Greetings again, wise TigSource forums.

I am coming with another question today: namely the topic concern of effective methods and tactics for recruiting qualified collaborators onto an existing and well-established project.

Our project in question is fairly well-represented in terms of media available, with around 200 screen shots out detailing various facets, several tracks from the starter soundtrack, a cinematic trailer, a tech demo, homepage, social media pages, and several well-placed articles in RPS and elsewhere. We have been in development for quite a long time (10 months+) and are nearing the time when expansion of the team is a necessary condition for dealing with the present workload. Despite the many forms of media we have at this time, and around 6-7 attempts over the past few days to begin reaching out to new team candidates through classifieds, forum listings, and social networking, there have been near-nil responses to the efforts. Clearly something is off in our approach.

Our needs are as follows: 1 Coding lead with management roles, and strong engine-module knowledge, and 2-3 mid-level coders with C#/ C++, and Unity3D experience. The roles are occurring right as we transition from unpaid work to contractual work, so they sort of straddle both sides, but we are calling them unpaid collaborations to be conservative, and clarifying in topic.

If anyone would like to chime in and offer advice for a team in our situation, it would be greatly appreciated! We have been contacted by a couple diligent students, but the management role is the lynchpin, and is required to be filled before we can reasonably start a dialogue with the others. The obvious elephant in that room is that the demands we are making of the management role are considerable, which in a fair world would come with pay from the start, but we are asking them to contribute a month or two of their time prior to when we project funding will be available to them. In a way there is fairness in that arrangement, considering we as professional-age adults have worked a full year of 80 hour weeks on almost no resources, but it is still a concern.

An example of a listing we have placed, for that management position, is here:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?38368-RPS-featured-project-looking-for-professional-coding-manager-(Tech-demo-Available)

Any advice on how to hone our approach or tactics would be extremely useful to us in this crtical moment. Also... if you know that guy, don't be afraid to say 

Thanks for your time!

[Who we are seeking:]

Who we are seeking:

We are seeking  a small number of coders with C# /C++, and Unity3d experience. Past industry work isn't required, but helpful. The initial work is remote, and will start out as loose, but highly-goal-focused collaboration. The initial hours are flexible, however a couple dedicated members will help quickly push us over the cusp into paid work. We are looking for creative and motivated team members who will accompany us as we transition from the end of the conceptual design phases we are now in, and become valued long-term team members in the approaching paid implementation phases.

We are a group that values creativity, mutual respect for our members and supporters, and the fruits that can be accomplished through dedicated work. If you share these ideals, and the project materials resonate with your interests, we look forward to hearing from you!

The task which new team members will immediately participate in will be in helping to build a proof-of-concept engine environment within the Unity3d system. This will depict how we plan to handle rendering and shading, world generation and data saving / referencing, draw call management, lighting, and very simple GUI mechanics, in a stable and performance-conscious way. This proof of concept is the last element to be assembled into the already quite marketable project, which will allow us to be confident we are offering our supporters a complete vision of what they are asked to invest in, and move onto the paid contractual work phase.


The Highly detailed Unity tech-demo, which outlines the project's long-term conceptual goals, and is presented in consumer quality is available here; it is an excellent tool for all potential applicants to familiarize themselves with the work:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/tj7rrd2ge8nfagw/Sticks&StarshipsDemoPart1.MuseumPrototype.7z

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In order to get in touch with us, to setup a skype chat, you can send a message to:

[email protected]

Be sure to include information about your past work history, your coding background, and any personal information you feel may be useful! We can establish the rest in the first meetup, although please provide enough background information about yourself to give us an impression!

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Who we are:


We are Aloft Studio, an indie startup producing “Sticks & Starships”.

I am Dennis Varvaro.  I am 28, and my background is in the field of Classical architecture and design. I hold a 5-year Professional degree in the Science of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame, and have worked for a number of US firms, and for clients abroad, in Belgium, Switzerland, and England. I have also done historical survey work for the Prince's Foundation. My work in the architectural-design and construction-administration field has provided me with usable templates for executing complex building projects on tight deadlines, while minding pre-determined budgets and helping to mediate teams of contractors. The systematic management tools I acquired in my trade, and the design proficiencies I developed  during this time allow me to profess confidence in co-leading this project with the proper team. I have over 12 years of experience in the field of modeling and texturing, with emphasis on environmental assets, although I also have experience in character design and topography, rigging, and animation, and in watercolor and digital media painting as well. I have proficiencies in designing assets for optimized integration into various game engine environments, and experience in implementing work within those engines. I am also an amateur musician, and have composed some material to lead the soundtrack, samples of which you can experience above, as well as being a sound engineer comfortable working with several DAW suites.
     I have spearheaded the development of our current assets and development framework through a 10-month period, and have managed the project through social media, article appearances, and PR-related activities to this date. At present I am the project owner and decision-maker.

Chris Bolton is 30 years old, and has been with the project since its conception. He has over a decade of experience working with C++, C#, java, python, lua, and other languages, and has a background working with several AAA publishing studios. Chris has worked on the engine design of the project up until the present, however due to family circumstances, has found a need to step away from the work for present, possibly to return to full hours later, which has partially prompted our need to bring in more talent at an earlier moment, in order to realize our stated design goals.

-We look forward to adding talented and driven individuals to our group!

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The Project:


Cinematic Trailer:





Detailed Homepage:

http://www.aloftstudios.net/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sticks-Starships/1477234149156430


The project, "Sticks & Starships", is a voxel sandbox game, the most salient features of which are its vast and sprawling size and structure, and its ponderously complex tech tree which will take the players through an Oddessy of exploration, resource gathering, construction, design, and the implementation of vast, ever-growing industrial systems. The player will explore a voxel world divided into half-meter units, which exists as conceptual cube projected onto a sphere (thus making it circumnavigable), experiencing diverse surface biomes, and many strata of complex cave systems and subterranean life below. They will eventually gain the means, through industrialization, to travel to increasingly more hostile locales and environments, and eventually to leave their world itself in search of others.

Philosophically, a major goal of the project is to promote virtual environments where players collaborate together to accomplish complex gameplay and emergent goals, and to promote the ideals of artistic expression in many forms, and the practice of the scientific method applied to a simplified engineering context.

A more complete description of the game mechanics is present on our homepage, and in the voice narration of the Tech Demo.

Due to the ambitious nature of the project, we are choosing to narrow our scope to delivering the first gameplay segment, which includes the most basic game engine environment, and the classical-age assets; this installation will serve to prove whether interest and capital exists to fund the realization of the project as a whole.

The task which new team members will immediately participate in will be in helping to build a proof-of-concept engine environment within the Unity3d system. This will depict how we plan to handle rendering and shading, world generation and data saving / referencing, draw call management, lighting, and very simple GUI mechanics, in a stable and performance-conscious way. This proof of concept is the last element to be assembled into the already quite marketable project, which will allow us to be confident we are offering our supporters a complete vision of what they are asked to invest in, and move onto the paid contractual work phase.




























Soundtrack Samples:

https://soundcloud.com/dvarvaro/dolphinseppuku1

https://soundcloud.com/dvarvaro/itsawhale1

https://soundcloud.com/dvarvaro/downtoasunlesssea1

https://soundcloud.com/dvarvaro/miniaturetiger11


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In order to get in touch with us, to setup a skype chat, you can send a message to:

[email protected]

Be sure to include information about your past work history, your coding background, and any personal information you feel may be useful! We can establish the rest in the first meetup, although please provide enough background information about yourself to give us an impression!

Thanks a lot Ryan!

I am confident we will work our way up eventually. We are collecting a good amount of facebook likes, and have a couple articles in a couple of the middle-tier media outlets now.

We do have our demo coming up this season, so if all else fails until then, hopefully that will be our ace in the hole for reaching youtubers to cover us.

It is still challenging getting ourselves to stand out amongst the fray, but I am sure a lot of us here have that experience.

looks like the KS campaign is coming along nicely! I hope you pull in enough to meet your development goals

Yes, a lot of our views and tactics are being refined as we get a better feel for the current state of indie publishing. We get a lot of advice from well-meaners, some of it superb. We are always open to new avenues to explore to interact with the public, and to get more deeply involved in the online community.

On a lighter note, when I googled our trailer 20 minutes ago, this gem showed up:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/sticks-starships-genesis-will-have-you-raising-primitive-civilization-interstellar-empire-while-riding-cassowaries#comments

So we did manage to get through to someone 

That is an interesting concept, oodavid. Maybe it is about resolving cognitive dissonance (I did something nice for this person... so that means I like them, right?), or maybe it is an observation that the kinds of people who do nice things tend to do them habitually.

And thanks for the Gamespress mention, Misterdave; we are indeed hoping either they or Bluesnews will take one of our press-releases at some point soon.

Yeah, I think you are right about sending it to EVERYONE. We definitely sent to literally anyone who has posted anything in the last 2 months. That comment about looking for the "right fit" for our game is more the fleeting hope that there exists some few outlets somewhere that take our kind by the droves- those mythical "word of mouth" bloggers I hear so much about but can't find for the life of me.

We also might be trying this too early. As mentioned, we are already 8 months in, but maybe we are untouchables until we have a demo. We of course believe passionately in our work, and we thought that came across well in the trailer, but we are not unbiased parties.

Thanks for the input 30, and goodluck with Cosmochoria!

Hi everyone!

This is Dvar of Aloft studio.

We are a small indie startup with a game around 8 months into development, and we feel we are at the point where we should be making a public presence. We have a homepage where you can get an initial impression of our upcoming title, with a presskit and an image pack, as well as our first theatrical trailer. We have a decent Twitter group, and a small facebook page, and of course we are on IndieDB.

We are running into that barrier though that I am sure a lot here are familiar with around generating our first press. The way I understand it, the bigger sources like Rock-paper, Kotaku, Indiegames, and IndiegameMag don't like to touch games that haven't been covered before. And most of the smaller blogs I ran into post so infrequently that they have a near- unlimited glut of wonderful indie titles... why would they want to post about a startup a couple months from having a playable demo when they can post about Planetside, Banner Saga, or StarBound.

I guess the issue is we haven't found anyone who is a good fit for our current work.

How did all of you overcome that barrier? Does anyone know of a good list of very active, small time blogs that take a lot of diverse material?

And of course, if anyone viewing this would like to connect with us, here is our homepage, containing our work:

http://www.aloftstudios.net/

Thank you all for your consideration, and I eagerly await any kind of input! I think we are on a good track, but we do have some early hurdles to surmount!