Community game creation

News & General Discussion
1

Hi,

I am just throwing this out of the blue, so I myself haven’t really thought about it before, but in my perspective unity offers quiet a good platform for a “community game”. Meaning someone hosts a svn and users that proof capable of specialties would sign up, join and work on assets of the game. One guy makes a concept (prob the server owner) and the others fill it in on the way.

How does that sound? I am just throwing it out to see what comes out of such an idea.

2

There have been a couple of attempts at this. I don’t think any are currently active.

3

Simply no chances.

Eventually there will be max 1-2 guys who will pull it, if any.

4

Depends on the project. If it’s small and fun, and modular, people can step up. If it’s an MMO then I don’t think so :]

5

If it is small then why need many people involved. One guy can do that faster. So again this ain’t gonna work. Proven many times at many dev forums. There are few exceptions, but there the participants are not noobs.

6

Aren’t the Tornado Twins doing one like that right now?

7

Right. To be exact they are trying. We will see how it ends up.

8

I mean its possible, but you are going to find out there will be one workhorse and other people who just throw in some odds and ends.

9

It’s not a horrible idea, but it’s hard to get an entire group of people with similar coding techniques, similar ideas, and similar wants.

I’d suggest doing more of a plugin system. Have a couple people make a core game, perhaps with simply test assets, and allow others to add content via plugins.

This was going on back in Runescape Private Servers that I used to do (Lol). People could add a skill (Like woodcutting) via a plugin for everyone to download and use in their own server.

It would be a little harder of a concept to pull of on an action game because the content is more asset based rather than code based, so it really depends on the type of game I suppose.

Just an idea.

10

Yea it sounds like i thought it would be. After posting this I saw the tornado twins thing as well btw. I was just “hoping” someone came up with a brilliant solution :wink:

11

I think they have a large enough sphere of influence for them to grow a reasonable core group of workers so that those of us just looking over the shoulder and wanting to help by proxy and unsolicited feedback won’t bee too much in the way.
Plus with their youtube audience once the engaged group is done building it the game will be poised to go viral.

12

I think there should be a project for complete newbies. They would get to learn whatever they want from it( whether it be programming, art, music,etc) and would then hopefully have enough skills to pull off something small of their own :slight_smile:

13

I have seen ideas like this thrown around in all the game making forums I have been a part of or browsed. I have yet to see any one of them succeed. Reality is you need a team of dedicated individuals with a common goal and full dev team mentality to make it work, otherwise things fall apart quickly. One person doesn’t follow through, then others must pick up the slack, then some others might not want that extra work, the project stagnates, people lose interest etc. It is never a good mix.

14

Depends though. The Twins have found an effective way of incetivizing people to perform specific microtasks in the form of Prefabs. All they have to do is leverage that same momentum of getting specific tasks done in the form of game components and helping that person monetize that with their brand and visibility and people will keep feeling encouraged to deliver.
I think a big free-for-all is bound to fail but a structured system of rewarding folks with money, mentions (visibility) and the status of being the lucky few that get to put out prefabs would work well.

15

Yea but theres a problem that arises there to. To many people contributing half products won’t be a pretty sight either. Showing effort is great, but delivering products is what it’s all about in the end!

16

Good point.

17

I’ve got a similar project I’m working on, with a thread in this very forum. It’s creating a starter package in Unity for a Minecraft clone. From time to time, I post a link to download the entire package…source code and all.

There are actually several people on that thread working on their own minecraft “clones”…where minecraftish worlds are generated, but the rest of the gameplay will be their own unique games and ideas!

Anyway…I’ve thought several times…crap, why don’t we just all work together on this? And each time, here are the answers I come up with on my own:

  1. I have a particular coding style, this is very important to me.
  2. We’d have to all get on the same page. I don’t have near enough time to work on this project (maybe an hour or so a day), so are others supposed to wait on me? Should I wait on others? What if I need some threading code in for terrain generation…and dang, I don’t like what so and so did, and basically have to rewrite it. Thus potentially offending somebody. ARgh.
  3. I’m only planning on taking this so far. That is, the initial starter package for a basic minecraft game. After that…I’m doing my -own- SuperTopSecretCool stuff.
  4. Fact is…we’d all like to make a little cash. While we are all talking about various stuff, memory usage, etc…there is truly an aspect of “if I give this information away…is it going to mean less cash for me?” I mean…let’s say you come up with the original minecraft idea. And keep it to yourself, and make MILLIONS like Notch. Awesome eh? Now, let’s go back in time, and say you came up with the idea…and gave out the source code to the world…and made pretty much ZIP. HMMMMMMMMMMMM. I’ve actually had to dwell on the fact that I am making it MUCH easier for people to just rip out their own minecraft clone. If I just kept that to myself…I’d have a lot less competition, right? Technically, you could argue I am hurting myself and others by releasing a starter package for creating you own!

So…competition is a barrier. And everyone can’t just jump in and somehow create something cool…you HAVE to have someone who says “ok, here is how we are going to code. And here is how we are going to communicate.” And everyone has to agree and stick by that.

So…to me, when it comes to community projects…(again, this is all speculation and a little bit of experience), I’m taking the approach of creating something with ideas and thoughts from others. I’m giving out the source. If someone comes along and says “hey, you could speed this up 2x by doing this”, THAT to me is the kind of contribution I want and need. At that point, I’ll make the improvements, and relink the full source to everyone.

This way, the project grows and gets better over time, with new ideas, and I get it done faster. If anyone wants to pick it up and expand it, and post better implementations (or different ones), that’s awesome. But the knowledge is there and can continue moving forward.

So…to summarize…I think the best way to have a community project maybe be to simple make the project available to all, have a common thread(s) for discussing aspects of the project, etc.

18

sounds awesome man