I'm a 3d artist, I have an 'idea' for a game and I'm keen to find people to collaborate with.

its a bit of a cliche for people to go on to a game dev forum and say they have 'an idea'.

I've been studying 3d since 2012, mostly making hard-surface props using Blender and Substance Designer/Painter, I've used Unity a bit to make scenes but as I'm not a programmer/coder I've always struggled with unity/unreal.

after doing 3d for the last few years I've come to realise the real magic in game dev is with the programming/coding.

unlike 3d artists, I've noticed there is a lack of idle programmers/developers online, it seems if you know how to code you always have a project or something to work on.

so I have an idea and (cliche as it sounds) its a good one, I don't want to blurt it out online and I would rather first find a forum where people who are keen to work on a collaborations could find each other and show off their talents etc.

so if anyone has a suggestion of a forum which I should check out please tell us.

 

Officially the only thing we have here for finding people to collaborate with is Unity Connect.

https://connect.unity.com/

Reddit and generic game development communities will be your best bet.

https://old.reddit.com/r/INAT/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds

https://www.gamedev.net/forums/forum/29-hobby-project-classifieds/

Just be aware that while there are many people looking for team members to assist with their idea, the reality is there are very few people looking to join a team. Your idea has to be able to stand out among the crowd to have any real chance of attracting unpaid assistance. Like the following reddit thread mentions only about 5% of projects are worth looking into.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/9ofmd3/is_anyone_having_having_success_with/

 

The hard truth is no matter how good your idea may seem, finding reliable programmers and team members to actually stick with something more than a few weeks without payment is next to impossible.

And just remember everyone thinks they have the best game idea too, there is probably nothing special about yours, and people would rather work on their idea in their spare/non-paid time than your idea. The idea is the easy part, its the execution and the marketing that are the hard part.

Not being negative, I'm just being realistic.

But good luck anyway

 

Would this be your first game?

 

Every single person on this forum has ten good ideas, only the execution makes ideas actually matter. As long as you first post your art on a personal website - so you have legal recourse if it somehow gets stolen - you have zero reason to keep your art secret, show it as much as you can so you get publicity and possibly work partners.

 

I would look for mod teams. Modders are generally going to be more practical minded, realistic, and goal oriented. As a beginner you want to look for people who are experienced at getting S*** done, not joining up with fellow naive pie-in-the-skiers. You want to find people who you can learn from .

Or maybe look for a game jam team. Don't think I am discouraging a healthy, goal oriented collaboration at all -- in fact I think it's the very best way to learn and challenge yourself and 1000% more effective than just working on portfolio pieces, however you want to surround yourself with the right people and the right goal, otherwise you'll just end up wasting time.



Save your dream project for when you've got some experience under your belt and know some folks you can rely on.


PS, IIRC you are more focused on hard surface stuff, right? Maybe some arma modders would be a good fit.

 

I never quite found Arma modders or DayZ groups to click with, and I have tried interacting with them over the last few years via dischord etc, and it generally would go along the lines of first person sees my artstation is happy to have me on board, forwards me to the main person, who I message to introduce myself, they never get back to me. and as I value my time and its not a job I wont waste it to get their attention.

via polycount I've had some much needed and brutal critique of my 3d work which has greatly helped me improve the quality of my work, and thats why I'm confident that I can offer something to a group of game developers and likewise I know my 'idea' is a good one I can contribute a decent execution of the 3d part of it.

 

Check out the modding communities for Bethesda. There are almost always many projects going on that need people who can create art and people who can create scripts.

On the contrary I would argue that it's not a waste at all for two main reasons. One, artwork you create for a project can be used as portfolio pieces and it's not at all unusual for companies to hire talented modders. Bethesda is a good example of a company with this hiring practice but there are others with a track record of it.

Two, if you're unable to attract the attention of a community that isn't paying you, you don't have much hope of attracting the attention of a community that will be paying you. If you're submitting work and they're not responding, you need to determine why they're not responding and change your approach until you start getting responses.

 

You are going slower than you could be because you are trying to go too fast.

If your level of confidence seems at a mismatch with what feedback you are getting from outside (ghosting is feedback. Yes, it does suck), that's a good indicator that you lack some fundamental knowledge/skill. Not a simple matter of "improve your materials a little bit," or "just push things a bit further." Rather it's "go back to square one and figure out what major building block you are missing."

 

Will this be your first game?

 

obviously yes. my 3d modelling isnt bad though, I've held back from posting something like this over the last 6 years cause I've focussed on actually having something worth offering to a team of people.

 

I hadnt even beard of Bethesda, but I will give that a look now.

regarding getting in contact with modding communities, I dont like using dischord (I do use it if necessary) and I like having proper conversations with people one to one via email or whatever and I find in discord its easily for your input to be diluted with other people, sometimes not even team members giving their 'helpful suggestions'.

there was another community for another popular game, someone suggested I contact, and I openly said 'i dont play this game, however a friend told me you need modelers' and the response was pretty immature along the lines of 'well if you dont play it, how could think you could be part of our team?' I tried replying 'tell us what you need, what sort of polycount, LOD heirarchies, what sort of texture maps and I will do it and you will be happy with the result.' but as it seemed the conversation was quickly veering off course. and the oddest one was some weirdo I found on the Total War forum, who first asked me a load of questions making sure I wasnt a troll, and they had even written some rubbish mini-novel for their grand idea which was required reading for their mod. I didn't stick around with that one.

 

Bethesda make morrowind, oblivion, skyrim, fallout, I am sure you have heard of them but didnt realise thats who they are

As others have said, assembling a team when you are a begginner will be difficult. Assembling a team of programmers when you are a beginner and not a programmer will be very very hard. Programmers (like myself) are trained from the moment they go to university about contract negotiation and you will have a hard time justifying to any programmer why they should listen to you without payment and/or experience to back it up.

Im not trying to be mean, just realistic. I have been on a couple of teams that were started by amateurs and aside from the fact that both games fell apart when anything real started happening, I can also tell you that the experience was not fun and put me off game dev for a while.

Maybe just try to learn to code for a bit? There are visual scripting tools etc. It will do you a world of good to first try and make a small game before trying to make the game.

 

Got to improve your people skills. You are fighting against the current.

Modders are gonna be nerdy geeks. You got to either be one too or learn to speak nerdy-geek at least.

And how can you make models for a game without thoroughly understanding it's art style? That's an important part of the job! It's more than technical parameters.

You've stepped on a few thorns... now will you cover the world in leather, or just make a pair of stinkin sandals?

 

if you are serious about this, you need to stand out
flesh out your idea, make some art, how the game should look like, post renders or videos of that, post your art station or website
this will at least show the people that you can deliver and are not an ideas person on the team
it will also show the people the quality of your work

try to look at your post from the perspective of someone who is considering to join a team. there are a billion people who want to make a game. most of them don't have the skills to do it, and even the ones who maybe have the skills, vastly underestimate the work that needs to be put into it
so show your potential teammates that you have a solid idea, you can get the work done and that it will look awesome

 

On the people skills side, these forums are littered with the dead corpses of people new to game development trying to impress. Starting out all of us did that in one way or another at some point. And we all look back on those moments and cringe a little.

The thing is people love to help. But they do so because it's rewarding to them. Helping someone that thinks they know what they really don't, not really rewarding. And most definitely not someone you want on your team. I've been a developer for 25 years 10 of that in games. But whenever I go outside my area of expertise, I try to act humble and maybe even a little more ignorant then I actually am on the subject. It just gets better results.

 

this is the perfect attitude. When you are approaching a team of strangers for collaboration, and your main goal is to gain some experience, improve your skills, just be upfront and honest. "Hey guys, i know a bit about modeling but i'm wanting to get a real challenge and learn the in's and outs of working on a team. I wont be upset if you don't think my work is strong enough to go into the final build, but I'd really appreciate if you can give me a chance to learn from you guys and grow as an artist."

Some people are gonna be dicks, but if you do get picked up you'll be off on the right foot. If you start to realize that you are actually the SME in your field on that team, then you got to start thinking about cross-training. That means teaching what you know to others (teaching, no gloating), and in turn they teach you something. All the best teams do this.

So even though you are part of the team because you want a slice of the pie, you got to make the teams welfare your number one. THen it's going to take care of you in return.

 

Glad to hear you're willing to use it if necessary because the reality is it's almost always going to be the way you communicate with people who hire you. Just as an example for my current project I was recruited through a forum message, then a Skype "call" with the project lead, followed by Slack for every day communication with the team.

I legitimately can't remember the last time I opened my email for one-on-one communication.

Welcome to Game Design Documents. There are no standards for them. A basic arcade game (kinda like the game we're developing) may only have a couple dozen pages while an RPG could have hundreds depending on the type of content and how long the team has been in development. Grim Fandango, for example, has 75 pages for just covering the puzzles.

http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2008/11/13/GrimPuzzleDoc_small.pdf

Be prepared for anything from light to heavy reading depending on the team you join.

 

Ya re the mini novel, and also the whole idea about having a good idea. Games involve a lot of art, as in creative work, as in it's not a science. That's why nobody I don't care how good you are or how long you have been at it, doesn't really know the value of their idea when it's still just an idea. I'm sure it's happened, but no game I worked on did the idea/initial design survive through more then a couple of iterations.

So some teams might think a mini novel or a huge design doc is the best and only way to really get the entire feel of what they are trying to create. And I don't think you can really second guess that, you have to actually go through it before passing judgement.

 

You've probably found this to be true in your modeling as well, even if you haven't thought about it directly.

You know, you have some model you're gonna make, you sit and think about how you'll build it, and then not until you are halfway through do you realize the entire thing is majorly borked.

This is why prototyping is so valuable. In the military we call it a "dry-run" but its the same idea. You do a quick mock up of what you plan to do, run through it, and learn all the things you didn't know. It's essential to success.

Again, look for teams who seem to be on the ball with this sort of thing. People you can learn from and seem like they have the patience and good will to help someone out. Mission focused people who talk more about the work they are doing rather than big ideas they "will" be doing. Even if they are a little weird or want you to jump through some hoops ot see if you're gonna be a good fit, it's probably gonna be worth it.

 

This is interesting. Usually it's the opposite. As 3D artist myself, i often work for developers as freelancer (who are programmers) on their ideas. It would be interesting to see the opposite example.

That being said, i think you need to show stuff if you want serious people to join your project. You need to show you are serious as well. Simply saying "i have an idea, come and join me" wont cut it. As 3D modeler, commit time to your idea and make models which would be part of your game. Showcase them, maybe even go to kickstarter. Showcase your game idea with your 3D work, make some nice renders. That way your chances of getting serious people to join you would increase dramatically.

 

Game art is a big part of a game, if you are good developers will line up to make those models come to life.

 

Thanks,

Here is what I think. Building any game is a huge commitment of time. It is like asking someone hey will you spend a few thousand hours with me, and go through all of this long arduous frustrating journey.

You need to go on a first date before you decide to move in together. Most other game devs lonely and spending thousands of hours and wish they had an artist to work with. They probably prefer that you to work on their ideas, but even if they did like your idea, it is a HUGE commitment to work on a game. Thousands of hours and often years. It is really huge.

Anyway. My advice to you is to put your idea on the Backburner for now. And sign up for a game jam. Build and ship one simple game in a short time frame. There is plenty of game jams on Itch.io and probably a bunch of Unity jams just look on google. Work on anything but make sure you join a team with some strangers. Who cares what the idea is because it is just for a few days or a few weeks. Just do whatever, and complete an entire game. This will give you experience collaborating with others, give you a chance to meet some people.

After this you will have a better perspective of what it takes to complete a game and if you succeed you may have some relationships where you can discuss a bigger project. That is my advice. And I wish you the best of luck on your journey whatever you decide to do.

 

This!

Making large games takes long time and it'll involve a variety of challenges - technical, personal, creative, project management, resources. You're essentially asking people to enter a long-term working relationship with you. That's no small thing!

I want to know that someone is both experienced and committed before I start working with them on anything non-trivial. Otherwise I could get hundreds of hours in and find that the effort is mostly wasted when someone pulls out, or when the team somehow can't overcome one of the challenges.

Start with small projects, for a few reasons.

• The stuff you learn on a small project will save more than that project's duration when you move onto bigger things.
• You'll learn whether or not you really can work with whomever you're working with.
• You'll get experience at stuff that only happens towards the end of a project - like releasing things.
• You'll get exposed to some of the challenges, so you're better informed and can plan for and handle them better for your future work.
• You'll get a finished portfolio piece more quickly. (Smaller finished things are more impressive in a portfolio than larger, incomplete things.)
• The short project will probably end up being longer than you expect, anyway!

Is it making games in general that interests you, or is it just this particular idea you want to make?

 

Just having a idea isn't enough. Will you only provide the 3d models and let others do the 100 times bigger remaining things? That is actually the impression even if it is not intended.
There are things you can do yourself!
Create the project in unity, design your scenes and fill them with you art. Use free assets for example a character controller to prototype. After having a base and super cool screenshots you can go and look again for programmers. First you have to show that you actually can do a project and need mainly with the coding part help but not with the entire project.

 

Doesnt even need to be a running project with a character controller. It could just be static Unity scenes. Show that you can create and light Unity scenes that are awesome

Example: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v8eW3

 

Exactly. For an artist showing off artwork, it does not need to be a working game. Just make the most amazing static Unity scene that you can. If a big part of it will be character models, just put a stock idle animation on each model. For a video, just rig the camera to move around slowly using timelines.

 

Just searched unity on art station and picked that one, I saw now that he works for Ubisoft. Nice that he uses Unity for his private projects

Most AAA artists uses Unreal for their side projects.

edit: Oh, and he is Swedish too. Good stuff
Here is another one of his Unity projects

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WLNZy

 

Find someone who has a history of practicing what they love to do. As some have said, not dreamers who won't finish anything. I found an artist and we've just begun a new project this year as a collaboration effort, essentially abandoning mouse flight. I'm sort of letting him do the art and creative side. We've already got some great code, and dare I say it, some of the best code I've yet written.

The point is you may need to find someone willing to work toward a common goal, even if its a new project. If you want experience or anything to do, definitely go that route. Just be sure to inclusive and fair to the other party, and get some legal framework up about responsibilities and rights, you don't want to hang yourself if things go south between you. Go to Twitter and YT and do various searches for Unity Game Project (not game) because it will show you who has made decent progress over a long period of time on their projects.

That demonstrates dedication.

You'll know they're in it because they love it, and that is whom you want to work with. If they began something and never finished it after a handful of updates, chances are they were looking for overnight success or a quick dollar.

EDIT: I don't upload new videos of Mouse Flight because its not being worked on for some time and I have little new stuff to show off. I'm on YT literally everyday.

 

https://www.gamejobforum.com/index.php

A forum 100% designed for paid and free collaboration on games.

You can find paid freelancers/partners here, which I don't think Gamedev.net supports

 

When I was starting out, as a writer and artist, I was looking for a team on several forums, (back in 2008) and the response I generally got was "So.. You want us to make the game for you, and then you're just going to replace our S***ty graphics with your not so S***ty graphics..."

It was at that point I taught myself OOP and just did it all myself.

It was hard work, but liberating, and with all the guides and tutorials, platforms and frameworks out there today, even easier to get something mocked up by yourself. My genuine suggestion is get stuck in, build a proof of concept, then look to grow the team to flesh it out on the strength of that demo/concept, if you even need to at that point that is.

 

I disagree with your conclusion here.

Art is the really hard part, not the game programming (and no, I am not an artist).

If you're really good (show us some of your stuff!), you will have no problem finding game developers to help you out. Most relatively intelligence folks can learn to program games to a reasonable level. This is especially true given the number of resources available to teach you how to do it, and the number of assets available, most of which come with source code. The days when really talented game programmers (think John Carmack) were creating real magic on limited hardware, are clearly long over. And with all the great and accessible tools (Unity, Unreal, etc), you can create a solid game even if you game programming skills are not that great.

Art, on the other hand is not easily learned beyond a "basically serviceable" level if you have no talent, no matter how many YouTube Blender and 3dsMax videos you watch. Your sketch on a napkin is going to be better than any programmer's art, no matter long they spent on it.

And lastly the art is what makes a game sizzle. I buy way more games on Steam than I'll admit, and I normally won't last 10 seconds into your game trailer if the art is bad. Unless your game is just so over the top good in every other way.

So, like I said, show off your work. If it's good, you'll find people.

 

I disagree. Talent is not an innate characteristic. Talent comes from hard work, dedication and persistence. I think they're both difficult. Right now I struggle with getting this dam computer security assignment to work with Maven and Java, of which I hadn't been exposed to Maven before this week.

Also there's more to making any sort of software than just programming. If programming is akin to doing the grunt work of constructing something, then a software engineer is your architect.

 

You're confusing talent with skill.

 

OK Ryiah I get it the dictionary says such and such but its not what I meant. There's common wisdom that those talents you see expressed in children (and other age groups) don't just appear out of nothing. Ie. they were pushed to the skill they've developed or they pursued the activity to the point of mastery in a short time [at the expense of other skills].

 

I know but it is important to understand that there is a difference because to some degree your genetics do play a role in your ability to improve in a skill. How much and in what ways is debatable.

 

Just semantics for discussed context.

 

Genetics are much more important than upbringing etc. I know socialists here in sweden have tried to debunk genetics because that would mean everybody isn't equal

 

You know what I almost mentioned that fact antypodish...

 

Thread starts with: where do I find people to make a game with me?

Thread ends with: genetics vs upbringing.

Does anyone even make games these days, or is the whole idea of game development just some kind of pseudo-activity while real life on the forums takes place?

 

General Discussion is where threads go to die.

 

I think the thing people don't understand is that genetics or upbringing aren't that different. The results are both physical encoding. Like, the brain isn't a magic box, it's a physical machine that follows deterministic law.

But if you take those facts, and you let normal human beings build a society around it... bad s*it happens. Like literal nazis, eugenics, etc. And I'm not talking about nazis in a flippant way, I mean all the racial and biological ideology.

I don't think we should suppress science, but I don't know if we as a species are grown up enough to handle whats coming.

 

The hard part is the part that you're not good at.

I'm mostly a programmer, so to me art seems hard. I watch the artists I work with do stuff, and there's no way I could achieve the results they do in the time they do, or in some cases I just couldn't do it at all. On the flip side, programming stuff to me seems easy, because I do it all the time and much of it just comes naturally by now.

To me art also seems disproportionately valuable, purely due to perspective. If I need some code written there's a good chance I can do it myself, no worries. That isn't a scarce resource to me. If I need some art made... different story! I need to rely on other people for that. I suspect that because of this many people feel that complementary disciplines are where the real value lies.

In my mind, if you want to make games or do any other creative team-oriented work, one of the best things you can do is find another person with complementary core skills and start making stuff with them. You'll be able to reinforce one anothers' abilities, you'll both learn a lot, you'll probably make stuff that's more than the sum of your individual efforts.

I think that's because this is how you learn to code. You make stuff. When you finish a thing, you start another thing. I wouldn't let this put you off raising the idea of working with these people. Your project could become their next thing. (Though, see my earlier post about commitment levels.)

Do you live somewhere with a local IGDA chapter or game dev social group? If so I'd get on their forum / Facebook group / Discord server / whatever they have, and I'd also start going to their social events. I wouldn't go there with the specific aim of finding team members, as it's not a recruiting service. However, getting known and networking will definitely help in that regard. Showing off your stuff and being open about wanting collaborators could get you loads of mileage on its own.

Are there any game jams which take place near you? If so, get involved. Again, don't do it with the specific aim of getting people onto your main project. Show up with the intent of having fun and learning while making something small and cool with other people. But you'll make strong connections with some of those people, and since you're working together for fun it's a low-friction way to keep working together in some cases.

Regardless of how you do it, keep one question in mind: What's the value for them? Think from their perspective and figure out what you can offer which is of value to potential collaborators. When you do this, keep in mind that your idea is not special to them like it is to you. I'm not saying that you should hunt for collaborators with hard-sell tactics (don't do that!), but that you should figure out how to make projects as mutually beneficial for all involved as possible. One thing I always do with new team members is ask what they want to get out of working on something, and try to build that into the plan.