Help Wanted Forum FAQ
- Help Wanted Rules
- Posting Guidelines
- Intellectual Property/Copyright/Licensing
- General Advice
Rules
- All posts must follow the appropriate posting guidelines (see below)
- No criticism, feedback only if allowed*
- No flaming**
- No personal attacks/insults
- No disrupting threads and/or starting arguments
- No spamming, posting of duplicate topics
- No posting of negative comics (such as the MMO ones)
- No bumping threads (see guidelines below)
* The Help Wanted forums have had serious problems with threads degrading due to endless nitpicking, often in the guise of constructive criticism, and even genuinely helpful advice often encourages others to post less constructive criticisms. For this reason, a section has been added to the end of the post template for the desired level of feedback. The options are "none", or "encouraging only" - I believe these options are fairly self explanatory. If you don't play nice, I'll be forced to go back to the zero-tolerance policy with no feedback allowed for anyone.
Also, feedback is more than welcome for any threads offering services, however holding an open debate about a person's rates isn't. If you want to share your opinions on contractor rates then there are two ways to go about it:
1) PM the contractor and share your views.
2) Create a thread in the appropriate forum dealing with the contractor's discipline (art, music, programming, etc). There you can hold an open discussion for all interested.
Derailing a contractor's post to discuss your views on rates isn't the appropriate time or place and will not be tolerated. Let the contractor look for work, not debates.
** For the purposes of this forum a flame is any post considered by a moderator or member of staff to be non-constructive. This could be an attack on the original poster, an non-relevant post, or any form of criticism.
Posting Guidelines
Post Templates:
All posts seeking help in Help Wanted must follow the posting template given HERE.
THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. Posters not using the template will be warned and given time to edit their post. Failure to comply will result in the post being deleted and possible further disciplinary action.
Posts offering services are not required to follow a template at present, but should include all relevant information:
- Name
- Skills offered (say what you can actually do)
- Portfolio links/thumbnail images/etc.
- Previous experience
- Anything else you feel a prospective team might like to know
Any other posts will not be required to follow a template, but should be kept neat and structured in a way that makes sense. Also note that Help Wanted isn't a discussion forum, so keep things on topic - if your post isn't requesting or offering a service, it probably belongs in a different forum.
Bumping:
As a general rule, bumping is not allowed in the Help Wanted forum. There are however, certain conditions under which it will be allowed:
- If after 2 days your thread has received no replies. In this case, you may bump the thread once, but you should first make some changes to the original post - try to provide updates and/or additional information. You may repeat this a few (not more than three or four) times, after which you should wait a couple of weeks.
- If you are adding additional content, you may do so by editing the original post.
- You may at any time post to say that all positions have been filled.
- You may at any time respond to questions posted in your thread.
General Guidelines:
- You must use the template. You can however make your post stand out by adding additional content, graphics, colouring, etc. As an excellent example of this, and one of the more succesful repeat users of the Help Wanted forum, I'm linking to this old recruiting thread by TheArtifex as a good example, and recommending a read through this article describing the guidelines The Artifex follows when creating posts.
- Use thumbnails for large images whenever possible. Your thread will load faster (especially for dialup users), and readers won't have to scroll as much to get past the images if they aren't interested in them.
- "The Company Issue": Some members post as a start-up development company - this is fine, but always explain your position and plans for your company and game. You don't neccesarily have to provide all these details on the forum, but if you are successful in recruiting always give interested parties as much information as possible.
- Don't promise to pay if you can't. Explain about royalties and the like if it's a possibility, but don't make promises you can't follow through on, and always be clear and up front about these matters.
Intellectual Property/Copyright/Licensing
Many members post looking for help remaking old games. Intellectual property laws prohibit the creation of a game based on someone else's Intellectual property (IP) unless you have the express written permission of the IP owner. That means you can't use the graphics, title, trademarked names, etc. of existing games unless you get permission, even if your game is a fan project or freeware. Some companies won't care, but others will make a big fuss (and possibly launch legal action) if you go ahead without permission.
Just because some other team are working on a project it does not mean you can (they may have permission - or the IP holder may not have noticed their project yet).
Either get permission from the company in question, or change your project to something similar, but with new graphics/dialogue/names/whatever. Threads for projects clearly violating this will be given a warning to make changes and/or get permission, and will then be closed if appropriate action isn't taken.
If this may concern you then I also suggest taking a look at the article 10 Big Myths about copyright explained.
General Advice:
THIS SECTION UNDER RECONSTRUCTION
Designing a realistic project, recruiting and working with a team, and succesfully developing and releasing a quality product (be it commercial or freeware) is a daunting task, so the following is provided as recommended reading for anyone interested in taking on the challenge.
While reading the material presented here isn't mandatory, it will highly improve your chances of making a successful Help Wanted post and being able to successfully develop your concept into a working game.
Recruiting and Working With Teams:
General Design Tips:
Productivity:
MMO Games:
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