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[lansing]

http://thebossmonster.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-your-game-idea-is-just-about.html

Most game developers have a "yeah but" game. As in, "yeah we had this great idea but then this happened....". And what follows is a series of disasters that caused brilliant ideas to go horribly awry. The culprits can range from broken pipelines and processes to flakey technology and tools to sheer outright incompetence by staff or management.

In the game industry, you hear a lot of cocktail party pitches for new video games. "I have a great idea for a game - it'll be about fighting plaque inside somebody's mouth" slurs the Dentist as he half-spills his Gin Gimlet on my shoes. You can debate the brilliance of any given idea - but I would argue that it's pointless since the value of ideas is just barely North of worthless.

This flies in the face of how most people like to think. The Big Idea is a celebrated cult - come up with a big enough idea and it's a game changed. But the cold hard reality is that a fair idea implemented well is worth more than a brilliant that never gets realized.

Ed Catmull, one of the brilliant founders of Pixar, has this to say about ideas: "If you give a good idea to a mediocre team they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works." Given the creative track record of Pixar, this is man whose opinion you probably want to respect.

Game designers tend to be full of ideas. It sort of comes with the job description. Many of them are even good ideas. The problem is that ideas aren't nearly as valuable as we want to think.

Let's be clear - great ideas are in fact great ideas. They are to be cherished and sought after. When they are discovered, they are to be nutured and cared for. But the problem is that an idea is gossamer. It has no reality until someone makes it so. The idea of an umbrella won't keep you dry in the rain. And that's where things get sticky. Your idea is only going to be as good as your ability to implement.

And implementation is where so many game developers fall down. Pre-production is often a never-ending fountain of ideas and brainstorming. Sure, it's great fun - but so many of those ideas then get chucked when reality starts to set in. When you realize that your engineers don't like working with your designers. When you discover your tools are completely broken for creating your content. When it dawns on you that your team thinks of management as the enemy. When you do the math on the amount of time the publisher is going to give you to develop - and the sums come up woefully short.

A great idea can change everything - if the idea gets implemented in a way that does justice to it. Now, there is a curious effect with truly great ideas. They have a tendency to be more robust and can be treated a bit more roughly. The truly awesome ones do often have a knack for surviving some of the most horrible mishandling. Dugan's Law of Great Ideas states that the greater the idea, the lower the standard of just sufficient implemenation is. But what a waste of a great idea to only just barely realize it.

You will never justice to the great when it is served by the mediocre. You will just squeak by. This means that creative managers should be focused on their process and team culture rather than just on chasing ideas. Find the truly motivated individuals and multi-talented players for your team. Give them autonomy and the room to explore (and make mistakes). Hold them accountable to standards of the highest quality. And then build an organization founded on trust and respect between departments. Put in place processes that get results - and practice, practice, practice.

Do that for a few projects and maybe a few years - and then your team might be ready to truly handle a great idea.

[Snakey]

It is a big problem with many people / groups is when the idea is too large. I've done this myself too. It's why I cringe these days when people's first project is also going to be their technology in which they build every other game for.

[laserghost]

I wouldn't go so far as to say ideas are worthless, just impossible to quantify until enacted and therefore nothing to hang your hat on. Great ideas are great motivators, but should be flexible enough to take reality's criticism and evolve to flow in harmony with the process.

I like this paragraph:

You will never justice to the great when it is served by the mediocre. You will just squeak by. This means that creative managers should be focused on their process and team culture rather than just on chasing ideas. Find the truly motivated individuals and multi-talented players for your team. Give them autonomy and the room to explore (and make mistakes). Hold them accountable to standards of the highest quality. And then build an organization founded on trust and respect between departments. Put in place processes that get results - and practice, practice, practice.

The autonomy and room to explore he's talking about is one of the most important aspects of teamwork. It is, in a way, more ideas. Ideas that have evolved from the reality of process and can renew the motivation of the team. I think ideas can have value, though only if it's constantly in flux, not stale and unyielding like a rusty cage.

[1982]

Define "great idea".

[gimymblert]

The problem is that one great idea is just not enough, it need many more idea to sustain it, some are not so great or not so original. You may need marketing idea, process idea, execution idea, funding idea, etc... it is an ecology. The greatest overlooked generic idea you could have to sustain your idea is : START MAKING IT !

Could you think about the greatest idea ecology you need?

[J. R. Hill]

Define "great idea".

Envirobear

[team_q]

[s0]

This seems kind of similar to your other thread about ideas. Why make a second one?

[floatstarpx]

This seems kind of similar to your other thread about ideas. Why make a second one?

The first one was pretty successful, so I guess it makes sense to release a sequel.... 

[jotapeh]

This seems kind of similar to your other thread about ideas. Why make a second one?

He ran out of ideas for threads. 

[lansing]

This seems kind of similar to your other thread about ideas. Why make a second one?

Well done Sherlock Holmes, thank you for your remarkable insight and brilliant contribution to this thread.

Why do you feel the need to pollute a thread by posting just say it reminds you of another one?  If everyone did this in every thread that seemed familiar... oh wait, they already do and it's pointless noise.

The previous thread was by Scott Adams and he was not writing about game development, this person is writing about game development.  Starting a new thread based on a new topic and source of information hurts no one and only makes it easier for those interested in reading.