Hi guys,

I've been a hobbyist game developer for about 5-10 years now. Having been on and off various mods (Anyone remember Sapphire Scar? No? Ok) and created quite a few failed projects whilst learning C++ from scratch. Its been a lot of fun and an amazing learning experience, and I'll continue for a long time to come. Professionally I'm an IT Architect, which I love too, and I've been thinking a lot lately about how I could use my various skills to create something worthwhile for the industry as a whole and I'd like to get some initial feedback on a possible project I've been stewing over for some time now. It could be a dud, but it could also be a good idea. Or maybe it already exists? Let me know.

[size="4"]The Problem
In all the time I've been on the edge of this industry the thing that has by far frustrated me the most is the massive amounts of overhead to embark on such a creative endeavor. Upstarts and indies alike have to battle an almost unending series of hurdles such as geographical team member locations and its associated difficulties, and lack of non-creative skills (business management, project management, IT technical, etc). In my [not entirely educated] opinion, many mods/upstarts fail near the start of their project because it just gets out of hand. Partially because they may just think too big ("Lets make WoW for our first project, but better"), but also because they don't project manage it properly - That is to say, they don't define a scope and then drill down and lay out the steps or phases necessary to complete it. I believe this because I've been a victim of it more than once.

[size="4"]The Solution
I want to alleviate the above issues as much as possible. And I'm thinking an online Video Game Development Studio is the answer - A modern website designed to provide all the tools necessary to develop a game, small or large, end-to-end. I'd like to explore what could be done to remove the mundane, often costly and time-consuming aspects of the development process. I want to be brief so as to not bore my audience here, so I'll provide a list of features I believe necessary:

• The obvious stuff:
  • SVN.
  • Basic Voice/Video Communications.
  • File store.
  • Documentation Wiki.
  • A public website.
    • Remote desktop client server.
    • Multi-participant audio/video conferencing.
    • A specifically tailored project management system for asset tracking, task assignment, etc.
    • Some sort of payroll system to perform various roles such as:
    • Track time spent on project or tasks.
    • Contracting tasks - The ability to 'hire' people as a contractor to perform a certain task (Create an asset), and then automatically get removed.
    • Some more specific things:
      • Scripts that automatically setup build environments for various engines (UDK, Unity, Leadwerks, etc).
      • Maybe some more advanced andintelligent things such as:
        • Marketing Tools - Watches Google for hits on your game and lets you know what people are saying, tools for distributing media packs to popular sites, etc.
        • Business/Money Tools - All the usual money related things such as balance sheets and cost forecasting, hooked into Paypal, etc.
        • Hiring Tools - Ways to advertise or view like-minded people to join your project, free or no.
        • [future] Open-source global asset database.
        • Completely hosted and managed from one interface.
          Now some of the stuff listed above may not be necessary for most mods and some indie games, but the hope is that should the project take off I'd like to see it become feature complete enough to be picked up by commercial studios as well.
          
          However, the keys to success would be:
          
          1. Simplistic.
          2. Deep (Not complex).
          3. Intelligent.
          4. Efficient.
          
          [size="4"]Notes
          I want to point out that I realize that there are a lot of almost-there tools such as MS SharePoint, many random online project management websites, Skype, VNC, etc. I believe them all to not really capture the full end-to-end development cycle, are way too generic to be useful to developers, or just plain too hard to implement and manage. However please let me know of any other similar systems, even to gain inspiration from, especially if you have used them before.
          
          Finally, I'd just like to say that looking back over this post I think I've gone quite specific and possibly complex, so I just want to reiterate here that its all just concept to get your brain juices flowing. What I want to get feedback on is whether you think this concept would benefit you or your team? Or, have you got any experiences to share where processes discussed above, or lack thereof, have caused a major setback or failure on a previous project?
          Anything else is of course welcome too.

I'm new to creating games - that I confess. Many of the things you mentioned above I learned we need through trial and error and listening to team members. The knowledge on "how to" is all around on the web, scattered - and I guess it is based on the leading figure whether the project succeds or not.

I think that a one-in-all site would be great, should it not exist already (don't know, never checked). Still, it would be time consuming to make due to the sheer number of possibilities and research involved. It would be all in all one of the many options laid down in front of the wanna-be designer/developer. The question and problem is, how to make it popular? How to boost the place on which Google coughs up your portal containing this knowledge? I'd start with a series of Youtube tutorials maybe, or a few posts on gamedev that would act as a nexus for gathering knowledge. Another fancy way to achieve your goal is to supply generic information about what is needed - that is much more important than selecting a concrete SVN and analyzing why X is better than Y for your project. I know I would need to read such an article (again, I've never checked before for such materials, but I'm pretty sure some books cover that).

To sum up, a great idea should you wish to pursue the subject. It would improve the success rate of the Help Wanted game designs by a significant degree if read

I would definitely use this, if it was good.

For my our project uses, phpBB, MediaWiki, IRC and TaskFreak (with an ugly hack to add a simple contribution point system).

Contribution point system? I like the sound of that.

In regards to the marketing of the site itself - I'm not that worried about that at the moment. If the project end up being worth while, it should perpetuate itself with some help.

Is this not the business app equivalent of saying you want to develop WoW?

I think it would be hard work to say you will create a tool to rival current SVN's, Skype, GoTo meeting, MS Project, etc. Let alone creating an app that rivals ALL of them.

Why not work on creating an add-on or template or website guideline that helps existing technology instead of trying to create them all from scratch. That has an infinitely better chance of getting finished and also being successful.

Wait... so... this is like OnLive except for programming/asset creation? Or do I still have to go buy Visual Studio to write my Hockey MMORPG?

I think what you've described is a well run video game development studio, minus the "superbly integrated" and online/website part.

Or worded another way, you've assembled a best-of-breed collection of tools and an integration/management/workflow to use them efficiently. That's mightily fine.




However, I smell NIH syndrome here. I assume it to be highly improbable that even a huge team of top-notch developers could build an all-in-one solution that can rival the combined power of the tool set you want to get rid of.

And then you'd

a) have to support, maintain and improve this huge integrated studio and

people will miss bits and pieces (connectors, minor tools, ....) of the old technology stack. Not to mention that they had to sacrifice their flexibility and would be subject to a huge case of vendor/technology lock-in.

Just a comment on customization: If you go with one version control system, you shunt out people who prefer another. For example, i believe the only way to work efficiently is with a distributed VC like Git or Mercurial. Some believe that SVN is the best out there. I think the communications and task tracking features are really necessary--when i was working with an online group some years back, we found those things to be real challenges--but just having a link to some master repository would suffice for the version control parts.

And a feature request: a forum or some form of asynchronous communication. It's hard enough to get people to meet up once a week. Letting people communicate and share random ideas in their off time is a necessity.

I would focus on the business side if you made such a tool. The version control and development tools are usually pretty trivial to set up. Managing the team seems like it would be much more difficult. I'd focus on those types of features.

lol...all you need is SVN, a phone, and a chat client.

And ideally, all the members will have a decent internet connection.