How to Find People to Work With

I've been making some indie games on my own. But I can't help but feel like my resources are stretched thin and. I'm primarily a C# programmer that can also draw basic 2D sprites but that's about it. I really would like to expand my resources beyond just me and work with other people. Now I know indies are suppose to wear many hats as it were and I'm totally fine with doing that. But while my 2D sprites are so so my C# programming is exceptional. So that's where I feel I should be spending most of my time since I'm very familiar with it as opposed to 2D Sprites which I've only just recently learned how to make. The 2D sprites would made much faster and better if say I relegated the work to a 2D artist as that's their particular field.

Anyway I think I've explained the rationale behind my logic fairly well. But I don't know how to find people to work. Does anyone know where I can start? I'm completely fine with collaborating with another person or working under a small team. I just want to get the experience of working with other people besides myself.

 

Try the Collaboration forum, or if you have a budget to hire people, the Commercial: Job Offering forum.

 

You may also be interested in local meetups. Not necessarily Unity related but any dev related should be a great place to find other interested people. Hackthons might be a good place too, if it's your thing. Generally there are people out there looking to connect with other indie developers to form a team. Just gotta look in the right places.

 

So I have this question in regards to commercial/non-commercial projects. Is there any middle ground between commercial/non-commercial? Could you say offer the person/people you're working with a cut of the game's sales instead of being paid upfront or is that a bad idea? For instance let's say I'm working on this project with no budget and I'm not making a dime off of it until I put it up for sale. So I find three people who're willing to work on the project and for their work I split the sales between the four of us effectively giving us all 25% of the sales made if the game makes any sales. Would this idea work or not?

 

The division is clear. If you're paying money for the work, it's commercial. If you're offering revenue share or any other work-now-maybe-get-paid-later arrangement, it's collaboration.

It might work, if you can find such people. That would be a collaboration (not a commercial job offered).

 

It's pretty hard to make profit share arrangements work with random strangers over the Internet. Everyone has to eat, so paid positions are more attractive. Skilled people can get paid for their work. These two facts lead to a pretty high turnover of skilled people.

It's easier in person, but you still need a strong pre existing relationship for it to work.

 

So a collaboration is considered noncommercial? I thought whether or not you choose to sell it or release it for free is what determines whether a game is commercial or noncommercial.

Then what would you suggest I do? What do most indie developers typically do? I can't afford to pay for positions yet I still would like more resources to work with. How does one go about expanding from noncommercial games to commercial games when your not able to make a profit since your games are free? Do you accept donations? I don't quite understand. The idea was that I would split sales with the people I work with until I could afford to pay for positions and ultimately make better games. Essentially working my way up.

 

In this context, "Commercial - Job Offering" means only paid jobs. Collaborations are everything else. There's a sticky at the top of that forum that makes this clear.

There's no magic solution. You adjust your ambitions to match your resources, or somehow grow your resources to match your ambitions. Or both.

And, by the way, most games don't make a profit (or not significant amounts of profit, anyway). That's the unfortunate reality. Most indie developers work on their own projects in evenings/weekends, supported by some other day job.

Well, as we said, that's great if you can find somebody willing to do it. Hang out in that collaboration forum, pitching your own idea (now and then!) or assisting with others' ideas. Develop relationships with creative artists who, like you, are just starting out and not yet able to charge much for their work, or who have a specific vision they want to create and need a programmer to help.

 

Most indies have another source of funds. That can be living off of savings, a spouse that works, a full or part time job, or living with parents.

Once you are good at your craft you can start selling your services as a freelancer, tutor, blogger or YouTuber.

Eventually you will have released several games and get to the point where you can live off of proceeds from your last game, or from kick starter campaigns.

 

I was going to start a Youtube channel and/or Wordpress blog but I hadn't considered making tutorials on them. That is what you're referring by services right?

Also the non-commercial collaboration sections seems very inactive with zero replies to any of the threads and very few views to them as well. Is this the case and if so where else could I go to meet potential collaborators?

 

I doubt there is anywhere better (other than real-life meetups, as @Ryiah already suggested above). The view counts on those threads don't look too bad to me. You may not see replies because people may be taking them to PM (private messages), or because everybody wants to pursue their own ideas and nobody wants to help create somebody else's idea.

So, if you decide what you need is experience and building up your portfolio, and you can leave your ego out of it, then I'm sure you'll find lots of opportunities to help somebody bring their vision to life!

 

Thread replies are not allowed in the collaboration forums. So none will have public responses.

 

Zero replies is mandated by the forum rules. Failed projects have a tendency to get nasty. So rather then deal with it, the admins just disable replies.

The few views is probably reflective of the fact that there are far more people asking for skilled developers then their are skilled developers willing to work for free.

I would focus on building relationships with other people in the industry, rather then looking for a collaborator. This works on the forums. But its even more effective in person. Go along to your local IDGA meetups.

The other option is to be one of the people donating skills in the collaboration forum. There are always people asking for work for free.

 

There are no IDGA meetups being hosted anywhere near me and I can't afford to fly to one of those events. I don't think meeting people in person will work for me so outside of the non-commercial section what other options do I have?