On this and various other game development forums, I’ve noticed a lot of those with (what they think are) great ideas asking other people to make their game for them. It’s always the same story… “I have a great idea for an MMO! I need programmers, artists, level designers, etc” (in other words, everybody required to make a game).
Is a great idea enough of a contribution to make one a team lead? What’s a idea even worth?
Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that an idea without the ability to create it is worth nothing. I’ve come up with a list of the three things somebody can do with an idea but no ability to create it themselves:
- Learn to create it. This takes time and hard work, and the idea could be unmanageable for one beginner given the size of the project (read: MMO).
- Pay somebody to create it for them. This obviously takes money or some service of value, but it brings up a lot of complications.What happens when your paid worker misunderstands your idea? What happens when you have a new brainwave and have to change things? (Programmers especially hate it when a project changes while they’re working on it) What happens if you’re paying your workers by time worked and they don’t get it done within budget?
- Find somebody passionate enough to create it for free. This is the most common approach taken by newbies, but most fail to understand the ramifications of this; namely, it involves transferring ownership of the project to the helper. The new worker effectively owns the project because they have the power to shape it as they see fit. If you try to make them build the idea exactly to your vision, they will leave the project, or worse, “fork” your idea and make their own version apart from your involvement.
For passion-driven teams larger than one worker, ownership of the project is split among the team. This makes the team prone to conflict and because they have no clear leader, the team will likely split if no compromise is reached.
This list leaves no room for the “idea guy” to be the team lead with no other contributions.
I do think that an “idea guy” (someone who has ideas but cannot contribute deliverable work) is a valid position in a passion-driven team.
Let me give an example: A while ago, two friends approached me with a website idea that I loved. I’m the only web developer among the three of us, so I took the position of developer and project lead, but I still need my friends’ ideas because they can come up with some crazy stuff that I’m simply too practical to see. However, I have the right to turn down my friends’ ideas (because crazy ideas are often unusable or fail to consider reality) and they understand that.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this; this list is just something I came up with without doing any research and having much experience.
