Hello! Come back again with me C0BR0T. For those of you who are new to Me, I am a Game Designer of The Unseen (Horror), Voice Kuy! (Hangout), and Jungsya’s Birthday (Birthday Party) who have Indonesian citizenship. My job in game development is to make the game look unique even though the game has the same genre. I am also the Founder and CEO of Nusantara Production as a community engaged in the production of games and clothing at ROBLOX.
In this topic I will explain to you “How To Make Your Developer Team So Much Better!” Because it is undeniable that we need other people not only in game development life, but in everyday life we need other people to be able to achieve a desired goal. What do you need to make a good developer team? Without further ado, let’s look at the explanation below.
Attention! The content in this post is the result of my experience and based on the books/journals that I read. If you have additional literacy on this topic, I highly recommend you to write it down in the comments, Thank You!
To produce a good team, we need competent human resources in this field. Maybe this statement makes you wonder “How can we get competent Human Resources?” Please read this discussion to the end.
The meaning of quality recruitment is that you as a project leader must directly intervene in recruiting developers. With you directly intervene to recruit them, you can easily select them to be a team. You must have several special criteria so that the recruitment process will be more selective and of high quality. Not only recruiting Builders, Scripters, or Modelers, you also need to know how competent they are in working on your project. I suggest choosing developers who are diligent, skilled, and have a high work ethic so that they can deftly do what you tell them to do. If these 3 requirements are not met, don’t be surprised if more complicated problems will arise in the future.
You can find competent developers in several communities. On Discord, for my country, there are several developer association communities, including the 24H Debeloper Club, INDEX, FROXI, and Volumetric. And there’s probably more of a developer community out there than what I currently know. Usually, those in the community have a strong interest in the development life, and therefore will usually be more productive than haphazardly recruited developers.
At this point, you should understand that there are different types of developers, namely Builders, Scripters, Modelers, UI Designers, Game Designers, and Translators. Of the various types, it is further divided into several sub-types based on their expertise. Let’s take the example of a Builder, some of them are experts at making Obby, some are experts at making cities, some are experts at making forests, some are experts at making maps with a Low Poly theme, some are experts at making maps with a High poly theme, etc. You have to be careful in recruiting, lest you force them to make something they are not good at, it will be a minus for you in their eyes.
After obtaining competent human resources, the next stage is “Communication”. Almost all workers must have experienced working as a team in their career track record. In such teamwork, one thing that becomes the main and important point is communication. This communication is very important because it has a position as a means of connecting information between members, regardless of what role each person in the team plays. Whether it’s between you and the Builder, or between the Builder and the Scripter, all levels of communication within the team will have a huge impact on the success of your project. Whether we realize it or not, communication that is built in a clear and directed manner will form a good team, where each team member will know and understand what tasks they are responsible for.
The importance of internal communication in achieving the success of the project you are running must be understood and agreed upon by everyone on the team. At least everyone in the team has the same mission, which is to create a good communication system to form a good team. From there, a conducive and directed work ecosystem will be formed.
Before continuing, there are several things that each team member should understand, especially you as the project leader of the game you are developing. Among others are :
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The importance of effective communication
A study states that three or more people who work together on a task or project, will be much more effective than one person who spends all his time doing the same thing. With a note, among these three or more people have effective communication patterns. Without communication, three, five, or a hundred people will not work well. The first step to building effective communication is to develop trust, as this doesn’t happen automatically. Trust that is built properly will make communication between team members more open. In addition, honesty also plays a very important role and must exist in all teams. Without an honest team the integrity of the team will be weakened, and the effect of course on communication is not normal. -
Aware of the enormous benefits of effective communication within a team
Did you know that a team that has effective communication can actually work faster and more efficiently than others? This is because each team member works more accurately according to their duties and responsibilities. With good communication, team members have space to understand their roles and duties. On the other hand, teams that fail to build good internal communication will spend a lot of time and energy doing other tasks that are not needed. This is due to a lack of understanding of each other’s job desks. The consequences can be fatal, for example conflicts within the team and lack of trust between group members. The failure of internal communication will ultimately make its members fail to understand what makes themselves more efficient, because they themselves fail to get feedback from others on the team. If you’re in the role of project lead and encounter this in your team, then prepare for destruction and failure (I’m not kidding, because I’ve been there before).
The secret to building effective communication within the team
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First, make sure that your organization, company, or agency has a clear vision and mission and has the support of all team members. Without a clear vision and mission, any good communication will not produce any results.
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Second, choosing people who are competent in their respective roles (as I explained in the previous point). Starting from the project leader, Game Designer, Builder, Scripter, Modeler, Translator, UI Designer, to the UI Designer. Competent people are usually easier to work with, because they already have the basic skills to communicate well and are ready to build a better team.
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Third, the importance of utilizing technology
You must have understood that technology is now developing very dynamically, offering new ways to communicate more effectively and efficiently. So there is no reason not to take technology into account in an effort to build good communication and teams.
So, what can technology do to help you? A simple example and is now starting to be widely practiced is to form a group chat in one team, be it using Discord, WhatsApp, line, Instagram, or other social media chats. From this chat group, you as the project leader can check how far the progress of the project or task that is being worked on by team members. However, usually these chat groups are only limited to things that are brief reports and their scope is even narrower.
In a broader scope, you can create system automation that may still be done manually. Such as for example for correspondence for the disposition of tasks in the internal team, monitoring the performance of team members, or perhaps the reporting stage of members. Today’s technology makes it very possible to do all these tasks online and can be directly seen or monitored by each team member. In addition to speeding up the process, the time used is also less. In this way, the execution of the plan can be accelerated, evaluations can be carried out immediately to obtain maximum results, facilitate the emergence of innovative ideas, and the potential for targets to be achieved is even greater and faster.
As a project leader, you must manage your time as well as the developers involved in your project. You must be able to divide your time to monitor the progress of the project you lead. You should also give the developers deadlines to get the work done as effectively and efficiently as possible.
At this point, you might start to think “How to do good time management?” What are the real benefits? And what are the effects of poor time management? Make sure you keep reading discussion ii to the end.
To manage time well, you should have certain skills, such as being able to set priorities, being able to make plans, and so on. However, don’t worry if you don’t currently have these skills, you can learn them while you put in a good time management effort.
Here are some important skills to make it easier to manage your time with your development team.
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Goal Orientation
The ability to set goals and move goal-oriented is a key skill that must be mastered before engaging in other skills that are important in time management. Knowing your goals and moving toward them shows you have a clear view of what you and your team need to do and prioritize. -
Priority
Setting priorities is the second most important skill in time management. You need to make a list of tasks that must be done then assess which tasks are more urgent to be done first. -
Planning
Apart from setting goals and priorities, planning also plays a big role in time management. You must be able to plan what to do and when to do it to achieve your goals. If these three skills have been mastered, 75% of time management is in your hands. -
Management
Working neatly, systematically, being able to manage and organize work according to a schedule for each job helps you stay on the right track. You also know how to organize your work to get maximum results. You and your team will also not be bothered looking for the documents you need because everything is neat and organized in folders. -
Emotion Control
In addition to technical skills, psychological control such as knowing how to properly manage emotions and stress are also needed in time management. Deal with stress in positive ways so that you and your team continue to be motivated to work and focus on achieving goals.
At first, time management was only associated with work or tasks, but now time management is also starting to be applied in daily activities. This happens because time management is useful and has great benefits for human life. So what is the importance of time management for you and your development team? Here are some of the uses of good time management :
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More Focused and Productive
With good time management, you can focus more on your achievement targets. When you focus on doing each task, the task will be completed faster. When tasks are completed more quickly then you will have more free time to complete other work. The result? Time management makes you and your team more productive. -
Reputation and Job Satisfaction Increase
In addition to feeling satisfied with yourself because you can complete work faster, your boss will also be satisfied with your work. This has an impact on your reputation, you will be known as a capable and responsible person. -
Have More Free Time
When work gets done faster, you’ll have more free time. You won’t find the phrase “task pile up” in your dictionary. -
Become More Organized
People who can manage their time well will try to make sure their desks are always clean, organized, and tidy. This will minimize the time it takes to find the items you need because they will always be there. -
Reduces Pressure and Stress
Because you and your team are not in a hurry to complete tasks and know exactly where they need it, your team will not make many mistakes. This absence of minimal mistakes will certainly help reduce the pressure and stress that you and your team feel.
It can be seen that time management has various benefits that can benefit the project you are running. However, you may be asking, “If time management is not done properly, what will the impact be?” In fact, with the various technologies available today, there are various things that make time management easier, so the negative impact that is felt will be minimal.
However, we don’t always choose to use them, do we? There are even technologies that can make us unproductive at work. Here are some of the bad effects that can be felt if you don’t do time management properly:
- Overwhelming tasks
- Unsatisfactory work results
- Be in a hurry
- Unbalanced work-life balance
- Lack of sleep
- Forgetting the time
At this point you should also understand that activities such as real-life work, school, college, and family events are more important than developing games. So, you have to understand their routine and schedule before you can finally set a deadline.
Developing a game doesn’t always have to be done through updates. It is better to start with improving the internal conditions of the team that you form. Have your developers put in their maximum effort while working with you? If the answer is no, maybe what they really need is motivation to work on developing the game you and your team are making.
No need for complicated things to improve employee performance. Simple things like motivation at work can already help you to develop your game in a better direction. Still could not believe it? Again, I advise you to keep reading this article until the end.
The benefits you can get by motivating your developers are:
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Increase Employee Retention
When entering the world of work such as developing games, humans naturally have the intention to work optimally and give good results. So it can be said that basically, they actually have a fairly high work motivation. Your job is to prevent that level of motivation from decreasing or even disappearing altogether. How to increase work motivation is not too difficult. As long as your team has a clear direction, good respect for fellow developers, and has the resources employees need to work, they’re more likely to stay on the project you’re running. -
Help Ease Your Tasks
The advantage of this one is usually felt in games that are still newly launched. With a small number of developers, motivated developers will not hesitate to help with your daily operational tasks. That way, you have more time to think about other, more important things. On the other hand, developers who have low motivation to work can hinder the development of your game because they are not able to provide the quality you expect. -
Increase Product Value
Having a developer who has the motivation to work in a team can help you to produce games that have high quality and value in the eyes of players. The motivation to work felt by developers will make them feel that the game they are working on is their own game. As a result, they will ensure that the game you are developing has special value for players. Without being asked, they are willing to go a step further to make your game stand out and stand out from competitors’ and even market leaders’ games. -
Developers Won’t Be Satisfied With Themselves
Self-motivation at work can create a positive and conducive work environment. developers will feel passionate about what they are doing thanks to this work motivation. Without any interest in the game being developed, they can feel “away” from the company’s overall target, thereby reducing the quality of their performance. Instead of providing the best possible performance, they will just perform poorly (And this is what you don’t want, right?). Developers quickly become complacent and subconsciously work at a level below their capabilities, when in fact they can do much more than that. -
Encourages Creativity, Commitment, and Energy of developers
Whatever the genre of the game, creativity and energy are needed when developing a game. Both are mandatory intake for developers so that they can continue to produce even better innovations. Well, if they don’t have the motivation to work, they won’t be able to offer new ideas that can help you improve your game and get new players. Without you knowing it, they also bring less positive energy to the team you are managing. As a result, productivity can decrease and game development does not go according to target.
That’s all I can tell you about "How To Make Your Developer Team So Much Better". We can conclude that team management within the developer team is very important and creating a good developer team will certainly produce quality games. As I said to my development team, “A work team is made up of several people, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, each member working together to achieve the desired goal.” with the hope that what I wrote in this topic can be well received and can be applied to your developer team and can make your developer team much more qualified so as to produce quality games.
Thank you for reading this topic to the end. See you in the next interesting topic!
well 
