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[Mipe]

And how many more or less competent programmers expect top artists to make the art for them. It goes both ways, you know.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Competent artists are more common than competent game programmers, though. So their relative value is lower. Although this depends on the type of artist: competent artists specializing in 3D modeling, for instance, are probably rarer than competent game programmers.

[Alex May]

This thread is a good lesson for prospective indie teams.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

(I kind of wish that, for once, someone seeking to form or join an indie game team weren't just looking basically for someone to make their game for them, and were actually looking for someone whose skills complement theirs or someone to learn from.)

[Mipe]

Well, to be fair, they are looking for someone to complement their skills; they have artists and designers, just no programmers.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

But the "designers" aren't actually experienced game designers, but ex-game journalists. A lot of people think they can design a game until they actually try it, so I don't think it's accurate to say that there any designers on that team, just people who might have the potential to be game designers, but aren't yet. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and they turn out to be superb designers, it's plain inaccurate to call someone who has never designed a game a game designer.

[Alex May]

Yeah all they've actually shown is an ability to use Photoshop to make a logo, and make web sites, and write bad copy. And piss people off. What skills? As soon as someone says "we can't tell you because of marketing", it should set off alarm bells. Marketing? Seriously? Don't make me laugh.

[Lynx]

Whether or not they'll succeed depends on whether they can land a veteran lead programmer, I suspect.  They can't really interview any other programmers until they have the guy who will supervise them - they don't have the expertise to tell whether someone is blowing smoke or has real skills.

Plus, the lead programmer will know what's possible and what's implementable given the time and money constraints - without that, you have a bunch of guys sitting around going 'Wouldn't it be cool if the game did X?'

If I were them, I guess, I'd designate someone to investigate the many game engines that require less programming, and develop a prototype to show publishers, while trying to land the lead programmer.  Once they have an advance and actual money they can use to pay people, they can hire people much more easily.  But again, the lead programmer is going to be the most important person to get.

[Alex May]

They won't get anyone worth a dime. Literally. Anyone who can program can land a job getting paid to do this. You'd have to find someone willing to put his or her savings on the line for some bunch of guys with no experience. Fat chance.

[Lynx]

Right- one of them is going to have to break down and stop 'designing' and start developing, at least enough to make a prototype they can use to convince publishers that they have awesome talent and just need money to make the next blockbuster.

[Iamthejuggler]

Wow, I didn't realise it was a "work for royalties" kinda deal. Dearie me. 

[nihilocrat]

Thats quite alright Admin, your entitled to your opinion, as i said above, we are posting this thread to LOOK FOR A PROGRAMMER, because we currently DONT HAVE ONE. Read please.

I will pass by your final comment, if someone cant research the thread their posting in for information, then they can't really comment on someones supposed 'lack of team management and research skills'.

We will no longer be posting here, you have, as I'm sure not for the first time, pushed away a member of the community who wishes to offer something to the community itself. If anyone would like to continue following our project, or would like to join the team please contact us. If you are only interested in bombarding us with negative comments which are just not helpful, then we have no time for you.

It's quite a shame, i almost thought that you would of realized our legitimacy after the following posts, which were made to answer such claims.

I honestly think Derek's trying to help, and except for the hotdog shenanigans, everyone else is.

Our community is very much built around people who make games first and ask questions later. Indie "studios" are often people hacking away in their bedrooms in their spare time. If they need a coder or an artist, they post on forums about "this cool project I'm working on", and provide some artwork / screenshots / whatever to get people interested. The work is understood to be a completely hobby opportunity, and these partnerships sometimes develop into teams that make marketable commercial games of all descriptions. The key here is that the game comes first, the business comes later, if at all.

It looks like, being from the gaming press, you are probably very familiar with the way professional studios work, and everything about your creation (press release, site, logo) suggests you're going in with that mindset. If you actually offered up-front money for your programmer positions, I could see people biting for the job. To all of us, you just look like another person that likes to talk about games and design them, but don't actually know anything about making them and would rather just have someone else do the actual work. I greatly appreciate TIGSource because we tend to assault these people with the cold, hard truth: making games is excruciatingly hard, and you've got to bring a wealth of skills to the table, namely programming or artwork, or else you are necessarily just telling people to make your game for you. The experienced programmers you are looking for will have red flags going off in their head because they've probably worked with producers / designers before that have no idea what the implementation of their ideas takes, and are constantly changing their mind or are unhappy with results because of this, which leads to very bitter and angry programmers.

I am pretty retarded when it comes to business, but I can't imagine starting a company with zero actual money. If you have venture capital, you'd at least be able to pay people for work, so I assume you don't.

I hope the current economy puts you in a good position, because there's likely to be unemployed programmers who'd at least rather do SOMETHING than continually get turned down for the few jobs on the market today.

[Derek]

Business, from my experience, has very little to do with having a fancy website or press releases, bragging about your marketing experience, or having a "producer" (or two).  There's no need to obfuscate things or play cloak and dagger games.  Just state simply what it is you're offering and what it is you need.  I think this should be true whether you want to be independent or whether you want to work for/start a studio.

The more someone has to puff themselves up, the more vague language they use, the more defensive they get when you prod them, then the worse the deal probably will be for you!

[Melly]

When my company flies, I'll be clear and true with my proposals.

You get bread, rainwater and exercise 15 minutes each day.

Better than EA!  :handthumbsupR:

[tylerjhutchison]

When my company flies, I'll be clear and true with my proposals.

You get bread, rainwater and exercise 15 minutes each day.

Better than EA!  :handthumbsupR:

You drive a hard bargain sir.  But I must confess I am an even better negotiator.

Bread, rainwater and 20 minutes of exercise each day and you got yourself a deal!

[Snakey]

Business, from my experience, has very little to do with having a fancy website or press releases, bragging about your marketing experience, or having a "producer" (or two).  There's no need to obfuscate things or play cloak and dagger games.  Just state simply what it is you're offering and what it is you need.  I think this should be true whether you want to be independent or whether you want to work for/start a studio.

I fully agree Derek. One of my first experiences happens to be when I got such a position inside a studio. Apparently publishing money was on its way and all these other great promises. After a few months, not only had I wasted all that time, but I realized that it's probably really doubtful that any publishers were even considering to fund this project because there was nothing to show anyways. After a tonne of managementese talk, I realised that our president ceo/whatever didn't really know much about the game development cycle at all. He may have known about the games industry, and that's fine, but it doesn't help one ioata when it comes to developing them.

The more someone has to puff themselves up, the more vague language they use, the more defensive they get when you prod them, then the worse the deal probably will be for you!

Yes. I wasted a tonne of time (3 months) and quite a lot of money (I still had to eat during those months) and I didn't get anything but resentment out of it. Friends later told me that the president later called me incompetent to the rest of the time, explaining why I had left. It's a shame that my friends knew me before this, so they didn't believe it and winded up leaving themselves.

Anyways, unsure whether these people are still actually listening or not, but for any programmers who are even remotely interested in this, I'd advise to run away. Don't walk, but run ... far, far away. They're not willing to risk anything, but you will because no one is paying you to do any of the work you're supposed to be doing! Royalties and stock options mean squat because first of all, their company isn't worth anything, and secondly they don't have any products to derive said royalties from anyways. Lastly, they're probably thinking of paying some ridiculous sum for any kind of programmer, aka, $5 USD per hour, or something stupid like $10k for the entire project (to get a relative measure, these days I quote about $40 USD per hour and that's be on the generous side of things these days. So for a 1000 man hour project, I'd be asking for $40k. Considering that it's possible to work 40 to 50 hours per week, that's only about 25 to 20 weeks of work ... and that most modern day FPS take years and not weeks or months).

Don't worry about 'oppurtunities' like this. They come more often than you think, and talk is real cheap these days.

I once tried to do this too, start with zero money into a game dev studio. I later realized this was stupid. You can't really start a game dev studio with no money!

[Sk8rCai]

If at first you don't succeed...

http://www.redsoftinteractive.com/projects.html

[Lurk]

Maybe the mistake here was to announce an opening for a position within a business model that should'nt be a traditional top-down vertical hierarchy; if you have no money to hire an employee, the person who decides to join your team is'nt really an employee, he's a collaborator, which means he should have an equal say in the development process. If he's a programmer, for example, his input on the choice of an engine should have more weight than that of anyone else within the group, unless they're also programmers, which can and should lead to interesting and polite discussions before the product specs are officially announced.

I think you'll see a lot more of these kind of 'generous' offers, as the industry's been very hard at work to minimize the importance of grunt work in game development, while promoting video game 'stars'(producers, designers) who too often have ridiculously little to do with actual production. Eventually, people start to believe that all you need to make a game is a pretentious designer, a snazzy website with cool fonts, a press release and an expendable workforce...wait...did I just give you guys the recipe?..

[William Broom]

If at first you don't succeed...

http://www.redsoftinteractive.com/projects.html

Hmmm... I wonder how far they got with 'Fantasy Warfare' before abandoning it?

[Eclipse]

This is not advertising, this is offering your members here at TiGForums an opportunity to get into the industry, vandalizing such a post would be dropping to the level of those people who are actually spamming your forum.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I've just quit from the industry and you want me back
I can't accept this. Also, Hotdogs.

In a more serious note, dear CrystalCore, we don't like corporate bullshit here, the best way to post here is like "Hey guys, i'm Name Surname from CrystalCore, we have almost no money but we think we have awesome ideas! here a bunch of screenshots and concept for our upcoming game (then post\link them), we need programmers! Who wants to try to work and grow with us?"


also the thing "our game is so secret we can't even say how it will look like without an NDA" isn't the most appealing thing to hear.

Anyway, are you searching for people in UK? or are you searching for random codemonkeys around the globe to try to pack at least a working demo?

I could be interested if you manage to find at least two 3d\texture artists that can get good looking things in the right times

Oh also, you're going dead wrong with that leadercrap game engine: it's not portable on consoles.

You will waste your time using it as it's only an OpenGL 2.1 engine (forget xbox 360), also it uses Newton Dynamics, that's the slower (but easier to use) physics engine around... you really need to ask a programmer what to use and then deal, doing a multiplatform fps with such technology is crazy shit