Best Way To Sell a Game Concept?

dunng808 writes "If a couple of young, game-crazy guys wanted to get started designing a game with the intention of selling the concept, how should they proceed? In the music industry they would make a demo MP3. In the film industry they would write a script (and I would recommend lyx with the hollywood document class). Should they develop some sample game play with a well-known engine? Is the one in Blender good enough? This somewhat dated list suggests it is. Or should they focus on textual descriptions and static scenes made with Blender and the GIMP? Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?"

Comments

Re:Agree. Concepts are a dime a doxen

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. This reeks of just another average Midwestern hack with big Hollywood dreams.

Submitter - Wanna make a good game? First, slap an ESRB A 18+ on it and get plenty of bad press for your demo to drum up a little controversy. Then add ingredients to taste:

• Sex. Think about Grand Theft Auto's hot coffee and God of War's sex minigames...but show fill-frontal nudity and butt-ass naked fucking with good, variable camera angles. Ensure that there are ample females in the game and make some of them struggle.
• Drugs. A wide variety of known and unknown intoxicants that have variable visual, verbal, auditory, unpredictable effects on the gameplay and plot.
• Psychedelia. We want eye-candy and unpredictable plot twists. Not like that lame hackneyed show Lost, but like Twin Peaks' plot fistfucking American McGhee's Alice's stage design.
• Violence. Literally a no-brainer. If anything moves, it must be able to be beaten, raped, scalped, eaten, and everything in between.

Re:No way

[interkin3tic]

Getting ideas is the easy part.

Yeah, but often the "idea" is really just "Hey, you know that successful game by someone else? Let's make that!"

Or sometimes it's

"Hey, you know which world war is my favorite? That's right, number two, how did you know?!? We gotta make a game about it!"

And that's not to discount the all-too-common "idea" of

"That game that we made, the one that made actual money? Let's make a sequel! What's that? The main character died? And so did everyone else? Everybody in the whole world?... I smell PREQUELSEQUEL!!!

Oh yeah, and then the

"I just realized that if you put an old CD... say 'Ace of Base'... into a white jewel case and label it 'The Ace of Base wii game', someone will actually buy it and you will make money!"

There are so many games out there that suck because they were made off of brain dead concepts, it's very tempting to assume that the one thing the videogame industry lacks is someone with ideas.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to try to download the "Aliens invade the earth but a strong silent type with a gun saves the day #495" beta.

Re:No way

[tehcyder]

In every game, even ones where I can be evil like Fallout 3 I always seem to be the hero

That's probably because it would be pretty tedious being, say, the unfit, alcoholic sidekick who gets his head scythed off after five minutes. You wouldn't get much gameplay.