What I am going to say has been said by others. It is hard to communicate new game ideas to other people. Even if you did successfully manage to communicate it, it might get shot down, or failed to get actualized.

Say, after checking your profile, why the threads you started are all about "no new ideas!!~!" ? You have been here more than a year, yet you posted only five times. Are you a long time lurker who like to steal ideas?

Technogoth, SuperPig and coderx75
[embarrass] I feel a bit targeted here, as I know it's the first thing I do every time I see someone post an idea they think is original.
But don't get me wrong, I have never discouraged someone, my only concern is to help them do some research on their idea. After all, if somebody has done it before, why not go and have a look and maybe learn something, or see the mistakes that were made and improve on it?

When coderx75 say this person had a great idea but got shot down, well, I dunno you, but I think this is sort of the point of the forum, to crash test ideas, see what people think, how they react.
When Wavinator posts one of his ideas, do I treat him any different than some n00b making is first post? Nope, it's just that Wavy has _thought_ his ideas through. And still I will post some "hey, this remind me of this and that, maybe you should check it out, I've a feeling this might be useful to you".

Then again, if you are one of those people who think great thinkers just come up with great ideas while sitting in their bath... well, sorry to say, but it only worked for Archimedes [wink]

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Original post by superpig I call bullshit. I've never seen anyone being actively discouraged from persuing something in this forum - some people are overly concerned with implementation details, but that's to be expected in a community where many designers double as programmers. I've seen people say "That sounds kinda like Game XYZ" but it's up to the OP whether they interpret that as a problem - regardless of the merit of the original idea, if it's similar to Game XYZ then it's similar to Game XYZ, and the OP can either choose to interpret that as a 'there's no niche here,' or they can choose to interpret it as a 'this is another game I should check out to see how they approached similar problems.' It's something that's always seemed strange to me - that people feel they can't do a game because someone else did one similar. Was the first game perfect? Can it be improved upon? Then what are you waiting for?

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Original post by ahw Technogoth, SuperPig and coderx75 [embarrass] I feel a bit targeted here, as I know it's the first thing I do every time I see someone post an idea they think is original. But don't get me wrong, I have never discouraged someone, my only concern is to help them do some research on their idea. After all, if somebody has done it before, why not go and have a look and maybe learn something, or see the mistakes that were made and improve on it? When coderx75 say this person had a great idea but got shot down, well, I dunno you, but I think this is sort of the point of the forum, to crash test ideas, see what people think, how they react. When Wavinator posts one of his ideas, do I treat him any different than some n00b making is first post? Nope, it's just that Wavy has _thought_ his ideas through. And still I will post some "hey, this remind me of this and that, maybe you should check it out, I've a feeling this might be useful to you". Then again, if you are one of those people who think great thinkers just come up with great ideas while sitting in their bath... well, sorry to say, but it only worked for Archimedes [wink]

I see nothing wrong with saying that someone's idea is like "Game XYZ" as long as you state why/how. For example, this thread poses an idea that gets compared to .hack which is nothing like what the OP described.

As for good ideas being discouraged, perhaps I'm being a little too harsh. I've just recently started using the boards again since the ratings system's been in place. A few years ago, gamedev was a great place to come to if you wanted to be bashed, flamed or just get a lot of negativity. Things have changed greatly since then (kudos to the staff).

I've noticed that simple ideas spark good discussions since they're easily digested. Rather than dumping the entire concept into a post and receiving a million undirected comments and questions, it seems much more productive to discuss an aspect of your idea (gameplay, fighting system, balancing, etc).

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Original post by superpig I'd be interested to see the thread you refer to.

It was a pretty good discussion about online communities. I'd be interested in re-reading it myself. It was a few years ago so I'll have to search through all my posts when I get home from work. If you're really interested (and a masochist) you can search in my profile... had something to do with "communities".