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

That could be because everyone "is" an artist to some degree, in a society where 90% of the population is incapable of even using a crayon to make shapes on a paper bad art would be far more valuable and pretty much everyone who knew how to use crayons would call themselves artists.

I'm still a student at university. My idea of this was to have some sort of collaboration with a fellow student in art, and we'd design the game together. I feel it's wrong to just have the programmer design everything and then tell the artist what he wants. I think the artist should also have a degree of creative control over what the game is about, the mechanics, etc. (of course, within the skill of the programmer, he shouldn't expect AAA production)

When you say anyone can learn how to code, well yeah anyone can also learn how to draw. I'm actually doing that right now because no one likes to work with me so I have to make do with my own skills for my free projects. And progress hasn't really been bad, I don't think it's harder to learn to draw than it is to program. While programming a simple mistake can break your entire game with art you can make lots of mistakes and people wouldn't probably even notice if your art is moving too fast on the screen for example.

I'm not a professional programmer, and I'm still a student which is why I can afford to do these kind of free projects, but artists who are students like me, who have the same amount of experience with art that Ive had with programming, don't want to collaborate.

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that nobody likes to collaborate. When there's no money involved it's super easy for someone to just say "meh I don't feel like working on this anymore" and quit. I worked on 3 free projects while in uni and all three failed because someone just decided to quit (and then the rest of people quit as well when there were more).

On the other hand, we had a game jam and there was going to be a prize and just because of that prize, the same guys that had quit before teamed up with me again and were super hard working and got more done in 3 days than we had done for the free project in 3 months.

I think with free projects, the only thing that really drives you is the passion to create the game, and most people just don't share that passion.

Sorry if I sound like I'm rambling just wanted to share my experience.

EDIT: @L.Spiro: What you described could be avoided if the programmer uses placeholder art and ask the artist to make the art when the game is in a working state with placeholder art. That way, the artist will know that when he makes his art, it will be in a working game and be replaced by the placeholder art. He can even see how the game plays and that could benefit the vision he puts through his art and make it more fit for the part.

@Hodgman: That code is... beautiful!

@Buster2000: Can you tell me which forum that was? I would love to work with someone working in pairs gives me a lot more motivation than working alone. When I work alone I end up putting it off over and over again but when I worked with other people I promised I do this thing by this time, I would do it.

EDIT2: One more thing. This is just something I perceive and may be wrong so please do correct me if Im wrong but I think a part of the reason could be attributed to how gaming is viewed as a medium. Many people consider game immature and unimportant, so they're less likelier to work on a game than say, an animation. While the same might be true for programmers, I think a larger portion of programmers think of games as worthy of their time than that of the artist's.

My 2 cents as a junior in the industry (inhouse sound designer) :

- To be even noticed as an artist they need to be already really good, and it's very easy to see a bad artist. I suck at art myself but I can pretty much see when people are not that good. This means that hobbist go for people who are really good but they are not really good themselves a lot of the times. The artist will see that.

It is especially true with programmers on hobbist projects. No way to really judge their skills, I have been in projects where I could have coded at least as good as the "lead programmer" and I don't call myself a programmer.

- Artists don't really need to make a game to have their work in a portfolio. (most people who work for free do it for portfolio, I do hobbist project still to improve my portfolio but I've become much more picky). Sad truth is most people don't really care of your next "super game of Doom" and they don't do it for free because they loved the idea so much despite what they might tell you. They do it for the portfolio.

Artists don't need that as much or at all.

You have a truck full of composers because they need to show game music, not just music and same for sound designers although it's not as bad in term of supply/demand; sound designers need to show game sound design. Artist don't really need it that much.

- Very hard to work as an artist under a project lead who has no clue about art. Like you have no creative director or anything and your art is being judged by some dude who has no clue. Very frustrating. In more serious (paid) projects even if the project lead is not an artist you know he is more serious about it and probably has more skills, so it's not the same + he pays you for it anyways.

You can combine this point with the one before. If you're not paid and you don't need a portfolio why bother having someone not competent telling you how your art should look like. It can train you to deal with client but that's it.

- Most of the time, and it's true for audio too, you will fall with teams that want to do the next AAA. Nothing they do is AAA worthy yet as the artist or audio guy you'll have to be much closer to AAA because it's way easier to see that your work is not AAA level. It is extremely annoying and a good reason to avoid teams that look inexperienced (every small team with no veteran trying to make an AAA as 99% chance of failure anyways).

Not to hate on programmers, I work now with great programmers and it's amazing but in hobbist projects they are the biggest risk for sure. I had one project where people expected me to give battlefield/call of duty sound design on 0 budget. Meanwhile their AI was jumping into walls and running back in forth in front of you.

So all in all with all of the risk you take of wasting your time with bad teams, if you can avoid it you do it. And artist are the people who can.

Its a pain in the ass to join an on going project as an artist. Generally the art style is already decided and theres already a mess of random art, like assets and concepts, that the "recruiters" want you to follow.

This means the artist will need to follow art that he/she probably dont like or even think as poor choice of style for the game, not to mention the difference in skill w/ the current art and the artist. (Or even the mess is so huge due not having any good art lead due recruiters despair, that the art doesnt even follow a style guideline)

This means theres will be no pleasure in doing it. Who works for free for no pleasure?

The ideal scene is artists with the same skill level agreeing with a style all of them are comfortable with.

Even if theres no art defined yet, if you join the project and do some assets, your name gets attached to the project. And them if you decide to leave (which is common in hobbyist projects), theres the possibility of the project getting a shitty artist to carry on, doing poor job or even modifying your work, and your name is stil attached to the project as artist.

The other issue is cold, hard economic reality: programmers tend to make a *lot* of money in their day jobs. It's not uncommon to pull in 6 figures right out of college in the US.

That makes it pretty easy to work for free in one's downtime.

I think Hodgman is on the right track -- For the most part, a somewhat talented/domineering programmer/composer/designer can much more easily convince a group of lesser-skilled and/or more-demure programmers/composers/designers that they are capable of leading them, and because they know for themselves that they are really not all that advanced themselves, they need them.

A 6th-month programmer can probably produce code (perhaps slowly) that pleases those of a similar level. Compare that to the case of a 6th-month concept artist or 3D model, whose work -- in my experience -- is undeniably unsuitable for production at that stage, and you can start to see why. There are plenty of 6th-month artists out there, but not even 6th-month programmers/designers/composers want to work with them -- and to be fair, the only people who want to work with 6th month programmers/designers/composers are other 6th-month programmers/designers/composers. The thing is that a 6th month artist doesn't fool themselves into thinking they need a team and a project to improve (and they don't), while the 6th-month programmers/designers/composers are usually convinced that they do (they don't either).

So the situation that arises is that there's an oversupply of 6th-month, artist-less development teams who, despite their own (lack of) qualifications, are entirely non-plussed about working with any of the few 6th-month artists who might be interested in contributing to their project because the artwork isn't up-to-snuff. And so most artists go off to improve their skills on their own, and by the time they emerge from their cave their skills are often sufficient to work on more-ambitious projects with more-qualified teams. There is a real lack of young artists *willing and able* to work with young teams, but its at least an equal part down to young teams who *aren't willing* to work with young artists.

Part of why this is also probably has to do with young teams wanting a great artist to carry more weight of appealing to users than it ought to (i.e. they want a great artist to help convince people that their boring design and shoddy programming is worth the 4.99 asking price.)

^ Exactly. And it was basically my point in my post above too.

Teams don't go with bad artists even if they are bad themselves. Artists know that and train, after a while they are good and then the bad teams want them but the artists don't want them anymore because now they can do better.

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that nobody likes to collaborate.

I think this is true. I wish there were something we as a community could do to change this, but it's pretty much human nature. If it could be changed though, the whole face of indie entertainment would change.

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that nobody likes to collaborate

I think a more accurate statement would be that many people don't know how to collaborate.

You often see recruitment postings with pitches along the lines of "help build my dream game". It's very rare to see something that goes like "let's collaborate to design something that we all want to build".

Working for free on someone else's game is never a terribly solid proposition. Programmers may be a little more willing to go along with this, because they know that by implementing the mechanics, they have a lot of power to influence the game's direction. Artists are mostly expected to churn out art to match the vision of the "lead".

If you want artists to work on your games, how about bringing them in as equal partners from day 1?