As I've mentioned a couple times, the Metropolis project differs from other open source projects in its approach to volunteers;  Instead of the usual plan of attracting volunteers developers to work on an existing program, the aim is to build up funding prior to starting development at all.  However, there is still ample scope for volunteer participation, not only by developers but by community members with other kinds of skills.  Today let's look at some of the different expertise community members can bring to the table.

[More]

At the heart of this project is the idea that development of the new game will be responsive to the community.  This has to go beyond simple "suggestions."  As should be obvious from the Cities XL experience, a commercial company may completely ignore community input if it decides that its goals are better served differently.  We need to avoid repeating that situation;  I believe that unless the community participates in development actively, rather than passively, there is a strong possibility of the end result deviating from what the community wants.  So, we need to ensure that the developers are not only listening to community input, but are mandated to act on it.

For developers, though, it's not feasible to write software at the behest of a 100,000 member committee, all with different ideas and priorities.  There is simply too much noise and disagreement for anything to get done.  Our challenge is going to be finding a way to distill community input into something concrete that developers can act on.

[More]

Continuing on from my previous post, I want to address the issue of how the NPO structure would interact with the development team working on the actual project. A poor or unclear definition of roles in any group leads to a host of problems: infighting, power struggles, and politics, all things that distract from the core mission.  Making sure there is a clear delineation of responsibilities and authority for all involved will avoid a lot of these issues.

[More]

In a previous post I talked about the kind of organization that would be needed to handle community funding:  A non-profit association controlled by community members.  I'd like to explore more thoroughly the shape and direction of this non-profit organization (NPO) and it's role in making our game project happen.  To do that, I'm going to do something counterintuitive and start by looking at the end;  In other words, to look at what happens after the project is finished.  While I know this may seem wildly premature, if you'll bear with me I think you'll see how important this perspective is in laying a solid organizational foundation from the beginning.

[More]