Hiring your friend for your project.

[Elliott404]

Is it good, or bad idea to hire your friend for your project part?
What are the pros, and cons if you have your friend work with you in your project?

 

[Ms Littlefish]

So. In my experience, it really depends on the friend and what's being exchanged. I've had friends that I click with creatively so well that it's an absolute blast and I end up creating some of my absolute best work. They pay or trade promptly and the friendship is as good as ever and sometimes even stronger. Then, I've had friends where working with them really stuck a thorn in my side and soured the relationship.

It's going to be case-by-case whether it's a good idea or not. I think what is most important in determining that is if you have an openness and honesty with that person in which you can freely express any discontent and proactively solve problems, as you would with any interpersonal relationship issue. Once money gets involved in any relationship you're emotionally invested in, it can sorta be like dropping cesium in a toilet. BOOM. So, the risks need to be weighed and each friend examined as an individual prospect.

 

[dragoonwys]

I agree with Littlefish up there, it depends.
I have one friend on my project, we world build together and bounce ideas around, exchange and collab on character designs. We can reject or debate on what makes sense for the world pretty well, so it has been a blast working with them. If you and friends have good communication chemistry with each other to solve problems rather than taking everything as a personal attack when called out, its worth a try.

 

[TWings]

The safest job for your friends is playtesting.
Pretty hard to mess up a friendship with that one.

 

[Mordridakon]

The safest job for your friends is playtesting.
Pretty hard to mess up a friendship with that one.

Well it may be hard to mess up a friendship, but are they really going to give you the feedback you really need? If its awful, they're not going to say as such in order not hurt your feelings. But sometimes, you need to know if something is terrible in order to improve(I know from my own experience with books).

 

[Andar]

it depends on how professional both of you can be.
If you can be professional (including telling each other if an idea is crap, and including you not trying to abuse the friendship to get a cheap worker), then it can work and help a lot.
If you can't be professional about the help and let expectations from the friendship intrude, then there is a danger of everything going downhill.

 

[Wavelength]

My experience working with friends on projects has usually not been so good (a couple of friendships and a lot of projects have been ruined), but as some others are saying, it really does depend on the people and the circumstances.

It tends to create a different dimension to the friendship - not always the one you're dreaming of - so it's really important to set clear expectations in advance. Figure out in advance what both of your roles will be (especially if one person is hiring and paying the other), and how your proceed without hurting either the project or your friendship when the time inevitably comes where you don't see eye to eye creatively.

 

[atoms]

It really depends on the friends and what you give them to do. What I mean is, I'd advice knowing or learning what your friends would prefer to do, so they do something they're most good at. If your plan is they work with you with the game your designing.

Playtesting seems like a good idea, you could also ask them to give you feedback on what they played, what they liked and disliked and what they'd keep in the game and do different.

It's always helpful to have a second person give feedback, so if it's a good friend it'll probably be even better. So long as your friend is happy to help out in someway!

You could also ask your friend for input on simpler things too, such as names you gave in the game, such as location names, weapon names, major character names or NPC names. I've done that with a friend once before in the past.

 

[TWings]

Well it may be hard to mess up a friendship, but are they really going to give you the feedback you really need? If its awful, they're not going to say as such in order not hurt your feelings. But sometimes, you need to know if something is terrible in order to improve(I know from my own experience with books).

Sure I wouldn't rely on a few friends for a complete objective feedback, but at the very least, they can find bugs which is always helpful, and you can't really argue about a bug.
Even if they're not the type to be hard on you, they can still provide some fresh eyes, sometimes they have some idea that wouldn't have crossed your mind too. Heck, you don't have to blindly listen your testers anyway, you're still free to do what you want at the end of the day.

 

[samkfj]

I personally--do not like working with my RL friends.

There's one big reason why--they put pleasure before work, and self interest before friendship. There's a time to work--and there's a time to play; as there's also a time to be tough and a time to be soft--but there's never a moment to spend being treated poorly by people you call your friends. I've been bitten by this twice before concerning game making. The first was just inability--marred with instances of "let's start--tomorrow." But--there was one instance for sure that cemented it for me. To make a long story short--I did much of the work while they wasted time and money.

If I wanted to hire someone--I would hire the best person for the job; friends tend to not be the best people for that job. However--game testing and bouncing ideas is okay--I do that a lot.

 

[woootbm]

This is actually a better question than I think some may realize. I've found that enlisting friends can be very detrimental to a project. I'm sure we all wish we could just have our friends to work with since we get along so well with them, but they can easily cause much more harm than good. Here are some of the reasons why:

-Low talent/skill. A lot of times friends will have a passion (or hobby... or passing interest...) that they will enthusiastically offer up. That's nice and all, but we have this whole community full of people who already know how to do things fully. I'd rather shove a Yanfly mod into a game than have a friend who is trying to learn Java do his best to make a "custom" system.

-Conflicts of interest. While it's good to have feedback and a back and forth over ideas, there needs to be leadership/direction in order to get anything done. Often times a friend will overstep boundaries in order to get his/her own ideas over. You can't really be a boss to someone who thinks of you purely as an equal.

-Increased "drama." Working on a team is tough. Debates are inevitable. It's a lot easier to have fights with co-workers than friends. Friends make things personal. Co-workers are more likely to accept something they don't like begrudgingly and move on. And if need be, they can be axed and replaced with less tears shed.

-Lack of motivation. Maybe my friends are just bad examples, but I am also a bit older. That means my friends have lives, wives, moved away, etc. Unless your friends are also highly active in this community and have the same love for the project, they will only work on it when they "have time." Obviously we all can only work on projects when we have time! But you can tell when this point is more emphasized with someone. I gave my game to a friend to give me feedback on it a couple months ahead of its release. All he had to do is play it. It is a 1.5 hour game. About a month after the game came out, he told me his machine couldn't run it (compat issue). Cool. Thanks for the help, bud!

-Increased feelings of dependency. The more you rely on your friends, the more you feel like you need them. What you need is professionalism. Take responsibility, accountability, learn new things, get work done. Friends are great for giving emotional support, but you need to learn to exist without that, and only turn to their support when truly needed; it should not be a default requirement to every step. On top of that, if things go south with your project, it will die a much more horrible death if it was built with all friends. You'll feel like you can't continue without them, it wouldn't be right to do it without them.

With that last point I want to say that this is actually a chance to learn. If you can learn to enlist people, manage a team (or be a part of a team) and get work done, that is a fantastic quality to have. You can become a bona fide game developer and will be able to go from project to project, and will even have the mental tools needed to work in this industry.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

Hiring your friend is very dangerous!

Here is my point of view: Your project is like your baby, and you want to see it grow, and shape it till it is your dream coming trough on the screen. But what if you and your friend both love the project so much, but both have another dream for it?

For example: You think it would be awesome to kill a main character off, and your friend doesn't want to hear about it. If you both feel strongly enough about it, one of you will have to give in. If either of you wants to give in, it could be the end of your friendship, forever.

 

[Andar]

@JohnDoeNews you're mixing up hiring and codevelopment.
Hiring means paying someone to do a job, and in that case it is clear that the one who pays is the one who decides what to do.

If people are unprofessional then this can spill over into their friendship, but there will never be a question on who's idea the work will follow.
A clash of ideas can only happen if they are co-developing without payment because only then both will have the same rights to influence the story.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

@JohnDoeNews you're mixing up hiring and codevelopment.
Hiring means paying someone to do a job, and in that case it is clear that the one who pays is the one who decides what to do.

If people are unprofessional then this can spill over into their friendship, but there will never be a question on who's idea the work will follow.
A clash of ideas can only happen if they are co-developing without payment because only then both will have the same rights to influence the story.

Yeah, I guess you're right.

 

[bgillisp]

I and a friend used to work together on stories for RPG's back when we were both in high school, and it actually worked well. However, I think the reason it worked is I was the story person and he was the here's things to polish and improve it person. And we had the rule that I had the final veto if needed.

Part of why I think it worked though is I would at least try his idea, and then after we saw it in action we could see if it really helped or not, and sometimes some of them we would say Nope and rewind the plot to where we were before the attempted change. And then there are plots that went so badly we ended it "And then aliens invaded" as we were just throwing anything at it try to save it. So yes, we got some bad results too, but we got some good results too.

 

[Pix3M]

I've had disasterous friend developer relationships. If your friends are terrible communicators, it will strain your friendships.

 

[Sharm]

Oooh. This is generally a bad idea. There are times when it can work, yes, but it depends entirely on how much you can treat this as a business transaction and not involve your friendship on any level, and you both need to be able to do this well for it to be fair and work well. Sometimes you can't predict how your friend will be in a business situation, it's very hard to judge from a friendship standpoint. Another potential hazard is that sometimes life messes you up and one side or the other won't be able to complete their end of the deal due to no fault of their own, leaving the other person high and dry. The bigger the deal is, the more strain this will be on the relationship, especially if the other side can't absorb the costs.