[game_edu] Firing Team Mates

[STEPHEN JACOBS]

I like Corvus' approach.  I've always set myself up as "executive producer" of all teams in a game and met with the student producer/project manager on a weekly basis who provides me with an update on what milestones everyone is (or isn't) hitting.  If someone's slacking then, depending on what their role is in the team, they could be reassigned or fired.  If they're fired, depending on the situation and the time in the academic quarter,  I might reassign them or just fail them for that part of the course.

Note that I our intro game design and development classes are two quarter courses where the teams change anyway between first and second quarter as we run multiple sections of game design and development most quarters. Sometimes we've run them as just the natural team changes from quarter to quarter.  Sometimes we've just walked in the third week of the second quarter and reassigned teams except the lead designer and/or producer to different projects, pointing out that when they get out in the industry they won't own the projects they work on, they'll be hired in and/or shuffled as the needs for given projects evolve.