Code of Conduct

1. Work environment

New Dawn Games commits to providing a working environment in which our team members feel safe and welcome. and strives to be a diverse and inclusive team. Regarding our work environment we expect you, as a team member, to: 

1. be kind and respectful towards yourself and others. Do not spread insults, hate, or other rudeness in our work environments. Everyone is welcome in this team as long as they treat others with respect.
2. avoid discrimination of any kind. This includes, but is not limited to discrimination based on nationality, religion, political views, gender, or sexuality.
3. maintain a professional and constructive attitude and a civil tone at all times, including when facing tough challenges or when contentious topics are being discussed. When making jokes, make sure that they are not hurtful, discriminatory or disrespectful.
4. not share any spam, trolling acts, or inappropriate or harmful material. This includes, but is not limited to viruses, IP grabbers, harmware, or someone’s undisclosed personal information.
5. use English as the main language in our shared working environments. Please try to use proper grammar and spelling. You are otherwise free to communicate with your other team members, team lead, or director in private in whatever way you agreed upon.
6. adhere to the Discord Community Guidelines and Terms of Service whenever you use the work environment on Discord.

New Dawn Games commits to a zero-tolerance policy where any team member in violation of the aforementioned principles, regardless of their position, will be subject to disciplinary measures.

2. Contributions

While New Dawn Games is a volunteer run game studio, we still strive to work on our projects with a portfolio-first approach. As a team member of New Dawn Games, we expect you to:

1. treat your work on our projects as an addition to your own portfolio. By volunteering your time to work on our projects, you will contribute to delivering a high quality standard for our project that will be reflected in our, and thus your, portfolio.
2. be able to commit a minimum of 2 hours per week to work on our projects whenever you have an assigned task. This way we can commit to reasonable expectations regarding the planning and production schedule of our projects.
3. be allowed to spend more time on contributions if you desire. However, we are committed to only assigning tasks that do not last longer than 8 hours per week. This helps us to calculate unforeseen circumstances in our production schedule.
4. upload all assets you’re working on to the cloud storage of the project. This holds for finished assets as well as assets that are work-in-progress. In case of absence, this allows assigning the task you were working on to someone else, who can continue working on it without interruption.
5. deliver assets that are original work. Assets have to be created from scratch or by using the provided reference material as an inspiration, instead of being ripped from or traced off of said reference material. This includes, but is not limited to concept art, models, textures and music. 
6. keep work limited to assigned tasks. While constructive feedback and ideas are always welcome, they might not fit our production schedule right away. Talk with your team lead or director to see if new ideas can be executed immediately or if they need to be placed in the production backlog.

New Dawn Games is committed to adhering to our production schedule. To avoid interruptions, we ask for consistent communication from all of our team members. Therefore, regarding communication, we expect you to:

7. share your progress during the weekly check-in moments of your team. These check-in moments keep your team lead or director up to date about the current state of assigned tasks. You are otherwise encouraged to share and discuss your progress in our working environments as often as you want.
8. attend the monthly meetings of your team. The monthly meetings will generally be in the form of a team-wide voice call. They act both as a check-in regarding the progress of the last month, and to schedule and assign tasks for the upcoming month. Moreover, these meetings are the ideal place to discuss both professional and personal matters with your team lead or director directly.
9. communicate about your ability to work on our projects or attend meetings. Make sure to announce when you will not be available to work, when your contributions will be limited, or if you’re not able to attend a meeting, for whatever reason. Note that any reason for absence is considered a valid reason, and we won’t discriminate against your ability to contribute to the project. However, we do require you to let us know preferably in advance.

The aforementioned expectations make sure that New Dawn Games is able to make a reliable production schedule for their projects, and that only minimal effort needs to be spent on adjusting our workflow.

New Dawn Games commits to a strict policy regarding participation in weekly check-in moments and monthly voice meetings. If a team member fails to communicate about their absence in time on multiple occasions, they will be subject to disciplinary measures.

3. Confidential information

New Dawn Games is committed to taking extreme care to protect any information about our projects that has not been publicly announced. By being a part of New Dawn Games, you have agreed that:

1. you will be provided with confidential information with regard to the association New Dawn Games and our projects. The purpose of providing the information is to assist the development of the projects and to promote the projects in terms of marketing.
2. you unconditionally and irrevocably undertake to observe strict secrecy to all information that has been provided to you, within the framework of the purpose of this information, and you are entitled to use the information only for its intended purpose. 
3. you are under no circumstances allowed to exploit or disclose this information to third parties, fully or partially, unless otherwise specified.

These obligations do not apply to information received by the association of which they can demonstrate that the information was already known by you, or that it had been known or available in the public domain since the date on which you received the information concerned, without you being liable in this respect.

In the event that a team member violates an obligation regarding the secrecy of information, they will immediately be exempt from contributing to our projects, without a demand or notice being required.

4. Disciplinary measures

In the event of violation of this code of conduct, the team directors of New Dawn Games reserve the right to issue a warning against the violating team member, or, after a repeated or major violation, exempt the violating team member from contributing to our projects, without a demand or notice being required.