The question of this post is: What team size leads to the best end product?
I want to weigh in the pros and the cons of both ends of the argument, then invite discussion to see what my fellow developers think.
Small Developer Team
For context, I classify a “small” developer team as a team of three or less people.
Pros
- Easy coordination
- Lesser spread out revenue share
Cons
- Less pure workforce
- Harder to cover all areas (UI, SFX, modeling, programming, GFX, etc)
Examples of success:
- Jailbreak (Badimo)
- Adopt Me (DreamCraft used to be, but it seems now they have more developers? Correct me if I’m wrong)
Medium Developer Team
I consider a medium sized team a team sized anywhere from four people to eight people.
Pros
- Tends to be more professional
- Relatively easy to cover the majority of positions
- Lots of brainpower to solve problems and design the game
Cons
- Rather spread out revenue share
- Coordination could be rough although with the higher professionalism that I’ve seen it could be counteracted
Examples of success:
- Tower Defense Simulator (Paradoxum Games) This is one of my favorite games.
Large Developer Team
I consider a large developer team a team with over 9 members.
Pros
- LARGE workforce. Can get stuff done and shipped to the game quickly.
- Very professional environment. Resembles corporate environment in some ways.
- All areas can be covered by more then one person, sometimes even setup in departments (modeling department, scripting department, etc)
Cons
- Massive revenue share spread. Could be countered by the high chance of success and lot of revenue made though.
- Coordination could be an absolute mess if not done correctly.
Examples of Success
- All the ROLVe games
- Vesteria
- All the RedManta games
I would love to add to this post with more pros and cons that are presented in the comments. Do you think I was wrong with some of the pros or cons? What do you think is the most effective team size and why? I want to hear all of your opinions.
Thank you for reading!