(Reposted from Classified Ads, in response to ID:559081, "Re: In Need of Staff for a Avatar: The Last Airbender Game.")

Normally I would have ignored such a post, especially at 4am, but the big ol' Moderator tag has convinced me otherwise!

It's true: quite a number of real projects - professional or otherwise - are lead by somebody who does not actually do any of the sort of work that us plebians must toil away on. This would be because they have acquired another important skill, which involves the management of teams. Ideas are fine and dandy, but everyone and their mother has fifty of them. The real skill is getting a bunch of people to do something together without beating the crap out of each other or mutinying.

However, how does one acquire such a skill? Perhaps it's a course you might find at some college. Project Management or somesuch. But, as I would probably be the first to point out (if only because I'm up at 4am to do such things), people who may have taken such courses are in short supply here. I would not detract (there's a better word I can't think of right now) anybody for making such an assumption, and so I dismiss the idea that somebody has taken a class on this.

Well, then, perhaps they've learned it from experience? They've managed a number of large projects. Surely, you don't always need a formal education for something like this. But, equally surely, somebody would mention such a qualification. It seems an important sort of thing to mention when attempting to attract potential employees (if somebody else used that word here I would pick them apart for it).

Well, they haven't managed many projects, but perhaps they could've been in some. That would make sense, right? Having seen how it's done, you feel confident that you are able to imitate the whole thing. Monkey see, monkey do. But, of course, there's a problem with that, too:

The person in question has no skills that they could've used to be in any sort of project.

And so, we are left asking: why the hell should we listen to this guy? What qualifications do they have over some average hobo off the street or - more importantly - ourselves? None. Zilch. Zippo. Qualifications don't manifest out of thin air, and aren't something you're born with. You have to have done SOMETHING before you can get people to say, "Oh hey, that guy, I bet he could lead me to make something cool."

So, when you come here, offering nothing but a vague idea that consists of little more than "a game based off of psuedo-popular TV show X," I support the response, "So what? Who cares?" No qualifications, no experience, no nothing. If you want to lead a project, then you need to have done something to prove that you are able to do so.

So how do you prove yourself capable to lead a project when you have no skills? You GET some skills. Learn how to actually make a project yourself; don't worry, it doesn't need to be a big one. Show people that you can at least get SOMETHING together, and say, "I'm able to do this, and I believe it shows that I am capable of making something bigger with help." And start small THEN, too. Don't expect to get a team of two dozen together (seriously, commercially successful MMOs started smaller than what some people here are expecting). Find one person who complements the skills you developed and work together to create something.

Or, hell, maybe take the idea of designing a game SERIOUSLY. Nobody else seems to be (okay, I lied: I can recall one person doing so recently). Write out a full design document, then present it to the forum (don't worry about it being stolen: it's probably not worth it). Say, "This is the entirety of my idea for a game. Would anybody care to help me make it?" But you can't have absolutely NOTHING and expect people to follow you.

I really wish Classified Ads could be taken seriously. I wish that actual projects would get started here as the rule, rather than the exception. But, no, this seems to instead be a cesspool of people with delusions of grandeur trying to push vacuous ideas. Pretending that this is perfectly fine and encouraging them in their trainwreck of a "project" does nothing but cheapen what little actual value that Classified Ads has left.

Being nice is nice, but sometimes, people need to be slapped to their senses.