Can't Find Dedicated People to Help With My Game. Need to Vent For a Sec.

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For about a year now, I’ve been working on a prototype for a 3D Platformer game. This is a project that I’ve put alot of thought, and effort into. The only problem? Nobody seems to want to help me bring it to life. Let me get the obvious out of the way. I am not a programmer. I’m someone who’s more into the actual DESIGN aspect of game development. I’ve created several animations for this game. I’ve written out scripts and descriptions on how I feel the levels should play out. But of course, none of that really matters without coding. It’s just a bunch of words, and animation files sitting on a computer.

Back when this project first began, I was lucky enough to find a talented group of people, who were able to give it the jump start that it needed. Together, we were able to create a basic prototype with only a fraction of the basic gameplay mechanics implemented, which you can see here if you’re curious.

Almost all of those team members have become inactive, and ever since I’ve been unable to find dedicated people to fill their positions. ESPECIALLY on the programming front. This is how the cycle would play out. I’d post a forum post, asking for new members to come on board. Someone would reply within a few hours to a few days. I add them on Skype, get them all set up with the game’s files, then after I tell them which feature I’d like them to implement first, they remove me from their contacts, and quit the project a few days later, usually without saying a word. This cycle has repeated with almost every single programmer I’ve come across, and I have no idea why. No matter what I do, or what I try, this always happens. I know it’s hard to find people who will do this type of thing for free, but the fact that the exact same thing has happened with nearly all of these programmers in LITERALLY the exact same way is concerning to me. It makes me think that I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t know what.

Basically, I’m completely stuck right now. Like I said, I’ve put alot of thought into this project. The story, the characters, the levels, all of it. I would absolutely LOVE to get into designing some levels for the game, and see this project truly come to life. But I can’t actually DO that, until all of the necessary assets and mechanics that I need have been programmed, and it seems like no one out there wants to truly help me with that. At this point, I’m highly considering possibly moving the project to UE4, since that’s more of a visual game creation tool, and relies less on needing to know programming. I’d have to redo alot of stuff from scratch, but at this point, it seems like the only person I can trust to get this project done is myself. But I dunno. Maybe I’m being to harsh. I’m just tired of this project sitting at a stand still with nothing happening. I want to see this project go somewhere. Will that ever actually happen? I guess that’s for the future to decide.

Anyways, I kinda just wanted to vent about that for a little bit. What do you guys think? Am I alone in thinking this? Or maybe I really AM doing something wrong? Who knows? I kinda just wanted to give my two cents on this pesky cycle that I can’t seem to break out of. Maybe I’ll try a simpiler game project that I’ve been thinking about doing recently. One that I could mainly do myself. Or maybe I could try joining another game project, and gain some experience that way. Regardless of what I decide to do, thanks for reading this big wall of text that is my thoughts. I hope you got atleast SOME enjoyment out of reading this. XD See you later everyone. :slight_smile:

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  1. You need to HIRE people, PAY them and preferably cover the whole thing with a contract agreement. Even if you’re talking about lunch-money level payment, that’ll weed off plenty of candidates.
  2. Before giving someone access to your project, and before paying them, you should request some demo from them, CV/portfolio or something similar. This should be done to weed out overconfident incompetent wannabees.

UE4 still have steeper learning curve, doesn’t have working animation retargeting… and is less suitable for cartoon rendering. If you feel this way, sure, give UE4 a whirl, but don’t put too much faith into it.

I think the best idea in your case would be to make a design document, get sketches for characters/locations and start saving up for hiring a proper developer. I’m not 100% sure that this is the right way to do it, that’s just my opinion. I don’t exactly put much faith into unpaid volunteer-based teams.

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Because you aren’t throwing money at them.

Because you aren’t throwing money at them.

Because you aren’t throwing money at them.

Yes, you aren’t spending any money on professionals to build the project you’ve spent years working on - which is a going to be a complete waste of your time if you aren’t going to commit to it or do it all yourself.

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How much are you paying? If you can’t hold on to good employees, chances are you aren’t paying enough.

There will still be turnover based on work conditions and life events. But money will reduce those to a manageable level.

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Most of your free coders are probably the ones that switch projects every other week when they get bored and finally end up creating threads about looking for a team or starting one for a zombie survival mmo rpg game with GTA 5 style graphics.

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I disagree. Judging by your video, the basic mechanics are already there. What I’m missing is a nice map, textures and a background.
I don’t think anyone is willing to invest the time to build the code for a complete game voluntarily without seeing the other parts (e.g. graphics, levels, animation, sound, music) grow as well.
It is your turn now to build some stuff and show others that you mean business.

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Maybe part of the issue is you talk about it being your game filled with your design.

These others you bring in don’t have any part in it really. They are basically just helping you to complete your game. From that angle you have to think what are they getting out of it?

For that matter would you put your project on hold and volunteer your time to help build someone else’s game?

Odds are many of the people replying are just curious. Maybe they want to see how the game is structured because they want to make a similar game for themselves. That is one possibility.

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Did you have reflected on how you treat your potential new team members?

As others have said it, if you want someone to help you build a game, you need to make sure its also THEIR project, not just YOURS.
And you should not give them ORDERS, but try to give them incentives to work on something. You need substitute the motivation of getting money for following orders with something else.

First thing to do is soften the orders to suggestions (which you probably already do)… don’t tell the programmer “You MUST do things this way!”… instead, tell them how you think the mechanic should work, ask them for their opinion, honestly reflect on it, and find a good compromise (chances are if you add your idea and his idea together, the result is more than the sum of its parts!).

Then make sure to treat them well. They are the most important part of your project because 1) it is rare to find somebody joining a project for free and actually doing ANY work on it, 2) they have a skillset you obviously lack and are in dire need of, 3) they are not paid to put up with shit.
Does that mean you put up with everything from them? No. But you should make sure that as long as they do SOME work and contribute, you are expressing your gratitude for it and make them feel good about helping out.

Last thing about making it also their project: Everyone has ideas. Most of these ideas are not that great. Still, we all rather work on our own ideas than help bring someone elses ideas to life.
If you want somebody to help you building a project, make sure to include their ideas too. That can sometimes run you into conflicts as some ideas might not go well with others. Fight that fight when it occurs, and make sure to be fair in such cases (it might be that YOUR idea sucks, not the others ideas).
Also, make sure to make your ideas shine. If you want people to help you build something, you need to sell the project to them first. Yes, you need to do some marketing targeted at potential co-workers. That is exactly what good bosses do when they start a new project with a team. They need to make the team buy into the project first before they can expect them to work on that project with all their energy. In your case, that is even more important. If your potential new programmer is not sold on the project, he will come into it looking for reasons to leave again. And he will find them. There are tons of those in EVERY project on the world. Its only that if you sold the project well to him, he might disregard those reasons to leave immidiatly because he believes that the project is great and can be a success no matter what things could go wrong along the way.

TL; DR: They are doing something that mostly benefits you in the end. Make sure it is worth their time, and that you are thankful for it!

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You either need to bring other people in, as equals to you in all aspects, which generally works best with people you somewhat know, or you need to be able to pay people, even if it’s lunch money level payments as @neginfinity says. No other way around it.

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Practically everyone I have worked with in video game development has their own ideas. If they making someone else’s idea, they want paying. The only exception in likely to be if you have a strong professional track record that is enough to make the chances very good for a big financial success that they will share in.

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I think there are several issues you will find on a forum like this if it is where you are trying to find programmers to work on your game.

The first is that a lot of programmers looking for teams are looking to gain experience, that is why they think they are prepared to work for free.

this leads to the second issue… they are NOT prepared to work for free. They just did not realise it was an unpaid job until they actually started. They see it as part of their game development hobby, and when it is a hobby interest comes and goes, which does not matter… unless other people are relying on you.

Thirdly, generally speaking experienced developers expect paying, why wouldn’t they? Their skills have a market value. The only time this is not the case is when working on personal “passion projects”.

Personally I have a bit of experience to how this works (as I imagine do some others on here). As someone who codes for a living I know what my skills are worth. For that money I write software, manage a team of developers and deal with deadlines, planning, managing expectations of the business I work for etc.

When I get home I like to make games, well, perhaps tinker with unity with the aim of completing a game one day is a better way of putting it. BUT the difference is some days I get home and I don’t want to write another line of c#, or figure out why something is not behaving how I think it should. The last thing I want is the pressure of deadlines or working on someone else’s software for free (and games are just another type of software).

I guess what I am getting at in a round about way is that unless you have an idea that someone with the required skills feels just as passionately about working on as you do then to get decent programmers you are probably going to have to pay them!

Or you could just learn to code… :wink:

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As much as artists or designers hate this answer… this is one of the best advices an artist or designer working as an Indie without a budget could get.

Yes, we know its not everyones cup of tea. Yes, it is kinda tough to learn. Yes, it might not be what you are interested in.
But really, if you are passionate about a project, and have no money to pay a programmer, learning some beginners coding skills might be the best investment in time you have done in a long while.

As long as you are not trying to create a fully procedurally generated world, or complex combat mechanics, you should be able to limp along with beginners skills. And at some point those beginner skills might be getting more advanced.

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Very true, I was a game designer with years of professional experience at developers large and small. Designing is the part I enjoy, but it is liberating to be able to implement my own ideas.

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Yeah, I once volunteered as a writer for a game that I was really excited about. I was hired as a “community volunteer”. That was fine, I had a busy life with 4 kids at home. The team would get these assignments…go research this, come up with some ideas and submit in a week. Then I would get an email…the art team wants it now so it has to be in tonight.

I also realized everyone else on the team was not called a community volunteer but were actually team members. LOL Yet, I was getting the same assignments and the same deadlines. I wanted to help out when I could, not have a real job with no pay. I could have gotten one of those if I had wanted one. I don’t at all fault the developers since I was the one who volunteered, but I guess I just didn’t feel valued, whether or not that was true or not. They were all very nice and liked my work.

So I left…and then realized I was not passionate about their game as I was my own so better to make my own game. :slight_smile:

Volunteers have the best of intentions I think, just like I did. But often the fun little project becomes a job and if those volunteers have experience or have had similar paid jobs in the past, they begin to realize that the time invested is not worth it. If they have no experience, then they get bored and move on.

So if you need experienced people, pay them or offer them a share of the profits or at the very least, make the game “ours” and let them share ideas.

If you only enjoy the ideas, you won’t get far. I am an idea person too…but I learned to model and level design, and do environmental art, write lore, network with others, deal with business management…because I had to do so. I am fortunate to have programmers and artists on our team. Our team…it is our game, not mine.

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As a rookie indie (one who has not finished a game YET) you can’t be just “the designer”. At minimum you have to be the designer and something else, artist, audio engineer, programmer. Something else that just ‘the designer’.
You mention A LOT you have put a lot of thought and effort into this project - however the people you are bringing on and seeing what you have so far - are looking at ‘the design’ and saying “OK so what has he done - how is he contributing”. Beyond design you need to contribute more - as an indie. I’m guessing - they are seeing you as ‘the idea guy’ without anything else to contribute.

Yep - you have 2 options - Buy a visual scripting language (like Playmaker) and use it to overcome your inability to code while developing (or purchasing) assets to populate the world.
OR learn to code - and create assets, or purchase assets, or pay someone to create unique assets.

My own opinion as a non-coding artist - Playmaker gives you pretty instant forward progress - although depending upon your grand vision - you may need to de-scope to be able to complete the game. Playmaker won’t be the choke point for creating the entire game you want to make - you will be, because of your limited knowledge and experience with the tool.
On the other hand - learning to code will take longer to get to a competent enough knowledge/skill level to progress with your game, however you will not be limited in ability to create the game you want to create so you won’t need to reduce the scope, although you probably should, because it sounds like you’ve designed a game that requires multiple members to complete. As a one man band it will take much longer to complete. And you will want to scope properly based on time and effort consideration of only you.

And then there is still the assets that need to be created. Again either learn how to create art, hire someone to do it for you, or purchase assets that can populate the game.

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Telling a designer guy to become a programmer is like telling a sued guy to become a lawyer. It doesn’t work.

@OP:
I have an idea. In addition to being “The Lead Designer” you should also become “The CEO”. It goes like this:

  1. You design the game. (The Lead Designer)
  2. Some little people make it. (Developers)
  3. You sell the game and take all the money. (The CEO)

Sounds good? :wink:

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Learning enough scripting to create the game (or prototype) you want isn’t at all the same as becoming a programmer.

A CEO without the funds to hire staff to manager isn’t much of a CEO.

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A designer doesn’t just come up with a game idea. They have to create logical systems that work together to create gameplay. Programming is putting that into code form. There is more of a crossover of capabilities than is commonly thought.

Being able to do enough programming to create some compelling gameplay is entirely possible. Don’t aim for highly-optimised ninja-level code. Instead, try to make something that works.

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Most people who want to be pure designers have very low skills and very high ambition. Most of them don’t even have any real designing skills. They only have lots of “cool ideas” which are in fact not so cool at all. They want to tell people what to do like kings when they have really nothing to offer.

Very few designers are good “system designers”. System designers need similar skills to programmers but most guys who want to purely design have absolutely no idea how to build a good system.

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Ultimately if its your idea, the other person really isnt going to be that invested in it as you. If your a programmer your best bet is to simply hire an artist and do all the coding yourself.

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