Where to find co-workers

Hi all,

I recently started a social pseudo-mmo project and I was wondering where to find co-workers.
I have all the graphical assets ready (from asset store) and an ever growing game design document, what I am looking for now is for people to help with audio, UI, code, game design and world building. While I can do a fair portion of the tasks myself, the project is pretty big already and thus I could need some more hands.

I am looking specifically for people with professional experience even tho this would be unpaid in the first place.

Looking forward to any recommendations.

Best,
Seb

 

So you have nothing to show and asking for few years of cowork for free?, Good luck.

You first stop will be
Unity Connect of course
And other game / programming forums, other than Unity.

 

I have plenty to show, just not throwing everything into public since it's a very disruptive project, Game Design Doc is 6 Pages + and growing.
Thanks for the hints.

 

6 page Game Design doc; that will definitely get you the slaves you need...........

 

The chances of getting someone with professional experience who would work UNPAID are slim.
You could try connect, gamejobforum, reddit and so on.

But, uh, in general people avoid unpaid projects, due to having experience of being burned on several of them in the past.

 

At this point, you purchased graphical assets from the Unity Asset Store and wrote up a design document. That is enough to get started if you can do all of the other work. However, it won't be enough to get highly qualified strangers involved in the project unpaid.

What you need to do is create a tiny slice of your game to show people. That might be enough to get some people excited. Try to come up with the smallest version of your idea that can show the most compelling feature of your project. Build a small demo or even just a short video showing that core feature.

 

If you build it they will come.

 

Sometimes skilled people will do something fun for free, but they need to see it's being managed by an obsessive fanatic who will finish it or die. Until I saw the movie, I didn't realize the greatest piece of art in the 20th century, American Splendor, was made by Harvey Pekar only writing the pages, then harassing his artist friends to draw them for free.

I think for a game people would want to see someone who's played everything similar, and enjoys talking about game features. They have a blog about their game going back a year, including one thing they've taught themself, even though they clearly suck at it, but needed it to make a concept piece. There needs to be enough of a specific vision that someone can decide to find it interesting -- I wouldn't help code "a rogue-like", but might a turn-based skill-based lovecraft/steam-punk must-also-reference-every-Jules-Verne-story rogue-like.

 

Hello, @sebako

A bit of advice, short and sweet. We have been working on an MMO for several years with a team of 5. It is a lot of work and tons of content to provide. Your best place to get help is through your community. Do a small portion of your game yourself, use your assets, your networking (Atavism is a good choice) and music/UI from the asset store as placeholders. Design Doc....very important for an MMO because it is so huge. Design a small area with your main features and make that first. Build a community through word of mouth, social media, whatever. If your game is original and the social psuedo might be....then you will find people interested. Some of those might be artists or musicians or coders and they may help you for free or for a share of the future profits. Realize...this will take years. So you will have to keep them motivated. As one who led teams of volunteers in game development, that is very very difficult. Volunteers will come and go and make it difficult for you to finish such a big project.

Now....People with professional experience.

Do you know what that means? It means that these people get paid to do UI work or music or code. They are professionals. You might get people who claim they are professionals but unless your project is so fabulous that one cannot resist, then I doubt you will attract true professionals. More likely some guy who says he worked on (insert game that does not exist) and steals your code.

Find people who are passionate about your project.
Start small, small demo area that will show others what is special about your game. MMOs are a dime a dozen and most very similar, especially those by Indies without the resources.
Use something like Atavism or uMMORPG for your game. You can learn from the community and you might find community members in their Discord channels who are interested in your game. At the very least, you have a group of people who are doing the same as you and can give advice.

You can make an MMO, it is not impossible. But you need to commit yourself to many years and many ups and downs...and be prepared to put money into the project.

Good luck to you and you are free to contact me if you have more questions.

 

We use Atavism. The server is very good, horizontal scaling and multiple servers. The editor speeds up development. That does not mean it is easy, there is a learning curve. But the community is awesome.

 

Please use the edit button instead of making a new post for each thought you have.

 

In addition to this, make sure you are on topic. How many of the rambling posts above are on the main topic? Or specific response to another comment? Virtually none. Keep it on topic, edit your posts instead of spamming threads with stream of consciousness unrelated ...stuff? Consider this a polite nudge in the correct direction.

It is a safe bet most people haven't and won't read what you wrote anyway. You have posted virtually all the posts in this thread, and they are all over the place, it's a rambling wall of text. If you want to post something that people will read or care about, be concise and on topic.

 

Wow! I will be brief, at least for me. I started as a Lead writer/lore conceptualist for an indie company in Britain. Eventually, I did some work for a couple of other companies but realized that I wanted to make my game. We have a family studio and we work on our games and do work with clients. Yes, it takes a long time to do an MMO and it is overwhelming at times. We have a lot of support so that helps. I do not recommend that people without experience create an MMO but when someone does express interest, I am happy to give advice or in many cases suggest they make something else first.

Teila is a character in the lore that I wrote long ago. Not my real name.

And yeah...I did not read everything you said up there, just skimmed. Too much, too long.

 

But note this is mostly done off-line. Making up fun names with a theme is hard, likewise thinking up original effects. Numbers can be somewhat tested with only a spreadsheet. Anyone can sketch a little. It takes work to make sure level unlocks don't clump up. One could spend weeks searching for and listing everything about social media history: MySpace into FaceBook, those old games that spammed all of your friends to join (and making up alternate names for them); Russian troll farms (Fancy Bear?); Cow Clicker; fake-follower sites and purges; Twitter in the Arab Summer. There could be pages of this stuff, with possible mechanics for how they'd work.

Some games are lots of programming -- a realistic physics-based simulator doesn't have that much paper-work. But something like a Summoners' War clone is easy enough to code. 90% of the initial work is on paper. If it's got a strong enough theme, and put together enough in some new way, that's what can get volunteers who see it and say "I want to make that".

 

Hi everyone and thanks for the Input. (also the lul 1111einself you will never make it toxic posts )

Of course I have a solid understanding of games, game design and code with a ton of experience working for some of the Companies mentioned here. But from what I get here, I need to do it myself, doesn't matter, just takes a bit longer.

 

I agree with Shiloh. When people see that you're serious about it, have put in some good work on it yourself, and that there's at least a decent chance you'll actually see the game through to completion --- then you might be able to get some people on board. Creating a demonstration project would be a great start.

From what I've seen, most experienced professionals don't like to do things for free. That's because it has taken them a lot of time, hard work, and study to get the knowledge and/or skills that they have now. And most will simply not give it away for free -- I think that's very reasonable.

But I'd also like to say, if you're really passionate about making your dream game -- go for it! Even if you fail, at least you tried. So don't let people get you down either. Sometimes your dreams can come true -- it just takes a lot of work

 

I'd suggest saving up some cash so you at least have something to offer. Offering someone $5,000 cash for $100,000 of their time is still a much better offer than $0.

 

I was just looking for info about Atavism and UMMORPG and some posts of yours came up regarding Atavism. A few years back you said you wouldn't recommend it, based on various problems. Is that not the case anymore, then? I have UMMORPG (got a couple of years ago but just getting around to checking it out) and I'll likely use that for a (very small!) personal project I'm working on, but I'm also open to playing around with Atavism if it's highly recommended. I've known you for a while now and do trust your opinion.

 

Ony, thanks so much. I will explain why my thoughts on Atavism have changed. Several people here have asked me that but I have avoided responding so far. lol

Since this would be going way off-topic for this thread, I will send it to you in a conversation.

 

It may be useful for others if you just started a new topic on it. The insight could be helpful for folks exploring that path.

 

I can do that if you think it would be useful. I hesitate because it feels like too narrow a subject to post a thread on but I will think about it. Thanks, Zombiegorilla.

 

Narrow subjects are often more useful than general ones. (and they are easier to search for people looking for help)