Collab section...seriously guys....

News & General Discussion
1

Alright, so…sigh…me and a programmer have been hard at work on a game for months now, and due to a little real life issues with my dayjob,quiting it and so on, having a kid and all, we needed to cut down on dev time because i have a 6 months resignation time.

SO! we agreed to work on other small projects on the side while i finish up my time at the dayjob so i can go fulltime on this.

My programmer went to the wonderful Collab section hopig to snag a artist for some quick jobs, should be fine, plenty of great artists on here looking for alittle portfoliowork.

Here’s the problem with Collab, and i simply dont understand why things are the way they are.

If u want a job, sure, i’d expect there to be some sort of filter the team seeking to hire would have to go through. Portoflio’s wopuld have to be checked, theres money involved etc etc. I would be ok with a job to make me wait 5 days before i knew, because its serious, making games is serious, it takes time and u need the right people for it.

Collab…is FREE work. Why does there have to be a 3-5 day VALIDATION time for something like this:

Posted: 09:49 PM 3 Days Ago
Hi. Only serious people! Ambitious, forward, and know what you want but lets the artist have creative freedom? Then we should join forces! Idiots will be blocked and never talked to again. Friendly, mature people will stay as long time contact and friend.

You are:
Over 18 years.
Has a skill / talent.
Is a PR and can move the team forward with possibly google doc tasks (I don’t want to hear from you one day and then you never hear back).

Yes! this is form a guy that got blasted before because he does artwork that requires him to put his work towards the fundamentals of art and NOT be on these foums looking for jobs.

THIS post got validated, and its only amongst others of simular nature. If i were an admin, this would not go through, why? what is it about? Is he lending his services? is he looking for friends,what? He has a deviant but i didnt wanna post the link because im not a total douche, if u really want it PM me, but belive me when i say, he is not ready to make games.

Now to the point, sorry for deveating. My programmer,who has finished games before and is a friggin joy to work with, has no chance of finding artists on here because his post is now 3 days old. What does the human brain tell us if we are looking for help?

It tells us a 3 day old post will most likely be taken, dead or not as fun to look at as a 1 hour old one, its simple, we dont like waiting.

WHY does a free, teamseeking,collaboration forum need a validation process? If i want a programmer,hopefully for a collab job, i dont wanna wait 5 days and cross my fingers it gets noticed under the 50 other posts above me.

I actually used the collab section once, and i got 50 PM’s form programmers wanting to work with me, but the point is, my post was lucky enough to end up on the very top, plus i used my best artwork. Had my post been at the bottom of the page, i’d get maybe 10.

U see…theres NO way to can reply to these posts, u cant even ask questions, while in something as important as getting a job that takes money out of one pockect and put it in another, is a free for all, even REALLY dodgy threads.

Im not gonan go on about the 14 years old in there trying to find ppl for a huge MMO, i could, but i wont.

I hope ive mad emy point, as much as i like roaming around in here looking at awesome WIPS and amazing assets beeing made by great developers, the collab section needs to be BETTER for serious people.

Gold buried in crap has little chance to shine.

2

I can do this too!

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

3

thank you, very helpful.

4

Your last Collaboration thread got 50 PMs? Seems like the system works to me. It has been discussed many, many times why the Collaboration Section is set up the way it is.

I no longer handle the Collaboration Section approval process, but the whole point was to filter out the pointless MMOs by 14 year olds. If those are getting approved now then it sort of defeats the purpose of the approval process and you should talk to Aurore about it.

5

Did you know that the Japanese have been “mining” gold from their sewers for a while now?

Guess your cliche needs updating.

Anyway, the collab section is heavily moderated because there are jsut too many clueless noobs with no skills who posted how they were going to make the next greatest game in the history of gaming. All they need is some people to do all the work for them. They all turned into flame wars and ended up needing more moderation. Not to mention your “friend’s” post would be lost in a matter of minutes.

Here’s a saying for you: You get what you pay for.
Here’s another: Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

6

Yes it works, but the reason it worked was because i got very lucky, i ended up at the top of the list. Adrien,my programmer, is a great guy to work with and its a shame another artist wont be able to experience that because his thread is beeing drowned by the example i posted.

I also saw a Space MMO and a 14 year old girl that wanted to make an RPG or something…if they needed approval, how did they get trough?

I understand it might be easier to just click “approve” than to spend hours looking through them all for whoever is in charge, we all have those days, but seriously…GOOD developers are having a hard time finding people.

The filter does not work, thats 100% certain, if u go through a few u will realize that very quickly.

here’s my idea:

Open it, and set a few rules. The one that are on the sticky now isnt beeing followed, at all.

Screenshots, artwork, working code, webplayers, SOMETHING should be a absolute must to make those threads look alittle more serious. Theres way too many walls of text with sparse ideas from young people who hasnt even opened up Unity, These are harmless, sure, but they bury the serious ones that actually make an effort trying to build solid teams and maybe one day make a game that will be the next Minecraft, who knows.

If they dont post something about their skills, dont let them post, simple. Im a painter, so its very antural for me to show what i can do in order to get the people i need, this is very logical to me,a nd it should be for the moderators of one of the worlds largest and popular game engines forums!

Something has to be done…i will need people in the future, would suck to gave to go on another foum and ask “hey, do u know unity?”, because here, most people do.

Like i said, it worked for me, i got 50 programmers ramming my inbox, but i choose to belive im a fairly decent artists and had ALOT of luck since mine ended up at the very top and stayed there for 4 days. this is not he case for most.

7

Why is your solution for the filter not working to make the filters even less stringent?

8

It wasn’t just to stop the MMO posts.

It was also to stop the harrassment that was occurring when someone posted something that wasn’t fully fleshed out. That was mostly MMO posts, but also included posts like the ones above. They would just be dogpiled by people yelling at them, with very few of those people trying to help anyone.

9

ok im gonna ignore half of ur post, and answer the important stuff, im not dicking around here mister. ur a funny guy, ill give u that. If u wanna dig through sewers to find gold, be my guest man, really.

Its beeing heavily moderated…when? now? take a look, come back and tell me it looks moderated to u. My programmer posted 3 days ago, waited, now it popped up and he is at the bottom almost, not the place artists looks first.

Clearly, it needs work. Here’s another exmaple of something that got APPROVED :

MMORPG help required

In Fantasy medieval times were three very antithetic factions clashed one another for total domination. Each extremely diverse from each other but still has very peculiar characteristics.

Faction 1 :The Compelling Khios were once unstoppable force, But overcame by nothing else but mere villagers who have been surfeited by forces that strive for control, But an unknown being summoned the once retrogress Junta from extinction.

Faction 2 :After the extermination of the iniquitous Khios, The people of Burmak established an unpretentious community for peace and unity, after years of harsh endeavors it cultivated into one prodigious nation.

faction 3 :Where gold is more important than lives, the Narazians peeress motivation is wealth. Only thieves, mercenaries and bounty hunters debate which heist they can take on at the bounty board.

we need to an advanced skills for the following;
3D modeler
Animator
2D Artist
Voice actor (Preferably Female)

if you are good or intimated about any of these skill please leave a comment right away

Your sincerely
xxx (not gonna give their names)

what is that…? To me that is not something i would spend my time on, it tells me NOTHING…all i know is i need advanced skills, and some kind of faction list there that i guess comes with nightime stories.

I know ill be bashed for even bringing up this thread, thats forum nature, but i think this is a serious prblem for alot of devs getting frustrated not getting the right people. I use Unity daily, i would love for the forums to be THE best place for finding assistance, and not a lottery like it is now.

10

I think the need for some kind of portfolio could filter 90% of posts…

Heck, even if you’re an ideas’guy, you could have a design document to show…

11

So open it up and and set more rules that people aren’t following now? That doesn’t make much sense.

I think the main problem is that the approval process has become way too lax. It does take a lot of time to do properly and you have to have an eye for posts that can be disregarded or approved quickly so that you don’t spend all day on the process. This takes a lot of practice.

But still I don’t agree with the “if my post isn’t at the top of the page no one will reply!” argument. If you’re seriously looking for a project to join you will take the time to skim down the page and read any threads that pique your interest. If someone isn’t serious enough to do even that much work to find collaborators do you really want them on your team anyway?

12

hmmm yeah i can see that, but that just lets me belive everything with MMO in the title should be carefully reviewed before released then, if they keep this approval thing.

I just dont think the forums of the (probably) most popular game engine should be a playground for wishful kids. I admire their passion ofcourse, but making a game requires alot more than passion.

Trolling and stuff can be avoided if the collab section had some guidelines to follow, like screenshots or some form of a more serious apporach. A nice text with great ideas gets u nowhere in a collab section, so i dont even see why they get approved, most devs (i assume) looks for work in an somewhat already established project, and not a story on a napkin.

13

yes, right now there are no requirments like that, last time i checked atleast, i apologize if its been updated. As long as u fill in the simple guideline u are golden, and u get approved. I want guidelines geared more towards making a thread that displays something that atleast looks like a game on its way.

Like i said, even just artwork or a screenshot gets u a loooong way, and harrasment probably wont be that frequent.

If i see 2 programmers there, one has a webplayer of something he made work, the other only fancy words, harvard education and had a trip to the moon in his self built rocket…i’d pick the webplayer anyday, but thats just me. It tells me “this guy actually MADE that happen, so he can do it again”

14

I agree, it seems to have become too lax. Like i said, i understand it takes alot of time, but it has to be done anyway. It renders the foum useless in alot of ways.

Yes,RULES. It has rules, but not the right ones. Open it up and set the right rules, any 10 year old can follow the ones that are current. a 10 year old cannot produce game ready artwork, program a small towerdefence or compose music ready for Skyrim, unless they ate something i surely didnt have as a kid.

I dont agree either with it, but u have to think beyond urself, what YOU would have done. “most” people dont like going through pages, and the more pages means, older posts. Older posts means, taken or dead.

Do i want them on my team? I dunno, never got the chance to talk to them, my thread was one page 9 when it got approved.

15

Page 9 when it got approved? That would’ve taken a month or two, so you’re either exaggerating or something seriously went wrong there.

16

nono, it was a joke towards never getting a answer from people looking for my thread, because it was buried or way back. Wich is the case for probably alot of good threads. sorry for misunderstanding, im getting tired.

I just hope they find a solution, because waiting for 3-5 days on the thread u spent 1 hour making to hopefully find the right people because u present great work on it, isnt really good. Especially when ppl with no effort can post whatever they want at will, and end up way above you.

Please excuse me, been looking at photoshop for hours, need some sleep before i start becoming something i hate myself on forums.

17

Hello, your friendly Collaboration Forum moderator here!

I think it’s fairly obvious that, since I took over the Collab forum moderation from Ethan, the rules that I follow for deletion/approval are a bit different. Not through any specific choice, mind you, but perhaps I have misunderstood the requirement a bit. I can obviously fix this by discussing more with Ethan and Aurore.

I have been (mostly) approving well-written posts with a reasonable bit of info in, regardless of whether I thought the project itself was a stinker. Sometimes I do skim-read and miss that it’s a 14 year-old making a rip-off of some other game, though, and for that I apologise.

If you are concerned about a post not being approved quickly, just PM me about it. I can’t check the list as often as one might hope, and sometimes it does get up to the 5-day time, but I do try and process them all at least within 1-2 days. The 3-5 day validation time is not because it takes me 3-5 days to stare at one post and decide if it’s worthy or not :wink:

Also, if you don’t think a thread should have been approved, then PM me. It’s probably a mistake on my part, but we can obviously work together to raise the quality.

Anywho, my apologies again if I appear to have let the quality drop on the collab forum, but just PM me if you have a question, or a comment on something I’ve deleted/approved etc.

Love from Tene x x x

18

Tenebrous, can you make it pay per per post, for both collaboration and for commercial:

$5 per post for each starter thread. The money goes to the Moderator’s tip-jar.

Someone who spam the commercial section with dozens of starter threads, need to pay more.

19

Maybe a moderated forum isn’t the best medium for collaboration. It would almost be nice to have something sort of similar to what sites like Rent-A-Coder have. They could further be divided into Commercial and Free Collaborative sections. It wouldn’t need to go so far as to escrow funds… but just provide a dedicated channel for these two items. Artists / Programmers post profiles and seekers post requests that can include filters on applications such as age requirements and proficiencies. I know people can lie about these things, but it’s a start.

Additionally, there can be review capabilities for both seekers and programmers / artists that help people make decisions in the future. It’s incentive to do a good job. And to top it all off, eventually it could become an additional revenue stream for Unity as they could do a premium type commercial offering where they escrow the funds and keep a percentage.

20

I think tangible proof needs to be shown of any project on the collab forum. If you haven’t started working then it shouldn’t be posted.