How can you build a team that will create the best games?

Knowing who you are and what you want to make from your core is the first thing you need before anything else. A solid statement which you will stand by as your mission is the next, as you will have to put yourself out there with surety. Yes, some slight changes to ideas may be expected as you work, but the core values must be intact for your audience, bur most importantly, yourself. After setting up some samples of what you want to achieve, you are ready to get over there. Look for people who meet your vision. Don't stray from what you want to accomplish just to have someone who may appear to be expendable at the cost of making a team that would change your vision.

for an outstanding game development team, curate a blend of passionate professionals spanning programming, art, design, and sound engineering. Nurture a collaborative atmosphere that fuels creativity through transparent communication and idea exchange. Integrate seasoned experts with emerging talents to inject innovation. Prioritize ongoing education, ensuring the team stays abreast of industry dynamics. Foster a unified vision, emphasizing project goals and instilling a sense of collective ownership. Celebrate triumphs and glean insights, fostering a positive, resilient work culture. This strategic assembly guarantees a versatile, skilled, and tightly-knit team poised to create top-tier games in the ever-evolving gaming industry.

In my mind, having a clear vision is key because it serves as the foundational blueprint that will guide every aspect of the creative and collaborative process. Having a precise understanding and definition of the kind of game you want to create, including its genre, platform, target audience, and artistic style, is crucial due to the inherent nature and complexities of both video game design and development.

During a project I worked on one of the most important aspects I found was creating a vision that people can rally behind. This is purely focussed on day to day work that people will do. All assets being created by the team have no real meaning if there is no context and vision. If the team can make assets that build to a specific end goal artists can feel more empowered and it can create ownership. This is the moment when people will step up and take it that extra 10% because they know what connects the tasks they work on.

Clarity of vision is likely to shave weeks or months off of your project's development cycle. Having defined goals isn't the only approach to game development, but it is more often the case than not.

Make sure to not overscale! Unless you have experience running large teams, it’s often better to hire a much smaller number of people with broad skills than it is to hire a larger range of folks with more specialized experience. Failure to do so not only rapidly eats at your budget and shrinks your runway, but often leads to people not having enough work to do! A better approach here is to slowly build your core team in ways that make sense for what you want to build and how you want to build it, and use contract work to bring in highly skilled specialists when you actually need them.

Motivation is key to getting game developers to become top performers. As a leader, understanding the motivational drivers for someone and mapping that to your needs is as important as finding the right skill sets and competences. Also, they need to be decent human beings. It makes things way easier.

One thing I see gaming companies overvalue is cultural fit. When hiring people, you should aim to recruit from diverse backgrounds and lifestyles. The best games are made by teams that have different opinions and different live experiences. Your team members will bring different perspectives to the table that make the game more interesting and enjoyable for everyone.

From my experience, passion is instrumental in the field of game development because it serves as the driving force that propels people to go above and beyond, investing extra time and effort into their work, ultimately elevating the quality of the final product. Moreover, passion is a catalyst for creativity, problem-solving, pushing boundaries, and for a genuine commitment to overcoming challenges, which also fosters a positive and collaborative culture.

It is important to have great professionals, but it is even more important that they fit together. That's the only way they're going to work as a team. I've seen a lot of 'star people' who are not able to move in the direction the team is going & vice versa. You have to align the people you have, otherwise you'll have counter-directional pieces of work that won't become the game.

Our team uses a variety of tools to stay organized when building in-house games. -Notion for making the initial game design doc, and breaking down development into assignable tasks -Figma for the design team to conceptualize the visual elements and provide assets to engineering -Linear for tracking bugs during development and testing -Slack for staying in touch throughout the development process, with a dedicated channel for each game

Workflow might seem mundane. But in a team, it's like the conductor of an orchestra, ensuring everyone hits the right notes: achieving consistency and coherency of collective output. Having decided the three mentioned in the article: communication system, project management system, version control system should be enough as a start.

Organizing your team is a highly recommended way of ensuring your team knows exactly what they are expected to do. Integrating tools such as Trello or Jira, or Asana to assist you with keeping track of your teams' progress and assigned tasks. The usage of a versioning control system such as git will allow you to ensure that different members of your team are appropriately contributing to the game that you are working on. Setting up a main communication platform such as Slack or Discord will allow your team to easily communicate as well as utilizing a tool such as google meet will help you to easily and quickly host any virtual teams if you have a Hybrid team. Setting up regular meetings per each sprint will also help!

Depending on the team size and development stage, the workflow can vary significantly even within a single company. For early prototyping and small teams, complex time-tracking systems and detailed task scheduling may not be necessary. An iterative creative process can be more efficient and rapid. However, during the production stage, meeting deadlines and resource limits are crucial, requiring planning and tracking tools. Regardless of the stage, having a minimal set of essentials for effective work is important: A consistent vision for the game you want to create. A version control system to store all produced artifacts. A communication platform (either an open space or remote communication tools like Slack)

It is always a good idea to have daily meetings and let everybody communicate their progress and share any ideas, concerns or frustrations with the rest of the team. Collaboration is always going to be more fruitful than solo development.

A team which has a perfect blend of experience and passionate energy will always succeed in building what they set to achieve. Having individuals with experience helps give shape to the team as well and their mentorship helps foster creativity within the team. Having young energy gives growth to ample ideas with a kick to solve problems at a faster pace.

If you're looking to improve collaboration within your team, the first step is to examine its dynamics. For example: 1. Ownership - is your team empowered to make contributions and feel heard? 2. Communication style - what kind of communication style do your collaborators prefer? Do they prefer confrontational dialectics, supportive spaces, or time/room to consider in private? 3. Discovery vs efficiency - Do your collaborators have the bandwidth to creatively engage? People's brains operate differently when they're focused on getting through a task vs freely exploring. This isn't exhaustive, but hopefully, it inspires you to examine your collaborative environments and make them work better for you and your teams.

There will often be less friction when team members have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. That's not to say that there won't be some overlap or that team members of varying disciplines can't contribute to other disciplines. Finding the balance often rests on the core principal of mutual respect amongst team members and a willingness to entertain others' concerns and ideas. Communicate clearly, respectfully, and thoughtfully to achieve greater team cohesion.

I believe that flawless development needs strong brands for tools and resources. Do not look for the best or most famous but the strongest, perhaps with the help of some acquaintance you can provide some right software for each need or support.

We are in an ever changing industry as new software and technologies are developed. I always have an ear out for opportunities to improve or refresh a skillset I haven't touched in a while, or learn something completely new from the ground up. I'm also always looking to hear feedback from my team and co-workers. They see the things I work on and have a perspective that I may not have ever thought of. I find it's better to take action on something as it is happening, rather than to wait for an annual/bi-annual review to compile all of that information. Ask those questions, look for growth opportunities, and remember to thank those around you for their encouragement since you are your own worst critic and don't give yourself enough credit.

As with every challenging endeavour, be ready fail. A lot. But if you are humble enough and willing to learn and improve, you will stand up, learn from your mistakes, and surpass even your initial goals.

Maybe the person in charge has a single function that would be to get feedback and help improve the skills. I believe that every team should have a guide, being held responsible for the performance of others and helping others too in the defined project.

Promote soft skills: While hiring people who excel in their respective fields is important, it's also crucial for one to encourage team members to double down on soft skills (e.g. empathy, teamwork, communication). Because game development's a collaborative endeavor in which the proverbial chain is only as strong as its weakest link, having everyone get along with one another is a must. From making room in one's schedule to help others solve a problem to quickly getting back to someone when they ask you a question, soft skills keep game development chugging along smoothly and promote a healthy work culture that leaves no room for antagonism. Soft skills also allow developers to prioritize conflict resolution should disagreements arise.

Remember that there is no "best" game. There are many games that appeal to different people. So don't try to design for everyone. Design for a niche, for a specific target player, and provide as many features that will cater to that player avatar. Test, revise, repeat! That is how our games become better.

I think it's critical to give User Experience (UX) Design top priority during the development process in order to assemble a team that produces the finest games. Through a focus on creating a user experience that is engaging, simple to use, and immersive, the team makes sure that players are drawn in and stay with the games. Play-testing and actively seeking user input are two methods that are essential to improving and optimizing the user experience of the game. A satisfying user experience is essential to improving the overall caliber of games and encouraging player happiness, which supports the team's capacity to provide outstanding gaming experiences.

In my experience, finding the right people for each role is crucial. With the advent of remote work and organizational flexibility, building teams and shipping high-quality games has become a more attainable goal for modern game developers.

Design games also taking into consideration that there are female gamers that are almost half of the potential market, don't create just specific games for them