Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
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Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#2This 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, and you rejected it, and years later you developed a show with even the slightest hint of an element from that concept, the person who submitted it could sue you. And, even if he wouldn't prevail 9 times out of 10, he'd still eat up a lot of time and work and money in the process.
The problem is that there's really nothing new under the sun. Every basic plot imaginable has been conceived. Every core concept shy of the truly insane or inane has already been pitched (and even those have been pitched, trust me). The chances that your unsolicited submission will bear more than passing similarities to a concept already pitched, or already in development, are quite high.
Aggravating this problem is the fact that people have sued over the most facepalmingly generic bits of supposed intellectual property: character names(!), broad-stroke concepts (i.e., "I sent NBC an idea about superheroes; NBC made a show about superheroes!!!11!1"), and so forth.
At the end of the day, opening an unsolicited envelope is more hassle than it's worth. I can't say if this is a motivating factor for game developers or publishers, but I imagine it would be.
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#3This 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…
Can't they just put disclaimer, "If you insist on submitting your idea, oh well, thanks. We might agree to realize your idea or part of it, but you must know that we can't compensate you in any way."?
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#4I think the reasons depend on the company, too. Large companies have different reasons than indie devs and amateurs.
As an amateur game programmer, I have a -ton- of ideas. I don't need anyone else's because I've got too many of my own.
As an indie dev, I imagine that the above applies, plus they already have a game or 2 released in a certain genre, and changing genres can be problematic with the fans.
As a major developer, you can break the 1-genre rule, but you become a target for lawsuits, as jonnathanson noted in another comment here.
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#5This 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…
Can't they just put disclaimer, "If you insist on submitting your idea, oh well, thanks. We might agree to realize your idea or part of it, but you must know that we can't compensate you in any way."?
that's absurdly rational.
but also impossible to prove.
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#6Because everyone has ideas.
Your ideas aren't worth anything. Execution is worth something. Game designers are doing the execution themselves, so you're not worth listening to.
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#7The people making the decisions probably spent a long time wanting to realise their ideas too. If an idea isn't good enough to convince you to work on it day & night, it will be a hard to convince someone else to do so.
The authors advice is right: "If you want to get your game made, make it yourself". If your idea is good & you can show it in action you have a much better chance of getting noticed than if you just post a wish-list on a forum.
[Edit: Is it just me timing out? Google cache: http://goo.gl/ez5e4]
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#8This 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…
Can't they just put disclaimer, "If you insist on submitting your idea, oh well, thanks. We might agree to realize your idea or part of it, but you must know that we can't compensate you in any way."?
This was exactly the kind of disclaimer on the thinkgeek 'submit t-shirt idea' page, at least 6 months or so ago. I would link to the page that had it but it seems it's now behind a user login page.
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#9This 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…
Can't they just put disclaimer, "If you insist on submitting your idea, oh well, thanks. We might agree to realize your idea or part of it, but you must know that we can't compensate you in any way."?
The problem is that there's not a central hub or gate through which all concepts and submissions must pass. It's not like a website, where you simply post a disclaimer or agreement that everyone must encounter before submitting something. People can theoretically try to submit to TV networks in any number of normal to bizarre ways: email, snail mail, stalking a development exec and accosting him at Starbucks, throwing a package over his fence at home, etc. You name it, and it's happened.
It's nearly impossible to retroactively disclaim things submitted through such varied means. So the safest course of action is just to send things back, or disregard them altogether. If someone's really written a brilliant masterpiece, then he should get an agent and go in through that door.
It's an imperfect system, but it's a system born of necessity. Even big networks typically have scripted development staffs of no more than 10 to 15 people (sometimes considerably fewer), all of whom are spending 100% of their time working on existing projects, or hearing pitches from agencies and producers. These people don't have time to read everything that comes their way through the mail, even if they wanted to, and even assuming that more than 1% of what comes in unsolicited is actually worth reading. And none of them wants to bear any legal liability. (Imagine greenlighting a show about superheroes, then opening a random envelope and finding a pitch that's very similar; talk about a potential "Awww, fuck" headache moment).
Re: Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?
#10Ideas 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 what matters, not ideas. Everybody wants to be the "idea guy," because they think that's the easy part, and the glorious part, where they just sit there and tell other people what to do, and get all the credit. But there are very few positions in the industry for "idea guy", and the only people who get them have a proven track record.
I work for Will Wright, who is an idea guy. It's my job to execute on his ideas, come up with prototypes that let him play around with the ideas, and then throw them away and start from scratch when he gets different ideas, or rewrite, iterate and polish the good ones until they're production quality. The designs he gives me are high level enough that there's lots of room for creativity, filling in the gaps between the design and the implementation. But the only reason I get the privilege to exercise any creativity is because I'm also executing on the hard part: implementing the code.
If you don't want to actually do the heavy lifting and grunt work of writing code, and if you aren't willing to throw it all away and start from scratch when the designers decide they want something else, or work on the complex, tedious plumbing that nobody will notice, then it's going to be very hard for you to find a job in the games industry.
The best thing to do is to write your own game, all by yourself. Then you will have something to show. But nobody in the industry wants to hear your idea, if you don't have something to show that works and is fun, because it's just a distraction from executing on their own ideas.
But now days it's entirely possible for one person or a small team to actually execute on their own idea and produce a good game, like Minecraft for example, as long as they're willing to do the hard work, and not just into it just because they think it will be an easy, glorious job to be the "idea guy" who tells other people what to do and takes all the credit.
And for god's sake, if you have no intention of doing any programming or other hard work, and you are just looking for a programmer to do all the "easy" work for you for equity instead of salary, now that you've done the "hard part" of coming up with the idea for the world's greatest game or iPhone app, then please fuck off and die. There are already enough narcissists polluting the games industry, thank you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games