Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Development Re-Starting, Seeking Volunteers

Brad McQuaid explained the future plans for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen in a blog post on the title’s website, including his intention to rebuild the development team and get some volunteer help, with the promise some of these volunteers might get a more permanent position later. Relying on volunteer work doesn’t look like the best of solutions to me, but I can also see why the developers would have to resort to this method considering their crowdfunding campaign didn’t gain traction:

4. WE’RE BUILDING A NEW DEVELOPMENT TEAM. The game is entering a new phase right now. We need to put even more together about the game for the community and for, in the near future, potential investors. As mentioned earlier, development of the game continues, albeit right now at a slower pace. We are looking for volunteers who can help us during this phase and, if everything works out as planned, we hope that some of the volunteers will be part of this new team going forward. So development continues, that development will be shown to the community, and one of our goals (along with continuing to make the game of course) is more to show potential investors in the next 1-2 months.

This new dev team and how we’re approaching it is different… certainly different for an MMO I think. I’ve learned a lot about remote development in the last 6+ months. It still doesn’t beat an office, and having an office with actual employees is still a very real goal once we bring in funding. But it’s also not what it used to be either… it really is a way that people can come together from all over the world and work on and build a game. Traditionally game development positions are as follows: management, programmers, designers, and artists. The new Pantheon Development team, however, because of it’s nature (remote development and because of the crowdfunding component) is going to be broader than that.

First, team members will begin as volunteers. This is because 1. we don’t have the funding right now to pay, 2. we’re a little weary and concerned about setting a bunch of people up as remote, paid contractors like we did when this project started, and 3. because since these people are not necessary local to VRI’s home base in San Diego, we need to take the time to get to know each of these volunteers, spending time with them on teamspeak or skype, having them deliver some assets for evaluation, etc.

When we do bring in funding and restart that campaign to reach out to Angel Investors, Publishers, and the like, and when we can have an office and paid employees, we will then look at the volunteer force and, on a case by case basis, determine if that person wants to and should become a contractor or, if they can re-locate, possibly a full employee. But, in the meantime, I think this is a very exciting start. So many people have contacted me wanting to help with this project, and I remain very humbled by it. And some of those people have the talent we are looking for as we re-build the development team.

The second thing, because of the remote nature, the community involvement, how this site is structured, etc., is that there will be more official positions/jobs than the typical manager, programmer, designer, and artist set-up. We are adding moderators and lore writers to that list, and possibly more positions TBD. The Moderators position is the first part of the team I am focusing on. We need to do a lot better with this site and building community. There are quite a few of you who are part of this site and community, but we don’t hear from you often. This is understandable, as posts by me and other people involved have been insufficient and simply not as exciting and fresh as they need to be. As mentioned earlier in this announcement, that is going to change. More posting and more blogging is coming. The Moderators group is going to be a huge part of this — not only are they going to moderate, but they are also going to be posting about various game-related topics as well, and making the general forums an active and interesting place to browse and lurk and hopefully a bunch of you will start posting again as well. Lastly, they will also be reaching out, outside of this site, answering questions on other boards, and trying to drive traffic here, so we can grow this community, again not just larger, but healthier and more informative and open as well.

If you are someone you know might be interested in being part of this new volunteer force and team, please email me directly at brad@pantheonrotf.com and let me know. We need people familiar with Unity, both from a programming and art standpoint. We need designers. And we also need more moderators and now lore people as well.