let me give you my advice, although others may think differnetly, so this is what i think.

"i don't want to describe all my tries, but i can't find that kind of man in my city"

Well, you probably wont either,not just in your city. if you not prepared to give an idea of what project you plan to make, then how can an artist approach you with there portfolio?, or whether they know they can actually do the proposed art for your game?. Not all artists are the same and have different abilitys and skills which could be genre specific, or style such as pixel art, vector art etc. Artists want there work to be seen so if you have a really good game idea then that will increase your chances of getting artists who then might be prepared to work with you for your project either on a paided basis or perhaps some negotiation could take place. Artists have portfolios or pages of some sort so that developers can look through their work and decide if thier work is good enough for their project, its just the same for developers. You should showcase some/all of your development work to show an artists that maybe considering working with you that you are serious and you can actually produce the project your concepting, even if its not a game. Its a good idea to have a plan too, im not talking pages and pages for like a bank proposal, just a small description of how you plan to go about your game as this can also prove that your serious and are not a "time waster". There has been a lot of "time wasters" over the years, not just here on OGA but on other forums as well, sadly which makes artists very hesitant to just create artwork on a basis of "I need an artist" without some sort of description and realism behind it to make it attractive at least.

"Looks like money is a common problem"

Yes and No to this. There are artists that create works that are free of charge, for donations, per work basis, hourly rates or even profit share. You need to take the time to search them and read what they are about and find out which artists work looks best for you and which option would be best for your budget needs(if you have one). This can take a long time, but its all worth it and is something that needs to be done if your a serious developer. you never know who you might find, maybe someone who is willing to help you with no payment at all, such as a novice artist themselves that may be looking for the experiance of working with a developer as an example. or even a Student!

"finish all coding the hire a freelancer"

Yes you can do this, there is no reason why you cant use 'Placeholder' art to begin with, most devs do this. it helps create the 'showcase' i mentioned above, and although it may not look as good as you want it to, it will make no difference when searching for the artist you want as they will see past the placeholder art and invision there own style for your project, and again if its a good idea, they may contact you seperatly to ask to do the art for you and send you their rates(if any).

Its important to build a raport with communitys and have respect for the artists, and artists have respect for the developers for which we both work very hard at what we do and need each other. you cant have a game without some art, and the art is lifeless without the code.:)

just a couple of things you could do that might help find an artist and your project.

1) Create a dev log for your project.

2) Search and research the artists that you are looking for.

3) Create a prototype of your project.

4) Be active on forums and build a raport/audience.

5) Gamejams are good for team building, its something to consider.

anyways i hope that helps and this is only my opinion by the way, so take from it what you will. good luck with your project/s :)

arh, yes you are right, i have made a mistake, my sincere apoligies. the posts were from a user called "AntGamesDev" which is not you as you are "Anti-game-dev", sorry for my mix up. dis-regard that comment about the posts. (il put that down to my experiance) :) i have removed that comment.

a dev log is the same as like a diary. you just write about what your doing, how your doing it, what problems you have, solved etc, pretty much what you do in a day on the project your working on. people like to see that sort of thing and its a good engagement for an audience, those that are interested anyay, it goes towards helping publishing aswell. you can do this on various sites, itch.io,gamejolt or wherever else has a forum, theres far to many to mention, which ever you prefer, you can do it here too, in the "Show off your project" thread. As for best practices i cant help you there, I dont personally have a dev blog/log as such right now as im not currently developing at the moment but probly will once i start again.it all depends on time and there are many ways to do it, post on twitter, facebook etc, gamers forums. have a look at some that do do one, then your have a better idea of what they are.

i hear these are pretty good:

http://www.indiedb.com/

I'm in the same position, except I'm a content creator and pretty much nothing of a programmer.  I'm in a position to commission coders for achievable per-task one-time jobs but I would rather just team up with someone for the passion of game development and think about money later, if that's even realistic anymore.  I think the commission approach is reasonable because it forces things to be prioritised and folks can be compensated for their time.

My outlook on the situation is that if someone is going to assume a leadership role (and honestly, only 1 person can and will, always) then they have a LOT of extra work to do to plan _everything_ out, and I really mean everything, including an ending - have documentation and reference material to work from, have prototypes and be able to visually demonstrate concepts, have a fairly chunky "dev-bible" (and expect nobody to actually read it) that is written in such a way that it expands from basic bullet-points into pages of details that attempts to answer _every_ question.  Not just with storyline and mechanics, but also an operating workflow - detailing which engine and softwares and templates, etc.

The game should already exist, in its entirety, "on paper" well before anyone is spending time poking around an engine.  Then, just because it exists, doesn't mean it won't change drastically.  I think branding also goes a long way, personally.  It may seem shallow, but if a project already has a professional-looking title and a logo or something, it will appear to be more of an actual project that's going somewhere rather than just some high schooler's fantasy cooked up that day during lunch.

Normally what I see around is a paragraph or two, drop the names of a couple of games or even genres and just say "something like that".  What's worse is a lot of people seem to be reluctant to keep their ideas under wraps from fear of it being stolen.  I believe, 99% of the time, if someone is the type of weasel that's going to steal your idea because they have nothing better themselves, they are likely the same kind of weasel that have no practical skills and will try to make everyone else do it for them.  So, better to just put your ideas out there and risk them being stolen by weasels, in order to allow fellow developers to understand the project and possibly team up.  While you guys are busy actually developing, the weasels will be trying to shove the puzzle together and looking for more ideas to steal and more assets to flip.

Anyone who thinks "it's not that kind of project, I don't need any planning, let's just wing it and make it up as we go along, etc." should actually just express that, because that will say a lot about the project and where it's likely to go.

In short - yes there are lonely programmers and yes there are lonely artists, but everyone has their own ideas and getting people together, in agreement and getting along so everyone is cool, flexible and professional - is the hardest thing to do.

@LDAsh: Very interesting and to-the-point. I agree and have had that experience. So are you an artist seeking a programmer worth joining your project or are you an artist seeking a project worth joining?

@Anti-Game-Dev: Bart's "How to write a good art request" guide may be applicable here: https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/how-and-when-to-write-a-good-art-request

"So are you an artist seeking a programmer worth joining your project or are you an artist seeking a project worth joining?"

At this point I'd say both, but moreso the former than the latter.

@LDAsh: How do you feel about skill bartering? Everyone has their own plans, so no one is available to work on someone else's plans. If you need some programming done, and I need some artwork done, (and assuming your style matches my project, and my coding fits the language of your project) is it feasible to trade hours of work for our independent mutual benefit?

It's an idea I've been kicking around for a while. A gaming skills market would be pretty awesome if we could figure out how to work it.

Actually I've had a similar idea for a while, something like a gamedev community where ideas for entire projects are upvoted, then approaches to developing that idea are upvoted, and then specific tasks are upvoted and shared among the community, and these tasks would earn reputation points when completed, with points going toward forming serious teams for serious big projects.  With enough members, several projects could be in development at one time and nobody would get bored, in theory.  There's a lot of concerns about legal issues and rights, making sure everything is original and legal, so to begin with it would need to be non-commercial projects, small-scale and signed-off, but eventually could lead to something more serious.

Cool. Let's test it out on an individual task basis first. Do you have a relatively basic programming task you need done?

I guess "relatively basic" is hard to gague. I suppose I mean less involved than "I need a fully functional game engine"

interesting this, i wonder how it works, are you proposing that you wright like 'scripts'  i.e a movement engine? and have it uploaded for people to use non commercialy, or if someone asks for a 'script' or code for a particular purpose that is only used by the requester? (or open) and they gain kudos/reputation points for that contribution? may have to start a new thread for this.:)

@Chasersgaming: yeah, this might call for a new thread.

"...are you proposing that you wright like 'scripts'  i.e a movement engine?"

That is one possibility, yes, but I was not thinking in such general-use terms. I would perform tasks that people are in specific need of. If someone specifically requested a movement engine, yes I would try my hand at making it for them, just like any typical commissioned resource request.

"...only used by the requester? (or open)..."

Either could be included as terms of the exchange. I might say "ok, I'll do this for you, but I insist it be licensed CC0 when our deal is concluded." Or the requestor might say "I'll sweeten the deal if you agree to let me keep it proprietary." Or the opposite might be desired: "I don't want to eliminate potential future customers by giving out free labor, so only you are allowed to use this when our deal is done. Others have to commission me if they want to use it." To which the requestor might say "No way. That goes against my FOSS ideals. However, I kinda understand where you're coming from, so I'll make a tiny sound effect for you in addition to the other stuff I promised... but all of it has to be licensed CC-BY or the deal's off."

"they gain kudos/reputation points for that contribution?"

Eventually, yes. Some kind of an internal currency representing work-performed. Initially, though the commerce should start out small and on an individual basis. Purely one-on-one barter to see how that goes.

For example: You need some bit of programming work done for your game. You "commission" me to program it. In turn, I "commission" you to perform some other work for my game in exchange. Art, music, sfx, even programming (though it's less likely I'll need programming since I can probably do it myself).

Once we agree to the terms (three functions that do xyz in exchange for 2 32x32 non-animated sprites of creature a and b, for example), we each perform our task and exchange the results.

Oops! I poorly estimated how long it would take me to create the 3 functions. It's taking way more effort than I expected. Too bad for me. I guess I lose out a bit on this deal. I agreed to it and on my honor I deliver as promised.

Oops! The way you requested the functions was not quite what you really meant, so the functions I deliver do what you asked, but they don't quite perform the way you want. Too bad for you. I can't be accountable because you failed to properly describe what you really wanted, so I guess you lose out a bit on this deal. You agreed to it and on your honor you deliver as promised.

Assuming we are clear about our wishes and properly estimate our own abilities, those will rarely be issues. Those aside, we review each other's work and point out any problems that don't line up with the requirements we agreed upon. Once all problems are resolved, our exchange is concluded.

Eventually this would be expanded beyond just a barter system and we would be exchanging some arbitrary currency like Reputation Points. I'll give you 10 RP for 2 sprites. You give me 20 RP for 3 functions. I take some of the remaining RP earned with you and use it to purchase sound effects from someone else, and so on.

EDIT: maybe something like this already exists. I'll have to look around. If anyone is aware of some site that might operate like this, exchanging tasks instead of money, tell me about it.

sound like a good idea! well done, i cant think of anything that has someting like that, gamedev market you can earn xp, but not sure what you get for it, just a gimmick i think.:) 

The idea for a ranking system, as my idea goes, was not really about reputation but actually more like obligation, as strange as that sounds, and not just members are ranked but groups/sub-groups and entire projects themselves.  The reason for doing this is to make sure the most deserving projects rise to the top and the most capable members will be working on the most important tasks.  It's not a dick-measuring contest at all because members with high ranks would be way too busy working to sit around farting their ego in everyone's face.  It might sound elitist and possibly it even is, admittedly, but it would certainly take a lot of the "bitch-work" and drama out of everything.  That's the whole point.

Personally, anything that gets in-fighting, politics, bitchwars and drama out of game development - I'm all for it, elitist-sounding or not.  I'm beyond tired of getting involved in teams and communities like that, I just want to make games, and I don't even think it's cool! :P

@LDAsh: I can see how that would be useful, but it looks like our two ideas are solutions to two entirely different problems, so I'm sure they could both be implemented side by side.

The above model would certainly reduce drama and give momentum to the most deserving project, but I'm noticing a big reason why everyone needs help but no one is available to provide help is because everyone is, perhaps selfishly, focused on their own project, worthy or not.

As one fish in a big gamedev pond, it's statistically unlikely that my project is the worthiest project, so it probably wouldn't get worked on by the community. As soon as that was evident I think I'd probably leave the community and continue searching for alternative ways to complete my own less-than-top-notch project.

I can't speak for everone, but I suspect may other people would feel like leaving such a community as soon as it was clear it only benefits the top 1%. Obligation is easy when it's just providing an upvote, but as soon as real labor is on the line, it's a lot easier for people to chose exile versus keeping their promise with no tangible personal benefit. Both our concepts involve obligation to contribute, but when I'm obligated to complete a single task despite only getting a slightly-less-than-equivalent personal value out of it, I'm more willing to meet that obligation than if I'm obligated to complete a huge task despite getting no personal value out of it. 

I think I'm misunderstanding some of your concept: the community gives each contributor a spot in the credits, but beyond that, what motivates a contributor to work on a project they aren't the leader of? I'm not saying people don't go for that. They definitely do, but they aren't common. If that were all it took to attract most poeple to another person's project, then all the hundreds of resource requests with "I'll give you credit and even a share of the profits when the game is done" would be a lot more successful. 

I more of the thinking behind a reputation points system to use as a currency to allow developers to purchase assets that they need, or hire the artists for there need, and be rewarded/paided currency points for the work done by either artist or developer.. It would work the same as an artist needing a developer for code too. You could also use the currency points or have a reputation points to highlight how good they are at forfilling an obligations for a project need, or I suppose it's a rating system that would help determine for the searcher who they could hire based on those things, and not like a league table where the best performer is always in ya face.

there are novice artists, novice coders, pro artists, pro coders, and I would say that pro artists would be out of reach for novice Devs as they wouldn't be able to afford there work, even if the artist provided free content, it may need modify which the dev can't do, again not being able to afford a 'custom' asset. Or the risk of the inexperienced dev pulling the plug and the artwork being wasted or the artists time would be enough to put them off. There's also the pro dev that want really good art that maybe the novice artists can't provide, although it is affordable.

I think it's about someone believing in someone's idea, be it game or art, and if some of us just took the chance on each other than It could benefit all of us in some way, or not, but there must be an incentive and an end reward of some sort whatever the outcome of the art or game. I think this could help collaborative work and team projects more appealing. 

You both have a really good idea here and if you can strike a good balance and get something set up in a way then that would be great! :)

Only my opinion and thoughts by the way.

@Anti-games-dev let me say this, I am an novice pixel artist and I have no idea about your project, if you like my art, and think it will be ok for your project then I will be more than happy to do the art for your game, free of charge(providing your project is free of charge) and I will ask you to credit me for the art in your project.:) things to note though if you choose to use me as an artist, I cannot do demand and time scales, I work at my own pace and do what I can when I can.if you ok with that then drop me a message and we can go from there.:)

"I can't speak for everone, but I suspect may other people would feel like leaving such a community as soon as it was clear it only benefits the top 1%."

But that "top 1%" are projects, not individuals. I think it's exactly why such a community would not work and end up a just another messy junkyard of trolls, unless some very strict criteria and organisation is in place, and with an absolute focus on projects over individuals.  If people are only interested in working on their own projects and not willing to compromise, and not confident their project would get upvoted in some substantial way, at some time, then maybe that's saying something?  I hope they enjoy being alone as a solitary developer and watch people continually come and go, because I think that's what it means.  It's for people wanting to form solid teams and finished projects, people willing to work together and cooperate.  Alpha-rockstars need not apply.

For professional studios, you have a roster of skills and full planning, with each member ready to be productive and put the needs of the project above their own personal feelings and opinions.  Yes, money is the glue that holds it together, but I think it's much more than that.  The teams are constructed before the projects, for the projects, and the projects take priority over any member of the team.  Drama and politics can certainly also destroy professional studios, but not nearly as easily.  Projects evolve through careful planning the design and workflow, getting input from everyone at every stage, with constant prototyping and iteration.  The more indies understand and try to adopt that workflow, the higher chance they will succeed with a finished product and fleshed-out team ready for the next big project.  That is the main goal.

For indie developers, you typically find individuals starting up their own projects and thus assuming a leadership role, and instantly you find this hierarchy of command, of "founder" making demands for "their game", often without enough planning.  In this situation, someone would be extremely lucky to find a bunch of underlings to participate, which is where most indies find themselves and unwilling to compromise, even if the underlings had some money for their work.  When I work with people, I make an effort to ask for opinions, even when I know there's really no room to compromise, I still ask.  I pretty much never say "no", the closest I get is to say something like "that sounds like a good idea for another project down the road", which is always true.

With such a community that attempts to automate itself toward these kind of criteria, putting projects above individuals and keeping discourse strictly on development, people stand a much better chance of forming teams, working together in a productive and fun way, and staying together as teams long-term.  The ultimate aim is to bring the right people together to then continue on to much bigger and more ambitious projects, hopefully professionally.  What I see, and what I think is sad and often even toxic, is this rockstar-wannabe mentality (borderline dictator-envy) of people who consider themselves the "alpha", the "boss", right from the beginning, when in actuality they usually qualify as just another role with an unfinished idea.  A thousand lonely indies with a thousand separate ideas, where the vast majority will stay.  In such a community, as I imagine it, we'd naturally figure out who cuts it and who doesn't, but always with the projects as a priority.  The projects themselves are the "boss".  Individual rockstar-wannabes who believe their project is the best thing that could ever exist just wouldn't fit into such a community as they wouldn't really fit into a large professional team, like some kind of natural selection, and the community wouldn't even miss them.

I really like this conversation, I think it would be  great idea and a much needed addition to the indie community. 

What do you guys think about this:

The website will consist of panels of projects (similair to itch's opening game view layout.) these projects will be listed under pages relating to a certain genre of game. Projects will be moved closer to the top part of the page by two factors: Popularity ( the amount of people consistently adding to the project ) and Prestige ( The credibility of the people working on it ).

Projects will have a name, SHORT description, genre, popularity score, project member list, contributions list, project update log maintained by all members of the project, tags detailing the skills needed for help in the game and an optional images section at the top. The short description will help focus the project and clearly state its goal.

A users credibility will start at 0 and if the user accepts a request by a member of a project, increase the users credibility by a value determined by the credibility of the project member requesting the help. If the requesting users credibility is higher than the user who accepted the request, and the user who accepted the request successfully fulfilled the request, then a larger amount credibility is given to the user who fullilled the request. If the opposite happens and the requestee's credibility is much lower than the accepting user, reward the user with some form of points (maybe stars idk) for helping a newer/less distinguished project member. I'm hoping this system encourages a newer members to contribute to recieve more attention/contributions, and more experienced users to continue to reach out to newer users to keep them included and not isolated from the main hustle and bustle of development on the site. 

Every user would be classified as either a donut or coffee. (Just stay with me here please.) Donuts would be your run of the mill gamer who (maybe) is just interested in a project they heard about and wants to follow development. Donuts would have an option to create a "contributor" profile, add relevant skills then change profile status to "coffee" adding a section for stars, credibility and allowing the user to create and contribute to projects.

some thoughts: 

1. It doesnt have to be donuts and coffee. something else

2. I dont have any ideas on how to flag/discourage people who write bad code from contibuting without basically saying "you suck go away"

3. I dont want this to be all "I have the most points so I'm at the top 1%" I specifically wanted there to be a sort of three classes of users, basic "donut" users, active "coffee" users, and "coffee" users with alot of stars who are known to do alot of work for the community. 

4. Should "coffee" users project views be tailored to the users specific skill set? ( for example if dev is skilled in pixel art and c#, projects with those tags are shown first ) or maybe this should be a seperate page?

5 Maybe projects should have to set a estimated timer, and when the timer expires the project is listed as dead or something.

6. Basically: anon or basic user "donut" --> if wants to contribute or wants help with project becomes "coffee" ---> if requesting help posts project that may or may not recieve alot of attention. ---> may contribute to other projects in order to increase discoveribility of own project.

Coffee and donuts, very funny. :)  I like it.  It sounds so elitist but both people and projects need to be distinguished and categorised.  It requires a lot of careful thought and more planning, very careful planning, but I believe it's the right direction to go.  I also think it's a great idea to focus on those with greater skills and experience to help those with less, but not none.  I don't think it should go down the road of yet another resource/tutorial/"accelerator" type of thing, but be totally focused on active developers involved in active projects, already having an idea of what they're doing and capable, and _wanting_ to work in a bigger team.  Again, the projects are the kings, not the people.  It should be something primarily for people who can _actively_ be involved in game development, and segregated between "talkers" and "doers".  

The more I think about it, the more I'm interested in starting it up, but I can't do it alone.  If anyone has thoughts about this, I'd really love to hear it and collaborate.  I have art skills/resource and a little money to throw at it, if we can get enough people together to make a start.  I'd be willing to drop everything and focus 100% on this.

@LDAsh

so its open to anyone who is prepared to do code for a project?  someone is assigned to do ask task?

im trying to picture it in my head:

Project: Man walks on moon.

Code needed: Movement engine, Inventory

Assets: Pixel art (orthographic)

offers: Coder 1, Coder 2, Coder 3, Coder 4, Artist 1, Artist 2, Artist 3.

assigned; Coder 1 (movement engine), Coder 2 (Inventory), Artist 3.

think i have misunder stood what you are trying to do.

I think you misunderstood.  The project and thus its workflow comes first.  If it's clearly exploititive toward either programmers or artists, then we must trust the community and its sensibilities to decide if its a worthwhile endeavour or not, if it's unbalanced or not. Some projects may be code-heavy or art-heavy but we must trust the democracy of the community to decide if it's worthy or not.  This is something that needs much deeper discussion, along with many other aspects (IP, quality-control, legal concerns, etc.), but with these aspects pre-established, then it won't matter because the only thing that matters is to get the top project(s) complete and then move on to the next, and get better and better.

hmmm, so by that you mean there is already a 'Team' put together waiting to develop an idea, which is put to a community vote, discussion and if it deemed worthy for development it gets the go ahead and that project becomes priority for the 'team' to develop? (after the last project has been completed.)

Ah, now I'm starting to see this better. It isn't just the one top project that gets attention, it's a scale of multiple projects, and people can choose to join the one they like? Though they would tend to join the top ranking projects because they have the best organization and momentum. 

"Welcome to Pendant. The other side of indie-pendant game development."

"If people are only interested in working on their own projects and not willing to compromise, and not confident their project would get upvoted in some substantial way, at some time, then maybe that's saying something?"

Hmm... yes I think it's saying we emphasise that these projects ARE your project. "Want to make a game? Have some ideas? Come join! Everyone gets to give input. Make this game project your own!" It will be true that everyone gives input, and that input isn't simply dismissed. It's weighed and discussed by the community and given a lower or higher priority democratically. I still think every project needs a project-leader, but that leader would be selected by vote probably, and the responsibilities of the leader do NOT include unilaterally making demands for "my game". Rockstars welcome... just not the kind that can't compromize or listen. Everyone gets to be a rockstar game creator.

I'm sure some projects may fill up with all the members they can handle and possibly won't be able to accept many new members, but that won't be the only project available.

How are people going to be ranked? I don't mean "what are the ranks going to be". I mean what determines a person's rank? Kicknbrit's concept of viral credibility seem interesting, but I feel like it needs a balancing factor. Some additional mechanic to go with it to counteract potential nepotism. Well, not quite nepotism, but it feels like it could reward people for seeking out all the easy tasks as long as they're requested by the most credible people.

Assume I'm highly credible. I request one sprite 32x32 pixels non-animated. I also request concept art for a cutscene backdrop 1024x768, with a bit of animated lightning flashing in a storm in the background of the scene. Everyone will jump on the sprite and pay no attention to the backdrop because the sprite is a way easier task, but grants the same amount of Credibility Points when completed. A bidding system perhaps? Something that would allow the community to quickly negotiate the difficulty vs reward for completing tasks. The community will tend to ignore tasks if the reward is not high enough to account for the difficulty of the task, prompting requestors to evaluate how important that task is to them. If they really need it, they'll probably raise the reward for that task a little until the "free market" decides the reward is sufficient.

Perhaps this is where the hybrid comes in. People with high credibility probably have high credibility because they put in a lot of work to one or many projects, earning those credibility points. Now they are in a position to spend those credibility points in exhange for tasks being completed. 

The people with the most credibility and upvotes would have the most currency to spend toward the implementation of the upvoted concepts they are championing. Yes, no, yes?

If im honest im completely lost by all this now, I have conflicted views as im not sure what the actual Focus is or its intention to do. A way to bring novice and pro's together in a way that both can benefit from thier influences or a place for the best of the best to get together and make games quickly.

sorry , im tired, il have a read of it later when its spoken about a bit more and i can get me head around it, mines spinning.:)

I think that is a good idea.

We all know that the most successful coding site is stack overflow, and that basically works as you describe, if you add in bounties. Is that where you are going with this?

Medicine storm you have a very interesting point. While I think that projects should remain personal and only on a hire for help basis, you make an extremely valid point about the lack of value differentiation between tasks. I also like your solution, it sounds like you intend to swap the credibility system with a virtual currency based system that players earn/spend purchasing and creating assets. I like it! But I have two concerns.

1. Would a currency based system on a server backend be safe, and does anyone has the faintest idea how to implement that lol.

2. This concept seems to be teetering on the edge of becoming a seemingly normal freelance website, but with a rather inefficient/counterproductive system. (freelance work for freelancework seems costly and a huge timesink for something that could be much more effectively worked for with a regular day job.) I just feel like adding currenncy would take the "team" experience out of the scenario and make the projects seem more of a job than a community hub. Due to this I feel like the website would attract mostly people who are serious about there own game, but lack the $$ to finish, and turn away more established devs in favor of more proffessional sites for freelance work.  My original idea is flexible enough cater to a more proffessional audience because it is not so serious and work oriented, but it could also be a resource for developers with little to no budget. But the problem you pointed out still stands. There is no way to encourage people to do bigger jobs instead of small ones for quick credibility...... ):

Any ideas? 

 p.s. sorry for grammar and run-on sentences I have been up for 3 days straight

My take on the concept was similair but this site would be focused on many diffrent skill sets actively contributing to player initiated indie game development projects. And also a place interested gamers could go to get development updates on games they are waiting on potentially.

Hrm... What about a priority system? Like each project will start with a max of 3 diffrent jobs that each get diffrent priorities: 

Easy - low cred gain

Medium - medium cred gain

Hard - high cred gain

All jobs must be finished in order to make another 1 - 3 jobs (maybe)

Also if project only has 1 or 2 jobs then the max reward tier matches the number of jobs available.

LDash I understand what you are getting at but don't you think having a singular project or even just a 

'community voted' project would kind of disinclude a ton of people. Also If we did that how would we motivate people to work on a certain project. I think to motivate a collaborative community of contributors we need to give everyone a peice of the pie instead of those whos project have been 'voted in'.

MMMMMMNNNNNnnnnnnn PIE.  

sorry guys

Concern 1: That is a good point. Less-than-reputable individuals would try to game the system or hack it to give themselves unearned points. However, the points have no real value outside this community so the only motivation for doing so would be to gain an advantage in getting game assets created for themselves. The same motivation is present with a purely credibility or reputation based system where the highest ranked developers get the most influence over who joins their team and how much resources are dedicated to "their" project. I think there is a bit less of a selfish motivation on the project side since no single person is trying to get a project completed, but instead many people who all agree and upvote the project. Either way, hardening the system against abuse is a good idea.

Concern 2: Also a good point. This is would be close to Just Another Freelance Website. Though I think a place where you can trade freelance work for freelance work definitely solves one of the problems a lot of people run into with their projects: Most people wanting to make a game have three things: 1) A specialized talent that is integral for creating a game, but also not sufficient for creating the entire game. 2) A desire for the other components needed to make their game. 3) Insufficient capital to obtain #2 via freelance requests. 

Allowing each person to exchange #1 for #2 allows people to disregard #3. I suck at art, but I'm a wizard at code. Someone is a beautiful artist, but can't really code. Some game making software helps in this regard, but often that software lacks the ability to implement the kind of features the creator really wants in their game. I code for the artists game, they draw for my game. We both get the parts we want (hopefully) regardless of not having the money for the assets. Maybe this is just Freelance work with extra steps; if all these people had a truly valuable talent (#1) they could do freelance work, earn money, and hire freelance work for the parts they need. 

I think that illustrates the team aspect should always be integral. Perhaps these exchanges are occurring within a team, within a project. These teammates are already on-board to accomplish the same goal, but this would give weight to team contributions. I've had people join my project so they could help out only to find they weren't pulling their weight. One artist was doing 90% of the work, but only getting 1/5th of the total credit on a 5-artist team. The credits page lists all 5 artists as if they contributed the same amount of effort. Maybe an internal exchange system or point system within a project would help motivate all members to put in the effort. Each team member gets a visible reward/feedback for their contributions and the priority of tasks is a bit more free. If there is a high-priority coding task (lots of points for completion) I would be motivated to take it on, but if it looks like something I really REALLY don't want to do, I'm free not to. I can pick a lower reward task instead and leave that one to another coder. 

It also helps people understand the effort required by a task they may not be familiar with. Someone on the team says "we'll need monster AI" so they request a very simple task "create advanced monster AI that can outsmart 80% of players" and offer 3 points for it. Huh, thats weird. Why isn't anyone taking this task? It's an easy 3 points. Maybe it isn't as simple a task as I thought it was. We either need to give it a higher priority (more points), or tone it down (make it a simpler request)."

What do you think?

Well we can both agree on #1, #2 I think we honestly just have diffrent final ideas for the site. It seems like your idea is a collaborative community project where a task is voted in by the community, where as mine is a series of projects that will recieve attention by anyone interested. I seems like you have any one contributing to the project counted as a team member helping build a collaborative project, where as I have a project originally started by team member(s) then requests are posted by the team and other users can contribute solutions to them.

@Kicknbrit yeah, im in agreement with you on that, not that i disagree with @medicinestorms idea, but they both seem to cater to different needs, im at a view an idea gives the potential to 'unite' 'novices' and 'pros' together regardless of the project, where all are rewarded with incentives of some sort  that can then be used to get other sources like a currency system that doesnt involve money. which benefit artist and coder, novice or pro. i cant help thinking that a voted project by a community could have a negative effect somewhere, or that a chosen coder/artist for the project based on a ranking system, could be isolating? i dont know, just my thoughts really, not ment to be negative, just discussion.:)

I've realized my idea is less relevant overall to the main idea. What i propose might be useful for solving a problem with difficult task balancing, but that problem doesn't even exist yet. Let's focus more on kicknbrits and LDAshs concepts. 

So, start to finish, how do you see a projects life cycle going in such a system? I want to understand how it might work.

I don't think your idea is less relevant at all, that's not what I ment, sorry, I think each idea here has a part to play with the main idea, Which I am unsure off, I thought it was about having something that allowed developers to get a team together to for fill thier project needs if they are enxperianced or could not afford to pay for that experiance, and or encourage members of the community to get involved and help out, with the same thing for artists as well. A system that benefits both which. That when a request comes in then it can be at least considered by the community of artists and coders and not dismissed for other reasons, like Being more interested in my own project to really care about the ones i have committed to, to much annoyance to one of the team.

am I chatting rubbish here?

Definantly not chatting rubbish lol. Medicine storm, I see either a single or group of users starting a project, subbmitting it to the site with the proper info, It appears on a new genre called "Recently Started Projects" or something. and also in its correct spot inside its respective genre page. Im thinking the "correct spot" is just determined by: CreditScore = ProjectMembersCredit * ProjectMemberCount. Also with the way this is going, I feel like projects that have been posted for long enough still might not get enough exposure due to high competition , so maybe deliver 4 - 5 projects to every "coffee" player catered to theyre listed skills every day?

"...I think it's saying we emphasise that these projects ARE your project."
MedicineStorm, I never said that...  Infact I can be certain the top-voted projects wouldn't be "mine", they would be new and born from open discussion among developers and reached by a consensus, I imagine.  The moment someone starts throwing a tantrum and screaming "but meee mine mine meee!!!" = out.  This is known as "awesome-to-asshole ratio", I think. :P

 = Doers over talkers, possible over impossible, compromising over stubborn, teamwork over rockstar-alpha-wannabes.  Cool talented people in and together, trolling obnoxious ranters alone and out.

...if someone wants to look down at that and call it elitist and draw all kinds of suspicions over it (things never actually said), then that's fine, no need to get involved.

@Chasersgaming, @kicknbrit: Haha! Yes I know you weren't meaning that harshly. I really do think my concept is better suited for a later iteration, though.

@LDAsh: Agreed. I don't mean people should assume possession of projects. I just think it might encourage a lot of participation when each member feels invested in the project. Not that each member feels they are the sole owner of the project and can dictate terms, but that each member feels the project is co-owned by all team members where each individual's input is at least considered if not valued. They aren't working on some other guy's project. They are working on their own project along with all their teammates. :) Same as what you're saying, but with emphasis on community ownership... Which I guess is what you were already proposing.

I think that's where the differences are.

1) being an individual person/team looking or needed art/code for THIER OWN project.

needs posted out to 'tendor' for those particular persons to come forward and for fill a request.

this project is more individual driven then a collaborative endeavour, but that doesn't mean they can't teach or learn from each other in that process. The elements are the importantance, not so much the project. 

2) a group of individuals comming together to team up to complete a task/project voted for by a community vote. An OPEN PROJECT.

With the community deciding a game idea is worth doing, a team comes together and develops a game with no 'team leader' at the helm, the project evolves through collaborative discussion within itself (and community?) with the emphasis of getting the job done in a professional no nonsense manner.

I'm willing to help however i would like to inform you that i'm currently working on 3 games so time may be a little thin for me. However if all you need is 2d art i can provide some. I've been making pixel art for 6 years now and i like to think i'm pretty good at it. (see my page for examples). i'm not worrying about money especially if you want a partner and not an employee. if you are interested P.M me. I'm interested to see what you have in mind

:)

okay then. I think chasers gaming was spot on with the two types of concepts we have. So I have a suggestion. Everyone who likes idea 1 or 2 say so. Then we can get a feel of what this group wants in terms of the final idea. Also, does anyone have PHP, HTML or any web design/server experience?

I work with mainly lua and html. With some script kiddie-ish experience in php, C# and Python. 

And whoever does would you be willing to work on a continued project? Thanks.

So far we've outlined the concepts across several comments. I am not sure I understand the whole concept. Would anyone be able to outline the primary elements of each all in one spot?

I have HTML, PHP, C#, and VB.NET expertise. I have done some webhosting, but the server wasn't mine, I just access the server and administrate it. I have very little server hardware experience.

@kicknbrit not sure I covered all of it, was really just my summary of things.:)

I have an idea and a concept with regards to some of the comments here, obviously my idea won't cover all and may go in a different direction, but it's an idea non the less. I will draw something up and write about it and PM you guys for you to have a look at it and consider/take what you want from it, evolve, make it better etc. I think we have taken up this members post enough.

i don't have any experiance really with any set up or code with anything other than gamemaker, and that is novice at best,same as my artwork.but if I can help with anything should anything come to pass I'd try and be supportive as I can be.:)

My only advice, if you guys are going to spend time planning something out - think top-down with rules/guidelines/automation that ensures projects come first, trolls and time-wasters get shoved out, and dreams are separated from reality.  Everything as professional and mature as possible. Also, careful not to make it an ego-fest, like I said before, it's not so much about reputation as it is about how functional someone actually is.  Working on a game project is not cool, it's everyone, but having completed one or more that people actually play, kinda is, a little, I guess.

An example of a rule/guideline is something like - when pitching ideas for game projects, there must be a fairly substantial criteria for even being allowed to pitch.  It doesn't need a title or names or anything, but it needs to be unique and have something to see or even play, covering core mechanics in great detail.  Any pitches that don't meet the criteria should not even be considered, I think.  Obviously there will be moderators calling the shots, but these moderators need a carefully planned list of guidelines to reference, to decide if a pitch goes into the "serious pile" for voting, or the junkyard of dreams.

Without such rules and criteria, I see it being a waste of time and if it does go anywhere, it will just end up infested and become toxic.

Let me put my idea here a little more concretely:

[project1] [project2] [project3] [project4] [project5] [project6]

[project7] [project8] [project 8] [project9] [project10] [project11] [project12] 

each project consists of a picture posted under a project name with a popularity stat under each. (maybe not a stat becuase that might ruin peoples chances, but definantly a hiddden one.) Interested people can click the project and be taken into a main screenshot of the game along with a developers log and a help request section. 

There will be 6-8 genre sections, maybe from a  slide down or left to right sliding menu. In addition, there will be a recently released projects section. and a FAQ , about us section etc. 

Site forums would be a must in this project. Also, a way to attach files to a project to only be shared by members of the project too.

A user control panel and a settings section, and thats about it....

Actually since reading those posts, my idea is not really something your looking for at all, so there's no point me waving in. It's seems like a 'greenlight' system for game development is what your sort of after. Kickstarter or indiegogo could provide something like this, instead of funding, your looking for just votes.pitching the game idea to a public vote, and it's requirements for a team are 'tendered' too. This game sounds good, +1 vote, this game looks popular and I can do what they are asking programming wise, +1 vote and an offer for coding, my art style would suit what there looking for for this game, +1 vote and an offer for art. Each tendered offers are then selected by the voters, and your good to go.:)

If your talking to me, there is no vote system or anything. A user publishes a project, and anyone that wants to help can help.

Oh yes, I see that now, argh, it's coz I'm scrolling up and down, up and down, trying to read it all and gather my thoughts on what I've read, trouble is I can't remember who's saying what, haha.:)

i know one thing, my thoughts are against the idea of public voting on a game idea. But that's just me.

Then how would it be any different from what already exists?  There's no point in reinventing the wheel.