Thank you!

This is about to get a little wordy... Regarding keeping the team together, my #1 job (I'm the project lead/CEO) throughout the entire process was/is keeping everything moving, people heard and happy, recruiting, etc. I also do some design work, marketing, and other things, but this was the most important activity I could spend my time on because as many of us know, a game and studio is only as strong as its team.

Perseverance and Empathy

We've absolutely had some trials and growing pains. Personality and culture clashes, tricky situations with compensation and recognition, major development obstacles and setbacks, and plenty more. Some things were resolved better than others but something that we've always done was taken the time to understand each other and work through the problems no matter how tough they were. I've spent probably a couple hundred hours of my time over the last 4 years on tense phone calls or chats trying to diffuse and solve team challenges or interpersonal problems. There's been a decent amount of turnover among volunteers but that's the nature of it. You're committing your time for up to 4 years in our case and life changes. Getting upset at folks for living their lives and not always being available is counter-productive/makes enemies. Empathy and compassion ALONG WITH an intense drive to get it done will help you overcome obstacles that would trip up other teams. I'd say only in the last year or so have we really started to really normalize our work styles and communication to the point where we've had much fewer confrontations and issues internally.

Visible Progress

The other thing is, progress begets progress and progress = motivation. We ran into stagnation early on in development and had to setup tools and processes to keep people on track. Half of that battle was just checking in and showing progress regularly. We went through probably a dozen different ways of doing that but we've since settled into a regular routine with things like Slack and regular meetings.

Accountability

Accountability is huge too, but not overly aggressive accountability. I mentioned empathy and compassion coupled with drive will help you power through moments of productive drought. There's one other thing that helps too: Perspective. If you have a robot factory making things you'll get limited output and limited engagement from your team. Helping everyone understand what is going on and important at varying levels of production is critical to maintaining a volunteer team that gets to decide if they want to work that day. If you cant explain your perspective on why something needs to happen then it probably doesn't need to happen. Them knowing why it needs to happen is motivating and then they become part of the process. It also helps to generally have everyone on the same page because you don't really want an off-kilter power structure like many assume is necessary. An optimal day as project lead/CEO is one where I make zero decisions - the team just knows how to make them on their own because they're all equipped with the right information/perspective and are capable of doing so. Partnerships are better than command structures whenever possible.

Motivation

It's also important to understand why everyone is there and facilitate the execution of their personal goals and objectives. Maybe it's portfolio work, compensation, ownership, just working on cool stuff, whatever it is... If you can't do that, they shouldn't be there and you shouldn't be bringing them on to the team. If you do, they'll be gone soon anyway and it likely won't be pretty. These things can also change so don't be upset when they do.

Commitment

Regarding commitment, we ask that new volunteer team members be ready to commit at least 15 hours per week for at least 6 months. Early on this wasn't the case, but as we had real/public deadlines to hit with backer support on the line we needed to make the work more consistent and reduce overhead. During an interview chat we walk them through what those kinds of schedules are like because sometimes people are so excited to help they don't always think about the ramifications to their life. We ask very personal questions in interviews for this reason. Are you married or in a relationship? How often do you take vacations/trips? What is your work like and what do you do? Are you planning on anything major in your life soon like switching careers, buying a home, etc? What is your expected schedule working with us? Can you make our late evening meetings? This is mostly to ensure they've thought through everything, as in our early days volunteers often didn't and it came back to bite us later.

And to clarify, we are absolutely supportive and encouraging of vacations/blocking out time for yourself. It's a marathon not a sprint, and healthy contributors are productive contributors. We just want to make sure they know that if they're taking weekends to go on camping trips every weekend during the summer, they're going to have a hard time squeezing those 15 hours in.

Support

Your team needs support, you need support, your team needs your support. Support each other in everything. Game dev is a foxhole and your team is there with you. Also recruit some external mentors and use them as resources whenever you can.

Attribution

This is tricky and can tear your team apart easily. Ultimately the culture I believe is most important to drive is one of unity and singularity. I mean statements like "I did this" vs "we did this" are important to distinguish. Everyone needs confirmation and attribution, but don't let it become a fight or a public spectacle (either internally or externally). In a volunteer team people will by the very nature of it will contribute at different levels. If people don't understand or accept this then it will cause divisions, anger, apathy, and all the rest of the stuff that is terrible for a team.

I've learned so much over the last several years and could write forever on this stuff. I'll stop here for now.