Strangers are not as bad as you describe them. I found some pretty great strangers here on game-dev. The most important trait for me in a team-member is independence. Since I don't have time to collaborate, they have to keep working on their own. I find this is even more important than talent.

Nice article. In my experience, the people who talk the loudest and sound the most confident are the least capable, and the people who can produce useful work are the most self-conscious and tend to be quiet. Their knowledge gives them the capacity for self-criticism, while the ignorant have no concept how little they know.

"...the people who are the least capable and add the least valuable get heard the most..."

Ahhhh... true in all walks of life.

The three guys in the social network had a great innovative idea, which is much more special and worth much more then knowing how to code. Mark basicly just stole their idea/project to fill his own pockets. You can be the best programmer in the world, but if you have no inspiration and cannot come up with a good programming idea, you will never become succesfull.

The three guys in the social network had a great innovative idea, which is much more special and worth much more then knowing how to code. Mark basicly just stole their idea/project to fill his own pockets. You can be the best programmer in the world, but if you have no inspiration and cannot come up with a good programming idea, you will never become succesfull.

And yet, that guy with "no inspiration" is the rich and famous one...

I really hate it when people argue against themselves in their own comment.

And yet, that guy with "no inspiration" is the rich and famous one...

Is that the goal in life? I must have missed that ;)

"Remember the 1% inspiration 99% perspiration quote by Edison?"

Then again, Edison was quite a dull fella, and not the big genius as who he's often portrayed.
But I digress :-D

I certainly know the loud fellas who are super confident and "know everything", and tend to ruin projects. They tend to be bosses.

Yeah that's why games suck so horribly nowadays, people have no idea what to do, and have to rely on "non idea guy" but with technical skills to come up with ideas...

If you apply that logic to say film industry, it means that if a director don't know how to actually operate camera or sound, etc, he's useless as a director, and instead a cameraman has to do directing, since he actually knows how to shoot a movie, and what director knows? Nothing, he just sits there shouting at everyone about how they should do their work, really film industry should take example from indie gaming and fire all directors and make teams only of people with technical knowledge, who needs directors anyway?

I sense idea guys with hurt feelings.

I agree on the fact that we cannot up vote comments. Either remove the up vote buttons or.... fix it whenever possible. Great article by the way. Plus one for the author.

Edit: that problem has now been fixed. Thanks to Gamedev.net

Champloo13, I don't think the article says it's a bad idea to rely on non-technical people when developing games, but to rely on people who "spend 0% on the actual project itself".

Take a game designer for example. Noone will say "It's useless to have a game designer aboard, because he just has ideas and doesn't code the game". But I think it's indeed useless to have an Idea Guy game designer who has lots of ideas, but doesn't (or doesn't have the skill to) merge all the ideas, all the little pieces and all the input from other team members into a detailed, working game concept. If he does that, he is contributing to the project a lot.

@Champloo13

I don't think that analogy holds up. Many parts of the team on the film industry essentially take orders from the director: the director has the vision, and instructs everyone else on where to be, what to express, at what angle to capture the scene... The director has to manage a lot of things. Most importantly, if the director says nothing, the project doesn't move forward, and if it does, nobody is coordinated with each other, and the whole project flops. The director does a very hard job.

An Idea Guy, by definition, provides an idea. He doesn't coordinate people working together, he doesn't give timing cues and provide careful instruction (a director often knows a lot about cameras, even if he can't operate that particular model), and he doesn't solve the hard problems when they come.

I think a more adequate analogy would be an Idea Guy and a screenwriter, but even then, that doesn't hold up. A screenwriter has the immense job of writing a story line from start to finish, taking into consideration things like the budget that the film will have (why write a scene that we can't possibly afford to film?) and the actors that may or may not be a part of the production (some write, and find people to fill the roles. Some have people for roles, and write around them). Most importantly, a screenwriter may also have to modify the screenplay repeatedly, over and over, for any circumstances that arise during filming that change the original plan. If someone is paid to write the screenplay and no more than that, then it is someone else who takes the role of screenwriter to edit the screenplay. An Idea Guy will throw ideas at the problem until it solves itself, rather than taking input from everyone on the team, and progressively shaping the outcome of the project.

TL;DR: The difference between a director and an Idea Guy is work. If you work, you're on the team. Even modern graphic designers (who are already a part of the team) know a little programming basics, to write shaders or scripts. If an Idea Guy knows nothing about how it works, there's no way he can say what it should do.

Im glad to be both the hard worker & idea guy haha

Original ideas are not easy to come up with and need to be guarded carefully. Plodders (those who do all the perspiring), are often unable to recognise a useful idea and it often takes some 'loud talking' to get the idea into their heads.

As Fromfram says, specialisation has it's drawbacks and being an Allrounder has great merit, especially in the Indie world.

Original ideas are not easy to come up with and need to be guarded carefully. Plodders (those who do all the perspiring), are often unable to recognise a useful idea and it often takes some 'loud talking' to get the idea into their heads.

As Fromfram says, specialisation has it's drawbacks and being an Allrounder has great merit, especially in the Indie world.

Original ideas are not that hard, but original ideas that works it's another story.

Also know if an idea works or if it can works with some minor changes are very hard to know.

Yeah that's why games suck so horribly nowadays, people have no idea what to do, and have to rely on "non idea guy" but with technical skills to come up with ideas...

If you apply that logic to say film industry, it means that if a director don't know how to actually operate camera or sound, etc, he's useless as a director, and instead a cameraman has to do directing, since he actually knows how to shoot a movie, and what director knows? Nothing, he just sits there shouting at everyone about how they should do their work, really film industry should take example from indie gaming and fire all directors and make teams only of people with technical knowledge, who needs directors anyway?

Do you really thinks that no one that works developing a videogame have ideas?, and it's not fair saying "games suck so horribly nowadays", they have a lot of work and many people enjoy them, if you don't like them doesn't mean that they "suck".

I think that you wanted to say that modern games lacks in originality, and I agree that some of them lacks in originality(again, there are a lot of very original games, but you need to find them, if you only see your neightbours playing COD, Battlefield or Medal of Honor doesn't mean that all the games are like that).

But studios develop games that only uses formulas not because they "don't have ideas" but because they don't want to risk. If an original idea doesn't work, studios can lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and even be closed, that's why many ideas comes from indie studios, because indie studios doesn't invest as much as big studios and can take more risky choices.

Reminds me someone :)

Thanks for the article!

There is a stereotype that programmers/animators/3d-artists don't have good ideas, and that they need some "Idea Guy" to unity them under his brilliant idea. And I personally know someone who said, - "I don't have any technical skills, but I'm very creative and have great ideas, so I can tell other people what to do. Skills are for people who aren't creative". What is really insulting, that there are people who believe that, which makes the "Idea Guys" powerful. The "Idea Guys" take credit for everything good in a project, and blame others for everything that's bad. This is the main problem of the industry.

It happens less in the filming industry, because a director has actually a certain job to do at all levels of production, especially on the set. You can't be a "Fat Shouting Boss" while directing. It won't work. By the way, 90% of ideas are made BEFORE the shooting. Therefore, it's different and more fair than the gaming industry. The gaming industry gives more ground to the "Idea Guys", but the more professional the team is, the less those "Shouters" are being payed attention.

I may be a little exaggerating, but most of the "Idea Guys" come from the D&D community. Those guys believe they are the most creative people in this industry, and that everyone should listen to them, just because of that. The guy I've mentioned above is a D&D as well. A D&D fan is always correct, by default. If you are disagree with a D&D fan - you are stupid.