The thread title may be a bit ambitious but I'm asking people to share their stories of Indy projects gone bad. I'm trying to identify the most common reasons for failure. For the purposes of learning please include: 1)The number of people in the project. 2)How you were introduced to the project or if it was your own. If it was yours, how did you recruit others? 3)What tools did you use to communicate? 4)How often did you meet. 5)What caused the project to fail? As an example, my first indy project was written using the Truevision Engine back when it was open source and written in VB6. There were 2 other members in the group and we met on the TV3D forums. We used the forum to communicate and never met officially. The cause of failure was a lack of skill level or any concept of what we were trying to tackle, we were all very green and had no idea what we were doing.

Starfall
1 - About 10
2 - Gamedev team based around somebody
3 - Forums / MSN
4 - Randomly
5 - Funding, I would assume, as artists stopped to work.

Recubo
1 - About 6
2 - Gamedev PM
3 - Forums
4 - 1/week
5 - Lack of progress

Seriously, I could go on all night...

Thank you, so each of your projects started on gamedev. Were the projects using middleware or custom engines?

I haven't gotten involved in an Indie project in the past few years, so I don't remember the details like the project name or the number of team members, but from what I can remember, the following were the cause of failures:

• Lack of documentation and planning
  There really is no milestones to reach. Each member is not assigned to a specific task. The common conception is the programmers are making the engines, the artists are making the character arts, sound fx people just make whatever sound effects they feel like making at that time. So each week, people would gather, and they would say "So, A, what did you do this week?" "Oh, that's awesome." "Ok, B, what about you?" "How's the game engine coming along?"
  Documentation is nothing more than a "It's an MMORPG. Players pay $15/month."
  
  
• Lack of leadership
  In Indie projects I had been involved in the past, the Project Manager, or the Executive Producer -- whichever title he wanted to call himself -- never possessed any production skills. What I meant by production skills are any of the following: programming, art, music. So the leader is this guy who called himself designer, but doesn't possess any skill to create what he designed.
  Occasionally, the team leader is somebody who can actually do something, but by the time he slacked off, that's when we lost the momentum. "Sorry guys, been busy with school, so how are things going?"
  
  
• No compensation
  Compensation is always "X% depending on the amount of work contributed to the project when we managed to sell the game". That's not going to work in an Indie project where the team members barely know each other. If it's among close friends who already have some industry experience, that might work.
  
  

Quote: Original post by alnite
Lack of leadership
In Indie projects I had been involved in the past, the Project Manager, or the Executive Producer -- whichever title he wanted to call himself -- never possessed any production skills. What I meant by production skills are any of the following: programming, art, music. So the leader is this guy who called himself designer, but doesn't possess any skill to create what he designed.
Occasionally, the team leader is somebody who can actually do something, but by the time he slacked off, that's when we lost the momentum. "Sorry guys, been busy with school, so how are things going?"

I just want to touch on this one, but the other points were good. I would say it's not necessary for the lead designer/concept guy to not possess any of the functional skills, but it is VERY important that he possess some sort of planning skills. If nobody delegates, it seems to always end up with people doing whatever they want, not doing anything, or worse doing something completely wrong.

I've been working on a game for the last 8 months and it has progressed slowly but surely.

There have been times when I wasn't motivated but my brother who I would consider the lead on the project keeps me motivated by creating new awesome artwork and forcing me to insert it into the current build.

For me to get motivated I want to see cool stuff happening all the time and that generally means taking time out of the development and putting a few hours into the polishing what we have already built.

So.. add this to your list:

"Not taking enough time to appreciate what you've already achieved."

If you could plug one hole in the failed project with an industry vet that was prolific what spot would it be?

Programmer, a great project manager, an art director, a great designer?

Other than funding, what detail would a publisher or studio have provided that you really felt was lacking in the failed project?

Visionary.

Some one who knows the game in and out and can demonstrate that to all the dev's.

So a cross between designer and artist.

Quote: Original post by daveodonoghue
For me to get motivated I want to see cool stuff happening all the time and that generally means taking time out of the development and putting a few hours into the polishing what we have already built.

A lot of people work like that as well. I would assume its those that won't make it in the industry, but that's a large part of indies. I guess you need constant progress that is tangible (some kinds of programming, such as refactoring, will not motivate the troops, but a constant rate of art would).

Quote: Original post by Orymus
A lot of people work like that as well. I would assume its those that won't make it in the industry, but that's a large part of indies. I guess you need constant progress that is tangible (some kinds of programming, such as refactoring, will not motivate the troops, but a constant rate of art would).

Getting paid large stacks of cash is the great motivator you see in the professional world. I would figure there are a lot of people that could really care less for the game they work on and are in it for the paycheck. If the price is right I'll work on any game you want. But indies are different, I don't figure there are to many people that are going to work for months for free without seeing some kind of progress.

As for projects that have failed, generally it was through bad leadership and organization (visionary). You got idea guys that don't have any real clue what to do barking out orders and nothing gets done. Then they want to get 20 people on the team where most don't have anything to do. The one indie project I was in that got done was the one where I was the lead designer/programmer/manager. Because I have a hard skill of programming and some modelling I could continually get things done without waiting on other people. Which always kept the project moving which motivated other people.