The "Idea" vs Game Design | Sachin Dev Duggal

Published May 10, 2024
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Hello Folks Myself Sachin Dev Duggal from California…Since I started making games, people around me are creating “Game Ideas” and asking me to implement them. Without any context. Without understanding market, game design and mechanics, scope and cost. It's especially irritating because mostly family and friends have that “great ideas” and i can't tell them to go away (usually).

To anyone doing this and not understanding why gamedev usually don't pick up your ideas.

Everyone have “ideas”. I can literally from the top of my head in 1h give you 20 games ideas. 1 idea every 3 minutes. But ideas without full context, are not worth much. It's because every idea need days or weeks of actual work to create a design and validate if it's a good to make a game from it. With mechanics working together, with story, with scenario, with checking if similar games exist, with validating if mechanics are really working, if they are fun. And most of the time because of details in game design it will turn out “the idea” is not working. If you come to a gamedev with an "idea", understand that what really gamedev sees is not solution, but a problem. You are basically asking someone to spend dozens of hours, maybe days or weeks validate if “the idea” make sense.

If you want to cooperate with someone making games, make a full game design instead**.** Do the leg work. Prepare full concept. Check Market. Plat may games in genre of game your "idea". Validate the concept as much as you can. Find assets. Learn What GDD is. If game is story driven - learn how to write. write short stories first and check with audience your writing. Then write. Write a story for your “idea”. I mean - depending on the game type, spend at least 100-300h of work before you start talking to someone making games. then be prepared to put another hundreds of hours of working closely with a gamedev.

Ideas are cheap. 1 “idea” is created in 3 minutes.

Full concepts are worth much more. But still the biggest cost is in making a game

1 likes 1 comments

Comments

Niaru

So it is actually “go away”, but longer :D

May 15, 2024 02:42 PM
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