Why Your Game Idea Sucks

[kpenguin]

Interesting article (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_221/6582-Why-Your-Game-Idea-Sucks)

I've heard quite a few people tell me about their "brilliant" game idea and I've seen people post their game ideas here. Its a fascininating article in that light.

[Jahkaivah]

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/173/192317-jb_large.jpg

"Oh.... ok...." That's Johnathon Blow, maker of Braid by the way


:smalltongue:

[Cheesegear]

I think the title of the article is very misleading.

Very few Game Ideas 'suck'. I imagine anyone who's anyone has played at least a few of the 'great' games that're on the market these days, and has seen what they like and don't like, and have come up with a composite game that looks pretty promising.

The article title is misleading. What it actually says is that games cost time and money. And trying to give your idea to an established developer is a waste of time because they've already got 18 things that they're already trying to make. The creative team at said developer probably has another 150 - at least - stashed in the cupboard. And they don't want to add your project to the pile - for a few reasons.

The article says you need more than an idea to make a game. Which most people don't have. The article says your game idea sucks, but, doesn't qualify it.

The article is good in what it presents. But the title is misleading (and often wrong).

It's like saying "Why your idea for a novel sucks."
Novel ideas don't normally suck (that's why they're novel :smallamused:), it's just that it takes a lot more work to get a finished product than "Here's a cool idea..."
But, that's not entirely accurate, since developing and publishing a game takes a lot more effort than writing and publishing a novel. Well, actually, my comparison is pretty accurate. It's really just a question of scale.

...Wait...What was I talking about?

[AstralFire]

The title is intentionally misleading and she even corrects herself mid-article a few times about it. The point is to grab your attention.

[Trazoi]

Heh, I've seen and participated in debates on hobbyist or indie boards that hashed out the majority of the points in that article. There's a sizeable number of new game designers who post thinking they've got the next greatest thing and are looking for volunteers, but typically all the concepts fall into being "just like , only [I]bigger!". Bonus points for claims to dethrone World of Warcraft. :smallwink:

[Mystic Muse]

My game Idea rocks! It'sa remade version of the Legend of Zelda ocarina of time. Except this time Link is EVIL! except you still fight Ganondorf, and you get a pet dragon and you Marry Ruto at the end and you can actually kill people and you can be a girl and and......................

:tongue: This is actually PARTIALLY an idea of mine. I just know it'll never be made and nobody would ever play it. I'm not crazy enough to turn the above idea into an actual game though.

[Jimorian]

Something to remember:

Watt-Evans' Law of Literary Creation: There is no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently-talented writer can't get a good story out of it.

But like Cheesegear says, it's more a matter of there are too many ideas floating around at the developers in the first place. It's like somebody stepping up to an author with "I have a great idea for a book, you write it, and we'll split the money 50/50!"

Ideas are easy, the execution of those ideas is hard. In any field.

[Cubey]

I like the article, although I don't really know who it is addressed to. People who are deluded or naive enough they believe their great idea will be turned into a video game as soon as they pitch it to someone interested won't get dissuaded so easily.

And I'm also glad that alternatives exist. You have the Best Idea For a Game Ever, but no company wants to hear about it? Well, why not do something about it yourself then? If it's a story, write a fanfic or host a play by post game using that story. If it's a gameplay mechanic, make a freeware flash game. It's not that every Game Idea has to exist as a Game.

[Triaxx]

So in short: Take your idea out back and shoot it and put it out of our misery because no one is ever going to do anything about it, and we'll continue to receive the same recycled concepts from now to eternity.

The only way to actually get your idea out is to already be an established company. Oh, an no one is going to steal your idea, but you better make damn sure they can't.

[chiasaur11]

So in short: Take your idea out back and shoot it and put it out of our misery because no one is ever going to do anything about it, and we'll continue to receive the same recycled concepts from now to eternity.

The only way to actually get your idea out is to already be an established company. Oh, an no one is going to steal your idea, but you better make damn sure they can't.

Or...

learn the skills to make something yourself. If I remember right, the article mentions that as a workable scheme, and it has been done. Look up 2d boy. 2 guys, great game, makes money.

[Catch]

Wait, there's worthwhile content on The Escapist besides Zero Punctuation? :smallconfused:

[chiasaur11]

Wait, there's worthwhile content on The Escapist besides Zero Punctuation? :smallconfused:

I find Shamus Young's work on the site perfectly decent.

[Geno9999]

but typically all the concepts fall into being "just like , only [I]bigger!". Bonus points for claims to dethrone World of Warcraft. :smallwink:
This is why I try to follow this one rule when presenting my game idea:
Never, EVER assume that your game will dethrone the King of *insert genre of game.*
Now, while it's possible that it might be addictive and fun enough that it does dethrone something, don't assume that you'll get a perfect record in bowling just because you watched other people play bowling.

[Trazoi]

Or...

learn the skills to make something yourself. If I remember right, the article mentions that as a workable scheme, and it has been done. Look up 2d boy. 2 guys, great game, makes money.
Exactly. Even if you don't make a full game, it's very easy to demo ideas via a prototype. You can mock things up in GameMaker, Flash, Torque Game Builder etc. Or make a mod. Or mock it up as a board game. It's a lot easier to see if a game idea is fun if you can actually play it.


This is why I try to follow this one rule when presenting my game idea:
Never, EVER assume that your game will dethrone the King of *insert genre of game.*
Now, while it's possible that it might be addictive and fun enough that it does dethrone something, don't assume that you'll get a perfect record in bowling just because you watched other people play bowling.
The fatal flaw in most of the game ideas I've seen bandied about on the internet is that they assume that the developer has infinite assets and isn't hampered by any technical restrictions. The key selling point that makes them "ultimate" is either picking a popular game and then outdoing them in content (for example, trying to outspend Blizzard on MMO production :smalleek:), or on something that is insanely hard to do right (such as a MMO based on Street Fighter-esque combat, combining a genre that needs to cope gracefully with lag with one that is destroyed at any hint of it). The former is folly; the latter hinges on really smart tech-work and can only really be convincing to anyone with a working prototype.

[Cubey]

(such as a MMO based on Street Fighter-esque combat, combining a genre that needs to cope gracefully with lag with one that is destroyed at any hint of it)

That's doable, just make the moves, hit detection, etc be calculated at the player's, not the server's side. Of course, that's just opening a window of opportunity for people to hack the process with mods, and cheat.

[Lord of Rapture]

I find Shamus Young's work on the site perfectly decent.

Agreed, though I do disagree with the man on some points, and he does tend to suffer from nostalgia.

Escape to the Movies are worthwhile as well.

[Cheesegear]

Escape to the Movies are worthwhile as well.

I second MovieBob as good. All his reviews (for me), have been pretty spot on. I pretty much agree with just about everything he's ever said.
I also watch and/or read most game reviews by Susan Arendt as well. She seems to know what she's talking about.
I used to watch Unforgotten Realms as well. But, I feel it's getting boring these days.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Or...

learn the skills to make something yourself. If I remember right, the article mentions that as a workable scheme, and it has been done. Look up 2d boy. 2 guys, great game, makes money.
QFT. You make your own game, and market it yourself, you save so much work. Besides, the paradigm of the internet is GEARED towards indie developers. All you need to do is find your audience.

[Triaxx]

If I were able to program, I wouldn't be looking for a team to help develop it would I? I'd be bringing a partially completed project instead.

[Jahkaivah]

Talking about good stuff on The Escapist and not mentioning Unskippable. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/unskippable)

What

[chiasaur11]

Talking about good stuff on The Escapist and not mentioning Unskippable. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/unskippable)

What

Was considering mentioning it, but, you know, wanted to leave something for other people.

[Trazoi]

That's doable, just make the moves, hit detection, etc be calculated at the player's, not the server's side. Of course, that's just opening a window of opportunity for people to hack the process with mods, and cheat.
The "trusting the player's computer" part is going to the be the problem. :smallwink: But it's not so much that about whether the idea is impossible, it's more that the whole concept hinges on some clever bit of technological wizardry. And in that case, coming up with the idea is nothing compared to the time and skill required to implement it.

Plus there's the issue that these kinds of ultimate game idea typically don't have just one of these tricky technical issues. :smallwink: It's dead easy to type stuff like "AI that truly learns from the player" or "a full-scale computer generated world, complete with working ecosystem". Much, much harder to implement it.

[Cubey]

Plus there's the issue that these kinds of ultimate game idea typically don't have just one of these tricky technical issues. :smallwink: It's dead easy to type stuff like "AI that truly learns from the player" or "a full-scale computer generated world, complete with working ecosystem". Much, much harder to implement it.

We are in agreement.

This is not a video game, but still a fitting example: Google didn't achieve success because it's a search engine. There were dozens of search engines. It achieved success because search algorythms it used were made in a such a way that searching was fast and indepth.

[Geno9999]

Talking about good stuff on The Escapist and not mentioning Unskippable. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/unskippable)


Thank you Jahkaivah, now I have to go looking for my rear since I laughed it off while watching the videos.

[Lord of Rapture]

Talking about good stuff on The Escapist and not mentioning Unskippable. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/unskippable)

What

Because it isn't good. :smallyuk:

[Johnny Blade]

I like how this article's author feels confident enough to make an intentionally offensive sweeping statement about amateurish forays in general but is also showing a pretty clear sign of a ****ty writer - which would be making an intentionally offensive sweeping statement about the chosen subject in general - while still apparently being compelled to write.
Irony aside, it's almost like she'd fear that she'd otherwise have to face that she doesn't really have anything to say that couldn't be explained in four sentences instead of pages.


Also, everything I've ever seen on The Escapist was gimmicky at best.

[ondonaflash]

Its a shame, I had some exciting ideas for games I'd have loved to develop, but ultimately I decided on doing something different with my life, and now they'll never be anything more than a brief write up. Se la vie. Hell, I'll throw them on right here in spoilers, that way at least somebody might read them.

Angel Game

You play an angel of vengeance, acting on God’s behalf (Missions are delivered by an archangel, Vashael.) You travel to earth on a mission-to-mission basis hunting down the wicked and “purifying” them to death, as each mission unfolds you are granted new abilities to use as the situation warrants. You start with the ability to take human, canine, and feline form, as well as the ability to summon a sword of fire, and to fly. You have to track down the human, find them and kill them. Each case is presented with a degree of moral ambiguity vis-à-vis punishment fitting the crime, but each time you kill them with the absolute justice of God.
The plot is loose, it should focus on the player and a second angel as they perform their deeds, with the second angel (Kiriel?) starting to question the commands and the player’s character trying to reassure him, there should be some overarching plot about a demon (Mephisto?) trying to corrupt the city, that you in the course of your missions learn of and thwart. In the end Kiriel betrays the Lord and you are forced to kill him.
The missions should be designed so that you are eliminating corrupting influences more than just the wicked, but the strongest example I can think of is a mission where you have to hunt down a witch who is teaching girls witchcraft, but after killing the witch you kill the girls. So each quest should embody the few suffering for the Greater Good. These angels are in no way sympathetic to humans they are there to insure that gods will is done.
The angels should have a very “Old Testament” point of view and methodology. They should be very Old School Roman Catholic, harsh, cold, and pitiless. The demons should embody temptation, easy outs, acts of supposed kindness, seduction. The people should be portrayed as grimy, kind of unkempt, gritty.
You fight such individuals as pimps and mob bosses, but also users of the dark arts, demons, and even misguided fools. There is some element of stealth, since you don’t want to be revealed to your enemies, or revealed as an angel to the public at large, risk should come more from avoiding hazards than specific enemies, until it comes to eliminating targets who should have some sort of trick up their sleeves.
Some mission ideas: You possess a police officer in order to kill a mob boss who is dragging the innocent into sinfulness. You have to fight using only a gun, and some god given powers (like bullet time) in order to make your way through the den, when you approach the mob boss the cop’s body is bullet riddled, but you shed that exterior and take your true form (Tall, glowing, stern, wings) and kill him and his fellows.
In another one you have to enter a corrupted schoolhouse to kill a witch, there are lesser demons stalking it (invisible to the naked eye, perhaps a “God’s Eye” sort of power?), unholy traps, and dark magic circles, you get past them and have to fight the witch. (Femme Fatale-esque).
A demon is corrupting a city, you have to kill the demon, then burn the city, this is the penultimate level and you get the ability to rain fire within a certain diameter, you also have to ensure that there are no survivors.
The end boss is Kiriel, an angel who falls from the light of god after the destruction of the city, he is sympathetic toward the humans, and you are commanded to kill him (Because god commands it)

I'll bet this one would piss a lot of religious people off. It would be cool though


Detective Game

The game is set in a noir world, black and white, where justice isn’t nearly as clear. It is an Action Adventure game where you have to solve a crime by talking to people, finding clues, dodging traps, and fighting goons. It should be designed from a third person over-the-shoulder perspective.
The game should follow a standard detective movie plot. You play Fitch McRayne, hardline Private Eye and pulp hero, he’s an alcoholic, a smoker, and maybe the only man who can bring justice to this town. The Femme Fatale is Scarlet Silke, top dame for the big man in town, a sexy dame with her own agenda. Fitch is pitched up against Big Donny DeVaine, Mob boss and rum-runner for the entire city, possibly the most powerful man in town.
The men should be tough, the women should be deadly, it’s a town of secrets and it’s your job finding out which ones matter to you.

This one wasn't much more than a premise, and I never really bothered to expand it. I wasn't sure what I wanted it to be, an action adventure, or a Point and Click

Cave Game

You are a hiker, while hiking in the mountains you are separated from your buddies and sealed in a cave. You have to survive the caves and make your way out, to the surface, but the caves are not empty, they contain horrors long forgotten by man.
You have limited resources; you start out with a flashlight, a backpack, a survival knife, and a hiking stick. You can craft a spear but to get any other weapons you’ll have to improvise, you can pick up small rocks for throwing, and you can cannibalize the corpses of your enemies for different weapons. The game should have a crafting system where you can combine two items to make a third, nothing too outlandish, but things like spears, torches, a bow, some arrows, maybe bladed weapons of some kind. Food is also a problem, as your stamina decreases based on the amount of effort you exert on a given task. When you are afraid or at risk adrenaline should give you a boost to stamina, but afterwards leave you more drained. You will need to find sources of food, water, and fire, all while avoiding or fighting off terrifying monsters and working your way through dark caves.
The game should be frightening, it is dark, echoing, you never know where enemies are going to leap out, or how they’re going to attack, or even what they’ll be. There should be things like mole-men, giant spiders, utahraptors, all kinds of monsters stalking the caves, and each one behaves differently. The spiders try to ensnare you in webs and drag you to their maws, the raptors try to surround you and heard you towards an ambush, the mole-men like to leap out and ambush you all at once.
The game should have an extensive set of caverns and tunnels mapped out in advanced, there should be hundreds of different possible routes, and enemies should patrol along all of these routes, hunting you, hunting each other, there should be an active dynamic going on behind the scenes, out of direct sight of the player, so that encounters feel realistic. There should not be any forced encounters, or situations where only one option is available to the player. The player should have absolute freedom to choose, so long as a human being is capable of it.
In underlying plot, there is a group of cultists who worship a dark god, who are trying to hunt down the player to sacrifice him and summon their god. Their god should be blocking the exit to the caves, some sort of multi-tentacled horror.
Note: Maybe the game could benefit from a distinctly Lovecraft-ian feel.

The biggest problem with this game is the background dynamic. That would require a lot of processing power, though I think the algorithms are feasible. It depends on how complex the tunnels were. I think the coolest part of this game was the idea that it was really just one massive tunnel system, and they would wind around, and re-connect, and there would be switchbacks and the like, but you could go through the entire game without seeing parts of the tunnels. This might work as a text-based adventure.

First Person Shooter

The game is based around multiplayer combat. The teams (possibly multifaceted gameplay) are made up of a number of players (At least five), and are set in a large map. From each team there is a Designated Controller. The DC cannot move, and cannot fight. What the DC can do is see an entire map of the area and the locations of everyone in the game. The DC can also communicate with each of his team mates.

The DCs communication could be expanded by having the soldiers capture communication towers that are interspersed across the map, and along the same vein they could cut off enemy communications. They could also intercept enemy communications and feed them to their own DC. Victory conditions would be the execution of the enemy DC who would be located in the enemy base.

Again, not the most detailed description, the idea was that the soldiers wouldn't have a mini-map, or know any of the enemy locations, but the DC would, and he could relay those to his soldiers. I thought it might add an interesting level of strategy to the game.

[Rutskarn]

Shamus=Good

I also agree, because (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2924)I'm contractually (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=3557)obligated (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=4026)to (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=5015).

Also like Unskippable, and some of Arendt's stuff.

[Trazoi]

I like how this article's author feels confident enough to make an intentionally offensive sweeping statement about amateurish forays in general but is also showing a pretty clear sign of a ****ty writer - which would be making an intentionally offensive sweeping statement about the chosen subject in general - while still apparently being compelled to write.
Irony aside, it's almost like she'd fear that she'd otherwise have to face that she doesn't really have anything to say that couldn't be explained in four sentences instead of pages.
While four pages might be a bit verbose for what is basically "No-one is interested in helping you develop your game concept if it's just an idea and you've got nothing else to bring to development", I didn't think it was discouraging amateur development in general. While the title is "Why Your Game Idea Sucks", the point isn't that your game idea really does suck and that you shouldn't develop it yourself. It's just that your game sucks from the perspective of everyone else,, because they've all got at least a dozen ideas of their own that they'd prefer to develop over yours. You're going to need more than just an idea to win over a team to help you.

Also I've heard that game designers and producers with any sort of profile tend to get swamped by people trying to pitch worthless ideas all the freakin' time, so that's possibly another reason why she thought it was worth writing an article. :smallbiggrin:

[MCerberus]

I like the "Make Something Unreal" method of sorting through these ideas. Dangle a carrot to get people to put up or shut up, use their products to market the latest Tournament title, and let the community do QC.

[littlequietguy]

Read it. This is a important critique. I enjoyed it even though it ruined my hopes and dreams. Oh well. At least choreographing my own mmo is still fun at the least.

[Johnny Blade]

While the title is "Why Your Game Idea Sucks", the point isn't that your game idea really does suck and that you shouldn't develop it yourself. It's just that your game sucks from the perspective of everyone else,, because they've all got at least a dozen ideas of their own that they'd prefer to develop over yours.
I know, that's why I wrote my post. The title and some parts of the article are only written in this tone for stylistic reasons - she spends half a page or so back-pedaling - and it's a pretty poor style generally used by people that have no idea how to draw people in and come off as witty in another way.
Not that I'd argue about the point she makes, I just found this somewhat amusing in context.

[Triaxx]

Really, it could have been titled: Why No One Would Publish Your Game. Or: Your Game Needs More Than An Idea.

Really, saying it Sucks because you haven't finished it when you bring it to them is not especially helpful.

[Hawriel]

Years ago a friend of mine was inspired by 40K and wanted to make an ork warbuggy racing game. he worked on ideas and dested it out with another friend. not long after that I think GW game out with somthing very similar.

[tribble]

Wait, there's worthwhile content on The Escapist besides Zero Punctuation? :smallconfused:

There Will be Brawl is hosted on The Escapist.