Why are [X]s so hard to find?
by Steven Fletcher · in General Discussion · 01/08/2005 (11:47 am) · 1 replies
I just happened to see the thread www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=64 get updated.
I've noticed a number of threads of the form "Why are good [X]s so hard to find?", where [X] is programmers/artists/musicians/whatever. My own failures weren't helped by difficulty in finding team members, but the main problems were always my lack of ability/effort/experience/money/time spent on the project.
Still, it's a good idea to ponder why the difficulties with finding team members occur. I suspect that there are several reasons:
1. All the [X]s are doing their own projects and looking for [Y]s who are also doing their own projects.
2. Alot of the best [X]s are already working with full teams and don't need additional people.
3. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on when you use the Internet.
4. Many [X]s are loners.
5. No one wants to pay the [X]s up front, and it's hard to do alot of work on a game for the possibility of royalties.
6. There's no quick way to tell good [X]s from bad [X]s.
7. There's no quick way to tell good projects from bad projects.
8. [X]s are not robotic [X]-doing drones. They have lives and have to do things such as eating, sleeping, and working to survive. This leaves them with only a few hours a day to make games.
1 - It shouldn't be "fixed", but it should be ameliorated by the making game resources more widely available. Sites such as gamebeavers allow [X]s, [Y]s, and [Z]s to all share their work. Gamebeavers isn't a perfect solution, but I think it's best we have.
That said, I don't use gamebeavers because I don't think my 2d programming would be useful to them or thier 3d models, etc. be useful to me.
2 - not a problem. It's just a symptom of having people who succeed.
3 - when you find someone on the Internet who says he's the best [X] in the world, it's hard for you to know whether he's telling the truth.
Once, I dropped a project, and then someone I knew in person claimed that he had been paying people (over the Internet) to create game resources for my project. Whether he did this or not, I don't know. I vaguely remember someone else previously offering to do this (my reply was basically "Yeah, that would be good... No, wait! That's just stupid.), but Nothing came from his claims.
But there are ways to avoid people like that. Use something like rentacoder.com/RentACoder/default.asp that verifies peoples identities and stores the money in escrow so that people can't even attempt to commit fraud.
4 - Sites like gamebeavers help here by giving you resources without actual human interaction.
5 - Use rentacoder and pay them as the work gets done.
6/7 - These will always be problems, no matter what.
8 - Replacing game designers with robots could solve this one, but that would be difficult to implement and causes other problems.
I've noticed a number of threads of the form "Why are good [X]s so hard to find?", where [X] is programmers/artists/musicians/whatever. My own failures weren't helped by difficulty in finding team members, but the main problems were always my lack of ability/effort/experience/money/time spent on the project.
Still, it's a good idea to ponder why the difficulties with finding team members occur. I suspect that there are several reasons:
1. All the [X]s are doing their own projects and looking for [Y]s who are also doing their own projects.
2. Alot of the best [X]s are already working with full teams and don't need additional people.
3. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on when you use the Internet.
4. Many [X]s are loners.
5. No one wants to pay the [X]s up front, and it's hard to do alot of work on a game for the possibility of royalties.
6. There's no quick way to tell good [X]s from bad [X]s.
7. There's no quick way to tell good projects from bad projects.
8. [X]s are not robotic [X]-doing drones. They have lives and have to do things such as eating, sleeping, and working to survive. This leaves them with only a few hours a day to make games.
1 - It shouldn't be "fixed", but it should be ameliorated by the making game resources more widely available. Sites such as gamebeavers allow [X]s, [Y]s, and [Z]s to all share their work. Gamebeavers isn't a perfect solution, but I think it's best we have.
That said, I don't use gamebeavers because I don't think my 2d programming would be useful to them or thier 3d models, etc. be useful to me.
2 - not a problem. It's just a symptom of having people who succeed.
3 - when you find someone on the Internet who says he's the best [X] in the world, it's hard for you to know whether he's telling the truth.
Once, I dropped a project, and then someone I knew in person claimed that he had been paying people (over the Internet) to create game resources for my project. Whether he did this or not, I don't know. I vaguely remember someone else previously offering to do this (my reply was basically "Yeah, that would be good... No, wait! That's just stupid.), but Nothing came from his claims.
But there are ways to avoid people like that. Use something like rentacoder.com/RentACoder/default.asp that verifies peoples identities and stores the money in escrow so that people can't even attempt to commit fraud.
4 - Sites like gamebeavers help here by giving you resources without actual human interaction.
5 - Use rentacoder and pay them as the work gets done.
6/7 - These will always be problems, no matter what.
8 - Replacing game designers with robots could solve this one, but that would be difficult to implement and causes other problems.
Torque Owner Nate "Nateholio" Watson
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