From my knowledge the army doesn't use AA or whatever other war simulator to directly just train people on how to use weaponry. That's stupid. This is just like that 13 year old who thinks he knows how to handle a gun because he's played Counter Strike. As I recall, they largely use these sorts of simulations on how to handle situations cooperatively, as well as train and assess situations effectively. That sort of stuff is helpful within battle and you have to train in this, as this sort of stuff can mean life or death.
Pure inefficiency, imo. Modders have proven time & again that a lot can be done with almost nothing. You don't need a 'company' with all its lard, flab & bureaucracy, just a few good men and a solid concept. And lots of coffee/Red Bull, presumably.
And a lot of mod teams fail. Failure rate within mod teams are even higher than formalized software development teams. The reason why you need a company structure is because it resolves almost 50% of the reasons why mod teams fail.
In a company it makes sense to have a director in the various fields because you assume they have a basic level of management skills and are also very talented in that particular field. In a mod teams, it's kind of random as nothing is really formalized. The leader of the project automatically assigns directing leads etc based on essentially very little information (and misinformation). In my case, I've been told that I was a
junior programmer under a much worse programmer simply because I joined the project later that him.
The other reason is for legalities. We all know the fall out that occurs if a mod team wins a competition (like MSUC) and the prizes aren't divided fairly among team members. We get tonnes bitching, complaining and moaning. No one is going to sign over their time and effort to a bunch of people / modders. I don't even accept 'contracts' from modders any more because they
simply aren't worth my time (even the time that I have to take to respond to them is wasted). You want to work for a mod team, fine, but if the mod team does wind up going some where and you get kicked out ... that's your problem.
Simply just doing work to no end isn't going to mean that a mod team will succeed. The company structure etc are required, especially if you are paying people, or they are paying you.
At the end of the day, some mod teams will still work because people in the teams are old enough / mature enough to handle the situation that arises from game development because they've already been there and done that. However, we can see that the age range of those who mod games can be very young too...
I still think that lot of people still don't have a clue what software-development costs even when it is done in a 'perfect' environment.
Fully agreed. People just don't know, and can you blame them? I mean, the entry barrier is so low for game development in that
anyone is allowed to attempt to make them anyways. It all back fires when they suddenly realize that there are all these rules and formalities that have to occur.
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