My beginnings
Hi, I’m Maxime Dion, the person behind GameDevFinder, a dedicated game collaborator search website. I’ve always had a passion for playing games and in my late teens this passion transformed when discovered Flash and Newgrounds. It lead to the beginning of my journey in game development. Afterward, I spent five years working on mobile games for Gameloft. When I started, Android phone were not even out yet and neither was Free 2 Play.
Then throughout my career, I’ve had countless ideas and prototypes for games, but only a few ever reached completion. As a solo developer, I often struggled to stay committed to a project especially when things got busy at my full-time job. I’ve often wished for a partner, a collaborator to keep me focused and help with areas where I lacked expertise, particularly in art.
Where the idea for GameDevFinder came from
I was very exited when I got my first job in the gaming industry until I started working on my first project that turned out to be an American football game, a genre that honestly wasn’t really resonating with my interests. This experience somewhat dampened some of my initial enthusiasm for working in the gaming industry at first. The people I were working with on the other hand were fantastic. As I started working on personal projects, I wanted to search for collaborators that would match my interests and fill my skill gaps.
At this point I realized that the available options, such as posting on forums, Discord groups, or subreddits, were rather inadequate. Posts quickly got buried amidst the constant influx of new content, giving you only a small window of time before fading into the void. On top of that, the process is pretty messy. As a developer, I knew I could provide a better answer to “How do I find a team to make a video game?”. That’s when the idea for GameDevFinder was born. The name should be pretty self-explanatory. A site where you can create a profile, find someone with complementary skills and interests, find indie game teams or professional studio to embark on your incredible game collaboration!
Figuring out what GameDevFinder should be
Initially I was thinking of drawing upon the popularity of Tinder and start from some clone template. However, I decided against it and opted for a simple game collaborator search website with a directory of profiles instead. Users would then be able to filter profiles of potential collaborators based on criteria such as specialty, commitment level and game type preferences.
To address the limitations I faced in my own search for collaborators, I developed a comprehensive profile creation form that allows users to not only clearly define what they can offer in terms of skills, but also and what they are seeking in a game collaboration. This way you are sure to have all the relevant information at the ready when evaluating the profile of a collaborator.
Figuring out what GameDevFinder should NOT be
GameDevFinder is not intended to be an all-encompassing business with articles, forums, paid memberships or data collection. Mainly because I think people would rather spend their time actually collaborating on making your indie game projects.
For now, I’ve even opted of running adds because the hosting costs are manageable for me. I also get to teach myself HTML, PHP, WordPress and SEO. It’s always fun to learn new things and I get to avoid paying a web developer thousands of well-earned dollars.
Moving onward
I’m also open to help out anyone who would like to know how to make a similar collaboration site for specific community such as Portuguese speakers, person of color, trans individuals, etc. Although everyone is always welcome and diversity is encouraged on GameDevFinder. Good luck on your next indie game collaboration!
I hope you like our game collaborator search website to help you find game developers. If you have any comments, suggestion or question feel free to reach out through the contact page!
