Whether you’re a newbie dreaming of playing your own game or a skilled programmer wanting to make a loud title, you’ll need help. The foundation of any game is a team of people and if it’s chosen and organized well the game will be worth the effort. Your team will cover everything — design, art, sound engineering, programming, project management, business development. And as game development is a constant interaction between people of different roles, if they don’t achieve mutual understanding you will face huge problems: it will take a lot more time to make a game, the atmosphere will be stressful, or in the end you will get not the game you initially wanted because your team members didn’t agree with each other.
The smartest thing you can do when thinking about making a game is to hire a game development team as a whole. This will not just guarantee you a well-combined group of people who work together and get along but you’ll also get an increased productivity, great product quality, reduced costs and a lot of free time for you that can be spent on your game’s promotion! In fact, David Upton from Oxford University examined over 1 thousand IT development projects and figured out that people who previously worked together make 19% less mistakes when they work together again. Now let’s point out the main steps of hiring the right team.
Step-by-Step Guide on Hiring a Game Dev Team
Begin with surfing various forums and websites, e.g. Quora, LinkedIn, Upwork, Clutch.co, make a list of companies you consider working with and then study their sites and social media thoroughly. Look at their portfolios, posts, testimonials, and anything you find useful.
Get in touch. Contact the team and explain what game are you going to make. Don’t be afraid to ask any questions! It’s very important that you understand each other from the beginning. Ask about technologies they use, what experience they have, how much they charge, ask for some extra examples of their work and anything else that you personally need to form a clear vision.
Quality > Price. Remember, good game development can never be cheap. Although you can get attracted to lower costs, if you take a look at big companies with many years of experience, you’ll see them turning more to the idea of getting things done well rather than doing them cheaply. Therefore your best choice is an Eastern European company, which would usually charge lower than a US company but will provide you with a better product than an Indian company.