How Many Hours a Week Would You Work?

#1 If it is a game that I really buy into *and* feel a certain amount of ownership of then my answer would be "all the free hours I have!" How many free hours can vary a lot depending on the person and their situation. My situation is kinda different these days in that I do this for a living but I can offer my experiences prior to that: when I was single it wasn't unheard of for me to put in 5-6 hours a night...when I was dating someone, it was more like 1-2 hours a night. I tend to stay away from the computer on weekends altogether since I work on it so heavily all week long.

#2 Matt, when you say 'ownership', what precisely do you mean?

#3 I agree with Mat. It would depend on what the stakes are. The only difference is that I do all of my programming on the weekends since my daughter has taken over the computer.

#4 Wouldnt it be a joint effort, and so a joint game, so joint ownership? Sounds like someone comes up with an idea, says "hey I have this idea, why dont you work on it for me, and I will keep it and all ownership as my game".

Ideas are two a penny, which take an hour down the pub to think up, and a month or so (dependant on complexity) to design through.

Getting a programmer or artist to commit their free time for no money on a game that someone else claims is there's... I cant see many people buying in to that, spending a lot of time on, and lasting the duration.

Maybe I have the wrong end of the stick, it happens when I dont have caffeine in my system!

Oh, in answer to your question, probably around 16-20 hours a week, mainly because I have a job and family.

#5 Charlie, when you say 'stakes', do you mean how much you like the game, or do you mean how much ownership you feel over it?

Sorry I'm asking so many questions - I want to make sure I understand.

#6 Craig - Yeah, I would understand needing some form of shared legal ownership in terms of royalties and credit. But I'm not exactly sure if Matt is talking about that type of ownership, or a different more abstract type.

Thanks for all the replies so far!

#7 Reasonably people only tend to work hard on things they have a personal stake in. Working hard on someone elses project is a contradiction in terms. I know this sounds selfish but, you wouldn't be paying this person.

For morale you need to be working on something that at the end of the day is owned or part owned by you. Clear ownership rules need to be established otherwise bickering and rifts will ensue. I was on one project, where the designer thought he was god and owned everything. He was shocked when, after treating the rest of the team like mud they all took their individual contributions and left him to it. He was left (litterally!) with a note pad full of ideas and a blank screen. My parting words to him were "Let me show you what you really own on this project!" as I took my personal license of torque, 3Dstudio Max, Photoshop, my shuttle self build dev box and walked away.

The rule as a team leader is to never say MY GAME or MY DESIGNS. Everyone who is in a team will contribute something (may be a little, may be a lot). As a result a team project will always be OUR project or OUR designs.

So many people forget that if you can't do something alone it isn't totally yours. This is what credits and profit sharing were invented for. The original vision may be yours and the end product may contain your signature look, feel and gameplay (just look at oddworld inhabitants games or American Mcgee stuff) but, these are still acknowledged team efforts.

So my simple rules for working on other peoples projects as far as time goes are:-

1. If you have no ownership then don't! (work on the project that is)
2. Plan your time for the project around your paying work. Don't screw up your day job to write someone elses game for free!
3. Agree ownership rules up front. Things like "The art, code etc. etc. is the projects but, I must get a full credit within the game"
4. Have regular meetings, be that by web cam, messenger, phone, chat room etc. etc. A team that talks, remains a team. This also weeds out the hangers on and the BS artists who just want to be associated with a project while doing none of the work.
5. Respect your team and demand respect from them. Don't shoot down ideas just because they didn't come from you. Listen to opinions from team members. If your coder says feature X will take too long to implement then listen to her. If you think she is wrong, have a damned valid argument as to why. If your argument gets shot full of holes just hold your hands up gracefully and conceed.
6. Don't be afraid to re-plan. Many a project has been saved by a timely feature trim or re-plan. If you really want the feature but, don't have time to implement it now, add it in a future patch!

hope this helped (kind of went off topic I think)

#8 I have some volunteers that work for free on our projects just to be part of a game dev.

They are artists and programmers alike, and they put in between 0 and 5 hours a week.

They have no ownership or anything in the stuff they work on, but they are happy to be part of something game dev related.

I would never expect them to put in more. Even if they feel like its a great project and all - without actual ownership and stakes they will never work like the rest of us.

Personally I would never work on someone elses project without getting a piece of the cake. Neither as a programmer og manager.

Dont know if that answers your question.

#9 I've worked for 1-3 hours a day on a game project back in 2001 for 3 years. I worked as a texture artist.

Edit: I agree with Matt about the part with ownership. If I don't feel that I can affect the project anything, and if I feel that I mostly do what the lead wants and not involving my own design some, then it's probably less hours involved because it doesn't feel as much fun to do it, if I do it for free.

#10 I agree with the others, I think it really comes down to how much you like the game, and whether you feel responsible for it and can perhaps help to shape it. If I truly care about something where these oppurtunities are present and I am getting credit for it, I will invest every waking hour in it that I can.

Cheers,
Ian

#11 The others have summed it up pretty nicely but I will add in the other half of my two cents anyway =P

By ownership I do mean more than a profit percentage in the final product. I mean feeling like the game idea can be changed or influenced by you. As soon as I pitch an idea to someone and they buy into it, I no longer consider that idea "mine". They are free to start enhancing or expanding on the idea. They are going to put their own stamp/style into it. If they aren't or they feel that they can't then they are going to feel like contractors and not like a partner. And non-paid contractors have very low loyalty. Realm Wars is unfortunately a great example of a project where no one feels "ownership" and we have watched it consistently flounder as a result. It is important to have a central "vision" person for a project but they need to be smart about how they maintain that vision.

#12 Just to continue on what Matt was saying with Realm Wars. A big problem that it had when it was a community project was "too many cheifs and not enough indians". Everyone wanted to be a leader and contribute some that they felt was big and important and met their needs and wants and not the projects. As such we had a lot of awful submissions, half finished items there were 100% unnecessary for the game, people trying to one up one another by contributing the same items over and over and there was a huge issue with the actual required work getting done since most of it wasn't something cool.

After taking this project into a closed group environment in October productivity has soared and there is now an immensely talented group of people working on it as a team who want to see a great product made out of it. Everyone on the team puts in roughly 5 to 8 hours a week on average and progress is being made towards our goal of a first true milestone.

So what can you learn from Realm Wars failure as a voluntter/community project:
1. There needs to be a small dedicated and caring team. This is a personal investment on everyones part and they need to feel that their input matters and that their contributions are important.
2. Define small baby step goals and milestones and stick to them. Having a wide open set of requirements from beginning to end allows for too much variation and work not getting done as its needed.
3. Keeping a small core group is far more important than having a large group. Smaller teams are more focused and work together better.
4. Work with talented people who know their craft and the tools. Sure this means that more work is put onto the people that you have but it is being done right the first time, not the tenth time.

Logan

#13 Five.

#14 I'm an artist.

And I work on SLO (which is actually royalties... is that what you mean by free?) probably 15+ hours a week.

#15 Yeah, sorry guys, when I said free, I meant royalities and partnered ownership but no pay otherwise. The teammates would be able to suggest ideas, but there would be one and only one keeper of the vision as it were.

So hopefully that'll clear things up. Man, I can't believe I threw my own thread off topic on the first post :P

#16 @Bryan

I think you hit the nail on the head. There should be only one keeper of the vision (hence my point about the finished product having the clear signature of the designer even though it is a team effort).

@L Foster

I'm not sure what team size has to do with anything. Experience and clear work allocation tend to be more important when the team is large but, that is really a team leader thing. I have lead both large and small teams sucessfully and small teams that try to do grand designs often end up having to cut a lot of "wanted to have" features due to workloads. Unless of course you are EA, in which case you simply work the people you have harder until they crack!

I look forward to seeing some new realm wars builds in future, though the site seemed dead to me!

#17 Bryan,

What I meant by stake is that whatever I made out of it. If it was a game for sale then how much I make out of it. If it was for free, how much of the work I did and how well I get credit for it.