New Sub-Forum: Team Request

New Sub-Forum: Team Request
Article by Coffee

Well it seems that a new Sub-forum has been opened, or should I say reopened at the GMC. It's the often, requested Team Request forum. Yup, now anyone can go and post a thread asking for people to do all their work. Not literally of course, lol, but you know what I'm talking about, like this guy:

Minih-productions Needs You...yes You. -A team request by Minihobbs

It simply asks for people to do the following:

• Spriters
• Coders
• Level Designers
• Music Composers
• Beta Testers
• Artists
• Debuggers

Now, I don't know about you guys, but that sounds like everything that needs to be done to make a game, so if he's going to have other people do it, what the hell is HE planning to do. It's exactly as everyone has expected; newbs making teams in hope to get someone else do all the work and then take the credit for making the game. Of course there are some team-requests that are actually good and sound promising, for example:

[paid] Spriter Needed, Short Term. -A team request by ChIkEn AtE mY dOnUtS

It simply asks for someone to help him make some sprites, and thats all, meaning he's asking going to do some work. He describes what he would like, how many of what he would like, even provides a reference example and up to 3 ways on how to reach him via IM. Heck, even I helped him out with his first sprite, in which he specifically and clearly explained what he wanted and even provided a template, as well as a gif animation with each part of the "ship" that he wanted separate (He wanted each part to be a separate object in the game). Now that is how you request a team or help.

Now you're probably saying "Can't we just provide a template for people to request teams with?"
Sure...why we haven't I don't know, but this is what Smarty says about it:
"Also i posted a good Team Request posting template but they removed it. Selfish mods. Probably don't want my name in a pinned topic. If they come up with a posting template within a few days they got the idea from me. Otherwise they would've made it before opening it again." -Quote from Morinfen

This is the response to that message by Smarty:

"Whatever people post there, it's their ad. How well they describe what they need as team mates and what they need it for is their responsibility, and it will be their own failure if it their ads aren't written well enough.
From a moderation perspective, we can manage to tell people what not to post. But it's a waste of time to tell them what they should post, line by line, and chase them until it's perfect, or at least perfect in the eye of the beholder."

And honestly here, he's got a point. It's not like people are going to follow it 100% percent anyways.

So now, what does everyone think about this new subforum anyways? Well a poll created to determine how successful the new forum might be was made, and here are the results:

1. I would not be interested in starting or joining a team, advertised in the team forum. 45 Votes
2. I would be interested in starting a team, in the team forum. 26 Votes
3. I would be interested in joining a team, advertised in the team forum. 25 Votes

These results were taken on 7/05/07 at 1:03 PM Eastern American Time (GMT -5:00)

Well it seems that popularity isn't going to be a problem. However, many posts in the thread The New Team Requests Forum have made it obvious that the members believe this subforum will crash and die like the last time it was open. One of the members posted a statement that had some sense in it:

"Why did they open a team request forum? I mean, there was one in the past and it failed. Now the community is a lot bigger, so it's most likely it will fail due to the sheer amount of teams that will be created when the majority of the community has discovered the subforum. And a bigger community also means a bigger amount of noobs that will post." -Quote from TCGamer

So the question is whether or not this forum is going to survive. Well honestly, it's growing at a steady pace meaning it's going to get topics, but only time will tell whether or not it'll survive....probably not though. =P