I have a pretty severe form of depression that keeps me housebound and I spend the majority of my time playing games.
I want to make a game and I have an idea. It’s not the world’s best idea for a game but it’s good enough and defined enough that it makes me think it’s worth doing and makes me feel like it’s something worth getting out of bed for in the morning.
I don’t really have any illusions about it making any money (if I was doing it for those reasons I should probably make a mobile app.) I’m just doing it as a labour of love because it’s something I want to do, something I’ve always wanted to do and something I feel compelled to do but before now never thought myself capable of.
I’ll be learning from scratch and really just doing it as a hobby and as something to do with my time and my life (beyond just playing video games) and to be able to say to people “hey, I did this; this is what I do” even if it is just average at best, but there’s no way I’ll be able to get it made faster than or to the standard of someone with existing game development experience.
My concern is that if I have to discuss my idea and parts of it on the forum in order to learn how to implement the various mechanics, how can I protect my idea from being taken and implemented by someone else and what do I do if and when that happens?
Turning my idea into a game because it gives some feeling of purpose to my life, even if just as a hobby, focus and pass-time is one thing but persisting with an idea after it’s been taken and implemented and pushed out into the world, by someone else, just seems like the saddest thing in the world.
Imagine being a game developer. You need inspiration. Where do you go? Sure, there’s anyways waiting for it to strike. Or, you could browse all the major discussion sites looking for promising WIP’s and, knowing that you can beat an inexperienced dev to market, snipe them.
That’s the thing. I look at the games I play and think, well those are the tropes and the basic building blocks that seem to go into all of these things but here’s my twist on the genre and it’s kind of the U.S.P. and the gimmick on which the whole thing’s constructed (and which sets it apart from everything else in the market and arguably makes it a worthwhile proposition and not just more of the same) but it’s very specific and non-generic and as such shouldn’t it be protectable?
Matt Thorson created a game called Jumper. Years later, Team Meat made Super Meat Boy. It’s the same game. They did it much better but the original inspiration comes from that guy. The even recognized it but I don’t know how much money they gave him, mostly because I don’t think they’re legally required to give you any money if they steal your game idea.
Ideas don’t matter. That might sound bizarre, but it’s absolutely the case. Ideas themselves have almost no value, and chances are it’s already been done before twenty different ways.
The thing that actually has value is turning the idea into the final product. Worry about trying to make the game, because I’ll bet good money (that I don’t have) that you won’t finish it and nothing happens to your idea.
You can protect content, you can protect words, you can protect images. You can prevent somebody from exactly copying your work, or reproducing it in whole without your permission.
It’s a lot harder if not impossible to protect an idea.
Even worse, it’s all going to come down to lawsuits. So, can you afford a lawyer? So they win.
I don’t think the chance that someone is going to steal your idea during its infancy is very high, and the chance that any person who does steal it has the development resources and experience to make a complete game and release it before you when you’ve already got a head start on them is even less. Making a game is no easy task, and the people who have the will to learn how do it because they already have their own visions and ideas of what they want to create.
Even if the worst does happen, there isn’t really much you can do. The best thing is just to focus on building the best experience you’re capable of.
If you’re really that concerned about it you’re under no obligation to make your project public at all. You can just keep it under wraps and reveal only what you need to until you’re ready to release.
Well this is the thing. I’ll probably never get it finished and it’s probably going to be extremely simple in its execution but I’ve got a good enough excuse to at least sit down at my computer every day really just so that I can feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself and actually create something but I’m just worried about how long it’s all going to last.
I don’t even care if it’s popular for being so appallingly bad it’s good, I just want to be able to make something.
More than you think.
Hell, in the mid 2000’s I did it. I saw this demo and I LOVED it. Guy never updated. So, I made my own. I never finished it or anything. Couldn’t have sold it, anyway. But it is very common for creative people to “borrow”…
I don’t doubt it. I’m even concerned about making the thing on a machine with any kind of internet connection and I’m not particularly thrilled about the Unity people being able to look at it either (lol).
Not because I’m under any illusion that it’s going to make me the next internet billionaire; just because I don’t want life to punch me in the crotch yet again.
There is not an original concept under the sun. All content is recycled to some (usually very large) degree.
What makes your game is the work you put into implementing that concept. If you get discouraged because someone else did it first, you’ve got no hope of succeeding at anything in life.
There’s easier ways to just make a game than Unity, as well. If you’re just interested in doing SOMETHING you can always try a visual scripting tool, GameMaker is easy for beginners. Unity tends to require you to be a competent coder before you can do anything.
I’m not talking about getting discouraged because it’s all been done before, I’m talking about having my own personal contribution to the genre being taken and used in such a way that it renders my efforts moot. Although that might not be such a bad thing. I’m just worried about loosing my motivation.
Ultimately, for me it’s just an excuse to be able to make something cool and that I think is really meaningful and it’s just a shame that the system’s set up in such a way that a well-meaning effort can be so poorly protected.
Maybe that’s the way I should go. I just heard unity talked about a lot and got a bit of a burst of motivation over the last few days and so here I am. I guess the same stuff applies but I guess I can at least make the development part a little easier on myself.
Cause Unity is a $1500.00 tool that just became free a few years ago, and now it publishes free to mobile. GameMaker isn’t that expensive and a couple people have made games that got really good exposure and good reviews, even in magazines. It doesn’t even come close to Unity in any way, but it’s super simple to get started.
I’ve been looking at other simpler tools since your previous post and will probably go with GameMaker.
I wasn’t too worried about Unity’s cost since there’s probably no way I’d come close to utilising all of its advanced features but to be honest I think it would be good for me to start somewhere a little simpler. Really it it’s just going to be dots and blocks on a screen. My concerns are stuff like, how do I make that dot look like it’s facing a certain direction from a top down perspective.
Anyway, I’m not too concerned about surface appearances I just want to make something that’s interesting and fun to engage with, plus it probably wouldn’t have a very wide appeal anyway. It’s a retro-survival game. :0/
Professional game developers generally have their own ideas and are usually busy working on them. Rarely if ever do they troll the Unity forum “stealing” ideas from newbie developers. It just doesn’t happen. Inspiration? Sure. Outright stealing of a game idea and running with it? Don’t worry about it. Make your game.
After you’ve made your game, and if it’s a hit, and people like it, then you may find some developer lifting the idea and cloning it or whatever. You’ve got a long way before you need to worry about that. Don’t worry about it. Make your game.
