I have an idea for a game- I have a ton of concept art for it and I know the overall direction I want it to go.. but I really think I could use community feedback on some aspects of it. the only thing is I'm a bit worried about someone swooping in and taking my idea before I can even begin to work on the actual game.... do any more seasoned Devs have experience with this? Does anyone know some way I could protect my work and still get the feedback I need? How common is theft in the indie community??

EDIT;

thank you for your responses! Im very new to game development and am obviously not breaking any barriers anytime soon but I come from the art community which tends to be riddled with theft- I'm glad to hear that the Dev community doesn't seem to have that same issue! 9it probably helps that most people with this interest are a bit older) again, thank you and I'm excited to get some honest feedback on what I'm working on!

Everyone has their own ideas. Everyone thinks their ideas are good, so they're too busy working on their own ones to steal yours.

Game design is hard -- experienced designers are better at it than beginners and have no need for your ideas.

Game development is a very slow and/or expensive endevour, so there's always going to be way more game-ideas than finished games.

You can't protect a game idea anyway -- copyright protects implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves.

Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants and remixing existing culture. Your own ideas that you're keeping a secret almost certainly build upon existing ideas. Is that "theft"?

Check out the "game design" sub-forum. It also has some insightful FAQs about ideas and why nobody bothers stealing them.

Everyone has their own ideas. Everyone thinks their ideas are good, so they're too busy working on their own ones to steal yours.

Game design is hard -- experienced designers are better at it than beginners and have no need for your ideas.

Game development is a very slow and/or expensive endevour, so there's always going to be way more game-ideas than finished games.

You can't protect a game idea anyway -- copyright protects implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves.

Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants and remixing existing culture. Your own ideas that you're keeping a secret almost certainly build upon existing ideas. Is that "theft"?

That's true, that's part of why I'm concerned though because there are very few instances when something IS completely fresh and to lose that would suck- but at the same time ya it would take a lot of extra time and effort for someone to replicate something well- or minimal effort to do it poorly,, and since there's nothing that can be done it's not really worth worrying about. Thank you for the quick response!

the only thing is I'm a bit worried about someone swooping in and taking my idea before I can even begin to work on the actual game

That's true, that's part of why I'm concerned though because there are very few instances when something IS completely fresh and to lose that would suck- but at the same time ya it would take a lot of extra time and effort for someone to replicate something well- or minimal effort to do it poorly,, and since there's nothing that can be done it's not really worth worrying about.

I had the exact same problem as you with my MMORPG last year. The best place to start is here.

Game ideas in the game development industry have inherently little value... which is why no one will bother to plagiarize them. And the reasons why they have little value are because 1) there's an almost unlimited number of them, and 2) implementing an idea in the form of making a game that ships is very expensive and time consuming.

Now, if you make a really good finished game that's making lots of money... then yeah odds are that a hundred shitty Chinese companies will clone it within a year. But you dont have that, you have an idea. Not a single company on the planet will stop everything they're doing and scrap their existing games in development just to copy your idea. Maybe, just maybe you have some really awesome and novel idea... and some company or indie dev will copy some aspect of that idea that happens to mesh with something they're already doing. But the odds of that happening are lower than the odds of winning the lottery.

In the art community plagiarism is easy... just Copy+Paste and you have a copy of someone else's hard work and talent. Not so much in the games industry.

Another way to look at it is - ideas are only a starting point for a game development journey. Ideas usually do not survive the game development process unchanged -- they change a lot during development as you test and refine them.

The job of a professional game designer is not to simply come up with game ideas and then go home -- a designer has to babysit the idea during the entire period of development, which can be years. During that time they're refining ideas and adapting them to the unforseen. If you want to be a game designer, iterating, modifying, nurturing ideas and adapting ideas to constraints is your real job.

If you have an idea for a great MMO it has zero value to you, because you do not have the capability to act on that idea. It costs millions of dollars to make a simple game and hundreds of millions to make a ground-breaking blockbuster game -- so ideas for big games are worthless to people who don't have that kind of money behind them (And before you say it - it's pretty much impossible to sell a game idea. So it still has zero value to you).

So, an idea for a big game only has any value for the people who are actually in the business of making big games... and these people do not buy ideas...

So, if you want to ever design a big game / MMO / etc and have it be made, you have to get hired as a game designer at a company that makes big games / MMOs / etc...

So, if your goal is to get hired as a game designer, you need to get as much practice in designing games as possible...

But, if your designs for MMOs will never get made into games, that's a catch-22 situation, right?

Nope, you can get practice by sharing and discussing your ideas and learning from them!! :) That is how you find value in ideas that you don't have the capability to act on.

And if someone does actually "steal" one of your ideas and turn it into a big game, then that is actually creating value for you. If you've previously published the idea, and then it turns up in a big game afterwards, then you can claim credit for inventing it and use that of evidence as to why someone should hire you as a game designer.

Most indie game developers make games THEY want to, so unless they have the same idea as you then your ideas should be safe (ish). It has to be said that lots of games are copied and inspired from other past games, most notably Minecraft was a "clone" of Infiniminer (Notch's words not mine lol) but that's just how it works in the game development world :) If you have a million dollar idea and share it then yes, somebody will probably take it, but you should be pretty safe if your idea is generally normal. I wish you good luck and all the best with your game!

I have an idea for a game- I have a ton of concept art for it and I know the overall direction I want it to go.. but I really think I could use community feedback on some aspects of it.

Check out the "game design" sub-forum. It also has some insightful FAQs about ideas and why nobody bothers stealing them.

Yes, exactly. For Beginners is a technical forum. Boxrib, if you want to talk about game ideas, the Game Design forum is the place. I'll move this thread there.
And check out http://www.lostgarden.com/2005/08/why-you-should-share-your-game-designs.html

the only thing is I'm a bit worried about someone swooping in and taking my idea before I can even begin to work on the actual game.... do any more seasoned Devs have experience with this? Does anyone know some way I could protect my work and still get the feedback I need? How common is theft in the indie community??

Ask this frequently-asked question in the Business/Law forum. Short answer: don't worry about it.

EDIT;
thank you for your responses!

The proper way to use forums like this one is to post a new reply (don't go back in and edit the original post with follow-up replies). Much easier for readers to follow the discussion that way. Good luck!

Although I never agreed with "ideas are dime a dozen" because good ones aren't, still it's not much likely for someone else to "steal" your idea as explained in thread in many ways.

It's okish to be cautious if you have a very good reason but even in such case let a limited number of people test your idea. Don't act on passionate love with idea, let others tear it apart :)