Empirical evidence, it seems, points to the fact that artists are much less interested in working on free projects than other types of content creators (developer, composer, writer, etc). I was having a chat on IRC with a stranger the other night who has been working on a free project for a number of years and shared that while it's never been a problem to find anyone else, artists are always extremely hard to come by. I have the same experience myself, working on a project that has been around for quite some time. Even being able to point to recently published releases, gameplay videos on youtube, etc. seems to have no effect on attracting artists. I've tried to attract artists both from general game development communities like this one, and art-centric communities like deviantArt. No matter how carefully I craft my post, I never get any responses. Posts from other free projects have the same result. But the same posts that seek out programmers, designers, or other roles are generally received positively and generate at least 1-2 responses on average.

Of course I expect that paid work is more attractive than unpaid work, but that should hold true for all disciplines and is not specific to art. So why then, does it appear that artists are willing to work for pay, but aren't interested in collaborating on free/hobby projects? Presumably, they'd have more influence and more artistic freedom working on a free project than for a paid one that prescribes what they want the artist to make. I'm not looking for any hard answers here and I'm not complaining/trolling about this fact. I just want to speculate about why this is with this segment of the game development community, and perhaps speculate some reasons for this observation.

Here are some thoughts I've had floating in my head the past couple of days.

• Is it an effect of supply/demand?
  Art assets take a lot of time to create and many games require a lot of different art. Are there simply not enough artists out there in the communities to adequately meet the needs of the number of teams and projects?
  
• Is it due to a financial situation?
  Are artists living on a meager salary and come to game development seeking to make supplemental money? Do people from other areas of talent tend to be more stable financially?
  
• Does the lack of influence dissuade them?
  No one likes to work for free on someone else's game. Perhaps artists feel like they wouldn't have any influence on the game design. If that's the case, between two similar projects (paid and unpaid) where they would have no influence, the paid one seems like the obvious choice.

Looking forward to hearing thoughts and opinions of others. Especially those of our artistic friends.

At a guess, it might be because hobby/free teams tend to be made up of mostly inexperienced developers. It's not often you see 10+ year programming veterans working for free either.

Any teenager can pick up "Learn C++ in 21 days" and call themselves a programmer a few months later, and start applying for "lead programmer" positions on hobbyist projects (most of which fail due to this lack of experience :lol:).

It's a lot harder to pick up a pencil and then be a good artist a few months later. When I was a hobbyist, I could make simple weapons and buildings in a 3D modelling program, but I never called myself an artist because they sucked. I did call myself the lead programmer of our project though :lol:

When I saw someone painting concept art, I was always in awe at their god-like talent -- people with that talent are likely to have a real job as an artist, just like the 10-year experienced programmer is likely to have a real games programming job.

Artists have the option to work on other types of free projects than games, and most of those project require less technically difficult types of art than games. A lot of the more fun types of art to create, like thrown pottery, are completely useless for video games. Even if you want to limit it to the more traditional fine arts, drawing with pens or markers and painting with acrylics, watercolors, or oil, are more fun than using computer art programs.

I agree with Hodgman.

When looking at the art of an artist, you are more or less instantly able to rate their skill and you try to get your hands only on very skilled artists. The problem with coders and designers is, that you can't really rate their skill. Yes, a cool demo shows off some talent, but will he be experienced enough to manage a large project ? Is he able to create a system architecture which survives a few years ? Will he be able to track down bugs effecently and avoid show stoppers in advance ? Will he be able to handle performance issues ? The quality of a coder is often overshadowed by his ego, whereas an artists ego doesn't help a lot if he can't show off some cool art.

The second problem, this might sound a little bit harsh now, is, that people often overestimate their own skills and underestimate the skill needed in other aspects. So a rookie coder wants often unknowingly to team up with a veteran/elite artist which just doesn't match at all.

Another issue to consider: Artists don't need you to prove they're good.

A concept artist that works hard can have an exceptional, production-grade portfolio without ever joining a team. It's a very self-sufficient field, and outside of operating within the context of a brief (which they can get for free, or even be paid to receive provided they're just above mediocre). It's why so many people like the idea of going into the field. The barrier to entry is exceedingly low, even though most don't recognize that the floor for 'good' has been raised extremely high.

Programmers, designers, any of the none-visual fields really need others to work alongside them to quantify their degree of competence in their particular areas.

I also get the impression that artists have a longer history of being taken advantage of, and taken for granted. Game art's such a highly competitive field, and there are so many skilled people out there in it, that outside of a most brilliant and well known few, they're often treated as expendable resources.

Pay on average is lower than in the other professions within game development (if I understand correctly), so passion projects can really hurt a pocket book, and a 'deferred payment' can leave someone on the streets quite easily.

Artists like to have their work seen (go figure). They put a much heavier focus on this. There is nothing specific to games that aids them in this fashion. They (I keep thinking I should include myself by saying, “we”) can put up concept art or sprite sheets etc. on deviantArt and it is likely to get more attention than a free game (which is likely to be played by a few family members and then forgotten forever).

Even I would put much more effort into something I intend to throw onto deviantArt rather than on something for a game (especially a no-pay game), even if the game I am making is my own.


Artists aren’t really involved in the development process as much, so the only thing they get out of it is attention at the end. This is especially problematic if you are a programmer trying to recruit them without pay. This implies that your skills as a programmer are low, which is a problem because:
#1: They rely on you to get their art into the game. Even if you succeed, you might not have all the cool effects that would have made their art look 10× more stylish.
#2: You probably won’t even succeed anyway. Their art could be used to promote a buggy game, or worse.
#3: You probably won’t even finish anyway. They get nothing. A programmer can fail at a game and come out fine because he or she enjoyed the ride and learned a lot for the next project(s). Artists don’t enjoy the ride and don’t learn anything for the next time except, “Never work free again.”


Free projects scream “risky” to everyone on board, but programmers and designers and level designers etc. are more willing to join because they are part of the development process and have creative control. Musicians join because they can usually put their songs on SoundCloud or elsewhere, even while the game is in development, and sound works the same on both platforms.

If you want artists you have to allow them to also post their art on deviantArt, but even that usually doesn’t work because the art they make for the game is usually not suitable for other mediums. Sprite sheets for the game, concept art for deviantArt, etc.
Most of the time all their art gets wasted if your game doesn’t release, and only seen by 10.2 people even if it does.

There is very little incentive for people to make art for games free of charge.


L. Spiro

I have seen a counter argument on a few other art forums that contradict this. There are artists out there claiming that they have designed games and produced assets but are unable to find a programmer willing to work for free on a hobby project.

As for why some artists are not willing to produce free assets for a hobby project. Well something like a game is going to take a long time to create 6 months or longer to get all the programming and design fine tuning done before you have anything near a finished product.

Even an average artist can knock out a full set of sprites for a game in a couple of weeks which they can sell without having to put up with a designer saying can you tweet this can you adjust that.

Any teenager can pick up "Learn C++ in 21 days" and call themselves a programmer a few months later, and start applying for "lead programmer" positions on hobbyist projects (most of which fail due to this lack of experience ).
It's a lot harder to pick up a pencil and then be a good artist a few months later. When I was a hobbyist, I could make simple weapons and buildings in a 3D modelling program, but I never called myself an artist because they sucked. I did call myself the lead programmer of our project though
When I saw someone painting concept art, I was always in awe at their god-like talent -- people with that talent are likely to have a real job as an artist, just like the 10-year experienced programmer is likely to have a real games programming job.

It goes both ways

Because you are a talented programmer and with probably no talent in art, you see programming as easy and the artist talent as god-like/magical

Maybe some talented artist also see art as simple and programming skills as god -like because they haven't got a clue when it comes to coding

That's why talented is used when referring to artist, pianist and musicians and genius is used when referring to mathematicians, programmers, and physicist

Because you are a talented programmer and with probably no talent in art, you see programming as easy and the artist talent as god-like/magical

You misunderstand me. When I was a beginner, still just learning to code (very badly), make 3D art, texture, etc, I could still make simple games (art and code).
No one wanted my simple art, but plenty of "idea guys" wanted my simple code. It was very easy to join lots of hobbyist game teams as a shitty coder.
I actually started out doing environment art, but no one wanted my beginner art, but they were happy to take my beginner code (which was full of crash bugs and memory corruption ). Shitty code can still seem to work ok if you spend enough sheer time adding hack upon hack upon hack to brute force it into working. Shitty art is just embarrassing.
e.g. http://hg.icculus.org/icculus/lugaru/file/97b303e79826/Source/GameTick.cpp#l7276

I feel like bad coders are happy to call themselves coders, but bad artists don't pretend to be artists yet :)

e.g. http://hg.icculus.org/icculus/lugaru/file/97b303e79826/Source/GameTick.cpp#l7276

How many tab keys died writing that file .