I'm sure many of you have for certain heard the expression: "Teamwork makes the dream work". But quite honestly, based on past experiences and stats, I realized that it's often quite the opposite... "Teamwork makes the dream jerk", because more often than not, that dream or objective gets slowed down and advances in a very unsteady manner, making the whole experience feel very jerky. So why would one still want to be in a team then? Well let's weight out the pros and cons. This is a pretty important step when thinking about being an indie developer. Choosing whether you want to do the adventure by yourself or with people will dictate a lot about how you work and what you work on as well.
Pros of working in a team
First, let's start with why people tend to do it. There are many reasons why people do it and I won't be able to list them all here, so I'll list just name a few that, in my opinion, are the most important ones. I believe, the biggest reason is simply the idea of 'divide and conquer'. One person can't be good at everything, so having multiple people in the team allows for strengths to be redistributed through the different aspects of the game. One person might be better in animation or art while someone else's strength relates to coding and programming.
Having multiple people on the project also allows for more brains and therefore more ideas and creativity on the project. When it's time to spitball some feature ideas, you're more likely to hear some interesting ideas coming from others that can expand your way of thinking!
Another benefit, and that pertains more to the bigger teams, so it applies more and more the bigger your team is, is that having a lot of people looking at the game prevents major bug issues. Whenever a new feature is coming out to production, if you have a bigger line of command, it might need to pass through 5-10 people (or more) before it can get release. That means, less chance of not spotting bugs or errors related to that feature.
Cons of working in a team
The other side of the same coin is mainly that sometimes there are too many cooks in the kitchen. You don't have as much freedom as working by yourself. It then becomes really hard to make a decision about something because everyone has their own opinion and wants to do it their way because they believe it's the best. One way to solve that issue is to appoint a leader that will sort of have veto over some of the decisions that are being discussed. Sometimes, the issue with that is that there might be some resentment over time towards the leader if they never pick one's ideas.
Another issue that might come up is timing and orchestrating meetings. The more you are in a team, and the more difficult and complicated it gets to organize a meeting where everyone's availabilities match. It's easier when everyone's working full time on it because they must have dedicated time for it but if it's still on a part-time basis, it can get very complex.
Lastly, not only meeting the right people to work with can be a challenge in and of itself, making sure that everything gets through the whole chain of commands can slow down operations tremendously. For example, if you want to change something, you would now have to talk to the director that would relate the information higher up the ladder to then eventually come back down to the designer and so on and so forth until someone gets the OK to actually start working on it. That line of communication, depending on the team you're working with can take days before getting a response. This issue is mostly relatable to bigger teams as smaller teams usually have a way to rapidly contact one another.
What's the verdict?
That being said, it's all up to you and what you aim to do with your studio or your project! I think both are challenging and you can have a good or a bad time whether you choose the solo route or the team route, it's really just about which one you're gonna stick with through the pain!
Pros of working in a team
First, let's start with why people tend to do it. There are many reasons why people do it and I won't be able to list them all here, so I'll list just name a few that, in my opinion, are the most important ones. I believe, the biggest reason is simply the idea of 'divide and conquer'. One person can't be good at everything, so having multiple people in the team allows for strengths to be redistributed through the different aspects of the game. One person might be better in animation or art while someone else's strength relates to coding and programming.
Having multiple people on the project also allows for more brains and therefore more ideas and creativity on the project. When it's time to spitball some feature ideas, you're more likely to hear some interesting ideas coming from others that can expand your way of thinking!
Another benefit, and that pertains more to the bigger teams, so it applies more and more the bigger your team is, is that having a lot of people looking at the game prevents major bug issues. Whenever a new feature is coming out to production, if you have a bigger line of command, it might need to pass through 5-10 people (or more) before it can get release. That means, less chance of not spotting bugs or errors related to that feature.
Cons of working in a team
The other side of the same coin is mainly that sometimes there are too many cooks in the kitchen. You don't have as much freedom as working by yourself. It then becomes really hard to make a decision about something because everyone has their own opinion and wants to do it their way because they believe it's the best. One way to solve that issue is to appoint a leader that will sort of have veto over some of the decisions that are being discussed. Sometimes, the issue with that is that there might be some resentment over time towards the leader if they never pick one's ideas.
Another issue that might come up is timing and orchestrating meetings. The more you are in a team, and the more difficult and complicated it gets to organize a meeting where everyone's availabilities match. It's easier when everyone's working full time on it because they must have dedicated time for it but if it's still on a part-time basis, it can get very complex.
Lastly, not only meeting the right people to work with can be a challenge in and of itself, making sure that everything gets through the whole chain of commands can slow down operations tremendously. For example, if you want to change something, you would now have to talk to the director that would relate the information higher up the ladder to then eventually come back down to the designer and so on and so forth until someone gets the OK to actually start working on it. That line of communication, depending on the team you're working with can take days before getting a response. This issue is mostly relatable to bigger teams as smaller teams usually have a way to rapidly contact one another.
What's the verdict?
That being said, it's all up to you and what you aim to do with your studio or your project! I think both are challenging and you can have a good or a bad time whether you choose the solo route or the team route, it's really just about which one you're gonna stick with through the pain!