I’m curious to see how often a small team sets out with an overly ambitious game development project, and actually completes it. …or at least gets it to the point where it’s a playable beta or something. Really, anything that surprises you when you find out how small the dev team is.

got links?

Minecraft

Minecraft is a bad example. Its original vision is not that ambitious. Blocky graphics, procedural levels... It's actually a realistic goal. Unlike a commercial-grade MMO, there were no high requirements on art assets and so on. Today's Minecraft is much more ambitious just because it's been polished and pushed really far, but it's no longer a "small team" per se.

I’m curious to see how often a small team sets out with an overly ambitious game development project, and actually completes it. …or at least gets it to the point where it’s a playable beta or something. Really, anything that surprises you when you find out how small the dev team is.

got links?

Mount & Blade is a pretty ambitious game that got very far with a 2 person team. (The team grew before the game was done though).
http://www.taleworlds.com

Infinity is making good progress with a relatively small team of 9 people -- but a massive amount of the coding was done by an individual, who only started to bring on help as the project progressed.

Eternal Lands was brought to a functional state by two developers, who then brought on additional help over time.


In answer to your question though, I'd say: never. If they manage to complete the game, it wasn't really overly ambitious. A single developer or small team can do fantastic work if they're dedicated to the task. Most teams however, would benefit from being less ambitious and more realistic in their goals.

I believe with enough time and dedication a small team can achieve their end game (doesnt matter what it is either, game, app, website etc), however I also believe timing and research on past / present developments can often enough be VERY misleading. For example a small team working 2 hours everyday 5 days a week is 10 hours per head yet it will likely get recorded and declared as a week, however a team working 14 hours everyday is 98 hours per head and is also considered a week. Ofc these are only examples, but my point is its hard to actually work out how long a person, team, company has worked on a project without actually looking at what they did hour by hour which is information I dont think is freely given out.

Could a small team achieve their goals even if a project is very ambitious, yes however they need to thoroughly plan and dedicate themselves to the project and I mean a thorough overview of everything which typically requires knowledge of what is required in the project. If a team wanted to make the next WOW / EVE, they could do it but ultimately their project will require a lot of dedication, time and definitely thorough planning.

The team of course will likely get discouraged if it has to ask 'can we do this?', fact of the matter is, if a person / team has to ask if they can achieve something it is very unlikely they have done any planning, because its the planning stages that will confirm whether they can or not. Researching and planning are very important, not all plans go smoothly but they give a rough indicator of things to come.