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This article was intended for an online magazine that's been suspended but I decided to post it anyway. Disclaimer: These are the views of the author and are not necessarily the views of GDU, RMU or it's staff. Why will no one join me? Any one who has started working with any game engine to build a game for the first time has thought to themselves: “Hey, why don’t I get a team together to help me work on this project?†And it seems like a reasonable thing to ask. I mean you already know that games require many resources to be completed and you can’t be expected to know how to do all of them can you? No, not every one is good at coding, rendering, pixel art, mapping or writing. So why not ask people who are much more knowledgeable to help you out with your project. Your idea is awesome and you’re sure every one will love it. So you Google the engine you’re using and find a nice community of independent game makers like yourself and sign up. You rush over to the Recruitment forums because every one needs help once in a while, and post your first topic: Insert Game Title Recruiting! With a nifty description about the game and maybe a few lines of the initial concept you’ve been toying with for the last three days. Now it’s been 3 months, you’ve been waiting for people to join your team to get the game started but you notice no one has messaged you back. You look to see that a few people have made comments asking for more details or just spamming your thread with slander. What happened? Why were these people uncooperative or even hostile to your game idea? Well maybe they’re just mean on this website so you’ve decided to move on and try the next big forum that Google says supports your game engine. Once again you post your Recruitment thread and after about 2 weeks you get the same messages. Why is this happening? Is it just you? You go down the list and look at the other threads and notice a pattern. No one with less than 500 posts on the forums is even looked at seriously. Sure there is a great team of people working on a game with tons of awesome scripts, systems and they even have 50 screenshots of their progress. But you notice that each member has been on the forum for years. What’s up with that? Why them and not you? Now I’m here to explain to you why. It’ll be painful to hear but it’s the honest truth: Nobody Cares! That’s it. No one on these sites really cares about your great game idea. And to be honest, why should they? You just showed up out of the blue and posted a two paragraph summery of what your game is about and asked for help. Sure your idea might be awesome to you, but on these sites we’ve seen them a million times. Every day people post their ideas on the forums and are expecting to make a team for their game. Now I’m not saying that your game isn’t worth making, of course it is. But it’s you who will have to make it. I know it doesn’t seem fair that you’ll have to learn every aspect of game making in order to do what you want but that’s life. You haven’t proven to any one on the forum that you’re worth taking a risk to help in such a demanding way. And yes it is demanding. Making a game can take you any where from 500-3,000 hours of work or more. So you better be ready to put in the hours. Be prepared to prove yourself to the community that you’re not just some half wit wanting to remake your favorite game. When people see that you’ve actually made an effort by yourself, that you’ve got something on the go and won’t just abandon it because your life got to complicated or finals drained you, they will be open to helping you out. Now if you’re having trouble with smaller aspects of the game, like a script won’t work or you don’t know how to do a certain action, feel more than welcome to ask for help. On an individual basis these forums are havens for newcomers. People are more than willing to give up 20-30 minutes to give a little advice or help, but don’t expect a long term commitment. It’s up to you to make your game, not the game making communities. Once you’ve been on the forums for a while and know how to get around the engine people will be much more willing to help you out on a more long term basis. So keep at it, don’t get discouraged by set backs and ask for help when you need it, but be ready to do the work. And never forget to thank the people helping you out!