One of the best methods I''ve used is doing a ton of work yourself and showing them everything you''ve done at the end of each week. Then they compare that to how much work they have done and feel bad if they ain''t done very much.

Probably wouldn''t work with everyone though, and there''s still the possibility that they''ll just keep feeling bad and not actually make any effort to do more work.

Also, we keep weekly dev diaries so everyone can see what they''ve done each week, and people can see for themselves more clearly if they''ve been letting it slip.

Also, you should try to keep everyone working on the same part of the project as much as possible. Otherwise if everyone on your team is working on the first level, and one person is on their own working on the graphics for the final level, their stuff won''t be able to be incorporated for ages and they won''t feel part of the team.

If all this fails though, you''ll have to resort to bribery.

Having just handed off my last open-source project to my old team so I can do a for-sale title, here''s what worked for me:

#1: Communication, regular and periodic. I had a private message board and email list strictly for the development team, it made keeping in touch easy.

#2: Credit where credit is due. Nothing seems to motivate folks (hey, that includes me!) more than having their name in the credits, along with a note in your public development diary (you DO have one, right?) saying that so-and-so finally killed the such-and-such bug, or added a cool new feature.

#3: Be willing to let peer pressure work for you if you have a team member that''s starting to fall too far behind. If your team is fairly professional about it, they''ll do all the guilt-tripping on their own (heh heh, sneaky). On the other hand, don''t go nonlinear if someone has a relatively decent or incredibly original excuse... ;-)

It''s NOT easy keeping a geographically dispersed team motivated, especially if progress is slow. Sometimes you''ll have to step in and outproduce everyone for a short while (as the other poster mentioned) to provide a little ''encouragement'' to the other folks. It''s amazing how motivated everyone else can become if you implement some killer new feature, if nothing else, everyone will want to enhance it or add something they can brag about!