has anyone tried this on this forum? i think that its a great idea , and i bet a great game could be made from it. i know that i would like to be a part of it!

instead of one user (in most cases one with no experience at all)
saying "im the boss and you all work for me!" i think everyone involved could be equals and vote on all major issues , like what type of game should be made in the first place.

so here is a poll to see how many forum members think this is a good idea .

community based project? single choice
good idea , i might sign up	49%, 20 Votes
bad idea , no thanks	51%, 21 Votes
Total Votes: 41 Voting on this poll ends: 03/31/09 04:16

it doesnt work so easy, and there have been several attempts to organize one. the reason there needs to be a boss is there needs to be someone around to make a decision, and guide everyone to stick with it. without that, these projects then to just fade away.

i can see your point , but perhaps if enough users want to do something like this , anyone who feels that they would be a good project leader could put there name in and everyone could vote for a project leader or coordinator

I like such ideas despite their high fail rate.
My hopes are up that one will succeed, some time.
Therefore, you have my vote.

This WILL not work:

-if there is no serious "platform" developed
by a dedicated user-group
-if there is no short/mid term reward seen by perticiating users
-if you mix users of different experience, asking them to create
content of different quality levels
-if noone does the projectlead, pushing the milestones and development

In the end, every user wants its personal pleasure out
of dedicating personal time and developing "for free" content. An making just
some small part, wich noone really recognized after all,
does not please any developers ego.

Community projects in such an open community simply do not work.

in fact it actually works, but when someone starts project himself/herself(Project Lead?) and makes a prototype, then people may want to contribute to project.

Wise and true words of Damocles, but for every vision there is a way. If you want to make this a success bad enough, it will happen. Just make sure that your vision does not deviate from the goal you appear to perceive. You can, of course not create an AAA title with this set-up, perhaps not even a B title or anything that has a future use other than gained experience for the participating members. And everyone must realise that, and understand why they do put effort in the game. And so that is the first task for you and the willing members to participate, to think of a way to gain more members, and how
to manage them.


I don't know what your plans are, but I represent thee my thoughts about said subject. They may be too far in depth for what you had in mind, but I think this is necessary to make this idea a success.

The easiest way to get members is to attract those who are new to the gamedesign business. They generally want to experience how it is to work in a team, and the project they join must offer this for them to continue working. These members do not yet care if their content will be of use in reality, yet will deliver quality that is below average, and may quit working quite fast.

Then there are the members who have some experience in creating work of quality. But often those members claim to have little time on hands. Well they do have time, but rightfully feel not like spending it too much on the project, as they gain little experience. Giving those a leading position is not always sufficient to keep them close to the team, and you, almost coincidently, need people with proper knowledge and enough spare time willing to participate. Those members are quite rare, but also important. It may be necessary to grab those outside of the community, as they do not particulary need knowledge about 3d gamestudio, rather about design, code architecture and art.

Filtering members on dedication, support, experience, newbie and uselessness will take time and may severely slow progress on the game. Members will cease to work and leave regulary, and the team loses more time in finding a new sufficient member. But eventually you should be able to manage the core of the team that will be able to make noticeable progress. From there, you should be able to operate the game course much more easily.

One last thing coming to mind is keeping the process alive. To keep things running it's wise to manage and document data, using SVN, a wiki, anything to keep information and core data available to all team members to read. Setting a short period course for clear milestones that need to be achieved within x weeks is vital, so everyone knows who works on what. It's okay when deadlines shift, as long as that is clear for everyone.


As a start I recommend you to create a main place for your future members to gather. Could be a site, a forum, an IRC chat, MSN even, but at least some private place for participants to speak. The next step may take some while, but that's generally not a bad thing. You can at least contact everyone when the basic structure is ready, meanwhile members can input their ideas.

Regards,
Joozey

lots of great advice from joozey , thanks joozey.

I vote for a community TETRIS.
The more join it the wider we make it (to grant enough space for all designers...)

http://sovietrussia.org/f/src/tetoris.swf

edit: this is a fun post...

What about ":schutzkontakt" of fogman?
fogman started several attempts for such a project, and none of them failed because of him. He is a very reliable, dedicated and experienced programmer and team worker.

Probably, one community is way too small to build up such a team, you need to get awareness for the project on several, not to say on many, communities to find enough dedicated people who's skills fit with the needs of the project.