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[Angrymatter]

Make friends. If you are good friends with the people who know how to make a game, you might just make a game. However, this does not guarantee that you will make a game or that you will have an easier trip. It's just a great thing to have. I worked with sundown kid to make a collab sort of adventure game. Sure, It might be crap but with every game you actually make you get better. So just make some dumb game and be proud of it. It was tough, many projects were lost and canceled. Many had potential. It will be rough either way. Like cactus said "Making games is like making babies. Generally, the process is enjoyable. Sometimes the baby comes out different than expected, sometimes it comes out perfect." Good luck.

[Nip Devil]

Yea, I read that article.

[indietom]

A dream team? Well you have to have one friend that can draw and play games. And to find a friend that programms is en helt annan femma.
Convert a gamer who talks about game ideas. And then lend him books on programming and help him.
Now you have a programmer.
Now it's perfect just remember they will piss you of.

[Medevenx]

Convert a gamer who talks about game ideas. And then lend him books on programming and help him.
Now you have a programmer.

That's not how it works. I was a gamer who loved talking about game ideas. But I was more visually-inclined which made me a Pixel Artist instead of a programmer. Even if you give me a book on programming I won't get it too well if I'm not programming-inclined

[Graham.]

Getting a team together isn't easy. You seem aware of what's going on generally. Money matters a little bit I guess....

Here are the three things a potential contributor will care about:
  1. Is he/she attracted to the vision of the project?
  2. Does he/she believe it will complete?
  3. Will he/she enjoy the process of working with you?

You have to convince a person of yes, to all 3. Experience helps.

Uh... visions are best communicated by sharing what you have, and being very clear about it. That takes practice I guess. But the practice is free, because there's no cost trying to hammer the web, or friends, with your ideas. You learn what gets them to bite.

Having a vision that's interesting in the first place... is hard. My best tip for being the leader is assuming responsibility for the vision entirely yourself. If you wait for somebody to "fill it in," you'll be heading down a difficult path. I don't recommend it.

So, consistently develop a good direction for your project, and practice communicating it with others. You'll have to write and write and write, and re-write and write.

Convincing people that you get things done just requires either:
  1. A healthy track-record of release games, OR
  2. Clear proof that you get things done on your current project.

If a person can go to your blog or whatever and go, "oh, I can obviously see how much this person gets done, and see that its consistent," then you've got number 2.

Convincing people that it's fun to work with you is the best part, IMO. If your personality shines through your work, or better yet, is included alongside your work, that will help. Basically you need to start individual dialogues with people, effectively "working" with them on something very small, up to very large. The very small thing can just be a discussion at the beginning.

Note... hiring good people with money requires the same things to be done. The process is a little faster, and of course you get to pull from a pool of people with more experience (generally), and from a wider one, but you've still got to do the same stuff. So there's no harm putting in the time on an unfunded title, for the experience.

[Medevenx]

I guess the problem is that I did actually decide to participate in someone's game project and they, like you, made a crappy-yet-finished game. it was called super smash flash. if you played it, I pity you. if you never did, it was a crap game. it was very buggy, very unbalanced, but could have been better if more time had been invested in it.

after its release, the creator went to town making the sequel, which he promised would be better in every way and blah blah blah. all of the artwork was to be ripped from exiting games or created by people who barely had an understanding of ms paint. despite the developer team being 20+ people strong, the new game was still under construction 2 years in and didn't even have any improvements over the old version save for having better art. Although I had stopped animating for the team for a while, I completely withdrew myself from the project after it was declared "20%" done. Now 4 years into production, the game still isn't done.

I've been in and out of the SSF2 development team and I don't recall your presence in the game development (unless you changed your name or something) but the sequel is definitely much better, the gameplay is very polished compared to the previous. I don't know where you got that stuff from.

Any game can take years, but even if it took you X years to finish if it's still awesome it will be your legacy. (Iji, Cave Story, Saturated Dreamers) because you worked on it so long not because you suck but because you wanted everything to be how you wanted it to be)

Also, about teaming up with people, it's not always about what YOU want, it's about what each person wants that's best for the group.

[indietom]

Convert a gamer who talks about game ideas. And then lend him books on programming and help him.
Now you have a programmer.

That's not how it works. I was a gamer who loved talking about game ideas. But I was more visually-inclined which made me a Pixel Artist instead of a programmer. Even if you give me a book on programming I won't get it too well if I'm not programming-inclined

It worked for me a guy I know was talking about games and was amazed by my game devemlopment.
And one day he asked me if he could borrow a book.

[Nip Devil]

Thank you indie tom and toast trip!



Medevenx, as you mentioned, I changed my name. You missed the entire point of bringing up SSF2. it was that just because you complete 1 game it's not proof the next game will be super special osm.