Creating a commercially successful game, means the developer needs a variety of skills, of which business sense would be just one part.

The problem is that I want pixel artwork, not pre-rendered artwork. Each race in my game have 30 ships, 6 styles for each of the 5 sizes, all drawn by hand, as well as portraits. This is a very tedious process for an artist, and I wasn't able to find any artist who would do it for free. My goal is to capture the retro-4X feel of Master of Orion.

Yes in practice you are obviously going to get more people if you offer money.

I'm just saying that (a) there exist people who do decent work (including pixel work) for free, as seen by the many decent looking open source games; and (b) having more than one person shouldn't be a problem - or at least, you'd face the problem with multiple paid artists too.

I guess another issue is probably to do with whether one wants to market it - if you're planning to make money from it, people are unlikely to help you for free; people who enjoy working for free are probably more likely to work with free/open licences I suspect.

[quote name='Zeraan' timestamp='1321638652' post='4885361']
The problem is that I want pixel artwork, not pre-rendered artwork. Each race in my game have 30 ships, 6 styles for each of the 5 sizes, all drawn by hand, as well as portraits. This is a very tedious process for an artist, and I wasn't able to find any artist who would do it for free. My goal is to capture the retro-4X feel of Master of Orion.

Yes in practice you are obviously going to get more people if you offer money.

I'm just saying that (a) there exist people who do decent work (including pixel work) for free, as seen by the many decent looking open source games; and (b) having more than one person shouldn't be a problem - or at least, you'd face the problem with multiple paid artists too.

I guess another issue is probably to do with whether one wants to market it - if you're planning to make money from it, people are unlikely to help you for free; people who enjoy working for free are probably more likely to work with free/open licences I suspect.
[/quote]

Yeah, there are people who are willing to do decent work for free. However, I was unable to find those people I suspect that after I finish my game, there will be people who will add new races (it's easily moddable) for free. My whole point was that I had to pay first before I can expect (hopefully) to see any income from this game.