You're here why..?

Hey there, forum.

I have a hypothesis. I have made an observation, and I believe I've come to a conclusion.

My scientific conclusion is that from the people here, most want to make money. With gamedesign. Or related products.

That's not news, of course. The three biggest groups, I'd reckon, have always been:

1) the dreamers
- who have their own project in mind and work on it, no matter how hopeless that pursuit turns out to be.
2) the money-makers
- people who want to use their acquired skills to make some money with it, and perhaps helping out projects they find interesting - not necessarily for free.
3) the lost children
- people who may or may not have worked with Acknex before, and who haven't really done anything in who knows how long that there is a large percentage of users who joined this forum after they stopped working on Acknex - usually not stopping them from commenting on their work. Hey, they earnt it, right!?

Recently, it seems that this forum shifts closer to 2.
Is that so? Am I making things up?


I'm not really judging here. Especially not the individual who decides on that - it's a perfectly sensible choice that totally makes sense (it's also a bit boring, to be honest. OH SNAP I JUDGED).

Where do you stand, and why?


A quick look in "Jobs whatever" shows that Coders are most willing to work/help out for free, whereas animators and model designers usually want money. Level designers are somewhere inbetween, and the rest doesn't seem to occur regular enough to warrant such an observation.

So, you modellers. Why's that, huh? We coders not good enough to work with for ya? You don't wanna play with the geeky kids, sitting all alone at the table at lunch time? You just want their money, not their friendship!?
In other words, I want people to help me out for free.


Jump directly to the poll.

Last sentence says it all And hey, I really want someone to help me out for free

Edit: I think I'm in group #1 ^^

I fall squarely in the number three range. The reason I haven't left this place already is because there's too much drama not to participate in.

Hm yes it seems as if there are not many people around here anymore that actually develop their game - except Harry Potter .
I guess I'm 95% 1) and 5% 2).

I am currently #1, however in the past I have been 2, but I have also just been 3 if anything interesting besides games were on this forum.

But alas a note to the original poster; why are YOU here except for being so judgemental(jk) and trying to get free models?

I'd say I'm a number 2. I seem to be getting somewhere with my game. I'm also much less helpful in the forums than I used to be, except where I feel someone is particularly neglected, or if the topic of the question is of particular interest to me.

It seems to me that a poll would be well-suited for this kind of question... except then one might be inclined to vote and not elaborate.

EDIT: Wait! 1. I mean, I aim to make money with my work, and I do (a little bit). But it's mainly my own game I'm working on. So 1... but it's not hopeless, and it's not my dream game -- just a warm-up. And it's supposed to make some money. So 2. 1 and 2. let's just go with that.

I feel like I don't understand the question properly

#1 and most of the time i go through with it. that being sad, i am not happy with my games. but that will change^^

2011? 99% #2, 1% #1
2012? 75% #1, %25 #2, but shh, that is a secret

No, I'm not the only one who develops a game (as far as I can remember, also Superku is developing a game?! ).
But my project is probably the oldest game project here. A never ending story.

So I would say, I am 120% number 1 - a dreamer.
But I hope, I'm a 'realistic' dreamer who can finish the project once a day. And then I will change to number 2 and hope to become a rich man.

What I find great 1st of all is that it's only coders who have posted on this.

I've never been able to find a free artist and am now paying for one so see myself more in the #1 and will continue along this route until something is released (which is now finally back on track). After which I'll probably be moving to another engine which offers additional platforms.

I would love to see a collaboration of artists and programmers on this forum work together to get one project released but that'll never happen because that's not on your list of options

I'm counting to #1....the dreamer gang

Besides small projects just for my kids (like a simple horsefarm) , I have nothing to release.

The USK here in germany is crazy.

I'm pretty much in the #3 now, even though I work with gamestudio whenever I get free time from grinding in Aion, work or dA stuff. I work at a game studio at the moment, so my game-vein gets dried out every day, except the weekends.

@HeelX
I think the % of #1's is higher than it seems, more likely to be
#1 30%
#2 50%
#3 20%

I went full-cycle in the past 12 years of using Gamestudio

Came to the forum for 1.
Been here for ages trying to achieve 2 (in the end, I made some money, not the amount I would've liked though :P).
And am now in phase 3, as I moved into making iOS games using Unity, but feel connected with the people here and my roots of game development.

I thought you worked for killzone, the million seller?

In general or in my case?

100% #1 since i played the king-kong Q-basic game on the PC of my grandfather.

Error014, plz make a real poll, it would be very interesting to see the fractions summarized, if more ppl read this :-)

i liked it a lot to do various experiments with gamestudio. just for fun so i don't think that makes me much of a dreamer.

for money i mostly worked on visualization und simulation projects. for me it was as much fun as working on games but it was much easier to get payed well.

i guess now i am #3 but i am not sure since that point is written a bit confusingly.

With the gorillas throwing yellow bananabombs?

I'm #1.

In general. If you were talking about yourself: sorry I misunderstood D:

Hmm...

I'm 5% #1, 10% #2 and 85% #3 atm

exactly!
And the snake :-D

I'm here because of the girls.

That's group #1 Sid

Oh, I see. I wasn't quite sure what was covered by "projects".

In your case, the key word is "dreamer"

Don't be so mean, I have feelings too

That said, I'm probably more 2.

As to the modeler vs programer...I've done both commercially and for free....it doesn't take long to write code to accomplish a single task.. especially if you've done it before. Art on the other hand takes time to do everything bcs 1 misstep or for forgotten area in previous pipeline steps could result in a lot of lost time. Detailing takes time and have you ever tried finding proper import/export tools for random tool x?

What is: 'I am too lazy switch at the moment'?

So most likely 50% #2 or 30% #1 20% #3

Eigentlich eher um was zu lernen und coole Projekte zu sehen als so nichtssagende Threads zu sehen -.-

Hmmm. I'm afraid you're incorrect.

Actually, I don't know what you said, but this thread has been in English thus far, so I'm going to assume it's incorrect.

Unless, of course, you're saying something along the lines of "Oh how I wish I could join this wonderful conversation, but alas I can only speak German. Good day to you all". In that case, good day to you, too

EDIT: Forgive my abruptness, please, but I want to nip this in the bud. It's not nice if people begin to respond in a language that's not understood by all participants and a conversation develops that excludes those of us who are linguistically challenged, even though we were able to participate up until now.

if we have to be absolutly fair, we have to write every sentences in english, turkish, german, greech, ... :-D

But this topic is nothing new...

back to topic: I think, somethimes #1 fits not perfect.
"dreamer"....
"possessed" would be fit better sometimes, i think :-D

"Recently, it seems that this forum shifts closer to 2."
A reason for this could also be, that in the time of A3, you had to search for "3D"-modeller quite more than nowaday, now more people are working with engines, which need 3D-models, sounds, .... so a budding market growed up?

Sorry Jibb, I said I'm here because I want to learn and see many nice projects instead of meaningless threads <- might be irony. Stop discussing, start doing

5% 1
95% 3

I'm part of the first group. Like, obviously. I love creating games, and I really enjoy working out new concepts and trying stuff out. I have many dream projects, and I hold them very close to my heart. Currently, I'm working on two, which is the perfect number for me. With one, I'm experimenting and trying to create gameplay that haven't been seen before.
With the other, I'm experimenting with implementing a story and still have an interesting game. This is really interesting to me.

I very much believe that a shift towards the "I-want-to-make-money" has happened, and I like reading about possible reasons here.



Perhaps, but if the amount of modellers were increasing, then that does not imply a shift towards the "#2"-crowd, compared to people helping out for free. Or does it in a way that I'm not seeing?
Also, yeah, you're spot-on with the "posessed"-thing!




That explains why it's easier to find a coder for a one-time-issue compared to a modeller. It does, however, not explain why it's even easier to find a coder for a complete project than a modeller.


And now, I'll just quickly answer to EVERYTHING else:

Redeemer:

Well, the amount of drama has, sadly, decreased a lot as well. Perhaps this is just my imagination, of course, but it seems that we had days of more baseless arguing and flames. Oh, how we long for those!



WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE ME HUH
; )
Really, I'm just making the observation here -- I've been thinking that for quite some time now. I feel it's justified to state it out loud, and I wanted to know how people explain that.
I'm here because I create games that will totally BLOW EVERYONE'S MIND. And you never know when the next cool thread's gonna happen, you know?

Spike:


Really? Don't take this the wrong way - it's not meant as an offense, but I'd have thought that after Ballad of Angels, and given the style of your other free projects (such as your videos), a true continuation of your dream project would have consisted of perhaps working on Ballad of Angels, or something similar, instead of games like Ambages. Don't get me wrong - not meant as a comment on its quality or anything, but I'm sure we can agree that it's style, being more aimed at kids, is different to what you're usually doing, and what you seem to prefer doing in your free time, rendering it something I'd not think would be a "dream project" of yours.




Don't we all... I guess we better stop kidding ourselves and start facing the possibility that we MAY have bitten of more than we can chew?
Uh, not *US* of course. Like, speaking of "we" in a general sense. Like, "'we' as the human race". I mean, both you and me? TOTALLY gonna finish our games. Right?




I am really incredibly dumb, and thus cannot figure out how to add the poll now (which is later than the original posting time). Like, there's no "add Poll"-button to press.
Of course, someone will now point out that it's RIGHT THERE, making this seem incredibly sad and stupid, but I swear it's not there, and in case that happens, I will blame aliens from outer space.

Gorillas and Bananabombs: Not only do they both have a wikipedia entry, there's also flash-based versions of those on the web. Including the original sound.

It's right there, over the wall you can't get past.


Now that's just neat. Oh I remember being a curious 10 year old opening gorillas.bas on his very first DOS computer, and to my surprise the source was actually readable unlike all the other applications I tried to open, searching hopelessly for the source, figuring out how the hell programming worked by adding more random characters to the gibberish. Not much time later I clicked and dragged together a little adventure game. So was my first experience with programming.
But I'm straying off.

OH CRAP I HIT IT WITH ANGLE 80, SPEED 120!

Poll:

You already thought so some years ago, and posted your opinion.
Consider the social changes over the last years.
In Germany it changed this way f.i. to mention only some reasons:
- from free studies to tuition fees;
- the new bacholar studies don't offer some freedom beside your studies
- many people are working in jobs that don't allow you raise a family, now
- a huge number of freelancers - most of the journalists are freelancers f.i. won't earn enough money to get a sufficient pension when they retire.
- a huge number of people, very well educated people, didn't get more than bad paid or un-paid internship, where they got full paid jobs a decade before - and, just to mention it, _while_ doing they same work and having the same responsibilities!

I belong definitely to the first group.
I'm a little dreamer. ^^

BTW, I belong to all three groups, it just depends on the degree of my tiredness.
When I'm awakened and in a high mood and got enough time to program, I belong to the first group.
When I earn some money with it, you know...
When I'm tired I just can't resist to lurk around in the forums, and get nothing done.

1 - Ages 17 to 22: Had just moved on from Click and Play and Multimedia Fusion to the big boy league of 3d engines using scripting. Wanted to prove the world wrong that a 3 person team can create the best MMORPG in the world using indie tools.

2 - Ages 22 to 27: My MMORPG turned bad ass and I said hey, let's go and show it to E3 so I can make some money on the side right? So my team flew there and made this video for it. Publishers insisted I had a full game before they can publish it and didn't want to give me cash to finish it. So I come back home, chop up my game in pieces and give away or sell them the community as Pathfinding, Dialogues and AI tools.

3 - Ages 27 to 30(current): Realized I'm 27 and needed to get a day job because I failed on 1 and 2. Employers don't use gamestudio so I learned actionscript and I'm now making 3d educational games with adobe's AIR. Once a year I lurk around here for random Error014 Morbius posts


Edit - Didn't realize this post was a year old. I was fooling around with the forum search. sssrryyyy

No Problem.
Good to see you around again. I hope its fun projects that you
work on.
I mostly work on/off on several Java projects for a hobby.
Gives me more freedom than a source closed Engine.
And Im not the highend graphics centered guy.

(I expect people will bug you now to talk about your IntenseX project..)

Hi LarryLaffer, great to hear from you again!

Although, you digged an old thread, it doesn't matter much, because there is a recent one from Error014 relating to the same topic.