Cube Engine Games

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How Not to Start a Mod

by eihrul on 10/06/2007 17:12, 51 messages, last message: 07/25/2008 18:13, 36732 views, last view: 04/23/2024 12:17

Okay, since this is coming up a lot lately, here is how to fail spectacularly with any particular mod'ing idea:

Premises:
1) propose starry-eyed idea
2) ask for significant help to start the project

Conclusion:
3) always fail

The reality is of any volunteer project is: if the people you want to help are significantly more skilled than you, or just significantly skilled, they will be more likely to work on their own projects than bother at all helping you.

Why is this? IDEAS ARE CHEAP. EVERYONE HAS COOL IDEAS. But very few people have the skill to follow through with them. When they do, they're usually not very altruistic about using them for the good of someone else.

Leadership skills matter not for starting something. People won't take marching orders from someone they perceive as less skilled. Leadership only matters in the end game, when you have a lot of stuff to manage.

So what does this mean for someone wishing to start a mod or just volunteer project in general (one might say any non-commercial project, particularly open source ones)? It means: YOU MUST BE WILLING TO DO THE MAJORITY OF THE WORK BY YOURSELF.

And when the critical mass of your project makes coming across it by accident via word-of-mouth unavoidable, then you'll start to get... a few, but very limited number of somewhat skilled people proposing to help. Very rarely, you might even get one or two skilled people.

So the breakdown (keeping in mind most statistics are made up on the spot):

Of your users, a very small amount will express interest in helping.
Of those, a smaller amount will actually TRY to help you.
Of those, a much smaller amount will be CAPABLE of doing what they're trying.
Of those, a much smaller amount will be capable of doing what they're trying to do WELL.

Scale all these on something of a low exponential curve. The bigger and more prestigious your project is the more the ratios will grow.

Long story short: unless it is the Linux kernel, any given volunteer project will pretty much only be successful if it's the work of but one, or at most a handful of people.

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#25: ..

by blikje bier on 10/13/2007 12:39

"Prepare yourself or prepare to be forgotten."

The first hurdle is to present your ideas, if you do that right than you might intrest others in participating in your mod/project.

My opinion is that it is not nessecary to do everything yourself, although it would help big time.

Furthermore, start acting a bit like a manager, when people want to participate, ask them about their work, do they have some kind of portfolio, this goes for all disciplines, design, art-work, programming, music, levelmaking.

Nothing is a frustating as people who are not up to job afterall, you could have wasted huge amounts of time when it finally comes out that you are on a dead-end, it could well kill the whole project.

Acting as a manager also means that you have to plan, make deadlines, make landmark points that have to be reached within a certain time, get your/the project into speed and keep up the momentum. A big project killer is if it takes to long to achieve a landmark point, that's why you need reasonable deadlines.

And acting as a manager means also that you could face some tough decisions, you might have to send people away from the project.

1. So yes, start a mod with doing a lot by youself. But this does not nessecarly mean programming as well, a good designer with a good presentation and a clear goal could well be enough.

2. Gather people who are intrested in the mod, and have shown their qualities.

3. Plan and manage from there on the project, set landmark points/deadlines.

4. Evaluate and re-evaluate all the time.

But then, this are just idea and my opinion, so feel free to disagree.