Once, Stan Lee said that ideas themselves were worthless. Its only the implementation of those ideas that matter. In the area of game design ideas, the same is true, especially when you buy into the myth that video game companies actually buy ideas.
Selling (or Giving) Your Ideas to Video Game Companies
I wasn't always writing tutorials about game design and programming. Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a wannabe game designer capturing my ideas on graph paper. I had absolutely no doubt that I was going to be able to sell my ideas to video game companies and make a fortune. Boy was I wrong.
This was back during the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System. It was a long time ago and this is my personal experience. I cannot guarantee that Sega, or any other video game companies accept "ideas", but I can guarantee that your efforts will be as useless as mine.
Naturally, to sell a game idea to a company, I needed to find a company willing to buy my idea. I thought they had to always be on the lookout for the next great game idea. After all, game companies do compete with each other and need that next best-seller to survive.
I went through all my old EGMs, my GamePros, my VGCEs, and even borrowed a few Nintendo Powers from friends. Amazingly enough, none of the game companies had any listings for game ideas. This fact didn't tip me off to the reality of it, so I pursued their individual ads. Quite few of them had what they called a "customer service line". It was the only phone number I could get, so I scribbled down hundreds of them in a notebook.
Then, my search began by calling these "customer service lines", much to the dismay of my parents who later found the phone bill was much, much higher than usual. Sometimes I found a bored woman at the other end, expecting young gamers to call in with game tips. Sometimes I found a techie hoping for a challenging bug. Sometimes I found ''(believe it or not)'' a sales representative who wanted to sell me bulk lots of video game cartridges.
The breakthrough came when I found that some of these people's offices were located at the companies headquarters. After bit of badgering, I was able to get someone who actually was responsible for the game development on the line. I was often told the same thing —- "We've got enough ideas." One time I was laughed at by a programmer at HAL.[ 1 ]. Two times, I was able to secure in my hot little hands what was then known as a "Non-Disclosure Agreement Form" which was the only way video game companies accepted anything from outside the company that was unsolicited.
The Non-Disclosure Agreement Form
While it was certainly braggable to show an official document from Sega to my friends, it really wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. The very nature of the non-disclosure agreement form sums up your chances of actually selling any kind of idea to a video game company.
A non-disclosure agreement form simply states that you and the company agree to certain terms. As a a part of accepting your idea for consideration the game company agrees not to share your idea with anyone else. As a part of giving the company your idea you agree that you will not sue them if any of their products are ever similar to your given idea. In short, even if the game company "steals" your idea you can't sue them, but the company promises not to tell anyone.
Because ideas are generally worthless, I'm pretty sure that neither Sega (or the other company I dealt with, which no longer exists) has ever "stolen" and idea. Mostly I'm sure that the non-disclosure agreement form was used to accept professional materials from outside developers. Things like game betas. Because I was also able to get my hands on one, I also suspect (not know) that it was also used as a way doing a marketing survey of hardcore gamers.
Stan Lee's Idea Value
Ideas are essentially worthless. Anyone can come up with an idea, as Stan Lee [ 2 ] has pointed out. You can come up with ButterFlyMan, SolarFlareMan, or even PorcupineMan. Sketching out these basic ideas on graph paper only solidifies the base idea.
If you were to come up with "A zombie game where you blow the heads off zombies.", you only have a base idea. Anyone can take this idea and flesh it out into a complete game a billion different ways. It's implementation that matters, and this is why video game companies will not buy, or even accept your unsolicited game idea. Even their secretary can come up with an idea. It takes a game programmer to turn it into a marketable product.
So What Can You Do?
Learn to make games yourself. See our friendly community will help you or see our Getting Started in Game Design guide where you will learn how Game Design Novice can help you make the game of your dreams.
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Notes :
[ 1 ] And if I ever find a way to contact this programmer, I still plan to give him a piece of my mind for having an hour of fun at a 12-year olds expense.
[ 2 ] Since first publishing this article I've gotten a lot of feedback about the idea that Stan Lees comments. Let me clarify, When Stan Lee was speaking about this, he was talking about the enormous amount of base ideas that people had tried to give or sell him over the years. Come on guys, this is Stan Lee. Surely he's heard every single base idea for a superhero about a million times from people trying to give him ideas. In this context, he is very much like a video game company who receives unsolicited ideas.
You also have to think about what he was saying. Lets say you have the base idea of "Porcupine Man". You give it to one person who is a great artist and story writer. Porcupine man goes through severe, attention-grabbing and thrilling trials of having quills all over his body. But, then, you give it to someone else who makes the comic-book using crayons in Picasso style. One is halfway decent while the other is downright terrible. The base idea is the same —- only the execution of that idea has changed.
One last thing in this extremely large note. If I am ever honored enough to have Stan Lee search for his own name and read this article, please also read this —- Stan, you ARE the MAN. We love you and we're tired of seeing Marvel screw you. Tell them to shove it.
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I found this article where the author basically says the same thing
Quote:
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/idea.htm
interesting…. so, what if you're glutius maximous is in gear and your making a game….I think we shoul make a game marketing thread :D…
anyway, actually this marketing threa would go along, or close to this one, because you just arn't going to get you're idea in the door, will will have to work hard and make it yourself. (echoing article)
What God Has Given a Preson in Wisdom For and Idea. Cant no man stop it if it.s Gods will for you,but you must seek his guideance, though the holysprit frist and most of all and it must be in Gods timeing, Dontever go before God let him lead you to the right people and he will if you let him . Be blesed in all God gives you in your wisdom filled Ideas,
Erm… WHAT ?!?
aka, ask God about it, then if he says yes, do it.
Aha… Interesting concept… And what a wonderful way to procrastinate till the End of Days, without feeling guilty ! ;-)
But how about this:
We are going to create a game template to assist you in developing your games.
Now, in the name of the Father, the Son and the HolySprite, get off your fat arse and get busy on that freakin' game you keep rambling about !!! :P
Or just not waste that time at all and get working right now. ;)…much more efficient.
"God" has never helped someone with game design, he is only an agent of destruction. He created so many things that can kill you, venomous animals, storms, and he created humans, your own worst enemy.
I think you should never ask "god" for anything, just go with what you think is right. In the end, your consiouns (the thing that can make you feel bad, just not spelled right) tells you what to do or you'll feel miserable. Not everyone has a consiouns, they are "evil".
So, yeah, when i comes to selling ideas, you can sell ideas, be its very hard, but anything is possible. I can sell a toy design if the company thinks it is good and you have a prototype of the toy, its just how it works. First all you have to do is show a small bit of how the game would work, by making a trash level, with a programming language you know.
If they think the game would have promise, they might buy it and make it better, they would just have to buy the idea and make it better.
Interesting your view on the concept of "God"; while I do have a sh..eepload to comment on it, I think I'm going to hold it back. For now…
I think you're contradicting yourself; offering a prototype for sale is *NOT* the same as simply offering the idea. You're not just saying "Hey, I've got this idea; how much would you pay me to tell you"; you're actually putting something on the table, that represents some extra work on your side, past the initial "spark"…
Building a prototype means taking that original idea and developing it further; since a prototype is also generally fully functional (but not very polished), it means that you took onboard and solved at least some of the challenges arising from the actual development process, thus adding significant value to the original idea. This is the main reason why selling a prototype is *NOT THE SAME* as trying to sell just the idea behind it…
+1 to that. A prototype is something you can sell.
The article said something like this.
Selling a game idea is nearly impossible.
That still gives a percentage of hope, you can always do something.
To prove that, man can walk on the moon, not yet but in the future, we just have to make a suit to withstand those heats. So there you have it, anything is possible.
<1> Excuse me, but hasn't that (i.e. the "Man on the Moon" business) already happened? Does "20th of July, 1969" and "Neil Armstrong" ring any bells?! :-O
<2> ?!? What "heats"?! What the hell are you talking about?!?