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.
//
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. :\