View Single Post
Old 01-29-2008, 02:24 AM   #9
Lanthum
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Suburbs of Chicago
Posts: 138
Lanthum is on a distinguished road
Send a message via MSN to Lanthum
Re: How not to be still-born

I wish I had the answer on how to attract and keep dedicated people, Tezcatlipoca - for you and me both. But I guess I don't think there is such an answer.

A few years ago (ok, maybe more like 4 or so ... who's counting? ) I decided to take the same journey you are describing. And for a time, I tried advertising for help. I wrote up my ideas about the game - put it into words, and had a few people proof-read it. But I never got very far after posting the ads. It seemed that the few who responded and had the skills, lost the interest in it as quickly or faster than I did. And instead of being able to motivate each other through the rough times - we all lost interest and they just left over time.

I have had the experience of starting two other businesses in the past, so I started comparing my start-up game situation to that of a fledgling business (which has also been done in this thread). And I came up with a theory:

The problem I think, lies in the fact that (at least for MOST of us) creating a game is a hobby. Even those of us that want or wanted to turn our games into a profit-generating business, we have other jobs and responsibilities. Our games usually end up taking a much lower spot on our obligations and to-do lists. Which is natural because we don't have funding and it's not paying the bills! But because it truly is a hobby, we can't really treat it as a business using a business model: bring in partners or employees, divy up the work, and pound it out. Because to me, people participate in hobbies usually out of a desire and with a motivation to have fun.

(In this context, I am strictly talking about non-competitive hobbies. When competition is involved, people will often continue the activity long after the "fun" is gone and is really nothing more than frustration.)

I personally believe that "having fun" is THE main reason a person has a hobby: gaming, fishing, gardening, programming, collecting, etc. It's what they have fun doing, which is purely an internal motivator. So while it's "fun" they will continue the activity, and when it's not they stop. Think of the people that stop gaming - it's no longer fun to them and they usually take up something else to do. I know some people might say "work can/should be fun too", but let's be honest - it really isn't the main reason most of us go to work. If you believe some polls, most people don't enjoy work. Instead, we go to work because it affords us a lifestyle - it pays the bills. And at work, we are surrounded by like minded people; people who are there usually understanding what the job is and what's expected of them - all the while knowing that to get that paycheck, they have to (sometimes) do their job! So, having fun or not, the paycheck becomes an external motivator.

Which is how things get done even when their hearts aren't into it. So after all that babbling, to me the problem with attracting and keeping motivated people is that creating a game is usually a hobby, an activity in which people WANT to be involved in, and that's easy to loose interest in. For most of us creating a game is not a job - which people continue doing simply because they get a check.

Which leaves me personally feeling that it is almost impossible to attract like-minded individuals to be long-term "partners" in a hobbyist venture. A problem compounded when approached as a business and where "success" for the hobby is almost certainly defined using similar measures as a business: large customer base, satisfied customers, etc.
Lanthum is offline   Reply With Quote