So this is what I am trying to do. Get together as many people as possible to work on a single title and submit the numbers to the Guiness book of world records. This is why I didn't want to bring all my ideas to the table as everything that I have already done means someone else can't do it and we loose a number or two... or 20...
I figured we need to start from the design phase upwards so the first thing that we will do is start a poll to decide what genre of game we are going to make and then take it from there. Instead of using my stuff, get a story writer to create a new plot, design the characters, the levels, everything, from scratch. Giving credit to all who participate for everything they do and thereby also keeping track of how many people participated.
Now, one of Guiness's requirements is that they be able to measure what goes into their books so to this end I had the following idea:
1. We would all sign up for the project and create a portfolio that includes our skills.
2. The project will be broken down into as many small pieces as is humanly possible and each member can log into the "wanted" database, pick a job, reserve it, do it, submit it, it goes through QC, gets placed in the "done" section and the person get's credit for his work.
3. This way Guiness can easily see how many people worked on the project...
4. Prospective employers can search for staff by sorting the list on a particular skill and...
5. Members can list their participation on their CVs and point prospective employers to the site to see what they contributed by searching by member name.
So, the lure to participate is the fame and the recognition that comes with participation. The benefits also stem from participation. Regarding money, I can't really see there being a lot of money to be made if the project takes off and the monies have to be split by hundreds of people... But, if you would be willing to participate but can't afford to work for free I have come up with a simple solution that might benefit you also...
I was thinking that each profile will have a space for a banner and a link to the member's own website where they can sell their own work or services. I would also create a dedicated section for banners of members and also show rotating banners on the front page so everyone has a chance of being on the front page.
My motivation behind doing this, as I promised I would divulge, is the fact that I am in a country that has 0 impact on the global video games scene. Heck, South Africa is like 5 times the size of the UK but, where the UK has a games studio in every 3rd city, South Africa has 2 in the entire country. We have 1 university offering 1 games related course... Can you imagine how hard it is to find a games related job in this country??? So, I wanted to become the poster boy for South African video game development...
I was hoping that if this project takes off and the members start doing the viral advertising and it becomes large enough to get into the mainstream media, perhaps, just perhaps the world will start looking at South Africa and South Africa, feeling the world looking at it, might get a wake-up call...
My first major milestone would be for this to become popular enough to get me in the local news (paper or TV) and make ALL the South African game devs aware of this project and getting all of them interested... That would be something worth putting in my autobiography one day!!!
It is far fetched, I know, but it is far more likely to happen during a project like this than through sitting around and doing nothing so I am trying...
I have the full cooperation of one South African games dev forum's owner and have also already arranged for a website to be created for us. Our first sponsor! Yeay! Participants number 1, 2 and 3 are out of the way. Who's next?
I was hoping that mentioning we are trying to get into the Guiness book of records would create interest and the first person I mentioned the project to went from calculating the cost to saying "I'll do it for free" when I mentioned the purpose of the site. So my first attempt has seen fruitful results. Hopefully we can find further support as the project goes on. Of course this will only happen if the viral advertising takes off and attracts enough attention.
Since everyone will be working from their own homes at their own pace, there won't really be much in the line of costs, apart from the server hosting, but that I will try to arrange from my employer. So far all the costs will be carried by placing a few banners on the website. There is, of course, no reason why we can't also have a donation system in place or do banner advertising to generate funds to cover any other costs that might arise. Ideally, we will find a sponsor who can do us some fliers but if people want to donate to the cause then we could always use that money to pay for further advertising... But that is something to worry about much later...
The point is, I have already procured interest in certain areas and even managed to get our first sponsor in place. The question now is, are we gonna do this?
One person has said this is "an almost impossible" project. I wanted to agree but that sounds a bit too harsh... I would like to think of it as "a hard project"
My reasoning behind this is that, if you were to get 3 to 10 people to create an entire game in their spare time with no income from their work, that is a recipe for disaster. What I am proposing is that we get a team of 3 to 10 people to just sit around each day trying to figure out how to break the project down into simple scripts and objects so that the other 10 000 people who are participating in this project can just log in and pick a job and get it out of the way so another 3 to 10 people can fit the pieces together and make the project work.The sheer numbers involved is what will see this through. If we have 10 000 people who can each do 1 hour's worth of work every month or so whenever they feel like it, we are still much more likely to succeed than having 5 people having to devote all their spare time to this every single day... Again I point out the necessity to get the word out and get other people involved. The only real requirement is that programmers have Unity and now that it is available for both Windows and Mac and free to boot there is no real reason for any programmer to feel excluded...
Let's get this started, let's get the world out, let let the world know about this, let's get more people, let's get sponsors and get the word out some more...
I am under no illusion that this is going to be a hard thing to do and no, I don't expect us to get 10 000 people to join, but is a 100 participants world wide too much to ask for? I sucked the figure of 12 months out of my thumb. If we get a couple of members signed up and they vote for a period of 24 months to get the final project done... is 500 people too much to ask especially when there are screenshots that become available..?
So, what do you reckon? Interested?
