Plan for David Mandrake

My original intention in deciding to make a Deus Ex mod was to create a team of developers who would grow in skill, such that they would be able to then take on a larger task, like a V12-based game, for money.

Part of what shaped my overall plan was thoughts on the hows and whats of billing. This discussion was begun with a friend and former supervisor, a systems integration consultant in the wireless telecommunications field. Obviously a Deus Ex mod wasn't going to involve direct billing.

I started to consider making a V12 online RPG. Creating billing code on top of V12 network code, however, would likely require a ton of effort.

A friend mentioned that graphics and art assets would comprise about 50% of the resources involved in making a game. It seems a reasonable estimate. I discarded the idea of making a graphical game at that point: it's simplistic, I know, to say that if graphics make up 50% of a game, that without graphics I'd get it done twice as fast, but I'm willing to run with that until I get new and different information.

I began to think once more of the final snag of creating a game development "tribe"/team: finances. I didn't want to create a situation in which I was leading people down an uncertain path. My sense of responsibility in these matters has become almost pathological because of the way in which my friends and former coworkers were treated by Sierra's corporate master, Vivendi Universal.

So at this point, my course of action is this: develop my skills at the most basic level--that is, storytelling; and begin to develop a game, paying members of my "tribe" as I go and treating them as freelancers until such a time as I can create a business model that allows for employees.