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Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

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Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#11

Post by michaels0620 »

SimHacker wrote: post #10

Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that. Execution is wh…

That's pretty amazing that you get to work with someone like Will Wright at such an early point in the creative process! Has it given you ideas for your own games?

You hint at one of the other issues that arises. So much of what a piece of software becomes (game or otherwise) is formed as it's being written. Something sounds great, you implement it, it doesn't look so good but leads you to something else, etc. In the end the game might end up being 50% of the original and 50% from prototyping.

One of the things that gets me is the person who says "Implement my idea. I don't have any money to pay you but you can have a percentage of the profits". Is there a single word that means naivete + ignorance + hubris? This is especially true for those who say they have a great idea for a game, but don't want to tell you because they don't want you stealing it.

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#12

Post by bonzoesc »

jonnathanson wrote: post #2

This is good information, but there's something else that probably needs to be said: nobody wants to get sued. I've worked only tangentially in the games industry, but I worked for many years in TV development. And people often asked why we (NBC or FOX, in my case) wouldn't accept unsolicited submissions of show ideas. The primary reason we didn't is that it was a legal minefield. If you read someone's submission, an…

> This is good information, but there's something else that probably needs to be said: nobody wants to get sued.

Put simply, unsolicited ideas have negative value.

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#13

Post by SimHacker »

michaels0620 wrote: post #11
SimHacker wrote: post #10

Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that. Execution is wh…

That's pretty amazing that you get to work with someone like Will Wright at such an early point in the creative process! Has it given you ideas for your own games? You hint at one of the other issues that arises. So much of what a piece of software becomes (game or otherwise) is formed as it's being written. Something sounds great, you implement it, it doesn't look so good but leads you to something else, etc. In the…

I fell in love with SimCity when I first saw it in the 80's, and I got a chance to port it to Unix as a third party contractor. Although it didn't make a lot of money, it did show I could make something work while respecting the original design, so he later hired me to work on The Sims.

His approach to game design is very exploratory, which involves making a lot of prototypes, playing around with them to evaluate the game play terrain, and then climbing the fun gradient towards the high points, and looking around for new ideas from that perspective. He purposefully designs for emergent behavior, but nobody has any way of telling what that behavior will be without actually playing around with a working prototype. It's the kind of stuff you can't just imagine, that you have to experience. So I would say the end product is more like 5% of the original idea, and 95% from prototyping!

The kind of person who wants to do the fun part for glory and have other people do all the hard work is very common, and I've run across many of them. It's a form of narcissism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism . Will is not at all like that: he's very humble and willing to listen to anything anyone has to say, and very good at explaining his ideas, and that's why he's been so successful, because people enjoy working with him, and enjoy playing his games. Though I don't know him personally, I get the impression Notch is a lot like that too. (Although I'm sure his lawyers wish he wouldn't shoot his mouth off all the time! ;)

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#14

Post by SimHacker »

michaels0620 wrote: post #11
SimHacker wrote: post #10

Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that. Execution is wh…

That's pretty amazing that you get to work with someone like Will Wright at such an early point in the creative process! Has it given you ideas for your own games? You hint at one of the other issues that arises. So much of what a piece of software becomes (game or otherwise) is formed as it's being written. Something sounds great, you implement it, it doesn't look so good but leads you to something else, etc. In the…

Here's a write-up I made of a talk that Will gave back in 1996, before I went to Maxis to work with him on The Sims. He described his ideas behind "dollhouse" and gave a demo of a very early prototype, so you can see how he not only had the ideas in mind, but also a working prototype, and was willing to show it and share his ideas with a classroom full of students (and a developer who was just sitting in on the class), instead of being afraid somebody would steal his ideas.

Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/9

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#15

Post by srdev »

SimHacker wrote: post #10

Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that. Execution is wh…

I actually find "idea guys" highly insulting. What does it say when they view the hard work required to implement an idea as trivial in comparison to their idea? How does that view reflect upon my expertise? Moreover, do they really think that people with practical abilities are incapable of coming up with their own ideas?

Insulting.

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#16

Post by bitwize »

About ten years ago there was a kid named Imari Stevenson. He had a gigantic site dedicated to his game ideas which he hoped he would sell to Sega, Nintendo, and Square. I won't get into the content in much detail. It suffices to say that flaming breast milk was usable as a weapon in one of the game proposals.

I told him the same thing that was written here, though I'm nowhere near a pro game developer. I said, if you're so dedicated to these game ideas you will probably have to write them yourself, and oh by the way, it isn't all that hard to do. He basically ignored me and insisted that his skill was in concept generation, not programming or art.

Some people just don't want to download GCC or the JDK and get cracking. They have a GREAT idea, they want it NOW, and they think it's up to a triple-A studio to make it happen. Yeah, only if you have brain cancer and can cajole the Make-A-Wish foundation into helping.

These days the name "Imari" can still elicit fits of giggles from some of my friends in the game industry. He's an "indie filmmaker" of sorts now, creating low-budget CG films about women who can shoot flaming breast milk or something.

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#17

Post by rick888 »

SimHacker wrote: post #10

Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that. Execution is wh…

The other problem with the ideas guy is that they usually can't see how difficult something is and want it asap. What ends up happening is that they either change their idea mid-stream or move onto something else. If they actually had any time (besides the idea) invested in it, this most likely wouldn't happen.

This is why you should partner up with someone with connections, money, or both if you are developer. Otherwise, they will not bring enough to the table.

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#18

Post by SimHacker »

srdev wrote: post #15
SimHacker wrote: post #10

Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that. Execution is wh…

I actually find "idea guys" highly insulting. What does it say when they view the hard work required to implement an idea as trivial in comparison to their idea? How does that view reflect upon my expertise? Moreover, do they really think that people with practical abilities are incapable of coming up with their own ideas? Insulting.

Will suggests that even if you have crazy ideas, you should write them down and remember them, and think about them later, because later on they might not be so crazy.

I've been playing Glitch, which is a "casual" MMORPG designed by the original developers of Flickr. They came up with the idea for Game Neverending years ago: http://www.gnespy.com/museum/ ... But more than simply having an idea, they developed a playable prototype of the game in 2002, that they put online and actually tested. I think it was a brilliant design, but it was a horrible time to come out with something like that (since The Sims Online, considered a bellwether for casual MMORPGs, was tanking at the time).

Unfortunately (or ultimately fortunately), they were running out of money, so they sidelined the game, took a module they had developed for uploading pictures, and developed it into Flickr, which they eventually sold to Yahoo. Flickr was so successful that they were distracted from the original game, but they kept it in mind for later.

Now that technology's caught up, and they're in a better financial position, they've finally re-implemented Glitch from the ashes of Game Neverending (and with the fuel of Flickr). They certainly learned a lot about online communities from their experience with Flickr, which they're applying to Glitch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr#History

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#19

Post by johnnyjustice »

I agree with this author completely. To his point George R.R. Martin thinks that fan-fiction is a bad exercise that doesn't force you enough out of your element.

People write your own games and change them enough not get sued(hey, at least you get to be creative)

Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

#20

Post by dkersten »

srdev wrote: post #15
SimHacker wrote: post #10

Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that. Execution is wh…

I actually find "idea guys" highly insulting. What does it say when they view the hard work required to implement an idea as trivial in comparison to their idea? How does that view reflect upon my expertise? Moreover, do they really think that people with practical abilities are incapable of coming up with their own ideas? Insulting.

Agreed and not just in the game industry, but everywhere. I've even seen a few people call themselves "ideas guys" here on HN and every time I think something like "so, what? you think I don't have ideas or can't come up with my own? what makes you so great?". Everyone can come up with good ideas, but not everybody has the drive, determination and skill to make them a reality.
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