If you hear a good idea you will automatically remember it and incorporate it into one of your own ideas and you might not even know it.

Lost Garden: Why you should share your game designs.
Indie Fund: The worth(lessness) of NDAs
Tom Sloper's Game FAQ's: Don't suffer from "stupid paranoia" (or other "stupid wanna-be mistakes")

These are all written by experienced and successful designers or developers with a proven track record. You're welcome to do as you wish, and you certainly don't have to share -- it can even be good to keep some things secret -- but a lot of people who know what they're talking about disagree with the idea that you should keep your designs secret, or that sharing them will be harmful to you.

You will also never achieve anything by telling random people on the internet all your ideas.[/quote]

You won't achieve anything by just telling random people your ideas -- games are made by putting in the hard work to develop them, not just by talking -- but you certainly won't stop yourself from achieving anything, and you may well get some good feedback that takes your idea from good to brilliant!


Just my 2c.

To me ideas are like seeds, they are fragile and easily destroyed. It takes lot of time, care and experience to make them grow. I would be glad if someone else steal one of my seed and grow it into a tree. For now I have only been able to grow small dying bushes.

Coming back the OP I think your 'weekly community concept' is what the 'Game Design' section is all about. Just create a new thread with a basic description of your game/theme/idea and wait for community feedback/ideas. Take YOURSELF the decision about what to keep/what to remove (you are the designer after all). Modify the OP game description and iterate again. After a few loops you might end up with an interesting game design

If you hear a good idea you will automatically remember it and incorporate it into one of your own ideas and you might not even know it. You will also never achieve anything by telling random people on the internet all your ideas.

In my opinion, ideas are cheap - execution is hard. Maybe 0.01% of ideas are something worth protecting, but in general you would gain much more by exposing your ideas to feedback than you would by protecting them.

In my opinion, ideas are cheap - execution is hard.

Very true -- and given the exact same idea, 5 different designers will probably produce 5 very different games (the other 295 people who try to use it won't get far enough to produce anything! ) , so your idea isn't "wasted" or "used up" if someone borrows something from it -- in fact chances are actually pretty good that even if you have a particularly unusual idea there are already quite a few other people who have had the same or a very similar idea out there.