Working as a solo dev

Some random ball working on a video game (2023 - pixelized)

Hello again everyone! Before I make the post talking about the upcoming gallery for MKM, I'd like to talk about working as a solo dev and why I continue to work alone instead of teaming up with someone to help me. I bring up this topic now because as you know, recently I had an annoying creative slump (which I've already recovered from) and among the many kind words that I've received, some people have suggested that I either hire or collaborate with someone to help spread out my workload. Actualy even before this, others had also graciously made the same suggestion or offer, so I figure this is the best opportunity to talk about this topic with everyone. The first issue with hiring someone is of course the managerial side. Which hours will they work? How much are they getting paid? Do we have a contract? Which payment channels are accessible for me to deliver money to them? Are they productive? Do they have good work efficiency? Etc etc... For any kind of serious work environment and collaboration (and also to avoid any big headaches and confusion in the future) this type of management is really the bare minimum. But it is a huge can-of-worms and it requires this extra administrative work that, honestly, I'm not really up to engaging with at this moment. Now with that said, I've received some offers where they offered to work for free, or as a gesture of goodwill with no strings attached. But even with free collaboration, a handful of new issues arise: 1) Scheduling. I have my own work hours and other people have theirs, and quite often those might not match at all (different time-zones, different work preferences, etc). It is frustrating to be "tied down" because you're waiting for someone else to finish their side of the work, in order for you to be able to continue your own side of things or make a release. 2) Art consistency. They key area where it would really help to have someone else working with me is the drawing and animation departments. But every artist has their own style and by this point I have done so many enemies and animations, that either we would have some serious art mismatch for enemies (which is always jarring to see), or the new artist would have to redo all of the enemies and animations, which is just an insane amount of work to do at this point. 3) Range of fetishes. As you know, in my games I've done a crazy range of different fetishes and perhaps the biggest issue of all to me is finding someone else to work with me on MKM and that has the same range of fetishes as I do. Everyone I've talked to have their own preferences and dislikes, and obviously I won't force anyone to draw or work on something that puts them off (as I would not like to work drawing dislikes either), so this drastically reduces the number of people could work with me in the current project of MKM. Since the start of my game dev journey in 2018, I've been keeping up with some fellow game devs and communities, and when you're there you get to hear a lot of "backstage" stories, and the majority of those stories relate to bad experiences with teammates. Whether it be someone disappears out of nowhere and you can't get in contact with them at all (leaves the work hanging), or someone creates some drama or unnecessary trouble, or an artist begins to slow down their work output (for many reasons, some valid, others not so much), programmers that can't properly fix bugs, etc. And this is just the work side of things, to not speak of the administrative side: Issue with contracts because teammates are foreigners and each country has their own rules for taxes and stuff, issue with payment provides and not being able to pay/receive their salary, language barriers, time-zone issues, etc. I could go into even more issues and details, but I think by now you'll get the point I'm trying to make: that getting some work help would indeed be amazing, but is not just a simple matter; at the very least not for an ongoing project such as MKM that is in an advanced stage of development. And I might as well take this chance to clarify: it is not like I'm opposed to ever collaborating with someone else or even working as a team. In fact I do daydream sometimes about having a small but focused team of same-minded individuals to create some awesome games with bigger scope. So yeah I'd love to delegate some of my workload to somebody else as it would take a huge weight off my shoulders, but the key takeaway here is that trying to fit someone into MKM at this stage of development seems to be more trouble than it is worth, so for now I'll just have to continue working alone until I complete its development. And then in the future, I might be able to collaborate with an artist to create some smaller projects. That would be really fun actualy, to start fresh on some cool ideas with someone who's as hyped as I'am to work on the same game. So I appreciate all of the offers for help and such, but for now I'll have to just keep doing my best and am to finish MKM this year, so that I may take on new projects and opportunities in the future. Thank you for your time, and I'll see you soon to talk about the new gallery mode! Best Regards, Mega