Help needed on my own project/portfolio

IgnitionChemistry

Hi all.
I'm Miguel and I am in a bit of an inpasse, professionally. I started learning CryEngine 3 and building up levels about one year ago, I've already had experience from high school in Photoshop, Illustrator and video and audio editting software.
I then learned Maya from online classes.

My portfolio is a big old, I have two or three pieces I'm still very proud of and that I like very much, but all the rest is just me trying to evolve.

What I really want to do nowadays is to bring a vision of a game I have to life. I've had it for quite a while, I gathered ideas from many games, to mods, text gaming forums and RPG books into one solid concept.
The thing is, if I was to gather a team of artists to collaborate on it, would you join just by reading the idea on the forum? Because it'd take me maybe months to build up just one or two very good in game screenshots of what I want the game to look like (let alone the characters!), for easily make people want to work with it (those who have free time and like the idea)
Another thing is, that exposing my game concept online could just make it easy for someone to copy it, I, like everyone else, think that my idea is great even excepcional, but the world is full of good ideas that just don't get to see the light of day right? Do you think it'd be enough and I should risk it to show a script to potential artists to collab?
Or really, should I be better working on personal pieces, that require less of my time and are very much more casual? (And this way I can have a life too, if you know what I mean, working on whole levels by myself is tiresome)

I guess I'm just trying to see the opinion of people with more experience than me on these matters. I'm still only one year or two old to CG world.

Thanks for reading,
Miguel Nogueira

iconoplast

You're better off working on personal pieces. They can be things related to or contributing toward what you want to make, but until you've shipped games you aren't going to get experienced people working on it.

For the most part, people have their own ideas that they want to develop. If you're really worried about it, don't show anything detailed to people without having them sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) first.

PyrZern

Well, I can tell you that ideas are everywhere. Everywhere. Of course some are crappy and pure trash. But idea alone is useless. You need a team, yeah, and skills and commitment and resource. Very little people have these. And usually if people have skills and resource, then you can bet that they have loads of ideas of their own.

Now, I'm not telling you to just throw out your ideas everywhere, but you shouldn't be stingy about it either. Ideas are usually great because people brainstorm it and build ideas upon ideas.

I highly recommend some mock-up screenshots of what the game will look like and feel like and play like. It's much easier to sell ideas that way and get people on board. Some part of a detailed Game Design Document will also help; especially some parts that would set your game apart from the competitors.

Like, for me, it would be something along the line of X-COM RTS/RPG game but with tactical squad semi-controls where each team has its own AI and personality. Then I would show mock-up graphic of what it would look like, and how combat gonna plays out. The GDD would also focus a lot on this area.

Also, on a related unrelated note; [also for other people reading this later] you would want to show people how credential you are. Can you deliver it. Can you prove that you can, and how. Also, what do they get in returns for helping you. If they want to build folio pieces and such, can they put things out there if you suddenly quit ? What about compensation ? Many people are tired of 'you will get percentages when the game makes profit'.