In actually commercial development, there are Creative Directors and Producers - and not to sound mean to them - they don't do much work. I'm not saying they do nothing, I mean they don't program or model (the main sort of things.)

So Indie development in this way is perfectly plausible.

"ryb" wrote:

>Directors and Producers ... don't do much work.

I'm sure this erroneous conception is why the word "producer" has a negative connotation with most programmers, and some artists.

Heh, yeah, no kidding. Producers certainly do end up doing work, but its not always quantifiable, like a piece of art or a program is. That's an unfortunate misconception, although I am sure there are some Producers that have gotten away with doing very little work. Bad examples or not, its still an unfair generalization.

Ok, to the topic at hand, I think I've got some to add to the discussion, although I missed most of it already. Nothing is impossible. The minute you believe it is, it then is. That's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, d000hg, it seems you may be doing just that.

Now, regarding the advice given in this thread. Of course anything Mr. Sloper says on the subject is automatically going to be stamped with the "Valid" mark, but I think there are some parts that have been missed.

The assertion that a prototype will be needed is only partially true. It is going to be true if you are looking to recruit a large team, but from the sounds of it, you are not at that point yet. You need to walk before you can run. There are a number of things you can do to increase your chances, but mass-recruiting is not one to do to start a project such as this. This is especially true if you are not contributing anything other than leadership, design and moral support.

What you want to do is recruit in private. Keep your eye out for someone who is looking for a project, and contact them. Then you can share your vision with them and see if it is something that they might also become passionate about. You will only want to start with 2 or 3 core individuals to help you get going.

Now, this is all going to assume you truly have the GDD that you were talking about. If you don't have one of those yet, then you got some more work to do. If you are looking for help in making one, then you want to be recruiting a designer to help you write it. I am fairly certain finding one here would not be an issue. Only then will you want to grab an artist to start drawing concepts and possibly a beginning programmer that might be motivated to help out a start-up project. As previously stated, the likelyhood of you getting an experienced team is not very good, but you shouldn't have much trouble getting a team of enthusiastic newbies that can help make this work. And, as someone else already mentioned, the key to this is compromise. You're in a catch 22 situation if you think you deserve quality individuals up front. You get quality members by having something to show, and you can't make anything good to show without quality individuals. The risk and compromise you have to take is to recruit people one at a time to start, and be patient with them. Some will not end up panning out, but you will find some will. Its when you find these people that it all becomes worth it. Trust me, I speak from experience.

Just to point out, I am fairly qualified on this particular subject because I have helped my project become something from nothing. I knew very little to start, but neither did the rest of my team. We started big, benefiting from a community that was already in place. We had 50 people to start the project, but they slowly died away because we were disorganized and had no design in place. We supposedly used the Extreme Programming methodology, but that ended up allowing us to work without a proper design, so ended up crippling us. This then came to the point where I was faced with a choice: Let it die, or learn more and bring it back to life. I made the latter choice a little over 2 years ago and have been busting my butt ever since. Now, our situations are not an even comparison, (since I do art, web design, gfx design, and more on top of the management and design) but that doesn't mean it inapplicable.

This all, however, becomes moot the minute you decide to give up. So all I can ask is: how important is this dream of yours to you? If you really believe in it, then what are you doing standing there? There is no better solution to a problem than action, hence "Actions speak louder than words."