Damn, that’s a lot fucking darker than I’d thought it’d get on reading the title of the fable.

I know it’s not the point, but I love the completely arbitrary bit where they’re walking down a road together, and has absolutely no bearing on anything the happens.

It’s like scope creep, but where the demanding client is also your boss/coworker.

Not to mention that an idea is not a game, not even conceptually. There’s a reason it’s called game design and not game turn-idea-into-code.

Hey there, champ! I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m afraid I have to disagree with your statement. Game development with effort or coding skills? Today I’m gonna show you how to do it without any effort, it’s like becoming an astronaut by watching the big bang theory!

Let me break it down for you. You see, creating a video game is as easy as pie. Typically, you would use lines of code. But what if I told you that you can gather a bunch of random images from the internet, throw them into a a computer, and voila! You’ve got yourself the next “Call of Duty” blockbuster. Going by standards nowadays people will be lining up to buy your game, guaranteed!

Who needs coding when you can just use a magic wand and poof your game is magically coded? Just like that! Forget the coding aspect of it, you can make a game effortless! How do I do this you ask me? Well, If you really want to master the art of game development without lifting a finger, I have the perfect solution for you. Introducing my revolutionary course: “Effortless Game Development Masterclass”! In this course, you’ll learn the ancient secrets of game creation without any pesky coding skills or effort required. You’ll be churning out awards winning games in no time, all while lounging on your couch and eating Cheetos. 😎😎👊 Dm me if you want more info for the affiliate link

I got asked by a team of first timers who have never done any professional coding or design if I wanted to chip in on a competitive MMOFPS they want to make.

That’s not going to happen. Between the rise of cheating, the insane hardware and optimization requirements of an MMOFPS, the general lack of interest in the genre (most have died due to low player counts), and the sheer amount of time and effort involved in designing and balancing the game even after it’s largely feature complete? Forget it, I’m better off buying lottery tickets than hoping for anything to come of that.

I had a guy whose pitch was “Ok, you’re the president.”

That was the game idea. The whole thing.

This sounds a lot like the Sinking Simulator saga…

DNA based mating system for an MMO battle RPG? Sign me up.

“games out there that don’t exist” how high r u rn

I can code but I can’t do art. I can make a game, but it will look ugly as fuck.

You mean like an MMO where different maps are arranged in an infinite hexagonal pattern that’s randomly/procedurally generated based on different biomes, that also keeps track of how many players have entered/completed each hex and begins scaling down the difficulty in said hex and evolving it into a more peaceful zone, that way the higher traffic areas eventually form safe zones/towns for low level characters while low traffic areas encourage high level characters to visit and explore, with the highest level characters able to survive unexplored areas and expand the map for all players, all while having developer tools to specifically add unique dungeons/events/items directly to tiles so that the game doesnt feel a mile wide and an inch deep but instead as if the whole world map is alive and constantly changing?

Yea… That’d be cool.

Nah.

That’s like saying a lot of banger songs could exist but the person doesn’t know how to write music.

Absolute delusional bullshit.

Verifying the idea is good is also part of the process. Play testing, making hard decisions, smoothing out jank, juicing up the experience… The whole implementation can make or break a game.

(X) DOUBT

The inability to detail the idea all the way down to the level were something concrete can be made from it kills it well before the lack of coding skills.

It’s like what separates having an idea for a book and writting an actual book that is enjoyable to read: there is no “knowing how to code” barrier in there and yet most people can’t actually pull it off when they try or it ends up shallow and uninteresting.

This is actually one thing I’ve been thinking AI and deepfake tech can potentially do good. Let’s say you have an idea and can code… You have an idea for music but no instrumental talent, so the best you can do is hum it. You can’t afford voice actors or other professionals.

Or maybe you’re artist with an idea who can storyboard but not code. Maybe you can make 2d designs but not 3D models, or aren’t great at animate.

But… there is software that can take what you say and change it to a different voice. It can animate a model to match the words. Similarly, software that could generate instrumental sounds from humming is possible. An AI can generate interactive dialog. It could also provide assistance in the generation of music, debugging of code, and eventually more advanced 3D modeling.

A lot of game design software is much more a GUI to an environment/model and triggers etc than stuff like writing hardcore backend C++ code etc. AI could take that even further.

Then add VR. Drop somebody into a blank-slate where they can create a whole world with a word, a gesture, and a great idea.

One day, that might be a reality.

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have you ever smoked weed? ideas are cheap - even ones that seem good. ACTUAL good ideas are only proven good when they are implemented AND become successful.

You know what’s ironic about all this is, as someone who has seen game dev pitches (not good ones), they arguably had their shit together more than most aspiring game devs. Looking back at the skeletals, ya know they actually may have had a chance of getting somewhere. They knew absolutely nothing about the technical side, but hardly any game devs actually do. They probably still stand a better chance today of developing this than some game studios asset-mashing in Unity or Unreal. That’s the true state of game dev.

Not great things, but she did make it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/305960/Dragon_The_Game/

Not sure if the original dev is still involved, but the team has also renamed their company a few times and released (and abandoned in a somewhat broken state) a few other games.

Sharing ideas can definitely be worth something when it leads to something actual original/concrete/useful, but on another level.

Most ideas these “creatives” come up with are neither of those + they are not willing to put in some effort to solidify the idea themselves.

I loved The Onion’s parody of TED Talks where an Idea guy is giving a presentation https://youtu.be/DkGMY63FF3Q?si=BBLyiYPCFSKwgxVY

“Sure, we’ll pay you 2% of the profits”

I envy you in some ways, recognizing your limits is something I wish I would have done. I came from a coding background, spent like 2 years learning unity, then eventually realized much of the cool stuff for games happen on the art side. So I learned blender… the whole pipeline- modeling, sculpting, materials, animations, each piece had it’s own challenges and quirks.

It’s been like 15 years since I started, I still haven’t released a game… but I do have a collection of neat prototypes that no one has played. I often wonder if I’ve wasted my time with the whole thing. If I could go back, I’d choose one niche, specialize in it and find a team to collaborate with, but there are trade offs with that too like giving up a lot of creative control.

You can have someone else do it for you. You just need the money. Give yourself Executive Producer credits, tell them your vision and pay them to make it happen.

Same here, I have one idea for a simple 2D game that I would like to make just so it exists. I even got myself Unity (before they stopped being cool) and tried to do some tutorials, but I just don’t have what it takes.

Have you considered making your deck building game an mmorpg?

Cool game but it is missing a lot of features, most importantly tutorial and art.

On the technical side: Do you self-host or in the cloud?

Yea this just screams VCU student.

“Ok, I did the overall plot. Who’s doing the dialogue?”