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I'm searching for people interested in creation of remote, horizontal game dev worker cooperative (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 week ago by pbpza@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/anarchism@slrpnk.net
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/20011867

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/20011866

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/20011741

Hi!

As I wrote in the title I'm looking for people interested in such an endeavor. I already tried creating such a project but due to internal disagreements it didn't pan out, still I am very interested in trying this out. Game dev is very susceptible to exploitation from capitalists which is very unfortunate given that means of production are essentially socialized already - we have FOSS software like Godot that is enough to create very elaborate projects and we can collaborate remotely so no land is needed either. This makes it I think a very fruitful direction to go, because costs of game dev are not very big and returns can be big if the game is successful. I know that there is a huge competition in game dev, but given that in worker cooperative nothing is siphoned by capitalists at the top I think it's not impossible to get to the level of subsistence on game dev, while being able to affect the culture and promote cooperativism among the general population and among video game creators. I don't have a specific game dev experience but I like solving complex problems and I am interested in doing a worker cooperative, I already did quite a bit of research during my previous attempt at this type of worker cooperative and I would for this coop to get inspiration from Igalia, Motion Twin and Sociocracy. At my last project people had issues that I am fine with anti-foundationalist philosophies so please consider that I like those and I like to discuss from those lenses. I am very good at self-directed learning and I could especially do stuff like coding, design, writing plot and characters, I could research some more legalistic side of cooperative but it would be nice certainly to have someone who has some expertise here. That still leave places for people interested in audio and graphics and I am very fine with redundancy in some aspects of the required "expertise", still I am a big believer in learning by doing and getting feedback and improving based on this feedback so I am mostly looking for people willing to learn, explore and collaborate to hopefully create something cool. I would like to create games such as Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium, Hotline Miami, FTL: Faster Than Light, Spec Ops: The Line, Portal 2, Undertale, Getting Over It, The Talos Principle, Vampire the Masqurade: Bloodlines, KOTOR 2. If you are interested in this project please get in touch, we may correspond a bit and see if we would like to collaborate!

I somewhat wonder about trying to release those games on FOSS licenses (still with asking for “paying” for them to support the creators), that would be “purer” from anarchist perspective than using proprietary license but this is not something I have thought about that much. The pro would be it being impossible to get the license stolen how almost happened to Disco Elysium creators.

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[-] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 week ago

If you are aware of them, why don't you join an existing cooperative like Motion Twin? I would recommend go to one first before trying to make your own

In gamedev like in many other endeavor, I would not start a coop or a regular company without some experience or without at least a clear project in mind.

Like you said, there is no big capital investment in gamedev but there is still one: time. In a coop you are asking people to invest their own time in the hope that a few months down the line, a video game will be able to make a profit in a very competitive market. You have to give people reason to do it and to do it with you instead of going solo. That's how FOSS projects work.

You can lead the way: work a month on a project you would love and show people the result. It will be a WIP but as recruitment goes "help me finish that game" is easier to sell than "let's get together discuss what you want but I promise there will be profit down the line, but I haven't figured a business model yet"

[-] pbpza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

That's okay as your perspective, I would like you to consider that Motion Twin is not remote so those are different project ideas. I would say it depends on how you approach those types of projects. Realistically the scope of what I can accomplish solo is different to the one even in a small team, and the vision that I create solo certainly will not be the same as the vision that would get created from a collaborative process utilizing methods like Sociocracy. I already got some interest from 2 other people, in practice from my experience even between 2 persons team and a solo team there is an enormous difference, that's why I am searching for some hypothetical collaborators. I agree that this is a very competetive market, I think that in practice almost everywhere there is some competition and I would rather work on things that interest me. I think every moment that I don't murder myself I risk that I will die of more painful death than what I could give myself through picking the most appropriate form of suicide, so I am personally fine with risk and if someone is not then that's fine.

this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
23 points (92.6% liked)

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