Hello,

For about a month I'm looking for people all over the net to make any free indie game or join a team that is making such. But as far as I've searched for such, there was no indie game that is making something really realistic (like MMOs that never finish or other games that need a team of 100 members) nor in gamedev or in other sites. However I don't say that there is no fun indie games. So my question is, how can I find people or a team to make a simple game that will be released. If someone could help me out with this, I would be really grateful, because I'm out of ideas. Tried making my own game, invited people to do something, but I just found many designers, writers or people who want to be a millionaire or others who are just hanging around and looking to add something to their portfolio. Tried joining a team, but there is no real projects that will finish (hundreds of MMOs of course), as far as I tried to join a team, they needed professionals. It would be cool if anyone could throw me a hint what I need to do.

P.S. I specialise in programming

You're better off on honing your own skills and working on your own project. When the time comes pay for your art when you need it. I don't want to knock online teams, but most of them fail so being self-reliant is a much better choice.

I went through that phase but never found anyone who was remotely mature or realistic. It was a huge wast of time and I've given up looking. However, if you are serious about this I would be interested in working with you through I would only want to use my open source video game SDK. I would feel as though I was starting over if I didn't use it...

3rd, basically the same.

I spent many months in trying to team people to produce something at least 1996 in quality. Wasted effort. While online teams generally won't do, "real-world" teams (I "recruited" at local universities, about 80 km range) turned out very hard to manage. The amount of social interactions diverting effort from the goal were incredible, even with a single meeting/week. Looks like asking people around here to work a couple of months with focus is just too much. There's a lot of geographical relevance here.

I suppose it would be possible to be more successful by having a proof of superiority - ready to go product - before starting... which is what I'm doing now. I set back the clock to 1990 for the time being.
Nonetheless, I plan to never look again in this same area. As a side note, I'm in contact with a company specialized in GIS products and services. According to them the whole country is "basically frozen wasteland around Chernobyl"... so I suggest to try asking people in the same area as yours.

Even among real-life friends, team cohesion is difficult to achieve. Project management cannot rely on hobby and self-motivation alone, which is why a lot of online projects fall apart. There's a degree of professionalism and disciplinary actions required to keep team members doing what they are supposed to do.

I would suggest working on your own, then publish a demo with your programmer's art. If there are artists interested in making your game look better, you'll hear from them. If not, you can always pay somebody to do it for you. I actually prefer purchasing for services than relying on friends. When you purchase for art, you can specifically define how you want it to look like because you pay for it. Friends will have their own ways of doing things, and sometimes they want certain unfavorable demands, such as 10% of profit even though all he did was the splash screen. Another reason why teams fall apart: arguments.

Just because you found some people to make games with does not mean all of you will hold hands throughout the project. You will have different opinions about many different things. How the game look like, how it plays, what type of music it should play on the title screen. It can be frustrating to mold these opinions/arguments together into one solid product. Then there's the dreaded miscommunication. People don't always see things the way you do. I am sorry to ruin it for you but making games isn't as fun as you might think it is.

Good luck in your endeavor.

Hello same-fate people ,

Thank you for writting your own experiance and pointing this out. I didn't really expected that no one have found a team, now I can really relax and code what I want , but one programmer can't really code a game (only some super mario copies), I'm trying to make a small and simple game that I would really like to play and hoping that others may like it too, but just with one programmer and no graphics/audio it's impossible. The games are fun then they have many features like cinematics, some short story, some optional goals like achievements, competitive AI, game rewards like money and shop where to spend them and manly interesting, fast action and addicting gameplay, but I can't really code that much, so the solution would be to code a simple 2D tetris or another boring game? And I don't really want to pay for the art assets and I don't have money for it, while my game is freeware. However I'm tired of making everything alone... Can anyone suggest me what can I do and help me out with this? because I'm lost. Thanks in advance.

but one programmer can't really code a game (only some super mario copies)

This is incorrect. An novice programmer may be unable to create a game due to lack of motivation, skills, or whatever. But an experienced programmer can create games, he usually knows the pitfalls to avoid, have motivation, and the skills to accomplish his goals. For example my game, Beyond Beyaan, a 4X MoO clone, was programmed solely by me up to a few weeks ago when a friend decided to join me. And even then, I still do most of the work, while he helps out in few areas. I've been working on this game for almost two years, and finally things are falling into place, and soon we'll be focusing on polishing the game up.

You are limited by your skills, your motivation, your free time, and your budget. If you struggle to create a simple pac-man game, then you need to focus on improving your skills. If you struggle to finish the said pac-man game, you need to focus on your motivation (find methods that help you accomplish your goals). If you don't have free time to work on your game, then look at your schedule and see if you can change things around. If you need outside help, you're limited by your budget (the more money you have, the more help you can hire).

If you still think that one programmer can't make decent games, take a look here: http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=33 This was created by one programmer.

[quote name='Mafioso' timestamp='1313604361' post='4850414']
but one programmer can't really code a game (only some super mario copies)

This is incorrect. An novice programmer may be unable to create a game due to lack of motivation, skills, or whatever. But an experienced programmer can create games, he usually knows the pitfalls to avoid, have motivation, and the skills to accomplish his goals. For example my game, Beyond Beyaan, a 4X MoO clone, was programmed solely by me up to a few weeks ago when a friend decided to join me. And even then, I still do most of the work, while he helps out in few areas. I've been working on this game for almost two years, and finally things are falling into place, and soon we'll be focusing on polishing the game up.

You are limited by your skills, your motivation, your free time, and your budget. If you struggle to create a simple pac-man game, then you need to focus on improving your skills. If you struggle to finish the said pac-man game, you need to focus on your motivation (find methods that help you accomplish your goals). If you don't have free time to work on your game, then look at your schedule and see if you can change things around. If you need outside help, you're limited by your budget (the more money you have, the more help you can hire).

If you still think that one programmer can't make decent games, take a look here: http://www.infinity-...id=12&Itemid=33 This was created by one programmer.
[/quote]

OK, you've coded a game by yourself, worked for 2 years, of course that is not a very small portion of time you've spend on it, as I haven't played it I just can guess how it looks like and how it is coded, but have you made that game really interesting for you (if you've tried to make so), added all features that you want, the code doesn't have any gliches? And now think about what can you and your friend with same skills make over the same 2 years. I think you could much more easily make even 2x better game, publish it and maybe get some money from it. I don't want to say that 100 programmers could done a 100x better game because it's not true.

From your mentioned skills, motivation, free time and budget. I don't have skills or budget, I'm only motivated and have free time as you can see . I can create a pac-man game but that takes motivation and free time, after creating the game, the better and interesting the game the more motivation I'll get to progress forward. If I'll only code a game for an infinity (2 years is an infinity for me) I'll finaly run out of motivation. And when I'm out of motivation I'll try make a different game to get some and I'll fail again.

So let's look at what just happened here.

SteveDeFacto just made a suggestion to Mafioso that they work together.

Am I the only person who thinks this is insane? A game is a multi-month project, at best. Why do people embark on these serious projects with strangers and expect that it's going to turn out successfully?

Stop hoping you'll find a group online that will successfully make a game. SteveDeFacto implied that he understood this is folly, and yet here he is starting a new group with someone who he has absolutely no connection to.

SteveDeFacto, you realize that Mafioso will probably end up quitting and the project will go nowhere, right?
Mafioso, you realize that SteveDeFacto will probably end up quitting and the project will go nowhere, right?

It's nothing against you guys, it's just the way things are. Don't invest in relationships with people who you don't know. Work on making yourself a better programmer and having tech to show, so that you can attract people who want to work with you! Then you can have a higher standard regarding who you start a serious project with. You can interview them, make sure they're the type of person you want to work with, demand proof that they're serious about the project, demand proof of their skill, etc.

[quote name='Zeraan' timestamp='1313608795' post='4850455']
[quote name='Mafioso' timestamp='1313604361' post='4850414']
but one programmer can't really code a game (only some super mario copies)

This is incorrect. An novice programmer may be unable to create a game due to lack of motivation, skills, or whatever. But an experienced programmer can create games, he usually knows the pitfalls to avoid, have motivation, and the skills to accomplish his goals. For example my game, Beyond Beyaan, a 4X MoO clone, was programmed solely by me up to a few weeks ago when a friend decided to join me. And even then, I still do most of the work, while he helps out in few areas. I've been working on this game for almost two years, and finally things are falling into place, and soon we'll be focusing on polishing the game up.

You are limited by your skills, your motivation, your free time, and your budget. If you struggle to create a simple pac-man game, then you need to focus on improving your skills. If you struggle to finish the said pac-man game, you need to focus on your motivation (find methods that help you accomplish your goals). If you don't have free time to work on your game, then look at your schedule and see if you can change things around. If you need outside help, you're limited by your budget (the more money you have, the more help you can hire).

If you still think that one programmer can't make decent games, take a look here: http://www.infinity-...id=12&Itemid=33 This was created by one programmer.
[/quote]

OK, you've coded a game by yourself, worked for 2 years, of course that is not a very small portion of time you've spend on it, as I haven't played it I just can guess how it looks like and how it is coded, but have you made that game really interesting for you (if you've tried to make so), added all features that you want, the code doesn't have any gliches? And now think about what can you and your friend with same skills make over the same 2 years. I think you could much more easily make even 2x better game, publish it and maybe get some money from it. I don't want to say that 100 programmers could done a 100x better game because it's not true.

From your mentioned skills, motivation, free time and budget. I don't have skills or budget, I'm only motivated and have free time as you can see . I can create a pac-man game but that takes motivation and free time, after creating the game, the better and interesting the game the more motivation I'll get to progress forward. If I'll only code a game for an infinity (2 years is an infinity for me) I'll finaly run out of motivation. And when I'm out of motivation I'll try make a different game to get some and I'll fail again.
[/quote]

The game I'm working on don't have all features implemented yet, but there's already some people who are interested in it. Some has even pre-ordered it. So yeah, the game is interesting to me, and others. When I first started work on this game, I had no experience in developing a 4X game. If I were to start it all over again, I'd progress a lot quicker due to my new experience. So again, this depends a lot on how much experience you have.

Let's back up a bit. When I worked on my first "non-DOS" game, an asteroids clone, it took me 9 months to write, and was very buggy. Then I came back to it a few years later, and was horrified at the ugly code (everything was in one big .cpp file), and rewrote the game in C#. This rewrite took me a month, and the game had more features, such as upgrades, different types of asteroids, etc. I didn't copy any code from the old version because it was so buggy and broken. 9 months for a buggy game, then 1 month for a much better version, what gives? Again, the experience that I got from the first version helped me a lot in the second version.

Reference: http://www.tape-worm.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=77 Note the first post declaring that I will start work on this game was on Oct 16, 2009, and the last "development" post was on Nov 18, 2009. The remaining features wasn't added because I started work on Beyond Beyaan.