For the second one (the failure), I devoted a big chunk of time to making people contribute to a massive .txt of story before telling them to work on their games.
I think this was actually a terrible idea, because the moment I asked people to start working on their game-chapters, they were dropping out
I'm now standing by the idea that people should be making these things in one burst, while they're fueled by drive and inspiration.
If this were to happen again in the traditional manner, I'd suggest this plan:
* Determine chapter orders.
* First-up makes the game.
* Makes a synopsis of the game as vague and unhelpful as possible for the development of the next chapter (basic appearances and Plot Progressions, pretty much).
* GAME FILES ARE ONLY SENT TO THE HOST.
* Next-up continues.
* Will send new synopsis with any previous chapters' synopsis.
I was also thinking of having each chapter assigned something from a random party-bag of surprises.
Some might be:
"BETRAYAL", "FIND LEGENDARY ITEM", "FALL IN LOVE", "A BIG BAD EVIL GUY APPEARS", "SOMEONE DIES".
(It'd be kind of funny if everybody picked randomly each time, so the hero might fall in love each chapter or meet five different legendary items/BBEG's)
The story would also have to have some sort of set progression.
(Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Conclusion), and the like).
The main idea of the Roulette Collabs was to be flexible enough to let contributors do just about anything, but to have enough structure to prevent them from getting lost in their options.
However, if you had a solid idea for a storyline, a Collaboration of chapters could also be made around that.
It would be a lot more structured and limiting, but it could still work well.
But yeah, there's been a surge of new game designers which is great for this kind of thing, because the individual chapters were ideally made within a week.
♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪