Looking for like-minded people for a game project

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#1

Hi Guys,

I am looking for likeminded and mature people, who would be interested in working on a game project together.
I have battled with the thought of actually going ‘out there’ and looking for people for a while now, probably out of fear of being rejected. When I was invited to this forum, I thought it might be a good chance to send some feelers out and to see what happens.

Let me give you an idea of who I am first; I am in my 30s and I am battling with severe anxiety and panic disorder for a long time now. Somehow I was not born with high tolerance for stress. I managed to slowly climb corporate ladder, though that was at a great cost to my mental wellbeing. This in turn slowly led me to a moment where I could take no more, and I quit my well-paid programmer job, so I could spend more time at home. Eventually I have started my own business and I am doing all right, though the people I am working with now – even though remotely – are same toxic people I worked with before. People who somehow got to where they are solely on backs of the others, people who think that ‘looking busy’ means you are doing a good job.

Well I had enough, and I am looking at properly severing myself from the industry I work at now and from such people. I always wanted to work in gaming industry, and now I am steering my life and doing everything else I can to make it happen. I figured if I do not do it now, then when?

I have solid experience in team leadership and building, project management, software development and IT infrastructure. I have managed few large projects in my life too, for massive brands. I code, though lately I realised that I am jack of all trades but master of none. Each project that I worked on in the last 10 years meant learning new language, process, db, framework or whatever else client needed.

I have few solid ideas for games, I’ve done some writing and research too. I am an avid gamer of course, with true love and passion for Sci-Fi. One of my ideas for a game is to plunge a character similar to me in the fact that they too suffer from anxiety and panic, into Sci-Fi horror setting and use it as a s metaphor for the internal and external battle person with disorder has to go through each day. A blend of internal and external fear, where you never really know what is real and what is not. Just an idea, and I am sure many of you would have something to add to that simple premise.

Who am I looking for? Anybody really, who is first of all emotionally mature. I want the work to be fun experience for all, that means surrounding myself with people who know how to play nice with each other, and how to listen. After that everything else is a bonus. Maybe just like me you are an owner of small business, well we could put our resources together for something better. Maybe you are just looking for something else to do, or like me you want to cut yourself from work that is making you really unhappy.

I have nothing planned after this, I just wanted to post this and see what’s the response. If there are people who are interested then great, we could talk, chat, email or skype and see what happens next.

Pawel

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#2

Hey @Pawel_Kosinski, i think there is a lot of people in the “same place” as you in terms of wanting to join a project but don’t know the right folks.
Can you explain your thoughts about how would that work? Setting sprints, dividing tasks and if the project comes to life what your plans to publish or distribution?

And more importantly, what kind of people are you searching for (and their skill level)? 3d artists (amateurs, intermediates), programmers, designers. Would be nice if you share a little bit, at least a concept, of your idea too.

Thanks mate :slight_smile:

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#3

Hey @Lucas_Lima I will be honest with you, that I haven’t planned that far into the future.

If it comes to publishing and distribution I think this would have to be a decision that people as a team / or we as a team come up together. Steam greenlight comes to mind but I am sure we could seek out our own contacts.

How the process itself would work, in principle, is simple. I worked with contractors all my working life, and managed projects remotely - successfully let me add.

The best place to start would be to gather all folks that are interested in working on a game project together, set a date for vid conference, get some beers in, and talk. Come up with an inventory of skills, basically what do we have between us to work with. Decide and agree on details like who is going to be art lead, project lead, tech lead and so on. That would also be an opportunity to see what we do not have.

Who would be the lead in each category would depend on how much on-board they are with the premise of the game (any game we would like to do, not only my example above) and how much time can they spare. Then it is up to each lead to organise the work effort for their group, and to project lead to organise other leads and keep track of overall progress. We would build an infrastructure to facilitate easy communication and file sharing between everyone in the project too.

For people, I have only one main requirement: maturity. Rest is a bonus. Any project will need a whole lot of different specialists, and I for one, have absolutely no problem showing what I know or even teaching people that will work with me new skills. I think if you have basic skills in any field related to game development it is enough, you can learn everything else along the way, as all the rest will do.

The game concept itself is a tricky one. I think we would have to talk about this as a group. I have no illusions on the matter however, and I am fully aware that we would have to start with something simple and relatively easy for first project. I do have few ideas for games that I was gathering notes and research for past 5 - 6 years, that we could use and discuss later on.

Hope I answered some of your questions and thanks for interest.

I am assuming that you would be interested (based on my answers of course) , what are your ideas on the matter?

2 Likes
#4

Cool

Yes, i’m interest in joining a project for a while, and i agree with you about the maturity requirement, that’s what could break everything apart, in first time projects the important thing is to have reliable people, quality and polish is something secondary, important is to finish the goal.

But there is another important point that is availability, in my case for example, I study at night and work at day (and practice at free time) … So i don’t have that much time compared to the time that some people might have.

But depending on the project, and team, would be cool.

But i might join the community challenge.

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#5

@Pawel_Kosinski, I’m interested in joining a project. In fact, I’ve expressed my interest in the community project thread too. I’d consider myself a solid beginner with Unity and C# development. I’ve been toying with Unity for the past two years, but don’t have much to show for it. I feel that I’ve got a good grasp of the basics and my google fu is pretty good so I can find a solution if I don’t know it off hand. Often I just need to view the documentation and I find my answers now. Anyway, you can list me as interested and hopefully we’ll be collaborating on something soon!

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#6

Hey Wesley an Lucas

How would you all like to keep in touch? What are your personal preferences? We could start a mailing group. our own mini form or even an IRC channel.

Also, if you know of people who might be interested in working together do give them a link to these forums and this post.

Finally, thank you all for replying! It is nice to know that there are people out there like me, who just want to give something new a go.

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#7

Hi my name is Quentin . I’d be interested in collaborating on a game project. I’ve always wanted to program and develop games since I got my first C64 many years ago. I’m working my way through the course and really enjoying it. Like Wesely I’d say I’m a solid beginner with Unity and C#.

#8

Sounds like a great idea. I don’t have that much time unfortunately, else I’d love to join in.

#9

Hey guys!

I honestly had no idea that there will be so much interest. Thanks to you all for replying and making my day bit brighter!

What are your thoughts on how to proceed from here, anyone?

I personally would like to schedule a chat or a video conference where we can all talk about what we want to do and what would be best for the first project. What do you guys like? A closed small forum? Chat rooms? Skype / Google hangouts? Google group? Facebook group?

I also wanted to mention that if the community project starts (the one that Ben started in other post) I will be helping there too and you all should feel free to do that also, and then treat what we will be doing here as a more private, closer to you project.

Thanks again for the interest!

#10

I’d like to participate as well, if it’s okay! I’m a 3D artist.

#11

A forum would be nice. I have skype , I’m located in western Canada so you UK people are about 8 hrs ahead of me or so.

#12

I’m open to any medium. I think we should get an idea on where everyone is, as having a real time meeting may be difficult depending on how far spread out we are. I’m in Texas (Central US and GMT -5). If we can make it work, real time communication would be best, but if we can’t then a forum would probably be the next best.

#13

Florida, EST over here. My preferred method of communication is Skype but I’m rather flexible if others would prefer something else.

#14

Good point. I am thinking then a small private / pass protected forum just for us and the project(s) would suffice for now (as it is not a competition to this forum that brought us all together). That would be enough to facilitate basic communication, organising and ideas discussion.

Some of you wrote to me on priv about forums and websites already. Let me set this first closed area myself and then we can share the webmaster workload between interested people. Later on we can discuss what else is needed and share it out so no one person has control over everything, and that everyone who wants, is involved.

#15

well, looking at this site, i must say, it is quite good, really good.
you can always have Pms, and invite other people into different conversations.
i think if you use this feature and some googledrive then switch into chatting. and gatherings. that would be more than enough to light things up.
(at least me and 2 others are trying to do this :smiley: )(hopefully all of three of us keep the fire up. which is the actual hard part.)

but i dont honestly think a separate forum would be a great idea, maybe we can all ask for a group system. and so that would make things A Lot Easier to handle? im sure if enough people ask Ben will rise to the challenge :smiley:
i mean sure it sounds nice and all having a separate forum, but you should count that, it is an extra site that people will have keep track off which is more work and time, which in turn makes things just harder.

edit: i would appreciate it if you guys share the concepts you Do not use when making your game. (if you make concepts and then choose one. thats what we are doing, and i’ll ask the other 2 guys who are with me if they are ok with sharing the concepts that we dont use).

#16

A lot of people interested :grinning:

So in terms of communication, it would probably be hard in realtime (skype and stuff), too many different time zones, I’m from Brazil, so Uk is 4 hours ahead, Brazil is GMT -3 (changes with seasons).

I think a private group place would be nice.

For organization i will list everyone who posted here so we can organize better: (If everyone could please confirm their interest)

@Pawel_Kosinski (Programmer)
@Lucas_Lima (3D Artist)
@wesley (Programmer, Unity and C#)
@Auggie (Programmer, Unity and C#)
@ChilledEagle (3D Artist)
@Minghua_Kao (CAD Modeller)
@Magxtopher_Xtopher (Programmer, Unity and C#)
@Mark_Carroll (Programmer, Unity, C# and Unreal/C++)

@MoMutrz (if i understood correctly you are already part of a project right?)

So i see we have 3 programmers and 2 artists by now, can we try to move forward? Slowly

2 Artists can manage a small project easily, what about programmers? Do you think 3 is ok?? Too many?

#17

I’ve though about it and I am interested. The project sounds cool and I’d love to be involved. The only thing that I have to figure out is availability.
My background: I’m trained as mechanical engineer and work in engineering software. I have a lot of experience in real life miniatures sculpting (28mm miniatures), both fantasy and Sci-Fi. I think you best note me down as CAD modeller. That is, somebody who can do “mechanical” models.
My location is the Netherlands.

#18

first, i honestly think that, one programmer can handle 2 artists just fine for a month or three months project length. (of course splitting work to multiple programmer will decrease the time to like who knows how short, but very short :smiley: )

for me im kind of a part of a one, the project is still in the “conceptualization process” so, if you count that as a stage, then yeah im a part of a project. but the three of us definitely look and feel serious about the project, despite having universities and work. i just hope we pass the conceptualization process. because if it is done wrong, others will end up quitting but if done right, there will be more chances that everyone will stick :slight_smile: (or so i feel. )

#19

Wow indeed lots of interest

I had few guys write to me by private message, guys if you are reading this do post in this thread so others can see you. You are all welcome.

In terms of people at the moment more is better. So generally what happens in projects like this (from my experience) is that we will set a cut-off date for people to state their interest. After that we can turn to people we already have and start organising. Once we organise ourselves we can start thinking about introducing more help, but we will need some boundaries set in place first.

Private group here would indeed suffice, if we can make that happen that indeed would be ideal.

@MoMutrz I wouldn’t share concepts here. I have few ideas and think of them as something personal really. I will share it with the team once the team is established.

If it comes to limits on people working on each aspect, this is honestly not the way to look at it. From my experience I know that you are almost always understaffed. So more the merrier. Its not hard to share the workload or keep track of changes. I am not going to say NO to anyone here who expressed interest.

Edit:
I just realised I might have sounded harsh in that last sentence of mine :slight_smile: What I am saying is lets not set any boundaries and limits now. Lets see how many of us are there and then make some agreements.

#20

I agree, more people more work done in sprints, and even more important in community work so everyone can partcipate. But i think there must be a proportion ratio, if we have like 5 programmers and 2 artists, things will be a little overwhelming for the artists as programmers will be working very fast in new mechanics.

What do you guys think about creating (for now) a facebook group (or any other service that allows that) that we will be adding just the ones who are already confirmed, so we can start discussing the concepts, ideas and limitations of the project, and adding people as they apply?
If we find a better way we can always move, but i think we need to start talking about it, instead of just keep waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect crew.
Just my opinion.

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