5 December 2009
Welcome to IndieZen

Getting it done, Indie Style. plus:
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Summary of the book by Patrick Lencioni

Indie Game Developer’s Guide – Team Building
Written by Tony Richards
Thursday, 03 December 2009 14:13

Whether you’re a beginner, hobbyist, aspiring game developer, or a seasoned veteran, this article provides some great guidelines and hints for creating a great Indie game development team.

The article assumes you’re putting together a zero or low-budget team to build an Indie game. It answers questions like “Who is the leader?” and gives you great advice on how to keep your team motivated and making constant, steady progress on your game.

If you’re considering starting a game development project or if you’re already part of a team, this article is definitely a must-read.

This article is a work in progress.. I don’t pretend to be an expert on team building. Lets discuss this in the forums under this topic (click here) and we can collaborate and polish this article. –read more–

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

There are five things to look for when building an Indie team. One of the most difficult points to handle in the Indie Community is the geographic isolation of your members. This makes the next five topics all the more significant when choosing your team members.
There are five dysfunctions that we should watch for when building a team. From professional sports to corporate boardrooms to online communities these five personality traits can breakdown cohesive focus and slow productivity to a crawl, and in the Indie community that will kill your project. –read more–

Over the weekend I had the unexpected pleasure of stumbling over an old bargain bin game I had bought some time ago.  It was the Pc version “Shadow of Destiny” by Konami. It was relased in 2001 for the playstaion 2 and later ported to the Pc.

Graphically speaking the game is sub-par for a playstaion 2 game of the time, and even less so for the compter. It feels very much like a dumbed down final fantisy game style wise.

Where Shadow of Destiny really stands out is its story. You start out as Eike kusch, a 22-year old man who is fated to die. In fact you dont start controling Eike untill after he is stabbed coming out of a small coffee shop.  It is in death that Eike is given a small divice and a second chance. The divice alows Eike to move though key spots in time, in hopes to change his fate.

The over all game play is very simple. Most of the time is spent on changing small things in the past thorough actions and dialog with prominent people from the city’s past and present, so the game is more like a interactive story trying to find out ways to stop Eike from dieing and of course finding out who’s trying to kill him in the first place.

If you like time travel stories or adventure type games I would highly recommend  getting a hold of a copy if you come across it.

Take one part Mad scientist, one part musicale, one part video blog, and Blend in the creative mind of Joss Whedon (creator of the show “FireFly”) and what do you get?

Dr. Horrible’s sing-along blog. An amusing story of Dr. Horrible and his struggles to go from a nobody to super-villain in the Evil league of Evil.  Of course his rise to power isn’t easy, not only does he have to make himself noticed by the Evil League of Evil, but he also must contend with his heroic enemy Captain Hammer. As if all that wasn’t complication enough for the Dr. There’s a pretty redhead down at the laundromat that’s grabbed the Dr.’s eye.

Filled with laughs and songs Dr. Horrible’s sing-along blog is definitely worth the watch.   Watch me!