Ideas - good and bad Everyone can come up with ideas (sometimes good, sometimes bad) and the monkeys can randomly type Hamlet given enough time. The tragedy of the monkey is that it won''t know the difference between Hamlet and random garbage - after eons of work it will ignore it''s triumph and keep on typing random stuff. So how do you judge the merit of various ideas? Of course, the value of an idea is related to its implementation details. It is therefore obvious that ideas have different values for different people - depending on their implementation skills and assets. For me a great game idea would be one that doesn''t require much graphics (if at all - naught more than programmers art anyway), is a 2D game with little animation (due to my user interface code), has very few rules (so the game is easy to pick up and learn and to explain - also easy to develop), takes only days before the first playable game prototype is ready, takes only weeks or months to finish, is a novel concept in at least some way, and is a lot of fun too (the early prototype helps sort this out - of all things fun is the hardest to predict). A good demo cut is also very important (the demo must prove the fun of the entire game yet it must leave the player wanting for more). A title that will make people click on my game on download sites also helps.

Ideas seem to follow a super fast version of Darwin''s natural selection. Most ideas are mutations of previously known ideas.

An idea is 1st tested by the mind of the one inventing it. One judges ideas based on their own principles and criteria. If it seems like it can surpass other ideas in matching the criteria, then you feel excitement about it. You can spend some time thinking about mutated offspring of it or you might feel like it is good enough to share.

Next, an idea is tested by team members in your project. Often they will mutate it and share versions that fit their criteria. When people have similar criteria and agree, then those features will emerge from the shared set of ideas.

Then the ideas are tested by the marketplace. Those that provide what the end user wants become popular and are therefore more widely known, which allows them to be ingredients for future mutations into new ideas.

So if one took apart atomic features of each idea, then I wonder if one could construct a "family tree" showing it''s ancestors?

quote:
One judges ideas based on their own principles and criteria.

Which is exactly the point of this thread: to exchange these personal principles and criteria.

[edited by - Diodor on August 5, 2003 6:09:20 PM]

Hmm. An idea is applied to replace an existing idea. An idea is a good idea if it is better at doing whatever the previous idea was doing.

5010 -- you''re talking about memes.

Personally, I''m mainly interested in space games, first person shooters, RPGs and RTSs. I have many ideas. Some of them are good ideas for one game, and bad ideas for another.

The basic rule is that I like a game idea if: (1) I''m going to have fun writing it, (2) I''m going to have fun using it, or (3) other people are going to think I''m dead smart for having done it. All three is best.

CoV

I throw out 75% of my ideas. Ideas evolve over time. You remember your failures, and fix them. Then, you have a cool idea that will work out. Part of the idea is always technical. You need to remember this always.

Scott Simontis
Big Joke: C#