The sense of this forum lies in a kind of self organization of Game developers and Game community. The same sparkles of self organization can be seen everywhere where gamers try to develop a game or their kind or a gaming community collects. Seeing this great potential however i also noticed that this power is split into myriads of some small units not totally able to fully utilize they overall power. This is all a matter of structure and organization, so instead relying only on the subconscious self organization why not consciously think about this structure this post shall function as a seed for this development and its up to you and your relies if the plant withers or grows.

Uh, what?

basically its about ways to improve interaction and cooperation
of game developers and how to bring game projects on alarger scale.

Massive forum based community projects have been tried before and don't really work for a lot of reasons. I could see smaller teams operating over the internet, but generally speaking a larger project is too hard to manage. When you put varying tastes, egos, and the fact that no money is involved into the mix you'd be hard pressed to organize a very large game from talent on gamedev.

Well i know its hard but i do not think its impossible.

One possibility is like you small groups operating over the internet if you link them with node points and enable a regulary
information exchange they can helpout each other compensate lacks of resources from one side etc.
For example a group help out with the programming of the other group while the other groups helps out with game art and model design etc.
Another possibilty would be to structure an big project into modules that can be added to a main programm. Then you have to set either difficult standards previously to development or you
must evaluate it after development this could be automated be letting an ai directly look directly at player behaviour and deleting th modules that do not fullfill the standards.

Generally it should be avoided that communitys get to big ,so that the overview and speed of topic exchange not dangers quality.

It's probably not impossible, but it seems to be very nearly so. I think I've seen only one effort like this have any success. The community of www.mircscripts.org made mts (mIRC Theme Standard, or something like that). I don't know how far that's reached beyond their own community, but they made it and, last I looked, supported it. Note, however, that they weren't working on anything very grand, and that in the end it was basically a couple people gathering comments from the community and weeding out what they deemed trash.

Essentially, it could work if you got a small team and used the gamedev forums as a sort of "mother of all peer reviews". But, that's what most people here are doing anyway.

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Original post by Way Walker Essentially, it could work if you got a small team and used the gamedev forums as a sort of "mother of all peer reviews". But, that's what most people here are doing anyway.

[smile] Exactly.

It is true that there is a huge amount of untapped potential that, if it could be singularly harnessed, would probably be phenomenal.

The problem is that that potential diffuses in a million different directions. That we all want to do something different and leave our own indelible mark on our work is a high barrier.

What IS funny (to me, anyway) is the number of people who want to work on medieval RPGs, but who so far haven't networked on a large scale. (Don't mind me, I'm still sore that medieval RPGs rule the store shelves... :P)

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What IS funny (to me, anyway) is the number of people who want to work on medieval RPGs, but who so far haven't networked on a large scale. (Don't mind me, I'm still sore that medieval RPGs rule the store shelves... :P)

True there are so many other possible settings to use. If I see one more knight I'm going to throw up.

well i always liked games where high technology and magic where the same, but i suppose when you create a game without magic thats not scifi you have to limit the available technology , a time that enables to move thinks by manpower instead of machinery so the player feels he can move something and be the hero.

Well of corse you could choose stoneage for that but there would not be enough weapons and items for the player to collect .
However I think its more intresting to use the medieval stage of another country, maybe the incas? or feudal japan. Other Indian
tribes ,Aborigines(although the never came to a real medieval age),Perser ,the old romans and greece, the old arabians, the old indians from india or the celtic etc.
(but hell thats totally off topic)

Somebody would have to get the ball rolling. By which I mean write out the Design Doc, Technical Design Doc and actually start making it. Make everything freely available, i.e. source code, graphics, design docs, etc. and as people gain interest, people will want to help out, and you've made it nice and easy.