If your looking for a project then the Unreal Tournament reboot is a great opportunity to get involved.
For the “Love of the Game” projects is still the best training grounds to learn the craft of making a game with a lot of people involved where no one will turn down free work as a contribution to the project. It is also one of the few projects that has a good chance in being released.
Get a gig at any AAA company there are probable more developers who have a project based back ground that those having a degree in <cough cough> game design.
In general going to a free work project on your end should be about what you can get out of it as an experience rather than something you feel has any chance of success. This is how Microsoft and Apple started.
As for completing your own projects then once again experience wise you can never get it were you think it should go with out the help of others so as a logic companies hire individuals who join up to make others works looks better and most of that involves grunt work.