of OpenGL experts. You'll never get any art or music created, the story will be kind of crappy, and the multiplayer won't work that great. So, this might be filed under "completely obvious", but the way I see it there should be some fundamental roles of any team. These can be filled by an entire team or a single person but they must be filled:

1. Design / Story / Play Mechanics
2. Visuals (2d art, 3d art, Video)
3. Sound (ambience, music, voice, etc)
4. Game Code / (opengl and/or 2d drawing)
5. Networking Code / Multiplayer / Match-making Services

Other specific things like game menus, build management, setup and deployment could be others. So first, are these the right 5 areas and/or am I missing anything? And furthermore how can we be sure we are putting the right people into these roles to get the best game?

Edit: I know this question is pretty vague, I kind of kept it that way for a reason. I'm looking for some general anecdotes from game industry veterans for what works well and what doesn't work when building a team given a blank slate. Echostorm's answer about community leader is a great example.

Answer 1

Not game specific, but Joel has some great advice here.

Answer 2

Listen to Stackoverflow podcast #23 around minute 20 +

no serious person would disagree

Answer 3

I would add these to your list:

1. Tool Maker
2. Tester
3. Manager (Director)

Answer 4

If you went ahead and removed "game development" from your question, it would still be valid. The same rules apply to game development as they do for every other team. You just have to find out what everyone is good at, and have each person specializing in a specific area.

How can you make sure you have the best people? That's a really general question. Ask them to show proof of their technical skill with work samples. Also observing how they work with your team is important.

Answer 5

I'm guessing by the question you are somewhat new to the games industry. It's really no different to any other project.

Basically for your intended game you need to identify the areas of responsibility (example; rendering, networking, gameplay, audio, tools) and staff these areas with a) the right people and b) at the right numbers.

(Note that this applies to the other disciplines (art, design, sound) just as much as programming).

You need a strong, experienced lead for each discipline who may not be a rockstar in their field, but is highly experienced, a good scheduler and a good manager.

Above that you need someone who holds the creative vision for the project (a director) and someone who takes care of the overall scheduling and all those itty bitty things that crop up (a producer).

You will also need QA at somepoint, ideally QA will always be involved in some way but scale up as the project needs completion.

This is a somewhat simplistic overview, but it's a very broad question.

Answer 6

I've been on large game teams before and in addition to Jim Blizard's excellent suggestions I can tell you to have at least one, community representative to be your public face in the forums, organize things like developer interviews, sneak peaks and condense the feedback from beta testers.

Before we had a volunteer for that it all fell on the coders and nearly halted development. We spent more time answering questions, justifying features and defusings fights in the forums than we did coding. Our rep came in and dealt with everything and told us what we needed to know.

Answer 7

To make a good band you just need more cowbell!

Answer 8

Find a game similar to what you'd like to create and watch the credits for it, that should give you a rough idea of team makeup.

Answer 9

You'll want to look at other dimensions than just the "functional" or "domain" dimensions you have listed above.

Specifically, check out the MBTI and the Belbin models. By all means be a skeptic about such models - they are not "revealed truth" about how the human animal works. But they will give you valuable insight into the kind of traits that you must balance to get a great team.

Even as you consider this advice, also consider that there's always something opportunistic about building a team. It's not a matter of listing N "ideal" slots and then patiently filling out these slots; you'd never get done that way.

Rather, you'll come across someone first who is obviously a great person to have on the team. Once you have confirmed them, that will have some influence on your choices for the second position: you'll want someone compatible with the first, but also different enough that they cover some of the strengths you're still missing. And so on as you add more people.

As the team begins to know itself, there will be readjustments in the role that each team member plays, relative to the other. Here again there are models, such as the Tuckman model, of how this process tends to unfold, and it's useful to have these models in mind as you oversee the team.

Answer 10

I don't think those are the correct 5 areas. In particular game code is far, far more than just graphics, and you may not need a graphics expert anyway depending on your technology. And networking code may not be needed at all for many games, and even where it is, it too may not require a dedicated programmer.

The content of your code team will depend a lot on the kind of game you're making. If that doesn't tell you what you need, then you need to go to someone experienced with your game proposal and see what they advise.

How do you get the right people? The same way as you would for any job - experience, education, communication skills and personality. I don't think there's any magic there. If you don't know who you need for what you want to do, start with someone experienced who can advise you.