Hey All,
I was just wondering how many people here have either started or joined a game development team with people from overseas, and if any of these have worked out, how many have folded and opinions of why these remote teams just never seem to work out?
Sam
I have joined only one really serious international project, although several of the people involved lived in Australia, and the project is still moving along slowly. Generally I'd have to say that the hardest thing is the time-zone / communication issue, since we can't just go over their place, or ring them up (without paying out a fortune) so email and Instant-Messaging become really valuable assets. Another difficult thing is with the timing of major events, such as exams and work with people overseas, since usually when you're free they are not, and vice-versa. Also you have to set a standard for communicating times and dates, (since the Americans stupidly use MM/DD/YYYY - why????), and the time zones, hence the times are also different, so scheduling an IRC meeting or similar involves effort figuring out the timezones and informing people to attend.
Oh well that's enough from me and my limited 1 project experience.
The reason I this topic is because after now my third attempt (1st was using the quake engine to make a RPG - which went under due to the guy in America had a real job that got too busy, number two was me and two other guys who always argued about story and plot and who was going to do what and me being the only programmer I ended up pulling out, and the last attempt was with a reputable company in America who where supposed to make a kids game for the PS2 using Renderware and after downloading and learning the engine and submitting my game proposal I am all of a sudden not needed - I think I have been used) I am really starting to doubt the whole working in a team thing (remotely) - but to get anything productive done and art that isn?t programmer art (and I know how bad my programmer art is) working and running we must work as a team which I am finding useless - so am I stuck in a catch 22 situation???
hmmn, i worked overseas for a while (4 years on unsucessful project) then worked in australia and now doing contract art work for american game company (paid, and we are getting stuff done, renderware as well)
have had no sucess with doing free projects, people tend not to appreciate work done for free. so people either disapear, or just keep changing stuff (have learnt to quicly recognise 'everything keeps changing' as a good sign that a project can never finish.....
i have some resouces avaliable (animated characters http://www.websamba.com/davidcoen/3d_other.htm - all the IEW stuff) if you are interested, and like everyone else, i have my own dream project too... what is yours like (though a lot of my time is taken do previously mentioned art contract work)
hey sam this is a long winded post and will be boring for others, so sorry.......
i worked with an overseas company but to actually work in the country (Hong Kong) required the company to sponser your visa, this required a guarantee from the company that they would employ no matter the circumstance, after gaining trust and a steady schedule things were working well.
but with no direct contact and a screwy aussie dollar which is four times the hong kong which went up and down by the day.
Australia was not looking good in the press as an ally to america and china wanting korea to re-unite and america wanting korea as a stronger trading port.
you start to get the idea that a lot more goes on than just how you perform, its the politics as well.
in the end it worked out more difficult than beneficial, and well i was no longer needed.