Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=783

by codebungl • 15 years ago

39 21 15 years ago

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, 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.

wiradikusuma• 15 years ago

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."?

orenmazor• 15 years ago

that's absurdly rational.

but also impossible to prove.

benjoffe• 15 years ago

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.

jonnathanson2• 15 years ago

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).

bonzoesc• 15 years ago

> 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.

wccrawford• 15 years ago

I 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.

jwcacces• 15 years ago

Because 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.

5hoom• 15 years ago

The 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]

SimHacker4• 15 years ago

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 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

michaels0620• 15 years ago

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.

SimHacker4• 15 years ago

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! ;)

SimHacker4• 15 years ago

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

srdev2• 15 years ago

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.

SimHacker4• 15 years ago

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

dkersten• 15 years ago

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.

rick888• 15 years ago

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.

bitwize• 15 years ago

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.

johnnyjustice• 15 years ago

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)

signalsignal• 15 years ago

Idea guys are great when they bring lots of money.

Why Won’t Developers Listen to Your Game Idea?

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