A community developed game

[Colenado]

I've been browsing around the forums a lot recently, I must admit I've never really been into forums before, and after reading a lot of posts from the last topic I had it got me thinking. What if we as a community banded together, figured out roles based on strengths and developed our own game?

From what I've from this community so far is one that is creative, driven and passionate about games. I think this could pull of something truly special. What do ya'll think?

[Blue Stinger]

Yeah, good point. My best friend created a software used by the biggest French companies and only made around $125 000 !!!

[AvalonArt]

Have you heard of Project Stamina ?
It's currently a community developing game which is a successor to the dead game Gigantic.
The game was amazing tho.
They have a discord also.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTR...1kQVuWQ/videos

[wariodude128]

This happens all the time. I can't count the number of community-made games I came across, all of them were projects, none of basically came to fruition. The part people love the most is brainstorming, basically telling others what they would like a video game to be. When it comes to development, the problems start to arise and the projects never go past the simple "who does what" step.

If you want a community driven project, and let's assume you're already on the same page as to what game you want to make, you'd need a chief of project (expect fights for people who just want to be the boss). You'd need to plan in advance EVERY SINGLE DETAIL !

Take a single variable : $max_money
Should it be private ? Public ? Constant ? Protected ? A mix of those ?

Someone alone in front of his PC while everyone else is sleeping need to know what he can and cannot do.

And if someone changes his mind or missed the memo and would like to have more money than what you've already agreed to ? Then you lose 2 hours trying to settle a pointless argument over whether or not the maximum amount of money should be raised...

Any idea of how many variables are needed for a game ? A sh*t ton !

Then some people would just start to give up, some other would make a crappy job etc etc etc. There are so many reason this could fail that hoping it would work is naive (no offense).

Again, what people love the most in this is the idea of pitching the game, convincing themselves they're going to finally make their own game (maybe become rich and/or famous), I don't blame them. What you can do, is creating a topic called "pitch us the game of your dream" ! That would basically have the same outcome.

Also, if you decide to contract someone to do some work for your project, you need to make sure every detail of what they own and what you own is in the fine print of the contract. If only so we never have another alex Mauer incident.

[isturbo1984]

great idea, wrong community, lol.

[Hyperweasle]

Sure, sounds cool. If you can find something we can agree on, then that's great. However like others have said, make sure it starts out simple. Plus if it's a simple game you will more likely be able to utilize the of cheap or free gaming tools that are scattered around online, making money not too big of an issue.

[Jokerthefoolio]

Katawa Shojo was made by 4chan so it is possible but what you need to do is make sure it's a simple game

[Blue Stinger]

This happens all the time. I can't count the number of community-made games I came across, all of them were projects, none of basically came to fruition. The part people love the most is brainstorming, basically telling others what they would like a video game to be. When it comes to development, the problems start to arise and the projects never go past the simple "who does what" step.

If you want a community driven project, and let's assume you're already on the same page as to what game you want to make, you'd need a chief of project (expect fights for people who just want to be the boss). You'd need to plan in advance EVERY SINGLE DETAIL !

Take a single variable : $max_money
Should it be private ? Public ? Constant ? Protected ? A mix of those ?

Someone alone in front of his PC while everyone else is sleeping need to know what he can and cannot do.

And if someone changes his mind or missed the memo and would like to have more money than what you've already agreed to ? Then you lose 2 hours trying to settle a pointless argument over whether or not the maximum amount of money should be raised...

Any idea of how many variables are needed for a game ? A sh*t ton !

Then some people would just start to give up, some other would make a crappy job etc etc etc. There are so many reason this could fail that hoping it would work is naive (no offense).

Again, what people love the most in this is the idea of pitching the game, convincing themselves they're going to finally make their own game (maybe become rich and/or famous), I don't blame them. What you can do, is creating a topic called "pitch us the game of your dream" ! That would basically have the same outcome.

[fenrif]

Fenrifs Guide to Making a game on a forum 101:

101 is the number of idea guys.
There aren't any other numbers, because that's all you have.

[PaXXXman]

I agree here! If you start simple with an already established platform, that would build up the team and it would be a good way see solve all that hierarchy thing and see what skill set your team has, what skill set you need more. Then go for the game you want. League of Legends or PUBG have been built like that. They both started as a mod for an existing game

[Spect3r]

1) Are there enough technically skilled people in the forum?
2) Financial backing?
3) Promotion/Marketing/Testing?

I doubt the answer to any of these question is yes, so i am not sure how you thinking of pulling it of.
Good luck though

[Animusisters]

You need trained people to make a game, not just many people.

[Hopeless Wombat]

I think people have already stated that it's hard in this context because we aren't being paid as developers, therefore don't have the drive to work on projects that don't fall into our spheres. That being said, perhaps a huge dumpster fire of user submitted ideas for all to see in some corner forum might be cool. I personally could read all about the game ideas of other people for hours on end. Who knows, maybe some of it will fuse like Bohemian Rhapsody and be a great game (idea).

I'd imagine you'd need to put a lot of documentation in, covering a base level of fields with the necessary systematic and mechanical information. Otherwise you'd end up with a million threads of one or two paragraphs. Dunno how balls deep you'd go with story. Having image mockups I feel is a must to properly convey intention and style.

Just a novelty thought.

[Baron Baldric]

I would be willing to contribute to a game .... An extremely extremely small game ... 5 minutes of gameplay. In my experience these things start as a teenage fantasy of making a The Witcher 3 in HTML and end in nothing.

If you have programmers, go for something at the level of Flappy Bird, if you only have designers or artists try to do something in Flash as a point-and-click adventure.

[Saskia]

Haha, now there's an idea.....