Special page for offering/recruiting help and assistance?

[Renal Shutdown]

In my experience, #ags is the best place to get help in any aspect of a game

That's where I'd go for help.  It's more of a community for me than the forums, since it's real time.  It's like friends and pen pals.  The friends are there, whilst the pen pals are just an interesting distraction at random intervals.  That said, I can understand some people's aversion to chat rooms, one person from one ATC i was in, didn't believe in chat rooms, with various reasons.  Time issues also don't help, with people being able to log on at only specific times.

A project should still be about working with people you get along with, tho.  You wouldn't enjoy a standard job where everyone else is an ass, why would you with something you actually cared about?  I don't think a "help wanted" sign is going to produce the same results as a knowing the person, or at least, knowing of the person first.

Vince/Ivy.  Congratulations.  It's nice to see something good's come out of it.

[Steel Drummer]

My idea for an improved Help Us page would be to have anyone that wants help fill in a form like this:
###
Project Name: [=============]

Short description: [==========]

Need help with:
[ x ] Play-testing
[ x ] Voice acting
[ x ] Music
[ x ] Backgrounds
[ x ] Character art
[ x ] Animation
[ x ] Proof reading
[ x ] Scripting
[ x ] Story design
[ x ] Web design
[ x ] Translating

Long description:
_______________
|Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  |
|Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  |
|Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  |
|Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  |
|_______________|
###

People that wanted to help out would fill in another form selecting what topics they could help in and any other extra comments, and the project poster would get a mail notification about it. People could also post comments about said project + rating which would help any moderators decide whether a project should be deleted or not.

People could browse through all the projects need help like a forum, being able to filter by topics to help with or rating and such.
I might actually code this if anyone thinks this is a good idea.

Sounds good. I wonder if they'll ever put any of these ideas into action...

[Layabout]

I've had a few people ask me for help. I've never posted an help offered thing in the thread. If I know them, and I have some time, I might help them. If not, then no way.

[The Ivy]

I'll just point out that after seeing The Ivy's post in the recruiting thread about needing someone to program Spooks, I volunteered and everything worked out marvelously well even though we'd never spoken previously.

And now I'm going through the code one line at a time to try to absorb some scripting knowledge from it.  :-,

I think ProgZmax's idea is a good one, though.  Also, Indicating the game's progress like in the GIP (Story 30%, Music, 70% etc.) might help people judge if it's a serious project or not.

[SupSuper]

What I think many people fail to realize, is that not everyone happens to know people who can help out in their projects. For example, my main problem has only been finding artists. Even if I know over 50 people online, and even if some of them are artists, none of them could help me out if I made an adventure game. Because, not only do you need to find someone who can draw, animate, colour, etc, but they also gotta be able to make it in a computer, and make it fit in a game.

Most artists I know can be good, even very good, but most of them can only draw on pencil and paper. Even those who can draw on a computer, it still takes a lot to make the art actually fit into a game. Plus, relying on one artist to do all the artwork can be troublesome, although having multiple isn't much better since everyone has their own style, their own techniques, use different programs, etc. Plus some artists are only good at this, others are only good at that, some can't animate, etc.

In the end, anyone that wants to start their own project usually ends up stuck with all the tasks. Writing, scripting, drawing, animating, etc. Nobody can do all that by themselves, and it takes a lot of effort to learn how to do other stuff when your talent relies somewhere else, so we have to rely on finding other people (as bad as it sounds) "to do it for us". Most of you seem to already know people that can help you out. Well, I (and probably many others) don't. We don't pick our friends, we don't guess what they're good at, and we're certainly not gonna go around trying to make friends with people merely to make use of their skills.

So, for many of us, all we got left is going around on forums looking for help, asking complete strangers to help out if they want, no matter how ridiculous that sounds, or risk just dumping all our projects.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think the main thing you have to get used to if you're going to enlist people to help you on your project *for free is compromise.  Be willing to compromise on style, certain story elements, etc, so the members feel as though their input is valuable.  This will help keep them interested in the project. 


*obviously if you are paying then you can have things the way you want them, just like Burger King.

[Radiant]

So, for many of us, all we got left is going around on forums looking for help, asking complete strangers to help out if they want, no matter how ridiculous that sounds, or risk just dumping all our projects.

That is true, but asking people in the forum really isn't guaranteed to help at all. The problem isn't really that the forum system is lacking (although I rather like your suggested system above), the problem is that everyone good enough to be on your team is also good enough to be on a dozen other teams and likely already busy with something, or working on his own project.

[Vince Twelve]

I'll just point out that after seeing The Ivy's post in the recruiting thread about needing someone to program Spooks, I volunteered and everything worked out marvelously well even though we'd never spoken previously.

And now I'm going through the code one line at a time to try to absorb some scripting knowledge from it.  :-,

In that case, I really should have commented the code instead of cowboy coding...  sorry.  Ask me any questions you have!

[Dave Gilbert]

I've seen lots of gamer forums that include a seperate "Jobs offered/Jobs wanted" area, where people can post threads about their project or offer their services.  A forum section dedicated to it would work much better than a single thread, and more people would read it.

[raimo]

Just a few words about this whole recruiting business...

I think many people fail to realise that when you're making an adventure game the most laborous part in most cases are definitely the graphics, especially when you're using a nice tool such as AGS and don't need to code the engine from scratch. This is why asking "I've got a really cool idea for a game and I can do everything but the graphics. Could you help me out with that?" is basically the same as expecting another person to do your whole game for you. Sure you can ask for help with animations if you're only good at drawing backgrounds or something like that, but hoping someone else will do ALL the graphics for you will get you nowhere. You have to be ready to make the most of the game on your own, otherwise it might be difficult to get any help at all.

If you really have absolutely no idea how to draw anything, you should rather try to find someone who needs help with the things you can do or maybe team up with other people and then start thinking about what kind of a game you'd all like to make instead of starting your own production and trying to recruit people to make it for you, for free.

EDIT:
Oh yeah, and I totally agree with Helm

[HillBilly]

I've seen lots of gamer forums that include a seperate "Jobs offered/Jobs wanted" area, where people can post threads about their project or offer their services.  A forum section dedicated to it would work much better than a single thread, and more people would read it.

I vote this, even if it could encourage eager beginners to start posting team-requests the minute they join.

[Dave Gilbert]

I vote this, even if it could encourage eager beginners to start posting team-requests the minute they join.

True, but they'll do that ANYWAY.  At least this way they'll be shoved off to a place we can ignore them if we want.

Also, those other forums have very strict rules for posts.  You need to have a concrete idea, demonstrate what the game will be like, show what other work you've done, etc.  Whoever moderates the forum could make sure those rules are followed.

[MrColossal]

Why not just combine help requests into the GiP forum if you're going to have that many rules?

Also, has the question "does this even work?" been answered yet? You can have the most perfect system for getting people to ask for help but if no one is offering help [I'm seeing what, 4 success stories out of 13 pages for the help thread?] than it still won't work.

[Dave Gilbert]

It's not surprising that the help thread has few success stories, because it's a pretty poor system. Does anyone actually look at the help thread?  I certainly have no desire to wade through pages of posts, looking for a project that might strike my fancy. 

It's far easier, and a lot more practical, to scan one page of threads; each with individual titles.  If you see "composer needed for fantasy RPG" or "Dialog writer for space adventure", you immediately know if its something you'd be able to do or not.

Two good examples of this in action:

Gamedev forums

Gamingw forum

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I look at the help thread occasionally, though I'm usually too busy working on projects of my own to have time for anyone elses.  I wouldn't be discouraged by a few rejections, though, there have been projects I signed on for because the story really appealed to me and I was given a level of creative control.  Asking someone to help with your game and then telling them what to do with zero interest in their input is a sure way to wreck development before it even starts. 

If you are willing to compromise on the design of your game and the story is interesting enough, you will have no problem finding team members.  Getting people to enlist is at least 80% sales pitch.  If you can't pitch a good idea and make people feel like they'll have a good time working on the game then you might as well just work on it yourself.  A separate forum will not improve this.

[Radiant]

Also, has the question "does this even work?" been answered yet? You can have the most perfect system for getting people to ask for help but if no one is offering help than it still won't work.

I think the OYS system would work rather better (only it would help if it were sortable by skill as well as by date, and if people would edit/remove their posts if they no longer have time to help)

[Ali]

I vote this, even if it could encourage eager beginners to start posting team-requests the minute they join.

True, but they'll do that ANYWAY.Ã,  At least this way they'll be shoved off to a place we can ignore them if we want.

Also, those other forums have very strict rules for posts.Ã,  You need to have a concrete idea, demonstrate what the game will be like, show what other work you've done, etc.Ã,  Whoever moderates the forum could make sure those rules are followed.

To begin with the forum will fill up with posts from people wanting others to make them "100 bgs in the style of DOTT, but better!" After that I think people will begin to realise that more modest requests will get a better response. I think we'd start to see posts asking for three or four backgrounds or one character sprite.

I think a Jobs Wanted/Offered would be good for new members of the community and the community as a whole.

[zabnat]

I was just thinking about a new project and then was thinking that when/if I finish it maybe I would like to have it translated, proofread and tested. So I head over the OYS thread just to see how many potential people there would be for forementioned jobs. I though it was pretty hard to dig those people from the thread and had an idea that since we have those help offered icons, why wouldn't it be possible to search using them. So I was thinking of starting a topic about it and by searching the forums I found it has been discussed before. Atleast in this thread I'm posting now and in this thread. So I didn't feel the need to start a new thread.

So obviously this kind of a search function would be useful. So has there been any progress in this topic?
I think this thread has some pretty good suggestions. I think for recruiting a dedicated forum section would be good, but for OYS I would prefer a searchable database. This could be made so, that there would be a dedicated forum section for OYS and offered services would be in the thread title as keywords. This way it would be possible to search based on skill as it is possible to search a specified forum from thread titles only.

Why not just post a help request in you gip thread or in recruit thread you say?
Well, I would like to sort out people according their help offers. Some peoples offers seem more assuring than others. If I want some playtesters I would like some people who really playtest the game not just a bunch of people who want to play the game in advance

[LimpingFish]

I read the first few posts in this thread before I noticed the date.

Regardless, seeing as it's here now, I may as well offer my opinion.

I don't read the RAT thread; in fact I don't think I have ever given it more than a cursory glance. The concept seems to be flawed, not only in it's ability to keep track of various posts, but also in that it seems to be ninety percent "Help Wanted" and ten percent "I Want to Help!"

Why not simply have an "Offer Your Services" notice board type deal, one that people seeking help could then peruse, rather than reams of ignored "PLZ HLP!1!" posts?

I realize we already have a system of icons under our avatars, but these are apparently quite easy to overlook.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Funnily enough, when I was available for scripting, I often checked out the RAT thread.

I like the notice board. And I agree with Fish - it's too hard to overlook, and REAL hard to look for, the icons.

Suggestion -

OFFER HELP BOARD.

A thread for each specialty - scripting, writing, etc. A post per person, each person describes what he/she can do in that area, the expertise, etc. Examples of what the person can do not mandatory but highly reccomended.

If extra-neatness is required, then it can just be one post in which all the people and their abilities are listed (still in a "Writing" thread, "Scripting" thread etc. division). Then, I don't know, people can post about their experiences with person X (or person X can post and say "I'm not available for this at the moment, sorry), and a moderator, or someone else who could be in charge of the thread/post, would delete that post and add the information in the main post.

I probably got a bit convoluted here. But ah well.