Division of labor on Project

CheekyGimp

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Wanted to get people's opinions on division of labor on a project. With a typical game like DMD, Dreams of Desire, Big Brother, etc. Do you feel the workload is split evenly across writing/coding/artwork ?
For example if 3 developers (writer, coder, artist) decided to collaborate on a project, who is taking on the lion's share of work ? And if it was a commercial project, would an 1/3 split each be the norm?
This is just a hypothetical (currently doing all 3 myself, with no planned collaborators).
 

Blazblue

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This entirely depends on the project and the people working on it.
 

ThanatosX

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Art eats up time like a mofo, I would guess it to be the biggest share of the workload. Unless it's a more story type VN or text game. Code and writing time would depend on skill and creativity, so harder to judge.
 
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redknight00

I want to break free
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As others said it depends, different genres require different amounts of work, for example a vn is usually light enough on the coding side that they rarely use an exclusive person for it.
 
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DSSAlex

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It definitely depends from project to project. I would expect producing art to take much, much longer than the other aspects in most cases, though.
 
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instancabile

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I'm new in game stuff... but I was hoping to find someone that wanna create something and make together. So If there is someone that need render so that he or she can focus in the stody I'm in as long I can create it and not just have the file and render it like a machine... I hope it sounds right
 
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MightyMidnightMop

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It's impossible to say without knowing what your game is. If you don't have a game, I would strongly suggest you first focus on getting a game out and getting funding. Once you have, say, $100/month of funding or a relative equivalent by some other measure, THEN discuss who gets how much. You have no idea how successful your game will be, and you should be focused on the game, with money being a side-effect.The
The workload can be balanced differently, leaning more on one person than another depending entirely on what kind of game you're making.

Let's take into account a few games: Corruption of Champions, Overwhored, and Snow Daze.

Corruption of Champions:

This uses a custom engine written in Actionscript (Flash). This game focuses on transformations, and the main output is text. There are some character portraits, but that's it for the artist. The programmer has the hardest job here, given how CoC's event system is wired, how the game focuses hard on transformations, and CoC's general design. The writer has a tough job too, in that they need to account for different player transformations. One example: You can't write, in a scene, that a non-player character reaches between the player's legs, because the player may have a naga tail.

Overwhored:

This uses RPGMaker, so there's not a heavy need for a programmer. The programmer's job here is more in making the battle system work. Someone has to figure out the leveling system, how to balance out combat, what levels trigger what abilities, and to plug characters in. Items also need to be written. But the programmer's job is made much easier in that RPGMaker is made for this kind of game, so it has an existing framework and community to lean on. Just, you know, don't let 'em know you're making a sex game in case that ruffles feathers.

What I really like about Overwhored is the dialogue. The conversations are witty. The npcs don't feel like stock 'fuck it, whatever' kind of people. They're part of this fucked up world. The art is also in a consistent style (all/most done by sleepymaid, I think) and very good. Here the writer and the artist are going to be where the bulk of the work is at. The adult content consists of a static picture, plus text content.

Snow Daze:

The programming for this is very easy. It's branching choices and pretty easy to do. The writing is very good in this, but since there are no mechanics to speak of, the art and voice acting really sell it. The adult content is in having, say, one of the girls bark for you while naked and getting a picture of it (as well as the audio).


All of these games are very good, and yet they focus on different areas. What contributions are made, and what areas the game depends on most should be the driver behind helping decide who gets what.
 

Aeilion

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Jun 14, 2017
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I find it a pity to imagine all that in quantity ...
Coding maybe, yes, when we stay on something simple.
But for the rest ... For me it is artistic field. Do you really manage to define the amount of work that can be done by drawing something or writing something?
I believe, that before all, it is up to you to define what part of "work" or time you want to grant to one aspect of your game and according to the artist you will have different results with this quantity of "work".
You can, at worst, set a limit in terms of number of cgs per month to produce. But I can not see how to do the same thing in terms of writing.
Everyone agrees, obviously, that it depends on the project. And it is obviously true. But even inside the project it will vary depending on the party of the game. Sometimes we will have more to write than draw, sometimes it will be the opposite etc ....
 
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tooldev

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Feb 9, 2018
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Your question is not a game design question but a regular business question. In business there is no such thing as 'fair' because you cant define fair at all. Fair in business decisions is in the end when all participants can agree on it.

To play that for your example it would require You to provide some kind of forecast of income and then get the other party to agree on a split model. From there it is for the other party to decide if that split covers time and effort provided. That simple.

P.S. Split models are actually pretty common all over the business world but they require solid contracts who owns what in the end.
P.S.S. A very good example why those contracts are very important in those models is Breeding Season which ended in a mess regarding ownership of assets etc
 
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CheekyGimp

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Folks, Thanks for the replies. For me personally I find the artwork/renders to be the biggest drain of my time and the slowest path of my project development, but wasn't sure if it was just me being behind the curve on Daz3D learning or the norm. Looks like it's the norm.
 

Droid Productions

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It's the norm inside the mivrocosm of RenPy/DAZ games; while it's easy to assume this is all there is (when looking at Western hgames), it's a niche inside a niche :).