Why's it so hard to meet programmers?

Hi everybody. I'm at a weird point in my life now, where I'm tired of not moving forward on my creative pursuits. I want to make videogames. I have absolutely no programming skills, but I have boatloads of ideas and concepts I want to express. I'm a graphic artist with 3d skills, so theoretically, I can (and have) designed entire games, I just can't actually make them.

But, I'm not even so focussed on getting my own ideas out there, I want to work on other ideas too. Problem is, I don't know a single person who wants to make videogames. I'm creative director at an advertising agency, so I know plenty of programmers for web development, but not a single person who is or wants to be a game programmer.

Is anybody out there who just wants to work on some stuff and see what we can do?

The type of 3D AAA titles that become popular have budgets in the $xx millions and timelines of 3-5 years, even with dozens of programmers working on them. That's many tens of thousands of man-hours.

There are many indie game programmers in areas where they can reasonably compete. Take a look at the Android or iPhone stores; there are dozen of indie games on there, but virtually all of them are relatively simple 2D games. There are indie game developers for PC too; Steam is a good place to find them, but again, you'll be looking mostly at pretty simple 2D games. If you really want to get into indie game development, look for someone to work on a 2D project.

Programming for 3D is hard, even if your game is based on an existing engine. Most programmers are not even remotely familiar with the concepts involved (particularly your web developer type people).

That's not to say that there are no indie 3D games, but they are rare. A lot of them start as game mods, attract attention, then get funding to go full-scale (ex: Team Fortress, Red Orchestra). But even building a mod on an existing game takes a ton of time. Minecraft is a 3D game, albeit with an extremely primitive engine, that managed to succeed spectacularly based pretty much solely on its concept, but that is literally the only example I can think of where that has happened.

So basically, it boils down to there being relatively few programmers who have 3D game programming as a side hobby and the fact that you usually need a lot of programmers to make a quality 3D game. With an indie project of this size you run into issues: have too few people and it never gets done; have too many people and there are so many conflicting ideas that it never gets done. There isn't really any work-able balance.

I hear you, for sure. I'm certainly not opposed to trying things out in 2d. But I've yet to meet anybody who can do that either!

It just really seems to me that I must hang in the wrong circles, because I've never met anybody interested in even doing game programming "some day". Literally not a single person of any skill level.

From this, I'm assuming that your are seeking to engage an individual (or a freelancer) for the said task(s). And about your quest for game programmer, you can take a look at this guy's work (which I randomly came across while googling). Best Luck for your projects.

Try Mokazon( blenderartists user) hes available for freelance work. go on the blenderartists web and type his name in and you'll find him, he is known in the blender community.