And most of those ideas suck balls because those people are programmers and anylists (left brainers) and dont have the imagination and creativity that authors do. They constantly think..."how are we going to do that in the game" which shouldnt be a factor when writing a story.

Regular people cant make games anymore...nowadays 1 person or even a few people cant make even a decent demo without spending a crapload of money on production and manpower.....and lets be honest, 3/4 of the scripts out there that got turned into games are utter trash. Maybe game companies should look to their customers for ideas, rather than the same crappy game script writers they always use, considering that we know what we want to buy/play.

Case and point....Halo. It took off because of the story, and it wasnt written by people that intended it to become a game (yes multiplayer launched it into what it is now, but the story made it successful in the 1st place)....it was meant to be a great story....and look what happens when you deviate from that story....you get Halo 3

I think that games should be written as books first by good authors...then made into games.

Not sure if you're seen this, but cbloom linked this in his thread:

http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html

Theres some really cool information in this....but think about movie screenwriters. The screenwriter just writes his story and then pitches it to production companies, he doesnt have to get actors and sets and all of the stuff you need to make a movie....he just makes the story. If video games were like this....we'd have a lot more good games out there.

Case and point again Halo...
Halo 1 was pretty similar to the books (for the most part). Halo 2 started to get really off track...and by the time Halo 3 was written, it was so far away from the actual story that it wasnt really that entertaining anymore. Just 1 example of how typical "game" writers really do a piss poor job. If they would have stuck to the original Halo story, AND included the multiplayer like they did....Halo would still be the undisputed leader in modern game titles....the story was that good.

I'm sure theres more examples...but the only exception I can think of off the top of my head is FinalFantasy 7. This could work as a game, book or movie. Excellent story...and one of he only ones I can think of right now that was written to actually be a game from day 1.

One fundamental difference between the screenwriter and the game designer. Movies are not run in real time - video games are. It's not like any awesome idea can just be thrown together. There's alot of things that are not done to technical limitations and/or the general infeasibility of implementing the idea in a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable amount of effort/investment.

On a more cynical note - there's also the big difference that everybody thinks they have the next biggest game idea if they could just get somebody to listen, while the vast majority of people are (and realize they are) less than qualified to write an entire screenplay.

This is incorrect. The Halo books were written after the game had already been completed and were based on the game and not vice versa.

I'm not directly involved in the industry, but there are some differences between the two industries. It is necessary to always work with someone on the technical side because there are a lot of limitations. And the idea and design doc is just one tiny fraction of the work involved in even getting a simple game released.

I'll give you one example. I wanted to make this "really cool game" and started writing the design doc. I funded the project with my own money and hired developers, artists, and sound engineers to do the work. (I've worked enough years to save up some money to fund a small project.) I was unfamiliar with the hardware and did not know all its limitations. About 2 months into the game, they came back and said it won't load. All the graphical assets that were already produced consumed too much memory for the device and the game now won't even load!

This would've been a show stopper and cost me a ton of money and time. But luckily I was able to find a solution after working a week on this problem. It's not even a true solution but a compromise by compressing and degrading the textures in order to fit it into the available RAM. I immediately instructed the art team to produce the remaining artwork to a different specification.

The project could've ended right there and could've been avoided had I done the proper prototyping before I started. Unfortunately I was not familiar with the technology and had to rely on a third party. The game is still months away from being completed but I'm hopeful.

From my experience so far, it is impossible to just take a design doc from someone and turn that into a game. There are too many little unexpected things along the way and compromises that need to be made. I've written about 120 pages so far over 2 design docs and neither were enough to just send the project off to be completed. I still need to be directly involved everyday with every team to keep things running.


I've actually thought about what you're proposing but in a slightly different way. My business partner and I would go to friends who are willing to put up their money to get their game ideas developed, but they have no idea how to get it done. We had a lot of friends willing to put up money when they heard we were making games. But it was just too hard and we decided to self fund and produce our own games. It is still a struggle to get to every milestone and to the release.

Maybe one day we will figure out how to do it.

I stand corrected...source?

Still...the story of the books were far better than the game.


Also, the books were at least written before Halo 3 came out right? If so then they could have made Halo3's campaign much better.

This is really cool...any chance you can tell us what company/game you are working on?

and from a designers point of view....do you feel that large gaming companies with successful titles should listen to their fans or their designers more for new content/games?

Wiki the original book, which was actually also written from scratch in just 7 weeks.

I didn't mean to give the wrong impression, but we're really a very small indie company that only started a few months ago. We have one game so far but nothing worth mentioning. We're only able to do this because of the hardware releases recently (android/iphone/xna) that give little guys like us a shot.

I have 0 prior experience in the video game industry and really just wanted to try something different. Besides, I use to write software for wall street and that's really gone downhill.

One thing I learned from releasing our first game was the amount of feedback we got. Some were very positive and supportive while others were not. I would love to implement all those changes suggested to us, but from a business perspective, all our upgrades are free so there are a limited number of features we can add before we have to move on otherwise we'd just go bankrupt. But nothing we heard back is beyond the hardware so it's possible at some point. At the end of the day though, we need to make a profit so we need to figure out how to make it happen without alienating our earlier supporters.

I read this to a girl who understands very little about games/game development/design/etc, and she lol'd. Pure truth-is-funnier-than-fiction genious!

Really, the only way to get in is to have connections. Like the saying goes, it's now what you know but who you know.

There are thousands of well-qualified potential employees looking for the same job you are and all of them have similar experience/education. In many instances, picking one from the other is similar to flipping a coin. Knowing the right people gives those people an edge to get into the business.

A friend of mine works as a game programmer. It's not that high paying and he works a lot. A poster above mentioned 80-100 hour weeks and that's not far from the truth. My friends was working 15 hour days/7 days a week at one point. It's not the type of job you do for the money. You do it because you like to do it.

You have some kind of prop bet about drawing out a nit, don't you? Case in point... for all intensive purposes.

lol...its not that serious. It's rare that I even use spell check.

i love the way that cbloom when asked what'd be your dream game basically describes my dream game