If you work alone did you ever think about working together with others and if so why aren’t you doing so now?
Everyone(Who is not a professional game dev yet) has their own projects because they feel more control and freedom working on their own project. As a result we all have 30 unfinished projects and that’s it.
Well said. I think it’s also hard to find people (or even one person) that has a similar skill level as you and is someone who you can work well with. Like, I am absolutely open to working with someone but I’d want them to be similarly skilled (or unskilled however you want to look at it) as me and I want to like them as a person as well. Otherwise it’ll feel too much like work.
Started off solo, then added a group of about 4 other devs when my project took off. Now we have a company of 4 and hire contractors to help out. It’s been a wild ride.
Nice, congrats on getting to that point! (And yes please reply with links lol, we demand you self promo)
That is awesome! Any public information about your project yet?
All my friends see my C99 code as dark magic so I work alone ):
Lol valid excuse there I reckon
I typically work alone just because it’s most convenient. I have a moderately unorthodox way of going about development so burdening others with that weird cycle feels almost cruel.
I do like the idea of teaming up, especially for game jams. I just have to actually do that some day
Same here. Also the self-taught nature of my skills probably makes me do many things the wrong way, and I don’t wish that kind of scrutiny on myself :D
I will also often take long breaks from projects but usually come back to them eventually. And that is much harder to do when not alone.
Sounds like me as well haha. Then comes scheduling and committing to putting in the time or not doing anything and possibly annoying the other person (especially if you don’t know them that well yet).
Me too. One of these days…
What I’m reading here is that the three of us need to team up and fail at a jam sometime so we can get over The Fear 😉
Sounds like it haha
Alone, although I’ve been wanting to attempt a game jam collaboratively with someone else. Feel like I would learn a lot that way
What sort of game do you generally like to make? I’m making notes of who to pester next time an interesting jam opportunity comes up lol, would love to try working in a small team for once!
On game jams, on my own. At work, in a huge team - over 700 now. Of course, I’m in a much smaller team overall, around 7 of us.
Currently working alone just because frankly I have a lot going on, my project is at the absolute beginning stages where even I don’t really know what’s going on, and I couldn’t pull my weight in a team if I wanted to.
Back in the day I had a dream of working alongside my husband, but we made our first ever game jam game and he immediately noped out of ever doing it again. Trying not to take it too personally, but he has crap taste in games anyway so might be for the best 😅
That is my justification as well. I’m always wondering if it’s just me not wanting to commit to something too much.
I tried that approach as well, only with good friends. Didn’t work out either. It never really grabbed them and for a hobby it was too much work, which I understand.
The game looks cute as heck btw. Congrats for having finished it!
Justification? How dare you, those are perfectly cromulent reasons! 😄
Yeah it’s a weird one because he has actually made his own game too, a conversion of “The Pit” to work with the Spectrum Next. So a certain type of gamedev is his thing, but gamedev with me not so much! I do think working as a team automatically puts more pressure on each other to keep up and put in equal amounts of work, whether it’s partners like us, friends like you or honestly just a team in general. Which is why we all end up solo, we fear the pressure.
(also thank you, we had no idea how to build a platformer at the start of the jam so it was a really fun experience!)
Interesting! But that’s really the thing, sometimes game devs are just not compatible haha. Yea, I think that’s the thing. If you’re solo you don’t need to constantly deliver and can work at your own pace without feeling guilty for not doing enough. (you’re obviously still going to feel guilty for not doing enough, however much you do, from the pressure you put on yourself…)
I once found someone interested in starting a project together but he lost interest within a week.
It’s been a bit, but when doing game jams I shuffled working alone and working as a team. It seems duos are the best options for me, but solo is okay. It’s just solo I get a little bit bogged down into doing the art and making it look nice instead of letting things be ugly first. If I’m working with an artist, things seem to go smoother because I can work on programming. 3 - 4 people on a very small game is too much, but obviously this is just jams and not something larger.
Solo currently. I do some freelance narrative design consultancy on the side, and I’d rather find something full-time and long term.
