quote: Original post by chronos
The problem with Oluseyi''s example is that ideas are less like mud and more like a recipe for mud. Mud is just mud and indeed you can find it in your back garden, but a good recipe for mud bricks is not as easy to come up with as a bunch of mud.

i''d think that ideas are like the mud, and the extremely detailed design document would be the recipe for the bricks... then making the bricks themselves, using the mud and recipe, would be the implementation, no?

this is an easy one to settle. find someone who had a great idea and sold it to get rich. it doesn''t count if they developed the idea into a professional-quality design, or programmed it themselves, either; that would be more than just an idea.

Ideas carry little weight by themselves. To become useful, they have to have the backing and skill support of human beings. Celebrity-status game designers reached their status because of a track record of successfully sorting out the best ideas and then having the skills to communicate these best ideas to the rest of the team(or doing it all yourself, but that''s still a toughie since a lot of potential games need the work of a larger team than one - the designer must then work harder on the ideas so as to start a project he can complete).

People can get lucky now and then in choosing game ideas, but only those who have real talent can do it consistently over multiple projects while working with different teams and development constraints. If you look at older games of the lone-wolf developer era especially, you can see this pretty clearly - some hotshot coder/designers made one great game and a bunch of lousy, uninspired ones, while others were successful almost every time.

quote: Original post by Sandman
If you rephrased that as 'anybody can come up with ideas that they think are good and useful', then I think that statement would be pretty much true. The only people that wouldn't apply to are the people who wouldn't be posting about their great new MMORPG idea in the first place.

Yeah, I agree it's pretty easy to fool onself into thinking one's ideas are better than anybody else's. This is why, ultimately, the best judge of what is good or bad is your player, who can only play implementations of ideas. Judging the value of ideas can be pretty difficult indeed, but they do have a certain value.

quote: Not really: unless you can prove that your mud is better than someone elses mud, or your recipe is better than someone elses recipe, then still no-one is going to be interested in buying either of them. And the only way to prove it is to bake some bricks yourself.

It turns out that I, like others, can make ambiguous statements from time to time. What I meant to say is that a recipe for mud bricks can be very valuable in a non-monetary sense. Perhaps the problem with my argument about mud is that recipes for mud brick are perhaps nothing new these days, but you can bet there was a time when somebody's ability to make better mud bricks depended on their unique insight into the craft.

[edited by - chronos on July 8, 2003 2:24:40 AM]

I agree with everyone about finding an idea''s worth only in it''s implementation. Where I disagree, however, is that just anyone can come up with an idea. I wouldn''t say that ideas are completely worthless, as it is obvious that some people are more disposed to coming up with creative and interesting than others'' ideas. As is seen quite plainly on these very boards (the "Matrix brain plugin" is a very good example), not just anyone can come up with a great idea. But yes, ideas are pretty worthless in a business/monetary sense without effective presentation or implementation.

quote: Original post by SolidHavoc
I agree with everyone about finding an idea''s worth only in it''s implementation. Where I disagree, however, is that just anyone can come up with an idea.

Anyone can come up with an idea. Not everyone can come up with good ideas. However...

quote: I wouldn''t say that ideas are completely worthless, as it is obvious that some people are more disposed to coming up with creative and interesting than others'' ideas.

Which doesn''t matter, since it''s the implementation that counts. Furthermore, given enough iterations even an idiot is likely to come up with a good idea. Not necessarily an original one, but a good one.

An idiot can come up with good ideas, but how would he know they''re good?

Ideas are, generally, worth about as much as the square of the paper they''re written on. Thus, if you''ve worked through your idea enough that it covers a 50 page design document, they actually have a marginal recycling value, and are worth about 500 times more than an idea that''s written in a paragraph on a piece of paper.

If it''s only written on the web, well, that''s not paper until you print it, now is it?

Ideas are what drive the technology of humanity forward.

Ideas are what drive the blah blah blah.

Ideas are what drive the blah blah blah.


[edited by - fisheyel83l on July 13, 2003 7:13:29 AM]

LMAO, nice one fisheye

I think the best point is, if you think you have a truely great idea, work like hell at it and make something of it. Then maybe it _will_ be worth something

- Christopher Dapo ~ Ronixus

quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Which doesn''t matter, since it''s the implementation that counts.

It''s the implementation that counts, but before the implementation there must exist a concept, no matter how vague. Every good game has a useful concept behind it (it may evolve during development, but it''s definitely there). Original or not, the ideas behind the concept have a strong influence over the implementation, so the value of the ideas involved actually matters a lot.

quote: Furthermore, given enough iterations even an idiot is likely to come up with a good idea. Not necessarily an original one, but a good one.

An idiot may indeed be able to come up with a good idea, but you can bet it won''t happen consistently if the person is truly an idiot. Lacking consistency, the idiot''s next idea at any given moment is more likely to be worthless than not.