(This is written entirely with regard to my experiences with the Verge community, though I imagine it applies elsewhere. YMMV.)
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you have corralled a group of talented people together, and everyone is incredibly enthused about your game. Brainstorming is incredibly productive. You jam out a rock solid concept and get to work immediately. Two weeks later, everyone has either flaked out, quit or dropped off the face of the earth. Maybe you, too, have been wrapped up in other projects or with your actual job or school. Your game has gone from 0 to 60 to 0 in an astounding amount of time. These two week sprints work out pretty well for contests. Just as teams are reaching the point of collapse, the game is finished anyway. But if you’re planning an epic RPG, this is disastrous.
This isn’t the only thing that happens to game teams, of course. Some survive for quite some time. But ultimately the only games that have ever been considered “completed” by Verge community members have been largely one-man shows with the occasional contribution. At the time of this writing, I’m not aware of any fully completed games that have been developed by a team. Why is this?
Nobody plans, that’s why.
