> The contract model has a lot of advantages over a partnership.

I think you can get the best of both worlds and blur the lines a little. You raise some good points, which teams should address in a formal agreement:

> What if someone leaves. Do the others buy them out?
> if the game never made a dime, but it's clear that it will, and someone wants out or stops working.

If you sit down and write this all out (the nice thing about an agreement is that you can decide anything, so long as it's legal), I'd say you're pretty well off.

> Perhaps three people-- one designer/planner/web guy/business person, one artist, and one coder.

I also like the number three. The principals of Dejobaan are broken down thusly:

1. Biz/Programming/Art
2. Marketing/PR
3. Game Architecture

And I think that Marketing and PR are so important we took on an intern for that area this summer.