The website is great for collaborating about game ideas, but who's going to do the job making it?

Do you think any skilled programmers or artists will take the job voluntarily? Unless there's payment involved, the chance of anyone helping you build the game is very very slim. Some might get excited, and might help build it, but it is usually up to a certain point before they get distracted and move on to other things in life.

There's a big gaping hole in between the "Call for Help" and "Play Test".

Cannot access the site from work as the filtering software reports it as "suspicious". Not sure why.

Hi all! I know this thread has been quiet since yesterday, but someone brought it to my attention. I'm actually the Community Manager at GameSprout and I'll be happy to answer any questions you actually have about it if you're interested. (Just a warning that I'm out of the country and not at my usual office desk, so I might be a touch slow in doing so compared to my normal response time.)

To address the concept: it's totally true that most people say "the game idea by itself is worthless." But there's a lot of reasons why we're trying a different approach. For one thing, the people who have "that great game idea," but just aren't sure how to get started making it, aren't really going to stop existing just because their idea is impractical. I'm sure people who develop have all heard "I have a great idea for a game..." at some point. A lot of times people just aren't sure where to get started, so one of the biggest roles that GameSprout serves is that of education - helping people to refine their ideas, and letting them see just how much it takes to actually get a game made from a small idea. Even people whose ideas aren't getting voted up get the chance to see games made in real-time and the discussion that goes on openly about those concepts - discussion that might frequently occur behind the scenes in a more closed project.

As for other questions, skilled programmers or artists can volunteer their time, but we also have full-time game devs working for the site providing content to the top-voted ideas. This doesn't mean we'll work on every idea on the site or that every idea we work on will become a full-fledged game, but it does mean that people can see what ideas get traction, what ideas aren't fleshed out well enough to actually make, and what ideas turn out to be fun or not-fun after being prototyped.

On a personal level, I find this project really exciting!

I have something to ask after I had a quick read through your Terms of Use.

Take heed: I'm not a lawyer - I'm just a layman interpreting the terms. From what I read it seems that once you put a game idea, any assets, documents or other work you've created on the site, GameSprout has a "perpetual, irrevocable" license to use those materials to developer and publish more or less whatever they want. I understand this is not an exclusive license - meaning the creator also retains the right to use his work, but once someone puts something on that site, they've already given a license to GameSprout to freely use it..

Am I correct about my understanding, and what effects does this license have on a creator's publishing rights?

Gosh, sorry it took me so long to get back to this - international travel and I lost track.

I'm not the company's lawyer, and he was the one who drafted those terms. My understanding here is that it was necessary to word them this way just to give us the freedom we need to work on games. Our intentions are good ones but we also want to avoid getting burned by someone who put their idea up but then wants to say later that we stole it when in fact they gave it freely with the hopes of collaborating with us.

At most, the kind of thing that something would turn up in is for example I am making a YouTube video to showcase GameSprout and during that we may show elements of the site, which might include user-created art, but I am being as careful about that as I can.