Conflict

[Arma]

While so called soft skills have already been covered in a previous Weekly Discussion, recent discussion on the Discord server made me believe this subject it different enough to deserve its own thread.

Let's get right to the point; Conflicts between team members. Though most of them are often easily solved, some arguments can escalate to the point that someone decides leave a project. But what happens to the work they have put in to that point? Does the ownership of assets lies with the project manager or the artist?

• Discuss the ownership of assets in group projects
• Provide means for teams to prevent ownership based disputes
• Share your experiences when it comes down to committing assets to group projects

 

[Tomix9tomix]

Well this is an interesting topic. I've never really worked on a team so reading some of the replies to this will be very insightful since what I'm saying comes from zero experience.

Obviously it is best to just have no conflict all together, but that is easier said than done. Some people just don't get along, and sometimes someone will have an idea they like while another team member hates it. Honestly, I think it is pretty hard to put in ways to prevent conflict, other than having a team with members who have good chemistry together.

In terms of ownership of assets, that is a challenging one. If a team member, for example, the main artist, decides to leave in a messy conflict, they might want to take their art back from the game and say, "No, I made this and I no longer wish to work if you, so don't use it." I think in an ideal world there would be an established set of rules before someone starts creating for the project where they have to understand that if they contribute something to the game, it belongs to the game. But really, this is the fan game world, if someone decides to break the rules it's not like you can sue them or anything.

My main point is, I believe that when a member contributes to a project, what they have made belongs to the game, and this applies to the leader too, if the leader decides to leave then they should give everything they have of the game to someone else.

 

[Aki]

Legally, artists retain the rights to their work. That's why you'll occasionally see an ugly breakup where an artist leaves and takes 75% of the project with them (viedo games or otherwise). This can get pretty muddied in a collaborative fan project when there's a project lead directing ideas to an artist doing concepts, which another artist pixelizes into game art. Who owns what if the team breaks up?

I'd recommend talking about this topic with every new team member. That might sound like a drag, but it's not as if you need to talk about a dramatic breakup! Sometimes there's just some content cutting leaving perfectly good fakemon ideas, who has the right to recycle them? Or maybe there was a special script made for the project, and the scripter would like to release a version of it as a public resource...would that be okay? Does the artist have the right to post something on their DeviantArt or Twitter that would be a spoiler for the game? Those are all questions that you should probably talk about with your team. It's not like you need to have a formal agreement and sign a legal document, just bring it up so everyone knows each other's intentions.

Let's see, as for personal experience...I don't remember a lot of times this was brough up when I worked with someone else.

1. A project lead did ask if I was okay making all my art a public resource when the project was shut down. I liked that a lot and was planning to ask that myself if he hadn't.
2. The only other time I saw this brought up was by a dev who had specifically had issues before with team conflict and key members leaving the project; he asked me to agree that my work belong to the project before I was allowed into the team chat.

 

[Brom]

So for my projects, I decided that the artist can remove and revoke use of their art any time during the planning and conceptualization stage. Artists will still have an opportunity to remove their art after this threshold if we talk it out and meet an agreement. For the most part though, anything after the main conceptualization stages will belong to the game.

For modelers, musicians, and other non-illustrative artists, I've decided to set a relative deadline for the project (e.g. reaching the fifth gym) for them to remove their work from the game if they didn't want it used in the game.

I can understand it from both sides due to me doing art and also helping other projects in my spare time. On one hand, the artist should have the right to remove their work, but on the other hand, it can be hard to find an artist who can fill the role of someone who left the project. But hey, if you work with people that you can work with seriously and casually fine, then you probably won't have to worry about all of this stuff. Just make sure you set up an agreement just in case this does happen though

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