Just checked GDShowcase. Why are there so many single person projects? It seems almost everything listed is some permutation of: (1) Pong, (2) Snake, (3) Tetris. Maybe if this site were more geared to fallicitate transactions between team members more people would do it? Anybody have any ideas? I would ceartainly like to see more three or four person projects.

The more people in your team, the more potential points of failure. Generally if you don't have money to throw around, you're more likely to get a project done if you do it all yourself.

A good middle ground is to start on your own, get something impressive half-done, and then people will see you're serious about your project and offer skills later. But I think that by that point, most people who started the project are happy to finish it themselves.

I had proposed a grouping contest, but it seems that everybody is in favour of single game developping. I won't insist...

Sheep.

Failure breeds greater results than 'success' with no challenges though. My gripe isn't that people shouldn't develop on their own, of course not, but it seems that almost every project here is a solo development. Out in the real world, you can do more as a team than you can as an individual... at least that's been my experience.

As a moderator, perhaps you might give some consideration to reducing the transaction costs of working on cooperative assignments. If everyone continues to do their own thing, I don't envision seeing anything that would neccesarily prove revolutionary, or even a step in a new direction. From what I've seen, every other person is working on revamping their end-all-be-all engine, which in my own eyes is counterproductive to the whole process of making great entertainment.

Question to moderators --

How difficult / feisable is it to create small group assinments, "workshops" if you will, that teach teams how to develop real world applications. A team project that forces a group to make a working / responive UI for example, would definitely be of use as not only does this teach developers the useful skill of how to make the UI itself, but also helps build teamwork skills (invaluable). Small projects like these, with even a time constraint perhaps, can really be of great benefit. Nothing helps like solving a problem on your own afterall, and working in teams helps to improve communication skills. Community members can even share their results with others, which I personally believe will do more good than having a newbie ask the same "how to add ___ for their engine" question every week.

As moderators I would personally really like to see you all move beyond the role of policing your community. Try to build them up, afterall many look to you for leadership. You can help make a good site, a really great site.

what, like a mini branded mentored sourceforge or freshmeat specifically for games sort of thingee ?

Actually, I think I agree that it would be something that would greatly enhance the community spirit of Gamedev. I don't think it would be an easy task to implement though, so whether anything like this comes about is really dependant upon how much people are willing to take on. At the same time, I've also wondered about the possibility of something in the way of a Gamedev resource repository, where people could possibly upload and share (or perhaps even sell?) models/code/utilities/artwork etc. rather than have to crawl over a dozen dead links to find 3 or 4 free resources that probably aren't what you were looking for!

I just think that a major sticking point for most developers is getting quality content into their game, and a centralised resource would no doubt stop the untimely deaths of teams that otherwise had some potential, and would also help those who do choose to work alone. I guess it goes without saying that game development is not easy, and something that centralised resources and opportunities would really boost the community.

But anyhoo.. that's just my opinion, it would be a big task to implement and I appreciate these things don't just happen without a whole heck of a lot of work, but in an ideal world, yes, I think these ideas would be great!

I do support your idea , but there are some flaws in working them out , for example not every one here knows the other person , & skill sets range from absolute beginner to really advanced , so things need to be thought such that it tailors the team in question.
Though deadlines put one under pressure , most of the member's here i belive are involved with one thing or another , college , work etc , so they would prefer to work at their pace.
Though working in a team is what a person will be doing at the end of the day , atleast i belive one should start solo , nothing wrong with tetris , snake ,i belive they establish a foundataion , in a way , a sea every developer must swim across, and learn things by self , instead of one incharge of networking, one incharge of sound .

IF there is a team which is commited to the work , then i guess it should'nt be hard for the gamedev staff to come up with project ideas/guidence for them.

If this is implemented , things will get really interesting :)
I for one am definitely looking forward to this !!

"But, it will require work," based on your replies seems to be the main shortcoming with my idea. Heh.

A couple of times I've heard the quality control argument used, but that's almost entirely my point -- you can't really create a good quality game by yourself. If you learn to properly delegate work, you can really boost the quality / quantity of the programs you develop.

Also mentioned was distinguishing the workmanship of your team mates. This is a valid point since there is such a wide range of skills on the site. Simultaneously, however, it's ironic that many members on the board are quite skilled at creating in depth levelling requirements for RPGs and yet are dumbfounded with regard to finding a way to filter out strong developers from the weak.

Im not even talking about big tough projects like: "Create a star destroyer.....go!" or anything thereof. Like my aforementioned UI example, small assignments, geared towards developing a ceartain skill like, how to load images into your program, or creating a proper title screen, etc. Maybe even go a step further and stratisfy them into class levels (beginner, intermed, 4 people team, 10 people team...etc). That way you get people off the forums, and into meaningful development. If a forum mod thought this would be promising, I would even gladly work with them to help design it.

"Well done is better than well said."

Personally I think this could be a great idea, if there were a way to keep a team motivated. I know that when something gets difficult, that I tend to say I'll work on it later, and then don't. Maybe if every month or so the team has to show off their progress, would help motivate people.