My outsourcing experiment isn’t working out as well as I hoped. I anticipated communication problems but hoped they would be speed bumps on the road of progress as opposed to the 10 foot deep potholes they are turning out to be.
The causes are fourfold:
1. English is not their native language.
2. Most artists aren’t good at writing or logical thinking, which is necessary for email exchanges.
3. They work when I’m asleep AND
4. They don’t have reliable always-on internet access.
These map to the following problems:
1. I can’t make complex ideas understood and even simple ideas don’t get across very well.
2. They have a hard time meeting technical requirements even when they do know them.
3&4. Every email exchange takes 1 day. This means that your normal office-type 5 email exchanges now take 5 days instead of 30 minutes.
This is why, now like a month later, I still don’t have a single correct model and I’m still repeating the same requirements that I told them at the start of the project.
On top of that they are slow. I understand they are students but it shouldn’t take three people three days to remove some polygons from a model and add a few texture details. This is a constant problem I’m facing.
I think outsourcing could work with the proper setup. For example, if I had a technical person there who was fluent in Chinese that would overcome the communication problems. My wife calling them in Chinese helps immensely and is the only reason I’ve gotten anything at all. But she is not technical and I can’t rely on her to call them that often.
Their work is pretty good. It’s just not good enough for what I’m doing. I sincerely hope I can make this work but given the choice between releasing the best possible game and spending more money I’ll spend the money.