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GLBHit or Miss: Why Some Fan-Made Projects Excel While Others Fail
0Article by Yuri Ilyin
When 'Black Mesa' by Crowbar Collective - a fan-made remake of the original Half-Life by Valve - emerged in 2020 as a standalone commercial product, it quickly became a sensation. For at least two reasons: first, it had a very high quality, despite using a well-dated game engine. Second, it took nearly 15 years to complete. The result, in the end, was nothing short of fascinating.
Reference: Black Mesa
The final part, fully revealed only in 2020, drew some criticism for its excessive conveyor belt jumping. Still, Black Mesa's rendition of Xen offered a far superior experience compared to the original game or its rather lackluster re-release.
Black Mesa is an example of an uber-project that had been completed and delivered a high quality product, on par or superior to many AAA titles.Other examples include the formidable community efforts behind the FreeSpace Open project, various Quake-related initiatives, and numerous Diablo mods (for both 1 and 2). Then there is the modding community around the Skyrim game that has produced 109k+ mods for its latest iteration.
Reference: A screenshot from Quake modded version
However, the cases of large-scale projects that eventually get released are just rare enough to stand out. Success to failure ratio doesn't exactly lean in favor of the former. For every project that soars, there may be dozens, even thousands, that quietly fade into oblivion.
And no, not that one, just remastered with exorbitant system requirements.
So what makes some projects succeed, while others fail?
Here are a few reasons that might prevent a fan project from reaching completion:
1. The IP Holder Isn't Happy
That's right, some entities are a bit too jealous - and notoriously litigious - about their intellectual property. Even a totally non-commercial effort may result in a cease-and-desist letter if the IP holder thinks it violates its copyrights and/or vision.
Valve, for instance, didn't shut down Black Mesa, but they did promptly axed an unofficial attempt to recreate Portal for the Nintendo 64. Blizzard famously zerged the World of StarCraft fan project due to copyright concerns.
They had the legal right to do so, and they exercised it.
2. Insufficient skill-to-ambition ratio
It is very typical for younger people to take on an ambitious goal, expecting to learn things on the go. Sometimes it works, but it is also very likely that the effort stalls or fizzles.
If the project involves more than one person, the team leads will have to assess the skill level of every newcomer.
And not only the hard skills...
3. Sometimes they just walk away
A non-commercial effort is obviously enthusiasm-based. Some people are marathon runners, the others are stayers, then there are sprinters who burn out quickly.
If the team consists of mature people, they will likely agree to complete their tasks before walking away.
Problems arise when a person who might have shown some stellar skills, suddenly vanishes for a time being, and when confronted about their failed commitments launches a blamefest. Sounds familiar? - Perhaps all of us had run-ins with the immature people, who start out being assets but turn a liability after a while. A prolonged test period for each newcomer is the only way to counter this.
And it would be very good if there is a backup - someone who can pick up and finish the abandoned task.
Besides, if the team is sizable, it is extremely likely that there will be difficult people - self-centered narcissists, discord-mongers, smooth operators, schemers who think they know better how to helm the project.
They need to be kept in check. But the safest way is to show them the door before they display their actual top skill: ruining everything.
4. Lack of structure
If a team exists, it must have structure and defined roles. Otherwise, the project is doomed from the start.
A volunteer-based project still requires visible leadership, quality control and segregation of duties. It is hard to expect from people involved a full-time commitment, a bootcamp-style subordination and/or an adherence to a rigid schedule.
However, there ought to be people with a vision for the end results. People who coordinate the work, manage tasking to ensure more or less even contribution from the team members. Those who gather the pieces and make things whole.
"We've learned the hard way that proper quality controls and long-term, inter-team planning can not only help us be vastly more productive, but also massively reduce reworked or cut content," says Zix, 3D Lead for the Skywind project - an ongoing effort on recreating The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in the Skyrim game engine. "Organization and proper decision-making, goes a long way to making a coherent-looking and feeling final product that everyone on the team can be happy with. That last notion can be especially difficult."
People who can mitigate conflict, because it will arise at some point, are an essential part of any team.
Infighting has buried more than a handful of projects across every industry. The creative sphere, where egos often flare unpredictably, is particularly vulnerable.
However, if someone can step in to repair communication breakdowns, relationships may become even stronger than before.
5. (Mis)Communication
Communication is king. No, the emperor. Without proper management, things go south quickly. This applies to both internal and external communication. For publicly announced game projects, there will always be people eager to play them ASAP. If expectations aren't met immediately, these fans can exert unhelpful pressure on the team. That's where public relations comes in, and major projects need people who can handle it with finesse.
Internal communication is just as crucial. Team members must stay informed about the project's overall status and ongoing progress. Without that, morale crumbles, and the project may collapse with it.
6. Overpromising and overlong development
Given the nature of volunteer projects, it is hard to expect a lightning-fast execution. Black Mesa, for example, took around 15 years from its inception to its final release.
The Skywind project launched soon after the original Skyrim release, and is still ongoing. According to Zix, the team behind it prefers not to make haste.
"We want to release as soon as we can, and that always affects our decisions on scope, but we're not going to compromise on quality to accomplish that. Factors like how many people will be working on the project in, say, a month's time, or how much time they'll have, or which skill sets they'll bring to bear, are unknowable," Zix told RenderHub. "Predicting a release date would mean possible crunch time for volunteers and possible disappointment for fans. We want to avoid both of those things."
Zix also pointed out that managing public expectations is also tricky.
"Misinformation spreads like wildfire and our own scope can change based on resources, so over-promising is a real risk," Zix says. "But at the same time, we love to share what we've been doing, and the community loves to see it. It's always a balancing act."
Excessively long development periods put a lot of strain upon the project members too. Volunteer or not, everyone wants to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and hopefully not the headlights of an oncoming freight train.
There are also technical challenges to consider.
According to Nathan Ayres, Lead Animator for the Crowbar Collective, one of their biggest hurdles was working within the limitations of their chosen engine: "trying to make a good-looking game in 2020 on an engine that first came out in 2004" - indeed, it must be tricky, even though Source engine had been updated a few times since then.
The Skywind team decided to stick to the Skyrim variant of Creation engine, no matter how dated it was.
"Fortunately, Bethesda made significant improvements with the release of Skyrim: Special Edition that widened the scope for graphics and performance improvements and have allowed for a much less austere approach to development," says Zix. "We work hard to overcome barriers, often leveraging the accomplishments of the remarkable and ever-enthusiastic wider Skyrim modding community, and even though Skywind is certainly not comparable to brand-new AAA titles, we've pushed the engine to its limits."
Reference: Skywind Project
So, in general the success or failure depends heavily on how the project is organized and managed. Which makes things actually even more complicated than they are in the commercial gamedev, where both the motivation and duties are reinforced contractually and financially.
Formally, volunteers owe nothing to anyone. They are not even obliged to ship anything, unless other people's money is involved: if a project crumbles, it crumbles, end of story.
But honouring gentlemen's agreements in full, of their own volition, is indeed something that makes every person a serious asset for any project, commercial or otherwise.
