If you’ve read any book on getting into the game industry, every single one of them will urge you to join a modding or indie group as the best way to get noticed and develop a portfolio. As the “why” has already been extensively covered, I won’t be rehashing that here.

Unfortunately, books usually stop there at the “why”, and don’t talk at all about the “how”. Having personally wasted a lot of time in indie groups that were bad for a variety of reasons, I hope to teach people new to the scene on some of the things to watch out for when considering a group. The indie world is chock full of wasted effort, and you will inevitably have a lot of your time wasted as well. For every shining pearl of a team out there, there are many pieces of coal… or worse.[…]