Game DESIGN Challenge?

[WILL]

Locked in a box? Not safe enough. Locked in my head? Now that is safe enough

Well good luck with that. Personally, I'm not interested in using your ideas, because I have lots of my own. And my ideas are more fun to me than yours are to you. Most game designers are the same. (Save for maybe these rare weirdos you talk about?) Your approach is kind of on the side of paranoia if I can be really honest with you. Someone that would steal an idea from "some guy" that doesn't have a sure shot to mass fortune is just sad and anyone like that should be disregarded as a fool. And that's how you should be dealing with it rather than hiding in the shadows like your protecting state secrets.

Sharing ideas can be fun so I like the idea of sharing instead of looking over my shoulder while I code.

My goal is to let the gaming world know what a Jason McMillen game is like, not trying to lay that one golden egg. It's not going to happen with my first outing. I'm planning for longevity rather than a "winning the lottery" scenario. Those that do this will have much more success by going commercial with their games. (Which is the only sense that I can make of your intense concerns at all.)


Moving onto more interesting topics however...

Now this concept wasn't about going commercial, it's about sharing fun game design ideas. (A thinking exercise.) I think it would be an interesting jam-type competition. It would be really interesting to take the winning game design to a second stage where people form teams and try to faithfully create that design into a game. Seeing all the different takes on a single set of design specs would be really neat.

The fun part of the design documents is that it doesn't have to be some boring endless blobs of text, you can draw out your ideas visually on graph paper and illustrate how you envision it on the screen. Of course you would need some description and the more complete concept that tells the full game rather than incomplete ideas would have a better chance of winning of course. You can't design a game from an incomplete vision after all. (Maybe if you are working by yourself, but the idea is that others need to "see it" too!)

Now what would be a good motivator for such a contest. Ideas?

[phibermon]

I have to be honest - when concidering game design as defined, I've not given it hardly enough thought as I could of done.

I either have a story I'd like to tell (as a fiction book is a story) or I have 'game-mechanics' in mind that I'd like to play with (IE minecraft style, Elite space style)

Actually thinking about the specifics is something I've not yet done, how will the players life work? is it a fixed amount that decreases? is it the 'recovery' style used in call of duty?

If it's a FPS, will there be goals? switches to pull? monsters to shoot?

It seems a lot trickier than it appears at first glance!

[WILL]

I either have a story I'd like to tell (as a fiction book is a story) or I have 'game-mechanics' in mind that I'd like to play with (IE minecraft style, Elite space style)

Actually thinking about the specifics is something I've not yet done, how will the players life work? is it a fixed amount that decreases? is it the 'recovery' style used in call of duty?

That's essentially it. One could define game design as create an experience or series of experiences for the player(s).

It seems a lot trickier than it appears at first glance!

It's not overly hard if you take the time to think it out in your head. It's not possible to have all the values and exact mechanics and game element interactions thought out in your head at the beginning. Instead start with your idea and let it evolve as you play around with it and look at examples of other games and influences that give you inspiration.

Designing a game is an ever evolving process. From the beginning to the end, the "plan" will get changed at least a whole bunch of times. Unless you are some kind of freak brilliant genius savant.

Each game should have some kind of pre-development phase, or a early design phase if you will. This is where you throw all your "super awesome ultra brilliant wow amazing what if" stuff at it and see what sticks and what turns out to be horrible for your game as you get to the actual intended shape that your game will take. Some of this is trial and error. Some of this is your inner genius coming through.

It can get a little artsy fartsy, but that's the whole point it's pure creativity in this part.

My idea is to have a competition based on this pre-development phase planning of designing a game. Let the best one be taken and used to serve as a framework for a follow-up competition.

The idea is that the early game design would start out as a "plan" from the start and turn into all these different outcomes and each developer's take on the original concept. It would change and all of the games would be different, yet share the same core.

It would be interesting to see how many different directions each team would go on it.

[T-Bear]

It would be interesting. Could give people the opportunity to get feed back on their ideas and stuff.
I am not sure if I would join. I really am not the planning guy. Would be cool to see what people come up with though!

"super awesome ultra brilliant wow amazing what if"

or "Stuff I think is superb and great, and will cause world peace and everything, but actually sucks".

Cheers!

[WILL]

A game design plan can be as simple as some doodles or a neat sketch on piece of grid paper or a napkin with some labels and a short descriptive blurb of text to go with it.

It could end up being more of an idea factory jam than a real competition to be honest. Depends on the interest.