Update: The Po4 Team List is here!
In 2009 Newgrounds hosted The Power of Three, a summer game dev event where teams of three (programmer, artist, musician) made games with the theme of three in three months. There were some amazing teams and many of them didn't finish their games but the really impressive part was seeing the lasting impact of the event. For example, Toss the Turtle is one of the most popular games in the history of NG and it was created by a team that formed during Po3. Zeebarf and EntropicOrder teamed up for Po3 and now have their own company. Adam Phillips and Weasel teamed up for Po3 and went on to make that awesome Brackenwood game that sorta fell through the cracks. Just this year I talked to some devs who originally teamed up for Power of Three, and I can't even remember who that was now.
For 2014, we're embracing THE POWER OF FOUR. Teams of FOUR now have FOUR months to create a game with the theme of "FOUR" somewhere in its design.
You can structure your team any way you like; it could be programmer, artist, musician and writer or programmer, character artist, musician and background artist.
One exception: You can use unlimited voice actors and they don't count torwards your team total. We decided this was important because we didn't want to limit the range of voices in a game, and leaving a fourth slot open encourages more teams to work with writers to supply their voice actors with good material.
When your team is ready, reply to this thread with your team name and roster of four team members. You may start development today, the deadline is October 14th, 2014.
Things you should figure out from the start:
1) Agree on how you will split revenue from your game, so everyone is clear.
2) Scope your game based on how much time everyone will be able to commit over the next four months. Don't expect to work full-time. If you're home from school for the summer, plan to have your game done before you go back.
You may seak sponsorship for your game but try to avoid sponsors with really ugly/lengthy intros and in-gameplay watermarks, they bum people out. Also if you want to run ads on your loading screen, please use the NG ad API for the NG version of your game; it defaults to standard 300x250 ads when hosted on NG because we now run a higher paying in-site video ad before your game.
Your game may be SWF, HTML5 or Unity; we support them all!
Please use the NG blog system to blog about your ongoing progress and share it with fans on sites like Facebook and Twitter! If you are devblogging as part of Power of Four but don't have front page news access, please PM me and let me know.
Our NG goals this summer revolve around Power of Four as well:
1) Get pre-roll ads running in front of HTML5 and Unity games.
2) Allow direct Unity game uploads, vs using the HTML5 ZIP upload system.
3) Get bug tracking integrated into the Project System.
4) Get project previews / hubs up and running (remember NG Alphas?)
5) Spread awareness of the Power of Four teams, their members and their progress.
6) Work with teams so the best games get big rollouts in the Fall. You can launch ahead of the deadline.
UPDATE: #1 is now done so all your HTML5 and Unity games are making more $$$ as of today! Be sure to enable rev-sharing under your account page if you haven't.
If you'd like to help a charity, you may rev-share with accounts such as Child's Play, The Yellow Ribbon Fund and The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
I'll be setting up a page to document the teams. You can use this thread to announce teams, discuss the event, make suggestions and ask questions. If you are looking to find teammates, you may use this thread but also use The Collabinator and the most effective method of all: Directly contact people on NG who you want to work with. This is your chance to make something with people you admire and form bonds that will last a lifetime!
UPDATE: I made a massive Throwback Thursday post for 6/6-6/12 in the General forum.
