i would like to work on games that have ideas that interest me. games with difficult, fast-paced, and deep combat systems.

I have a lot of ideas that translate well into the game medium, but i have no programming/coding experience.

What I do have, however, is tons of art experience. i'm skilled when it comes to art and animation, but everything else is moot.

I really want to make games, but how do i approach it without just being the useless ideas guy?

For some reason there are so many programmers on the lookout for talented artists so you would definitely not be useless even if you're the one with the ideas.

I think probably it makes more sense to let the artist carry the ideas forward instead of a programmer (we are way too nerdy :p)

Oh, thank goodness, that's good to know.

I've been wondering about finding people to collaborate with on a game.

I'd like to work with a group of people on a game from start to finish,

Is there a forum for this? i didn't want to just randomly post somewhere.

I

Oh, thank goodness, that's good to know.

I've been wondering about finding people to collaborate with on a game.

I'd like to work with a group of people on a game from start to finish,

Is there a forum for this? i didn't want to just randomly post somewhere.

I

There's LOTS of people looking for a good artist. One that can do both 2D and 3D is especially useful. Look here for a group, or make your own post: http://www.gamedev.net/classifieds

Reddit might also be useful: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedevclassifieds

There's LOTS of people looking for a good artist.

Yes, so much :D

As Ovicior said, you can use the classified section of GameDev, else you can try other websites (indieDb, ludust, etc...) There is probably a lot more but these are the main one I'm using after Gamedev.net and twitter

If you want to join a project you could always try directly contacting indie teams.

In any case if you have a good portofolio and some (a lot) spare time I'm sure you will find a team to work with :)

Look for a programmer... explain your vision to him, see if he is interested in it. Ideally, he has his own ideas, that go into the same direction as yours, and you can combine your ideas into a bigger, more refined vision.

But then there are also many programmers that are actually looking for projects, that do not have an idea to implement. Maybe somebody would like to work on a game project, brings a decent amount of expierience to the table, and would be happy to work with you to implement your idea?

Just make sure you sell yourself well... you are NOT just the idea guy if you have as much art expierience as you told us in the OP, and I am pretty sure no programmer would call you that. Make sure you have things in place that both show your expierience and skill, AND help you explain you ideas better.... concept sketches, drafts of game art, maybe, if you have the time and interest, start roughing out level design and stuff like that in a game Engine like Unity.

And that is the last thing to keep in mind: even as an artist with no programming expierience, you could do much more than just art if you wanted to. Modern game engine editors will let you get pretty far with zero programming expierience.

You can build the levels for your game in the editor without writing a single line of code. You can show off these levels in the editor view, or with some internet search skillz and copy-pasta, you can create a simple flight-through or even user-controllable script.

Of course you will face some learning curve to get an understanding of the editor and the engine, and you will have to invest some time into building the levels....

But at some point somebody needs to do that anyway, and depending on how many people you want to get involved, or how many people you can get interested, somebody might need to take on the hat of the game- / leveldesigner.

Given your game needs a lot of code, versus not so much art, or that you are quite fast at churning out the needed art, you might be the best candidate to do the level- and gamedesign, ESPECIALLY if you are the one who came up with the initial idea.

i would like to work on games that have ideas that interest me. games with difficult, fast-paced, and deep combat systems.

I have a lot of ideas that translate well into the game medium, but i have no programming/coding experience.

What I do have, however, is tons of art experience. i'm skilled when it comes to art and animation, but everything else is moot.

I really want to make games, but how do i approach it without just being the useless ideas guy?

I suggest two things. First you can check out this book I recently reviewed for the publisher:

Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C#

by Jeremy Gibson

Link: http://amzn.com/0321933168

It was a very good book, introducing game design and using Unity to prototype your ideas. I bet it is easier than you think.

The second is this: you don't need any programming skill to design games. Paper prototypes. Draw some game boards, get some dice, and try ideas out with friends. It is actually way easier to do this stuff without trying to program it.

Here's a great video showing what I'm talking about.

http://video.mit.edu/watch/paper-prototyping-your-game-episode-1-part-1-5514/

One of the benefits of being a designer and an artist - and not a programmer! is that you don't get to be bogged down by the implementation details.

That is also one of the drawbacks, of course.. ;)