Concepts That Should Be Games?

Now that we've seen what's in the pipe for the immediate future IGN is running an article hoping for the games of the future, and talking about novels, tv shows, and other properties that they'd like to see be made into games. From the article: "...while we at IGN are all for original, non-franchise titles--reference Katamari, Psychonauts, God of War, Spore--a lot of us have places in our hearts for certain TV shows, films, and books that made us all fuzzy with joy." What would you like to see be made into a game? Microsoft, if you are listening, I have two words for you: Shadowrun MMOG.

Comments

Everyone's a game designer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as everyone's a critic, everyone thinks that they have the ultimate game idea.

The problem is that every single person who plays videogames - from those that work in the industry to those who occasionally fire up a console - ALL have a couple of ideas for a game. Heck, working in a development team we often come up with several concepts a week just talking amongst ourselves.

The problem is not the ideas - it's the implementation. The basic idea takes 1% of the effort, 1% of the time. Building the damn thing is what takes effort. 18+ months of VERY hard work toiling on a project. By the time you have a couple of designers, a content team, engineering staff, a producer and a publisher - that's when things start to diverge from the original idea. It's very difficult to preserve the original purity of your concept because in the end you have to create a game that (1) has to be fun, (2) can be marketed, and (3) that people will buy. It doesn't matter if *you* think it's a cool idea, if it won't sell enough to recoup your investment - in which case, good luck feeding yourself.

Independent games are great when they can get made and can tackle some of these areas that mainstream games can't approach. But it's the "getting made" part that's hard.

Re:Everyone's a game designer.

[Shaper_pmp]

"Any game that is fun can be marketed because people will buy any game that is fun. The primary virtue of a game is it's level of fun. So unless your original concept was not fun, that assertion is false."

With the greatest respect, that's the biggest load of idealistic Utopian horse-pucky I've ever read.

"Build it and they will come" works when you only need a tiny fraction of the whole audience to make an endeavour worthwhile. Nobody, but nobody sinks millions of dollars into a game and relies on word-of-mouth to spread it.

Word of mouth might get you many things (respect, a hard core of gamers who passionately love your game, and lots of blog-coverage), but it won't get the game in stores, it won't push the game to Joe Sixpack who's too busy drinking beer to read gaming blogs (but who nevertheless represents 50%-99% of your market, depending on the platform), and it certainly won't allow the game to break even.

It is possible, I'll grant you, for tiny cult games, movies or books to achieve mainstream success, but this is a mixture of 5% excellence and 95% pure, dumb luck. For every one you see, there are literally hundreds of thousands that die cold and lonely deaths, unmissed by anyone.

I long for the day when this is true - when you can just produce something great and it'll automatically translate into wealth, fame and success - but even with the advent of the internet, that day is years (if not decades) away.

And still relies on luck, even when it arrives.

Re:Everyone's a game designer.

[Snowmit]

Counterexample: Alien Hominid.

Err that's not a counter-example. That's proof that there are plenty of good ideas out there if only people would actually impliment them.

They did a post-mortem in Game Developer where they explained about how they financed the game by MORTAGING THEIR HOUSES. The end of the post-mortem is an apology/thank-you to their spouses and loved ones for putting up with them as they stuggled through a whole lot of uncertainty and near financial ruin. They talk a great deal about the hurdles that they had to overcome while making the game, and the issues they faced with expanding the content and making it work and run on consoles along with getting approval from the console makers and finding a publisher that they could work with and trust.

All of this supports the grandparent's point that there are lots of great game ideas but that actually making a great game takes a huge amount of time and effort and risk. Imagine if the game hadn't done well? The guy would have LOST HIS HOUSE.

Most people are not willing to put their personal lives at risk like this, to say nothing of the sheer quantity of person-hours and attention to detail that it takes to actually take a game from pitch to publication.

The grand parent is exactly right. I work on mobile games. Our company has literally hundreds of great game ideas floating around - we keep a list. The explanations of any one of these ideas takes about half-a-page. The design docs are like 50-100 pages and mobile games are pretty simple creatures. I can only imagine the monstrosities that are console and PC design docs.

It'll never work

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that movie and TV licences almost invariably suck. Hard. Stick to (pretending) to make original games, please.

Re:Wow, you're an idiot

[UWC]

My impression of you: "I want a game that actively punishes me for not yet being good enough! Nonintuitive control and illogical design would only sweeten the deal. And learning curve? I want to run right up against a cliff. I am hard core. I've transcended conventional gaming. I want to effectively play five games at once with but one controller."

Seriously, though, there's a game for PSP called Mercury, I think, where you're guiding an amount of mercury through a level, monkeyball style, but the blob can split up (and often has to) and you have to accomplish certain things (switches, etc.) with separate portions of the mercury. That sounds like something you might be interested in. Reviews have stated that it's a very interesting concept and works pretty well, but the learning curve is apparently very steep and later levels can be extremely tedious. I've actually considered getting it if I can find it anywhere.