You got a problem? Yes, I’m making a thread about this. If you’re going to troll, then beat it.
Where would our indie teams be without the “ideas guy”? How would we even make a game without any ideas?
Are we all just going to come up with ideas AND build the game? That’ll cause problems. The ideas will get mixed up and confused.
If we had an “ideas guy”, then he can work on coming up with ideas for great games, and we’d build the games. No worries about confusing anything up, unless we don’t understand the guy for some reason.
completely agree 1337. Its a creative industry and you cant have a game without ideas. Think a lot of people have problems with threads like “i wanna make MMORPG, join ma team plz”. Whereas well thought out and explained ideas are great!
I had an argument with a friend about this exact same scenario. He argued that without the ideas guy the project would go nowhere so respect the man who thinks up of ideas. I argued that anyone can think up of ideas but to take that idea and make a product out of it takes a lot of work.
He countered by referring to NASA saying that NASA has teams of idea men and other people backing them up (he got that from the movie Armageddon btw). I countered by stating that there is a difference between NASA’s idea men and you. NASA can do the work they think of where as you (my friend) can’t. The conversation ended right there because he had to go suddenly.
The problem isn’t with them being ideas guys… The problem is that all they want to do is give some crappy idea, get someone to do the hard work for free and then get all the money/fame
Nothing wrong with being the ideas guy. Just don’t be the ideas guy wanting to make a MMORPG and request that everyone work on it for you for free and when and only when it has gone teh big timez do you give the slaves water and bread.
On the other hand… being an ‘ideas guy’ with half a dozen vague ideas about some crappy game idea you have that is going to be the greatest thing ever, and you want everyone to do all the things, because you’ve only got ideas and no usable skills…
If you’ve only got ideas, at least put your ideas into a GDD thats clear and concise… if you cant that do that, delete unity, go play wow.
An “ideas guy” or a qualified game developer is a great tool. I am working for a project currently where the leader provides most of the ideas and the rest of us build the game. However, he does a great job at collaborating the group and keeping everyone on track, so we respect him as a leader.
Most of the "ideas guy"s that come through the collaboration forums are people who want a group of free volunteers to essentially make a game for them, and let them have the credit. They deserve to get trolled into oblivion.
Its the ones that emerge through the initial challenge, learn about the industry and the processes, work with a few successful titles and understand what really goes into making a game and making a game great that then evolve from "ideas guy"s to "Game Developer"s. But you dont start out as a Game Developer overnight.
Only if you’re a bunch of amateurs who can’t reach consensus on things or write things down. (Or if there are, like, twenty of you. At which point you do need somebody to keep order at least).
That’s the big deal. Most ‘ideas guys’ are a) not really that great at coming up with ideas and b) even worse at communicating them to others.
You know what you call an idea guy who can actually write everything down, with sufficient clarity and depth that others can implement it, with sufficient breadth to cover everything a game needs, and with sufficient clarity of vision that nobody else needs to fill in any gaps or make any tweaks? A game designer.
Anyone can come up with ideas that have the potential to be great games. Heck, pretty much any idea has the potential to be a great game. The valuable skill is in fleshing out and executing on that idea; in communicating, maintaining, tweaking and balancing, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with being an ‘ideas guy’ (or game designer, for that matter, which is probably the closest analogy in game development). Plenty of other business sectors have similar concepts, after all. There are plenty of examples of people getting a great idea, and assembling a team to realize their vision.
In the context of the Unity forums, the problem is generally different. Being an ‘ideas guy’ is a rather vague description, in itself. The Unity forums are bombarbed with ideas from ‘ideas guys’, most of whom I’d hardly call competent game designers.
If you are an ideas-type-of-person, at least try to learn some fundamentals to support that choice:
Communication skills
Conceptualizing a vision
Technology. Know what is possible.
Markerting. Know about demographics, what sells, what doesn’t sell, who your target audience is.
…decent English, or whatever you language may be. I don’t mean to sound offensive, but at least writing in a readable manner helps a ton.
… and so forth.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a person with visions, and a strong drive to see those ideas realized. In fact, I’d encourage it, for anyone interrest in excelling in their field.
In short; the problem is when people with ideas have no understanding of whether their idea is objectively viable. That’s what we see a lot of on here. I’ll say this much - it isn’t hard to spot the difference between a good and a bad game designer, just to take an example.
Oh, and perhaps most importantly - have the DRIVE to try and get other people excited; I really mean excited, about your ideas.
A lot of what we’re seeing here on the forums is people posting short descriptions of ideas they may or may not have thought through, and instantly expecting everybody else to have a clear vision of it, and be on-board and matching their level of excitement.
Pitching ideas, unifying visions and present them are hard tasks. I mean hard. I mean seriously, mind-boggingly hard. People seem to underestimate this a lot of the time.
I think there is a fine line between an “idea guy” and an armchair developer.
An “idea guy”, as you put it, is someone that comes up with ideas, follows through with them and makes an example of their idea. They test, retest, following through with what they come up with and strip down the concept to its simplest for.
An “armchair developer” is someone that shoots off random thoughts that enter their heads and prompt most of these “ideas” with something like “wouldn’t it be cool if” then expect someone to come along and do it for them and make it work. They seem to think that the 5 seconds of coming up with a broad concept is exactly as valuable as the 100 hours of implementing and refining the idea. And they are all convinced that they know more than the people who actually work on the stuff.
I know this because I used to be the later and am trying very hard to be the former, work allowing.
Theres a difference between a game designer and a couple of kids that have no respect for their team and no management skills. You two are the ones trolling here. Stop posting these threads.
However, like most forums, the majority of people here are sick of seeing the same wasteful posts that bump good threads down the list. Every time someone starts a new thread with three sentences, badly written, about how they have this great new idea that will revolutionise gaming as we know it, and they just need developers and artists to join their team. They will, of course, be CEO and CIG (Chief Idea’s Guy) and everyone will not be paid until the game makes profit, and you can only join if you have triple A experience.
Personally, I would prefer not to see these threads in my new posts lists, but would prefer to see someone’s WIP that has a cool idea implemented. Unity3D is a game engine, how about talking about what it is capable of, what someone has done with it, what problems we are having with coding, how we can me things look good etc.
