doubt about a game team

[bastienff]

Hey guys, i am new asking on this forum but i guess you will have a lot more knowledge on the field to answer properly.

If i have a team grouped of:

1 concept sketch artist

1 ilustrator

2 designer

1 programmer

1 teacher (kinda, not formerly)

Do you think is enough to make an educatinal 2d game? Not too fancy but a decent 2d game.

Maybe it is too much or i am short of experts?

I would very love to know what you think.

[alex_h]

It's going to be depend very much on the scale of the game but in general that ought to be fine I would think. Depending on what the game consists of you might have a bigger design team than you need there, for example can't one of the designers also do the concept sketches? Or perhaps if your game is some huge multiplayer world that users can explore and interact with then you might need another programmer to help. If it's just flappy bird then one programmer will be fine!

[Red Spark]

And where is the idea man? Without idea man the "team" will clearly fall apart 

[nick-brown]

You're way too short on coders - I'd recommend at least 50% of the team is comprised by them.  The way you outline above, all I see is a bottleneck waiting to happen.

 

FYI my team was 2 coders, 2 artists (1 concept/2D, 1 3D).  We were all designers.  We still had more art than code ;-)

[adngdb]

My experience is based on game jams, but my favorite composition of a team is 5 people with 2 coders, 2 graphic artists and 1 sound designer. Going to 6 I would add a coder. Sometimes you're lucky and you have multi-skills people. Most of the time one coder is also a game designer and manager.

 

People (myself included) tend to forget that sound is an important part of a game. Coders are the primary resource of your team, without them there's no game. The number of graphic artists can vary depending on how much assets your game will require. Remember that each asset the artists create must be integrated in the game, and that's the work on coders. In most of the jams I did, at the end we had assets that we didn't have time to integrate.

[alex_h]

You're way too short on coders - I'd recommend at least 50% of the team is comprised by them.  The way you outline above, all I see is a bottleneck waiting to happen.

 

It still totally depends on what the game is. If it's really heavy on graphics and animation then you could just as easily end up with your coder(s) sitting around twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do for days while they wait for the design content to be finished. Yes you can prototype stuff with placeholder content but it's best not to go too far with it in case the real assets end up being wildly different.

[bastienff]

Thanks a lot everyone for answer me. Now i will describe a bit what i want to do.

The idea consist in a 2d game for kids (elementary school, maybe high school). The game will be based in oficial educational content and it is not intended to be a huge large game. Instead we want to do a game that can be used as a tool that support and assist educational learning.

We already have the main concept and theme of the game and we are developing dynamics that can be re used, soo the game do not get too large in terms of development.

My team is not hired so we can't give 8 hours every day to the project. We are a group and we want one day get close to be a videogame studio.

We also count with 2 business manager (actually they are two different professionals but there is no correct translation to english for one of the career).

 

Once again, thanks everyone for the replies.

[BdR]

And where is the idea man? Without idea man the "team" will clearly fall apart 

 

You mean the guy with this killer app or website idea? The guy only needs a few coders to create this unique project, althought he's got no specs and no programming experience. But still, his MMORPG is going to be amazing!

 

Yeah I met a few of those, you can probably do without him..  (How to Identify the "Idea Guy")

[BdR]

Okay, a more serious answer..

 

I assume the teacher is also the intended end-user of the game, I mean he'll use it in his class? If not then I'd also include an actual grade school teacher who will use the game as a independent tester. He or she can give feedback on ease of use, do the kids find it too easy or too hard, if the game runs too slow on school equipment, etc.

 

And if you're not hired to do this, do you have an actual target audience? So an actual school that has interest in using the game? But I assume that's covered by the 2 business managers.

[totor]

"an educatinal 2d game, oficial educational content, etc"

1 proofreader

seriously though unless you define more the scope of your game and your intention about it (sell it to students, rent to schools, make your own portal, etc) it"s a bit difficult to answer your question.

[magallanes]

Hey guys, i am new asking on this forum but i guess you will have a lot more knowledge on the field to answer properly.

If i have a team grouped of:

1 concept sketch artist

1 ilustrator

2 designer

1 programmer

1 teacher (kinda, not formerly)

Do you think is enough to make an educatinal 2d game? Not too fancy but a decent 2d game.

Maybe it is too much or i am short of experts?

I would very love to know what you think.

 

 

 

Excluding the teacher, i think that the group is fine.  Since there is a single coder, then you team should invest in technology, for example not saving in a cheap framework but a good one.

[b10b]

I think you are missing testers, especially important if the intended users are different to the developers.  You should find someone capable of herding sheep and providing a scientific test scenario to determine if what you are doing is on track for the audience.  Ideally find ways to automate as much of this as possible - always be testing.

 

I'd also add a producer (with a view to business development) to any team bigger than 2 else a whole lot of hard work could end up being experienced by almost entirely nobody.

 

As for "Ideas Guys", they are often undervalued by those in the trenches.  It's always gritty at ground level, someone solid must be there, but hand waving provides balance to loftier goals.