The main problem is that nobody would want to do any real work. Everyone would post an asset, then move on.

That covers 2 hours of creative work.

Who will do the remaining 20 hours of tweaking and tuning. And who will do the next 20 hours of debugging the asset integration? And who will do the next 20 hours of implementing feedback changes? And who will be the heavy hand that will kill assets (after all those 60 hours of effort) that do not work. And who will have the knowledge to kill assets before 60 hours are wasted?

Today development is agile. It means that rather than doing upfront work, things are tuned throughout the development cycle. With SaS this is trivial - software is always in development, and metrics on use are gathered and reacted upon. This means that rather than having a person do 20 hours of work over one week, you need them to do 30 minutes of work per week over 6 months.

Effort (or cost) of production today is lowest in history. Want an asset - hundred of them can be had in 24 hours. But getting people to do the tedious, mundane and boring tweaking and tuning requires different approach and solid management.

This is why open source project suffer from poor non-technical parts, such as user experience or lack of documentation. It's boring, tedious long-term commitment that requires patience and maturity, and is something people need to be paid for.

"Oh, but it's just a tweak, just resize it to 64x64". This is true - all tweaks are simple - but there will be tens of thousands of them, and the need for them will arise on daily basis and cannot be planned for upfront.

Even if the tasks can be performed effortlessly, the communication of these changes will be prohibitive. Take 1 minute per change (1 minute identify the need, 1 minute to file the bug report, 1 minute to classify it, 1 minute to read it, 1 minute to report success) and you have 5 minutes per request. In practice, each of these steps takes 15 minutes - and many of them will result in further communication and even more will be rejected or abandoned. At just 5 minutes, 50,000 minutes = one person month or 3 months full-time job.

This is the reason why companies spend so much time on internal communication systems, just in attempt to prevent communication from completely stalling them in everything. It's also the reason why remote work (except in case of seasoned professionals) fails.

And it's why the problem of communication is $100 billion business waiting to be picked and contested by everyone from Facebook to Google to Twitter and all the other players such as 37signals, JIRA, and tens of thousands or more.

It really is such a hard problem.

Let me pitch a new idea for you.

Your website starts out free, but becomes limited invite only after enough members.

A project starts with a design document that an individual or a group presents to you based on suggestions of what should be in it. After you approve, they are designated as the team leads and get at least 50% of the share. The team leads are held legally responsible for making sure they follow the law. They also control who gets to use the alpha or beta releases for free and can choose to show off assets to the community. The group can also purchase advertising and lawyers, which you pay the fees and the profits the group earns pays you back.

The slot system is still used, but the leads can assign the slot for in team only, for a particular member or the community and assign a % of the share. Some slots are "bid" slots, where everyone interested bids and the team chooses one. This is in case the slot requires downloading the game.(like fixing two or more assets that work poorly together)

If the project is a fork, the profit is divided between the original team and the new team, depending on how original the fork is.(decided by you and input by original team) And assets used will also be contributed to the original owners.

Leads can kick members out, but only with your approval, and they still get a % of the share(depending on maturity of the project), they just can no longer contribute or download for free. Leads can also add members, but every member of the team must agree and agree on the % they get. New members can also be silent members, who can can do everything the team leads can but cannot make slots or vote.(although they can appeal to you if being mistreated).

You and maybe a small number of people moderate the groups and handle day to day running of things. These people maybe the game engine developers, rather than the content developers, and can also be asked to add features to the game engine.

If a game is abandoned, it can no longer be developed, but it can be forked. An abandoned game can be downloaded by any person who was previously a team lead, unless the fork was to continue the development, which then it becomes inaccessible after the fork. Make it so an abandoned game is one that all members have quit or were banned, no development has taken place for 180 days and the product has not reached beta or all members declare it abandoned.

MD5 every asset and check for duplicates, but do not inform anyone you do that.

When a group reaches alpha, beta, etc, they submit it to you for approval.

There. This is a plan I think would work, as long as you could get a good enough community going. Strong ownership. Community driven. etc.

Quote: Original post by Binomine
Let me pitch a new idea for you.

Your website starts out free, but becomes limited invite only after enough members.

A project starts with a design document that an individual or a group presents to you based on suggestions of what should be in it. After you approve, they are designated as the team leads and get at least 50% of the share. The team leads are held legally responsible for making sure they follow the law. They also control who gets to use the alpha or beta releases for free and can choose to show off assets to the community. The group can also purchase advertising and lawyers, which you pay the fees and the profits the group earns pays you back.

The slot system is still used, but the leads can assign the slot for in team only, for a particular member or the community and assign a % of the share. Some slots are "bid" slots, where everyone interested bids and the team chooses one. This is in case the slot requires downloading the game.(like fixing two or more assets that work poorly together)

If the project is a fork, the profit is divided between the original team and the new team, depending on how original the fork is.(decided by you and input by original team) And assets used will also be contributed to the original owners.

Leads can kick members out, but only with your approval, and they still get a % of the share(depending on maturity of the project), they just can no longer contribute or download for free. Leads can also add members, but every member of the team must agree and agree on the % they get. New members can also be silent members, who can can do everything the team leads can but cannot make slots or vote.(although they can appeal to you if being mistreated).

You and maybe a small number of people moderate the groups and handle day to day running of things. These people maybe the game engine developers, rather than the content developers, and can also be asked to add features to the game engine.

If a game is abandoned, it can no longer be developed, but it can be forked. An abandoned game can be downloaded by any person who was previously a team lead, unless the fork was to continue the development, which then it becomes inaccessible after the fork. Make it so an abandoned game is one that all members have quit or were banned, no development has taken place for 180 days and the product has not reached beta or all members declare it abandoned.

MD5 every asset and check for duplicates, but do not inform anyone you do that.

When a group reaches alpha, beta, etc, they submit it to you for approval.

There. This is a plan I think would work, as long as you could get a good enough community going. Strong ownership. Community driven. etc.

I like the idea of putting the legal responsibility on someone else but this is the internet, there is no way to be sure someone gives accurate information and requesting someones social would automatically make them lose interest.

Plus the way your system works all failures would cost the company money and most games probably will be failures...

I think 50% of the profit is ridiculous for one person who does nothing more then comes up with a idea and contributes as noting more then a legal scape goat/ team organizer...

To me it sounds as though you only have a problem with my idea because you have control issues... Not trying to be mean but thats the impression I get.