How do I turn a game idea, into a game?

Question

I have an idea for a game, and I was wondering, how would I go about grabbing people in the gaming development community to help build this baby that is in my head. I am no coder, but I do understand coding concepts etc.

Are there sites for discussing possible game design ideas, or game concepts? (I'm hoping here is such a site :) )

Answer 1

Game development doesn't really take external ideas and fashion them into games. It's not like making films where you have a small chance of getting your script made into a movie if it lands in the right hands. It's more like writing a book where a first-time author is going to have to write every word himself before submitting it.

So, you're pretty much guaranteed to need to take a hands-on approach to getting your game made. There are essentially 3 routes:

• have a concrete skill to bring to the game-making process - typically game-specific such as art, design (not ideas, but concrete design), or programming. If you are willing to pull your weight, often you can find people willing to match your effort. (Whether they are capable of doing so is another matter.) Then you make the game for free in your spare time.
• money to pay people with so that they will do your bidding. Most people have bills to pay and will happily build someone else's idea if it'll put food on the table.
• join an existing company, again with a concrete game-making skill as above, and this time work on other people's games until you're in a senior enough position to be able to present your ideas to the team. This is the longest route and least likely to succeed, but is also probably the only route for games of a certain complexity and production standard.

There isn't really an alternative because game ideas are considered worthless on their own. They're not worthless, of course - but the two main problems you face are:

• most game developers already have more ideas than they have time to create (and have too little time in which to create them all). This is generally why they're into game development anyway - they had ideas, and so they picked up a skill to make them happen. The number of idle game coders waiting for someone to present them with a game idea is incredibly miniscule. I've been a moderator on Gamedev.net for 10 years and seen tens of thousands of posts there but I think I've only ever seen 3 people say, "I'm a game coder - give me something to code".
• it's generally not possible to spot the amazing ideas relative to the average ones until they are, at a minimum, prototyped into something playable. Nobody has set up a commercial 'slush pile' for games because you simply can't tell from a top-level concept whether the game would be fun, whether it would sell well, how long it would take to make, etc. Even if you restricted this to fully fleshed-out design documents, that only really helps with the development feasibility, not with determining how fun it'll be or how much it'll sell. So with this in mind, idea selection and production is left to the experienced - who will go with their own ideas (where possible - often they just end up making whatever the publisher is willing to fund).

Answer 2

There are game development communities on http://www.gamedev.net/ and http://www.indiegamer.com/

However nobody will react well to some random person just barging in with an idea, and it is crucial that you understand why. The first article on Sloperama addresses this issue: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/idea.htm

Although his advice talks about selling the idea, getting others to make it for you amounts to the same thing. Basically, you are going to have to build it yourself because noone else will do it for you. That doesn't mean you have to do every bit personally (ie. do all the programming, create all the art, compose all the music, etc.) but it does mean you have to work hard on it.

In order to get anyone else interested in your idea you have to be coming to the table with a lot. It helps a lot to have developed games in the past, so I might recommend setting your great idea aside temporarily and go develop a few small games (Tetris, Pacman, that sort of thing) on your own to develop rep.

ADDITION: Your use of the term "baby" in describing your idea is a red flag. That may mean you are too in love with your idea and expect other people to just do what you tell them. I hope this isn't the case, because you have to realize that unless you are hiring/paying them (up-front cash, not a promise of future profits) then this venture is just as speculative for them as for you and they'll rightly expect to have a lot of creative control too. Basically you should look at it like "hey does anyone else want to work with me on a shooter?" and then the details are worked out in collaboration with them.