Average Team Sizes.

#1 Didn't we discuss this recently in another thread?

11.

#2 The core of our team is TWO people: me and Jason Sharp.

At any one time we have zero to two other people helping us.

In all seven people have contributed to the project over time.

Fifiteen is likely too much. Based merely on statistics...your project will never see completion. A few large indie teams I know of have fininished or look likely to. Not many.

Accountants?

#3 Yes I realize that our team is large, the number of people working hands on with the game is 8.

Accountants? yes we have an accountant. He loves games, he loves our game. He offered his services and he is helping us to build a business plan. Why? is this rare.

#4 @Paul Dana

It all depends on the Project. For your project, 2 with outside help might be sufficent, but maybe not for his.
I do agree though that 15 sounds like a lot. I would even say 10 is a bit too much.
It's better to focus than to bring too much people onboard.

#5 @James - indie means self funded. Most self-funded teams do not have the need of
an accountant....nothing wrong with it, but yes it's unusual.

@Stefen - agreed. My point would only be that games that require large teams are the very
sort of games it's hard to pull off as an indie.

#6 Right now my team is 6 people.. with 2 of those also splitting time on other projects. On other projects we have worked on, the team that is actually working on the project was usually 2-4 people depending on the needs of the project at that time. We usually deal with an outside contractor for sound and music.

#7 @ Paul, Our work flow is going great at the moment. The story writers describe to the level designer and concept artist, the level designer works on a few ideas, the concept artist puts a visual spin on things, then the level is made, the programming team is working on cut scene editors, and a diaolg editor (thats nearly in a working state) and the accountant is building a business plan to keep us going for the next 5 years atleast. I do think we have a big team, but it is a big game. The best thing is, we have profesional people working on the most important things.

#8 Golden Fairway is a commercial project bigger than most indie game projects I have seen. But for reference: Our team is 1 producer/project manager, 5 programmers, 1 artist, all lead character work is outsourced - mesh, textures, mocap, and animation adjustments, all sounds/music are outsourced, heavy loads of 3d artwork are also outsourced. We DO, however, have ancillary support and other staff - sales, marketing, IT, accounting, administrative, etc.

#9 Right now our team is just 2 of us with a 3rd that helps out sometimes and a freelancer doing our composing.

#10 I think that ideal number would be 4 + you but that number depends on game type, needed features, skills etc...

Example:

If you are creating FPS then 3 would be sufficent (programmer, Artist, Modeler)

But on the other hand if you are creating something like SIMS then you would need a lot more people so it really depends on the project...

I am talking about torque projects of course :)

#11 Basic Bob was created with a team of 1. (ME :P )

I contracted out the art to 11 different people, 2 of which have thus far produced everything... I'm waiting to see if the last person can finish up the last of it (2 models).

If I could model half as well as most artists, I could have done everything myself and ont lost any time.

#12 Rumble Box was created by two people (Myself and Patrick Hackett)

Lemmon's Workbench is being created by four (myself as lead programmer/game designer, Patrick Hackett as art lead/co-designer, Heidi Bourrie as junior artist/sound designer, and Joe Lemmon for writing contributions and voice acting. So, three full time and one part time.

However, we haven't yet published anything commercially, so I'm not sure if it counts :)

#13 Puzzle Gaiden is being worked on by myself and Nauris Krauze. I might someday hire on a sound / musician guy, but that's probably down the road... So.... 2 1/2 :)

#14 At Froghaus we've set ourselves to have a max of seven team members. We've decided on that in order to maximize our artist potentials when it comes to game development. Any extra work is being handled by contract workers.

#15 I am relatively new to the industry but i think that a indie game would probably work best with about 4-8.

#16 The experience we've had is that artists/modelers rarely stay on long term(IE: more than 6-8 months) .. So I guess my question would be how long have you had this team of 15 invaluable members going?

In all I would say we've had over 75 people contribute art work to our project over the past 12-14 months. That being said the project we are working on requires a LOT of artwork, so most of the time people will come, stay for 2-3 months and then life gets in the way or they find full time employement doing art and don't really have the time.

That being said we have had a few people stay on for the lenght of the project or for more than 8 months, but out of the 75 that number is only around 7 or 8, if you include myself and our full time staff of programmers it is more like 12 or so

#17 At this point 2. once we get to sound we may need 1 more.

We are probably in the same boat as Bryan Edds up there.

#18 Direct quote from a book I have been reading. "The mythical man month" by Frederick P. Brooks. Its a good book if you want to learn about large project management that can be applied to smaller projects as well. A direct quote from him states:

Quote:"If you add more men to an already late project, it will just make it more late."

Adding more men than you need will not solve your problem. This posses as a bigger threat for indie developers who dont have the project managers that they need to facilitate and look over all those people. I understand you are not adding people to your project but it has the same effect. That is why Finney says that 3 people is a good size for an indie team. Its easily manageable for the "leader" while still having enough people to get it done. I would like to have a team of about 4 people yet i am not part of a project now.

My 2 cents...

#19 Two here. We had a 3rd but his rent paying work is getting the best of him so he says. He really just plays Halo 2 and Moto GP3 all day when he's not sleeping or up under his girlfriend so I'm starting to think he's not serious enough to keep around as a team member and rely on.

My 3D modeller/texturer has been taking up C++ very seriously. She's learning very quickly. I'm a musician/sound guy that is improving on my visual art and taking it to the next level. I think once we learn what we each need to learn, combined with what we are already skilled at, we will have all our bases covered and will only need to rely on each other to make our games a reality.
-Ajari-

#20 1 full time, 6 part time (with narrowly defined tasks) on Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa. We will have completed the game, start to finish, in 10 months.