Let me first state that I am a big fan of democracy. However I really think this form of organization is not suitable for such a project. The most important reason for me to follow a different approach is that I spend my free time and money (for upkeep of this domain) on the project and by this I want to realize my personal dream about a better Imperialism. Would I spend that much time if it was a completely different project? I guess not. So there are some things I will insist on, for example the Panzer General like combat system. On the other hand I cannot complete this alone and I also do not want to. I need other fine men and women who contribute ideas, translations, code .. or even artwork. So I am dependent on a community and I better listen to it. I know I cannot have my say everytime or I will be all alone in a little while. At the very least I promise that every contribution will be honored by an entry in the credits.
In the light of this the best form of organization seems to be like a publicly traded company. The time and effort that you spend on the game represents the portions of shares that you own of it. The higher the portion the more you have to say and decide where the journey is going. For now I would say that 50%+x of the project's shares are in my possession. But with time going on this might as well change.
The big advantage: we're doing open source here. So anybody having a different dream, you can fork anytime. What's mine is your's too. As I see it with open source, everybody can become happy.
Of course I hope that over time we can form a productive team which shares a common idea - of creating a good strategy game, similar to the old Imperialism.
To make the organization even more detailed I thought we could have roles. This would include:
- Programmers - programming the game
- Artists - doing artwork
- Designers - discussing and analysing the game rules
- Translater - translating it
- Tester - running latest releases and giving feedback
- Supporter - if you are doing a bit of something from above or just give a thump up
There is one more role, the founder. But this is restricted to one person. Me.
I hope I could make transparent how I think decisions in this project will be reached.