How/Where do you Recruit for TL/OELVN Projects?

[Mr Poltroon]

When you start a Project, be it a translation or an OELVN, you first need to find some members. Very rarely does a Project get off the ground without some members before its start.

This said, and this is addressed mainly at current project leads or knowledgeable members:

Where/How would you look for different kind of people for a Project?

Artists, Writers, Editors, Translators, and whatever you can think of. If you've done it before, how did you do it, if you haven't, how would you do it?

[Funyarinpa]

Tiago, please, be the main writer if you are starting a VN project.

 

That prose would be on the level of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

 

That said, there are several places to ask: /r/visualnovels, Lemma Soft Forums, this website

[Nosebleed]

I look for people I personally know first and foremost that could fit the position before making any public annoucements, this makes it easier to get off the ground since you'd be on the same page from the get go and it's just generally easier to get a good pace going when you already know each other.

 

In my case, I started out by seeking help in hacking, all in private, to make sure I had any chance of even getting something going, I found binaryfail through word of mouth and asked him for help and he kindly accepted.

If you don't have any idea on who can help, asking other project leaders is definitely a good 2nd option (and something I would do next if I hadn't found someone).

And if push comes to shove, your last bet is always to make a public thread and ask for help since hacking doesn't usually take a big deal of involvement throughout the entire project so outsiders are more likely to help you get the scripts, and even if they disappear later at least you got somewhere to go off of.

 

For editing, Ryechu approached me personally and volunteered to be an editor and I know him fairly well and know his background so I accepted.

I'd say that, if I hadn't found him early on, I would be quite in a pinch since I'm not the best to judge editing skills, but I'd probably have put up a "recruiting" post since I'm fairly clueless on this aspect.

 

As for translation checking, again I turned for people I personally know and who's abilities I trust. This is harder just because the translation checker has to have a fairly good knowledge of both languages. If I hadn't found someone earlier on I'd probably have gone through the fan translation registration thread and see if I could have found someone suitable.

 

 

TL;DR

For fan translations, my process for all positions tends to go:

Be the main translator (so I know the project only dies if I myself quit )

Find a hacker either through word of mouth or by asking for help on the forum (especially other project leaders). 

Ask for help editing publicly, would probably require the person to show me some of the editing they have done in the past.

Try to find a translation checker, again by word of mouth and if impossible then ask for help publicly.

 

If the forum can't help, /r/visualnovels is probably not a bad idea to go to.

[Heizei_koukousei]

Be the main translator (so I know the project only dies if I myself quit )

This has always made me question how valuable a project lead can possibly be if they don't know the language. Leadership skills are a must, but I have always believed that the translators are the heart of the team and deserve to have the loudest voice in matters.

 

 

So far I have found all of the staff members for Skyspear either right here on Fuwanovel after making a thread or, oddly enough, through emails from people who saw our external website. Before adding them to the team I always make sure to give them a small test. For translators I always give the same test so that I can build up a bank of possible responses. For editors, as Nosebleed mentioned, it's just makes things easy to look at some of their past work.

 

By making a website and linking it to VNDB a lot of potential is generated. Looking at the statistics for the website has shown that the word does get around without any direct soliciting from the team itself. Reddit actually seems to be a community that stays in the know. Twitter also helps to spread general knowledge of a new project.

 

Assembling a team is like fishing. Patience is key

[Nosebleed]

This has always made me question how valuable a project lead can possibly be if they don't know the language. Leadership skills are a must, but I have always believed that the translators are the heart of the team and deserve to have the loudest voice in matters.

I question the same.

My leadership skills mostly involved making silly translation notes about how a particular scene made me tear and discuss with Ryechu how to we make something sound extra erotic.

Yet my project didn't die and is nearing completion because I was at the heart of the translation progress, regardless of my leadership skills.

Though not to say a single person can't form an entire team, but you really need to make sure you're all on the same page about the game you're trying to translate, this is why I didn't start off with a public annoucement.

[Cyrillej1]

I've only had experience doing a very small project, my first one.

 

At first I only thought about TLing it myself.  And since I was already planning to try out Vnr insertion, I wasn't worried about finding hackers either, so could do that myself as well.

 

I had the idea that it could get started & finished, mostly because I was going to be main TL and script length was do-able for me.  So I started sharing my intentions with friends first, and one on fuwa said he'd help me with Editing.

 

After I announced on fuwanovel that I'd be working on TLing the VN, a member pmed me telling me he wanted to help me. So I got him to help me with TLC.

 

I also browsed fuwa's Fan Translation Skills Registration when I thought we needed more members.

 

I think overall, even if I didn't have help, I would have finished it either way.  But I was lucky people volunteered/wanted to help me with the project and improve the quality on it (thank you very much).  It also gave me more motivation to finish TL more quickly with other people involved.

 

I guess because I was main TL, it was easier to get the project started and I knew it'd get finished as long as I didn't quit.

[Satsuki]

Mostly my friends and their friends/acquaintances. Only when there is no choice left, I will go look for member from other places or do a public recruitment. 

The members from our OELVN project are pretty much all knew each other from before.

It's much easier to work that way, btw.

[Narcosis]

Why look for people to work with, when you can be a one man dev team.

[Mr Poltroon]

Why look for people to work with, when you can be a one man dev team.

Mostly because you can't, I'd wager.

[Narcosis]

If all that time usually spent by leads on creating dev teams would be used on learning and improvement instead, we'd have a lot more skilled devs by now. Trust me

[Ryechu]

Depends on the genre.  Here's a general list:

 

/r/visualnovels, Aarinfantasy, E-Hentai forums, Fuwanovel, LemmaSoft, 4chan

 

For Sukisho, we gathered most of our members via Aarinfantasy, and our QC approached me via our website.

 

For the various nukige projects I head up, most of my members are through here or E-H.  The problem with E-H is that most of them accept require "donations" for their time.

 

If the project is something other than a vanilla story (ask me for the genre list I'm willing to do, I dare you), typically you can bug me to edit it, and chances are I'll say yes.

[Mr Poltroon]

If all that time usually spent by leads on creating dev teams would be used on learning and improvement instead, we'd have a lot more skilled devs by now. Trust me

Indeed, and if everyone spent their time learning Japanese instead of bugging TL Projects then there'd be no need for them in the first place.

[Darklord Rooke]

For OELVN projects, if you don't know somebody generally you start here - http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewforum.php?f=58&sid=e0c666abdbc8de5703df0a019e5925e0

 

Then for artists you travel to Deviantart, and for writers you.....

[Narcosis]

Jokes aside, regarding gamedev - for artists, musicans and sound engineers - there's a lot of various places to search for; certain lead developers usually have their networks of contacts; aside from people they might have worked together in the past, it's good to know the industry as well. Not always, but quite often - they have a number of specified artists they'd like to work with. It's easier to hire a freelancer, than "acquire" someone, who you'd like to work with on a more than a single project.

Those who barely got off the ground, have a lot of different places to start. Certain services like DeviantArt or Pixiv even have their own boards, where artists post their employment offers. For music and SFX - Bandcamp and SoundCloud. The demoscene is a hidden gem of it's own, with a variety of different sites, modarchive.com being one of the most popular. Those are the formal ways. Informal ways include lurking throughout the message boards, posted above. Both of them require a lot of work and messaging.

A lot of people has issues with gathering members, especially those who already work professionally, because they are often unable to forward a polite and adequate query; they aren't able to sell their dreams and interest people. THIS might prove useful to them (although it's an article regarding communication with artists, it works nearly the same way for everyone else; learn to sell your ideas to other people in an appropriate manner).

 

While any form of actual employment is an important factor, a lot of devs often seek to work on projects they see interesting as well; people rarely work on things they don't like and it's important to have that in mind as well, when recruiting.