Thanks for your comments, everyone. I've read them all, agree with most, and have done some thinking. I've got a lot to respond to, so I'm going to give succinct responses.
If you want to create a game by a team you need to be really fast at finishing it, until time will disintegrate the team.
A lesson I've surely learned now, and wish I knew sooner. The biggest mistake that our initial team made was diving head first into a large and complex project with zero prior experience. Hence why the first couple of years were really a learning experience.
From the point of view of an artist, they want their work to be enjoyed by a lot of players. They want recognition.
I fully agree, and this is something we learned a few years back. Artists are generally not inclined to checkout the code and compile/build the game themselves to see their work in action. We started producing more internal screenshots and releases so that non-technical people on our team could see the progress, but it was too little too late I"m afraid. Right now, the project is in the best position that it's ever been for artists to see their work enjoyed by others.
From my perspective it kinda sounds like what you want is not contributors, but friends to work on the project with you in your collective off-time.
Exactly. I want people who love this type of game (a 2D JRPG with an interesting story and solid gameplay) and are passionate about beinga member of the creative process to build one. I tried to get people who joined to take ownership of the project and have them share their ideas, rather than being the one who always dictated what we should build and what we should do. It worked with some people, others preferred to remain more aloof and just get assigned things to do. Maybe I should use that sort of language in my recruitment posts.
I took a look at your project's forum and it's the very definition of dead.
Yup. I wish there were people active there because I like to post a lot and share my ideas and plans with others as a kind of sounding board. There are some people that still drop by our IRC channel occasionally and chat, but that's about it. I was hoping that posting more to the forum myself would entice others to do so, but there's really no one to read/respond to new posts.
Are you sure this isn't just an excuse to "have a life" and "watch the occasional TV show"?
I wasn't meaning to use "I'm busy" as an excuse. I've been much, much busier in my life and still made more time for this project then than I do now. I was pretty miserable during my workaholic years, and I don't want to fall back into that lifestyle. Ever. If I'm not having fun working on this project, there's no point in me continuing to work on it. I want to enjoy this process, even if it means it will take a long time.
But, how much of the original idea is left?
Actually, quite a lot. We've remained pretty darn true to the original design discussions we had with our initial team. And we've continued to follow our core design philosophies as we've worked out the details and built the game. Although the game has had a lot of features added on that increased development time, asset requirements, etc. I think one failure of this project (and myself as a team leader) was allowing this kind of bloat continue to pile on for things that we really did not need. (Example: we used to do random encounter battles, which are really easy, but now we have enemy sprites roam around the map and chase after the player character, who can use a stamina meter to try and outrun them).
It looks as if the project needs a reboot.
I was thinking something along the lines of this. What I was imagining was forming an entirely new team and starting somewhat fresh. We'd still use the same code and assets and story, but we'd brainstorm about what kind of game we want to build with it. I thought of this because its hard to be enthusiastic about joining a project that pretty much has most of the core mechanics and gameplay nailed down that were decided by a group of people years ago who have long since parted ways with this project. So I've been wondering if I could roll with that sort of mindset, attract a new team of enthusiastic people and share what we have to work with, and see where we want to go from there.
Try a kick starter, get donations, etc.
This isn't a for-profit project. We're not trying to make any money from it, even donations. It's just a hobbyist project to use our talents to build a game for people to play. It's as simple as that. Hence one reason why this is such a long endeavor. If I could make this my full-time job, I would have. But its never been our intention to charge people for this. And I wouldn't feel comfortable starting to ask for money seeing as how many people have worked so hard on this project for nothing for so many years. Its not fair to them if someone makes money off of their work.
Let it go. Maybe have a final release as a goodbye and do something fresh. It could be another RPG or even a smaller minigame. The world's your oyster.
Definitely thought about this many times as well. I wouldn't let it go without having some form of final release. Probably a much shorter version of what the full game was intended to be (maybe a few hours of content). I have a clear stopping point in my mind of where the game could potentially end if it were to end pre-maturely. So once I get to that point, I'll re-evaluate whether it makes sense to continue going forward or to call it done.
The front page of the site tells me nothing about the project.
Yes! I realized this myself a couple months ago. Our website does not explain nor "sell" the idea of the product well at all. I want to improve this, but kept telling myself "if you're going to work on this project, work on the product". But I think this is important enough that I should spend some serious time working on our about page to explain what this game is and what makes it special.
