Materialism Goal?

Is all developers work for cash? I know there is hobbyists but are they also work for cash? I know main goal for pro developers is building a career & getting money from it, but what about a hobbyist? I wanted to build up a team but — told me to add salary or hour rates, but if I work for free & publish free games, nobody will work then?

Thanks for taking time for reading & hope to reply to determine how to work myself out.

It's not so much a materialism, but a problem of everyone having busy lives that take up much of their time.

This is because even your free time is worth something, maybe others won't see it but it definitely will be to yourself. As you get older you really do have more responsibilities that take up that "free time" you'd once have (when I started making games around 8 years old I could probably spend 8 hours a day at making games and playing them, but that's really decreased now), so you start to need more incentives on where to invest your valuable time.

Sometimes people get together and work on stuff completely for free, but they really need a solid vision or goal to get behind as a team in order to justify it (or maybe some cognitive dissonance <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz"> ).

Here's an article I found on Google seems to explain it further <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/ ... ime-worth/

Free time "worth" calculator: http://programs.clearerthinking.org/wha ... xoAGPldU1M

Right, what Jayjay said. I have a family and a job. Any time I work on something is a deduction from either of those, so it really needs to be advancing towards a goal. So, logically speaking, if you can replace your job with your hobby of making games, you've now combined those two areas and made a much better use of your time.

I guess it all comes down to what experience and funds you have. Without funds for a project you can't hire anyone, so anyone who will work with you will have to be happy with getting paid in experience, a credit on a completed game and a share of any money should the game make anything. There's plenty of people like that around, but they are likely less experienced than the guys getting paid.

Another problem is that people who may work for free have no reason to think that whatever your idea is, that it will be any good or make any money, so any project when you start out will have to be do-able in your free time, you or your team would have to be very brave to quit there jobs to work on your game.

What sort of skills are you looking for from your team? I've been thinking of working with someone but I'm not sure what I could offer, I'm becoming a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none

I feel that perhaps I came across a bit harsher than I intended, so I'll try and clear this up.

On your website your job offers page states the following:

Marketing Manager - Worked (or Volunteered) as a marketing manager before.

Now I feel there may be a self-inflation of terms going on here, for example a marketing manager will either have a degree in marketing, an MBA, or about 6 years of experience; this would make him vastly over qualified to be working for free, in fact the only the marketers I know that come even close to working for free in fact simply work for no profit, which is different.

There's more problems with the idea of a marketing manager that is trying to market a project that has no budget, but discussing it would be long and ultimately pointless; you don't need a marketing manager - you need someone that can click the submit button on a Facebook post.

Money is a universal symbol of value, by giving it to someone you are acknowledging that they posses something of worth, be it experience, means or convenience. Asking a man to work for free is to ask him to (literally) devalue himself - and when value is removed from the equation, the remaining key motivators are obligation and passion. Obligation is built on time and value, as your studio is young and not offering payment, it's a weak path to consider, so the best bet is passion.

Passion is one of the strongest motivators for anything (and whilst I may sound a bit naive, I think the most successful), but to find those who will work for passion alone, and not money nor obligation limits your demographic considerably, the easiest target being young developers. Youth brings inexperience, which is important because experience creates both value and the expectation of the recognition of value (experienced people are unlikely to work for free) and financial security (very few young people have to worry about paying bills, so money is less of a priority), but most importantly passion.

The problem with passion is that it's laser focused. Young, passionate developers don't want make a game, they want to make their game; the game they lay awake a night thinking of and their days dreaming about. Convincing them to jump on your ship will be difficult...

...Unless you offer them something of value. If money's out of the window, target the passion, help them with their game if they help with yours; from there you get obligation. And that's how you get someone to work for you.

tl;dr: Drop the titles and pomp, don't portray yourself as a business; if you have to be anything be a think tank, seek out developers your own age.

Keep in mind that Naji is 14 years old. He does not realize yet (maybe?) that people have jobs and families and responsibilities...

Why don't you join a Team first? I'm afraid no adult will join the team of a 14 year Old. You are pretty young nd you already made a lot! That's great!

Sooo join some real Team:-P

— thanks for clearing things out, and yes I know I'm young but I got great potential, finding developers my age is difficult since I'm the only game developer in my country Lebanon, which make it difficult. and yeah, don't get shocked I'm the only one who cares!

alvarop yes I know adults have responsibilties & families but I was looking for people who are young like me to work, but I see I'm the only one who is 14 in the site.

Beaverlicious do they even accept a 14 years old to join a team? I wish, if so I would join yours, you look like a nice person. If you know a team I would be glad, since I have skills in C2 & game development for 2 years, and I'm willing for 6 years or for life.

thanks all for your replies

I don't know about Lebanon, but I do know that there's lots of people young and old who'd love to work on games with someone else who has a similar goal/idea. Don't get too worried about age, just try and find someone with similar ideas, or put your idea out there to get like-minded people to work with you.

After some time the thing that stands out isn't your age, but your results

These people might be of interest, they're in Beirut: http://gamecooks.net/

I doubt they'll give a 14 year old a job, but just talking to them could be interesting. Reading up on it, it seems there's a growing market for games in Arabic, so that's definitely worth looking into.

Also when I was a teenager Newgrounds was swarming with teens wanting make games.

— yes I know them, they are the only company in lebanon, I'll contact them & see.

You can find tons of volunteers on deviantart.