Teamwork

First things first: Have a good team

  • What is common in good teams?

    • 5: Impact: work matters
    • 4: Meaning: personally important
    • 3: Clear roles & goals: you know what you're doing
    • 2: Dependability: things get done on time
    • 1: Psychological safety: you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes

...or a great team!

  • What is common with great teams?
  • Follow a shared vision and purpose: Everyone on the team understands the goal of what they are working on.
  • Complement other team members' skills: Team members depend on each other to achieve their goals by applying their unique skills to a shared goal.
  • Exhibit open and safe communication: Team members feel safe to communicate anything to one another.

  • Share decision making, responsibility, and accountability: The team succeeds or fails together, not as individuals. Everyone earns their spot on the team daily. There is no room for titles or egos.

  • Have fun together: They spend time together and enjoy each other's company. They care for one another.

  • Deliver value: Great teams take pride in their work and deliver high value consistently.

  • Demonstrate shared commitment: Great teams have a unified cause.

  • How can we cultivate this kind of teamwork?

Exercise 1. Improv theatre

Play a short game where each person comes up with a word that begins with the letter A. Keep going clockwise until someone can't think of a word beginning with A. Then you move on to the letter B and keep going.

The point is not to come up with fancy words or get as many words as possible, but rather come up with the next word as fast as possible!

This will feel awkward at first, because it takes time for the brain to warm up, but over a few minutes, it will sink in that nobody's going to criticize you for offering a silly word, and nobody's going to criticize you for not coming up with a word (because the rules say that you just move on). Then your brain is better prepped for offering ideas and listening to others' ideas. -Aki KAnerva

Composition of a gamedev team

  • Game Development Cheatsheets
  • Cheat sheets for different fields of specialization in a gamedev team
    • Game Designer
    • 2D Game Artist
    • 3D Game Artist
    • UI/UX Designer
    • Producer
    • Sound Designer
    • Game Programmer
    • Game Writer
  • This only scratches the surface, however.
    • In game development, there's a whole lot of hats to wear...
  • Director
  • Producer
  • Game Designer
  • Game Writer
  • Level Designer
  • Programmer
  • 2D artist
  • 3D artist
  • Character artist
  • Environment artist
  • Animator
  • Rigger
  • Composer
  • QA
  • Tester
  • Marketer
  • Trailer editor
  • Web developer
  • Devops engineer
  • Social media manager
  • Community manager

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