Since having been here many development teams have either given up, or discontinued for one reason or another. The teams that I am aware of, off of the top of my head are:
A(pocalyptic) coders
Crobasoft
Natomic Studios
SilverNova
One Hand Writers
Hazard Games
Fendez Games
Csar Games (Starlord Interactive)
Ectoprods
Free Lunch Design
Fallen Angel Industries
Euphoric Rush
Cassata Games
Jonny Comics
and... Jimmi
(Remind me of any I've missed)
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Most (if not all) of these teams have been around since the beginning! Formed years ago, and since then so many people have left the teams or entire teams have ceased production. In some cases development teams are run entirely by one person (though in some cases by choice)!
Teamwork seams to be dying along with production of new click games! The more games released by us lot, that leave a mark in the freeware world, the better. Making a name for Click Software in general should be one motive! Creating some amazing games should definitely be another.
I merged with Deep Games back last year sometime and haven't looked back since. I'm currently working with Ben on a really cool game, one to rival The Underside perhaps Anyways, I'd encourage more people to get together and do the same - not creating new teams etc, but at least getting together and helping to create some awesome games.
We all just seem to sit here half-arsed and make half-arsed games and let some inexperienced noobs release a game or two each week, whilst the more experienced lot either abandon their current projects they've been working on for months or just lose interest completely for various reasons!
With two or more people working on a game, you share the work-load and maintain motivation in getting the game done. I mean how many games have each of you abandoned?! The answer to that probably totals to at least 3x the amount in the DC Database I'm sure.
Overall, we need to see more people using their skills in what ever area they best suit and making some high quality games with people around here! I think the main things stopping people from releasing games is being bothered, along with motivation and knowledge (guidance)... (aside from bugs in MMF ¬_¬ lol)
I'm getting tired of having to vote for tutorials and engines in GOTW, personally
I haven't really seen many teams that actually work like a team, it's always induvidual people who might just ask a teammate to do music or bugtest, but never a real team effort. In that case the team is just something to make it all look and feel more serious than it really is.
The problem with team efforts is that you need a real project leader. You can't just say "let's do the stuff we are good at", you just end up waiting for each other to do stuff, killing all motivation. The problem with a real project leader is that the other people working on the project have to accept the fact they have a leader otherwise you end up being pissed off killing all motivation.
Still, I don't think this has anything to do with the lack of new games lately. We prolly all know what's really causing that.
Yeah as Andy said, I'm part of Ectoprods.
Starlord Interactive was actually SevenT2s group. I just hosted the site and made/released almost all the games .
Actually i think they are officially just Podunkian at the moment. But since the underside is actually quite highly anticipated it might be a good idea to mention them.
You forgot VIRTUALLY REAL. I remember when they tried to lure visitors by displaying Jennifer Lopez pictures on the website. Shameless!
I was in a group called Oł Software back in the day. We used to chat on IRC most of the time instead of actually creating stuff. As a result, we ended up with almost as many games as we had members, and IRC logs that had to be stored on one of those wall-mounted spinning tape drives you see in all old movies featuring computers.
Hayo is right - "team" implies that each game is a combined effort, but in reality the most collaboration that happens is beta testing and some music/graphics/code help. I think the main reason groups are formed it to get to know people a little better and work with them. Oł (as a "label") isn't active anymore but I still keep in touch with most of the guys, some of whom are still very much into making games. I couldn't really ask for more than that from a hobby*
*except maybe a huge back-catalog of freeware games and the ability to comfortably retire on Oł-related Cafepress underwear revenue.
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Peblo Custom ratings must be 50 characters or less
Registered 05/07/2002
Points 185
11th July, 2007 at 21:16:18 -
GAMEMINE! I run that!
"Isn't it always amazing how we characterize a person's intelligence by how closely their thinking matches ours?"
~Belgarath
I wouldn't consider CassataGames a team, nor would I say I'm trying to protend to be a team. It's just nice to have something to smack onto my games other then my first name. Especially since in general, when I design games, I usually group a bunch of people together and get some help from them to design the game. It's just seems a little more professional to the people I ask, if they'd like to join the team to work on the game.
If you want to consider what I have a "team" though, then I guess a good way to put it is, I have a flexable team where the only static member is myself. Each game generally has different people working on different things and rarely do the same people go from game to game.
Team games is hard to do because everyone stands around going "Well, let's get started" without actually having a plan. Like Hayo said, you need someone to run it all, and a lot of people wouldn't like that. If you create deadlines and such, it kinda ruins the fun of clicking, which is something you should enjoy at you own pace.
'Tis true. We all know what it takes to make team work work, we just need to get going and do something about it instead of talking about what you need to do in order for it to work.. etc. :\
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