[quote name='Mratthew']
"be good at you're job"

Know the difference between your and you're. When you make mistakes involving contractions, you're painting yourself in a really negative light; It's not just a simple spelling error.
[/quote]
Ah, come on, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, I could nit pick stuff too:

[...] negative light; It's not just a [...]

Or, even better: Make a 10 second [...]

Know when to capitalize something and when not to.

My point: pointing errors out is fine, but give people the benefit of the doubt. For some reason I have an easier time accidentally adding/missing an apostrophe when I'm typing than when I'm writing, or mixing up to/too and similar words. I know the difference, and I notice it when reading if someone's missed them, but I think I type faster than I think and I mix things up.


Anyway, back to the original topic. I haven't read everything in this thread, and I wouldn't be surprised if others have said this, but a few of things I look for are:

• Commitment. I want people who are committed! A good sign of this is seeing work already done. This can be in the form of a nice logo/blog/website (simple, but professional looking), or it can be in the form of a demo/prototype.
  
• Down to earth. If someone says it's going to be the next WoW or Halo, I'm out. 'Cause it's not. People need to be realistic.
  
• Knowledgable. I'm not the smartest guy on the plannet, and I know lots of programmers who are way better than me, but I'm not too shabby, and I have absolutely no desire to drag un-knowledgable people through a project. This also extends to being able to learn new things well, because teams are always in a state of learning.
  

I'd just like people to show up. I've been involved in so many projects that just didnt happen cause everyone said they'd do it, but no one came to work.

[...] a core gameplay idea, which is well defined, but also flexible, along with completed art assets; they don't have to be "production quality", but they should be good enough to make people think: "... Ok, I believe that he could polish this into something market worthy.".
You could also try making screenshots: You don't have the game, but you can paint a screenshot of what you have in mind for the final product. Or, even better: Make a 10 second animation that clearly shows the basics of gameplay.[/quote]

Best part of a post I've read so far, a personal opinion of a physically achievable goal to set as priority for most any designer when posting.
Wait! You aren't job? I'll try to more thoroughly read before I post next time. I appreciate it. Be good at you are job, heh. Common the latest sit down between John and Ben Burtt would be pretty rad and it would have me on board for an indie game faster then most any game design idea, but maybe I'm shallow that way. Think of Wall-e! God that movie sounded good.

@Cornstalks That's the kind of folk I like to work with too.

I'm hoping to hear personal accounts of classified posts that stood out, indie devs that got your attention not just because of the ideas they presented but because their post painted a whole game worth making (in your opinion). I want to know the elements in those posts that made the difference. Maturity, professionalism, explore the box sort of aspects are pretty drilled around this forum (for good reason) but occasionally there must be designers that make you excited about games and I'd love to hear about it. The suggestions made by Goran are very applicable to my situation but there must be more out there. Maybe game or genre specific examples of "raising the classified posting bar" or plain old creativity in a classified post worthy of mention.

What I require, if they want me to join them:
Solid examples of their non-idea skills. It needs to be good, but doesn't have to be professional.
Preferably multiple different categories of skills already present in the project (Art + Music, or Music + Map makers, etc...)
A solid concept, but it doesn't have to be completed down to the super fine details.
Overall goals and milestones need to be set, but the sub-goals and steps towards the milestones don't need to be figured out yet.
The project must have already been going for at least half a year (preferably a whole year or more), and have something tangible to show (lots of music if a composer, lots of art if an artist, lots of story if a writer) apart from the idea. (This is to show that they aren't recruiting and expecting others to do all the work, but that they themselves have been doing loads of work even before recruiting)
[/quote]

This is a reasonable list as well. I like the Milestones layout, it might not work in a market game but I'd be willing to show it off for a freeware project post.

A question out to all the code-heads out there. I'd like to get a sense for what you as a programmer like to see out of designers other then cold hard cash to spend a few dozen/hundred hours on writing code. Obviously a good idea is a pretty useful thing but lets get beyond that. When you're reading the classifieds you're looking for something out of a team or individual to instill a sense of commitment and components to indicate a unified design idea but what are those components. In a priority list what matters to you? Art, documentation, pre-recorded audio, etc?

I can't speak for other programmers, particularly beginners (to whom this question might be more relevant).

Being a 'designer' is a very difficult sell to try and start a project yourself. Unless you have prior experience / track record, realistically you are probably going to need money to pay, or have other skills (do you have a good looking girlfriend, who is *really* committed to the project?).

If we take money out of the equation, other skills would be (as AlterOfScience says) things like producing artwork / programming, and *possibly* running a business (prior experience). I would have thought producing artwork is most likely to be the successful avenue, as that is what most programmers usually can't do themselves / aren't interested in doing. To be realistic, if you have any chance of being part of a non-paid project doing purely 'designing' (probably writing scripts or making levels), it's most likely to be joining an existing project rather than starting one yourself (and consequently working on someone else's ideas, that's what a designer does 99% of the time).

I would suggest to anyone who wants to get started in designing to either start making games themselves, with a game toolkit or mod tool of somekind that doesn't require programming, or to learn to produce artwork of some kind, either 3d or 2d, so they have some marketable 'skillz' to bring to the game. For indie games, artwork doesn't necessarily have to be AAA quality, you just have to be prepared to spend the time learning how to do it, and spending the hours and hours and hours on it.

In short, designer is a hard sell. Designer / artist (primarily) and to a lesser extent designer / programmer is a better bet.

Obviously a good idea is a pretty useful thing[/quote]
Not really. The game world isn't short of ideas. It's short of people who have the skills / time / commitment to do stuff. But I'm sure this has been discussed ad infinitum.

Ah, come on, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, I could nit pick stuff too:
[quote name='Goran Milovanovic' timestamp='1348464004' post='4983106']
[...] negative light; It's not just a [...]

Or, even better: Make a 10 second [...]

Know when to capitalize something and when not to.
[/quote]

There's a big difference between well defined language rules, and matters of style.

My point: pointing errors out is fine, but give people the benefit of the doubt. For some reason I have an easier time accidentally adding/missing an apostrophe when I'm typing than when I'm writing, or mixing up to/too and similar words. I know the difference, and I notice it when reading if someone's missed them, but I think I type faster than I think and I mix things up.[/quote]

Yes, I should have said: "Show that you know the difference", as opposed to what I actually said, which implied that he didn't.

I don't really care much about trivial spelling errors, but when you misuse a contraction (more than once), and you don't catch it, I assume that you didn't really take the time to refine/review your post.

This indicates a general level of carelessness, which would probably express itself in other detail-oriented activities (like game development, for example).

Maybe this is taking it too far, but that would be my thought process, and I think it's one that many programmers share.

I'd like to get a sense for what you as a programmer like to see out of designers other then cold hard cash to spend a few dozen/hundred hours on writing code.

The more important questions are:

1) Are there programmers who would spend a few hundred hours writing unpaid code for someone else's game (and not for himself)?
2) Would you be willing to spend a few hundred hours coding someone else's game for free?

Question 1 is to make sure that this is actually feasible: that it is not a waste of time trying to get someone to code your game for free. And the responses to Question 2 will allow you to zero in on what exactly is needed to get someone to code your game for free.

IMHO I don't think this will work. Are there really programmers who would code for hundreds of hours for free on other people's game project? (specific to games, open source software is very different)

Communication. Hands down.

I don't think I'd personally sign up on a project that wasn't already being run by the game's programming lead, just because I'd like to contribute in my available time, not take on a programming job in addition to my current programming job. Having the core coding momentum handled by someone else just appeals to me more. But that's just my stance.

Anyway. Clear communication gives me more confidence in a project than anything else. (Well, ok, a visible demo of the game in its current state would really sell me, but that's usually not available to most recruiting posts.) Whoever is taking on project leadership and logistical tasks, whether they're programming the game or not, better be very organized and well-spoken. A group project of any size needs to be able to clearly express requirements, changes, ideas, plans, schedules, mistakes, drop-outs...everything. If you have a good facilitator at the "head" of the project, it immediately improves my confidence that the team will end up with something to show for their efforts.

As a sidebar: I'm of the mind that a game designer with no other contributable skill categories (code, assets) has no place on an indie project. We're talking hobbyist groups here, 99% of the time. Handfuls of people. 5 is already starting to strain the limits of a cohesive internet group (where task completion and milestone maintenance is concerned). A designer is great for AAA studios and other scenarios where there's plenty of room on staff for specialization to that degree. In the context of this forum and scene, you're going to need to show some other means of contribution if you're trying to attract team members. Game Designer needs to be a second hat on someone (or on most of the team, honestly). Good game design is important to a fun game, but that can emerge through iterative development and testing within the team.

You say you're a character animator, so that's what I would want to see out of you if you're trying to recruit me. Not just concept art, or some show-off piece that might belong in Gears of War, but real, concrete assets that are game-ready, consistent with the theme of what you want to create, and ready to go. And plenty of them. Plus, I'd like to see you branching out into other areas as well, especially environment art, with several concrete examples of that presented in your recruitment post. A small project (hobbyist or indie) simply has little room for a one-trick pony. Everyone on an indie team has to wear multiple hats. There is just too much work to be done. If there are three guys, and two of them are programmers and the third says he only does character animation... well, in my experience, the character modeling and animation is much easier to find talent for than things like environment art, and maybe we could ditch that guy and find someone whose skills are more well-rounded. Everyone wants to be a character artist it seems (just get on DeviantArt and see for yourself) but relatively few want to do environment art. I've been on a couple of projects in my younger days, where environment art was one of the main sticking points. We always had plenty of wannabe character artists.