You have a brilliant idea for a video game. It’s creative, original, intriguing, and fun. You can picture it vividly—the breathtaking visuals, the jaw-dropping action scenes. You can’t wait to play it, and when you tell your friends about it they can’t wait to play it either. Your only problem is, you don’t own a game development studio. How do you get your game idea made?
Then you meet me. You find out I make games for a living, and before you can stop yourself you’re telling me about your idea. Your eyes get as wide as the twin moons over a desert planet, your hands scrub the air, spittle foams on your lip. I understand your game idea, I say it’s pretty good. Then you ask me, “What should I do to get a real game development company to make this game?”
How do I know you ask me this? Believe me, I know. I’ve worked in games for almost fifteen years and this is the number one question I’m asked. But no, that’s okay, it doesn’t bug me. Ask away—I’m happy to offer some advice.
I’m going to answer your question by asking you two questions. First: Is your idea really a game idea? Second: How are you going to climb the Ladder?
Is Your Idea a Game Idea?
Let’s start with the first question. You’ve got an idea for a “game.” My first question is: Is your idea really able to be made into a game?
When a game development team starts building a game, they start with a Game Design Document, or “GDD”. Usually this is a literal document but sometimes it’s a more informal thing: sketches, whiteboard drawings, memories of fevered conversations. But the best game studios strive to record their design in a written, illustrated document. In order to have even the remotest chance of getting your idea published you need to turn it into a GDD.
A game design is much more than a game idea. It’s a detailed specification for how the game should work. What does each button on the controller do? What does the HUD look like and what do each of the pieces do? How does enemy AI work? What pickups can players gather and what do they do? The game design describes every part of the game and tells how all the parts fit together to create a fun game.
This raises another question. What makes a fun game?
There are many possible answers to this question. No one has found a sure-fire formula for fun. Sid Meier says that a game is a series of interesting decisions, and this is a helpful starting point. Players have “fun” when they have to make choices. But not just any choices. Fun choices have to be intriguing, meaningful—interesting. How will your game design produce interesting choices for the player?
This is a hard question. Let me show you two examples that illustrate how hard this is.
The original Half-Life took the gameplay of Quake, then amplified and extended it in many ways. One of the ways they amplified the gameplay was to add a Reload button. Now ten years have gone by since Half-Life was released, and games like Halo have made Reload commonplace. But at the time it was a risky design. In earlier games you never had to reload, so Valve was making weapons harder to use. Players could easily get annoyed—”Why do I have to keep hitting Reload every ten seconds? None of the older games made me do this. Why can’t the gun just reload itself?”
Valve took a gamble on reload and the gamble paid off. Players loved Reload even though it made more work for them. Why? Because Reload creates interesting decisions.
When you’re fighting enemies and your gun has a little ammo left you don’t want to spend the time reloading. If you’re sure the area is clear of enemies you will reload. But what about those times when you’d like to reload but you’re not sure whether an enemy is about to pop out at you? Then the choice of whether to reload becomes an interesting decision.
Half-Life was more fun as a result of Reload even though Reload made the game harder. Now let’s look at another example.
Doom 3′s design called for the game to be set in darkness. Many of the rooms had only one light and some were completely black. To counteract this, the game gave the player a flashlight that could be used to light up any environment. Yet the player could not shine his flashlight and wield a weapon at the same time. This created a decision: do you want light or protection?
Many players hated this game feature. It seemed arbitrary and unrealistic. It often put players into impossible situations where they could either see their enemies or fight them but not both. Players would find themselves either staring helplessly at oncoming bad guys or blasting away into blackness.
Half-Life’s reload feature and Doom 3′s light feature are similar in many ways, but one of them was fun and the other was not. If you can understand exactly why that is, you’re one step closer to turning your game idea into a winning game design.
Most game designs also talk about the game’s setting, story, and characters. But I want to stress that this part of the game design usually accounts for less than a fourth of the total document. When people tell me their game ideas, usually their idea is 99% setting and story and only 1% gameplay. I have to tell them that they don’t have a game idea—they have a story idea. A game design is not a story design. If you want your idea made into a game, you’ll have to fill out the details about how the game actually plays—what the player actually does, how he moves his character, how he interacts with the world.
It’s hard for most people to think through how a game should actually play. Here’s a helpful hint for how to do this. Write a “Five Minutes of Gameplay” document. A lot of studios require this, and it’ll help you think through your game.
In this document, you’ll describe, in absolute detail, what a player does in your game for about five minutes of play. When I say detail, I mean detail. Don’t say, “The player goes North.” Say, “The player pushes forward on the left joystick.” Don’t talk about what the player thinks or decides: just show what he sees and describe what he does with his hands. If you can describe five minutes of your game’s gameplay in that kind of detail, you’re well on your way to writing a great GDD. In fact, you can put your “Five Minutes of Gameplay” document into your GDD as a kind of overview of the game.
How Will You Climb the Ladder?
You are not the only person in the world with a brilliant game idea. There are hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of gamers all over the globe who have ideas for games. How are you going to make your idea stand out? How will you get it to be one of the few that actually gets made?
You need to be realistic about this challenge. There are perhaps 8,000 people working in the game industry right now. Most of those people have their own game ideas that they want to make. They’re not sitting around wishing someone would give them a great idea. They’ve already got ideas and are just waiting to get the power and status and respect to form a team to get them made. So these people—game developers like me—are your competition.
And if you’re not already working for a game company, you’re at a disadvantage. A professional game developer has all the connections. He can walk across the hall and talk to a potential financier for his game—someone who knows and trusts him. A professional game developer also has expertise. He knows how games are made. So if you’re not already making games for a living, you have 8,000 other game designers ahead of you in the queue.
In fact, even if you’re already a professional game developer you have a huge mountain to climb. Very few people in the industry get to run their own game project. Of the few that do, many of those projects are based on movies, TV shows, and other properties, so even the project leader has little creative control.
So there is a tiny, tiny fraction of people who have game ideas and actually get to make them. Yet even then their job isn’t easy. They have to sell their game to publishers, explain and re-explain it to their teams, and ultimately convince gamers that their idea deserves the $50 it costs to play it.
There’s a huge ladder above you—a huge pile of people you have to compete with, overcome, work with, and convince. How are you going to climb it?
It is possible to climb it. Some people do. I did. In fact there are two different strategies for how to get to the top of the ladder and make your game.
The first strategy is to work your way up. I studied computer science in college. Along with my studies, I also did extra work teaching myself linear algebra, C++, 3D rendering, and game programming. By the time I graduated from college I had written two game demos. I showed them to game development studios and before I even graduated I had landed my dream job working for Origin Systems—at that time, the biggest game developer in the world. I worked as a programmer for a few years, then moved up to lead programmer and ultimately producer and director. I worked for four different companies on a dozen different projects, many of which were canceled. But a few projects shipped and a few did well, so I was able to keep climbing. It took ten years, but I got to design games and lead large projects. If you have the talent, the dedication, and the people skills, you can climb the ladder this way.
One step you can take that will shorten your ladder-climbing journey is to study at a game development education program like the Guildhall. I teach game programming at the Guildhall, so maybe I’m a little biased. But every one of the programmers we’ve graduated so far has gotten a good job in a real game development company, so obviously we’re doing something right.
No matter how you start, getting to the top of the game industry is a hard, long, difficult climb. If you want to make big, sophisticated, AAA titles, it’s the only way to go. But if you’re willing to make smaller games there’s another strategy that is both easier and faster.
The casual game market is growing rapidly and offers lots of opportunity. Casual games are the sort of simple, quick games you play on websites like Armor Games or Shockwave or on your cell phone. They’re usually created in Flash or Java and are relatively easy to make. In the last couple of years I’ve made a dozen or so Flash games, and they’re a lot of fun to make and play. Best of all, you can make a game all by yourself or with just a couple of friends. You don’t need millions of dollars, a hard-to-find game job, or even a publisher. You just do it!
There’s even money in it. If your games get popular enough they can get sponsored by a website. Websites will usually give you either an up-front license fee or a cut of the money that they receive from advertising. You’d have to make a lot of games every year to make a living this way, but it can be done.
Casual games are a tremendous opportunity. The downside is that they’re casual. They’re not big, grand, gorgeous experiences like BioShock or Fallout 3. If you can be happy just making modest, simple, fun games, you can be happy in the casual game market.
Whether you decide to climb the big ladder to making big games or the small ladder to making small games, you can get your game idea made if you work hard and stick with it. No matter whether you decide to make big games or small games, you have to start with more than just an idea. You have to turn your game ideas into game designs by thinking through the details of how your game actually plays and by discovering how to make it fun. This skill, too, comes with practice.
Best wishes as you start your journey. Drop me a line when you have questions. Let me know about your successes and I’ll celebrate with you.
Good luck!
26 Comments
Ya thats me, if I coul get MvP published it would be amazing.A new genre of gaming.I’ve asked you this about a bigillion times and this provides nice info.P.S.I like turtles
Thank you for writing this article, it is very informative and helped me think about the way of presenting game ideas, i hope to become part of a game design company in my future and you painted me the picture that i was looking for as to how this path would work out for me.
thanks for the informative article
sincerely
- David Klein II
Thank you, David. There are a growing set of game development education programs around the world, and you might consider orienting your education (if you’re in an educational mode of life) toward a school like that. The program in which I teach, the Guildhall at SMU, trains artists, level designers, and programmers both individually and in teams to enter the game industry ready to contribute fully to major AAA games. It’s getting harder to get a game development job without that kind of training.
i have an idea for a game.well we all know Guitar Hero…..so i have an idea for a new game
simaliar to that but its called Dance Hero.it will be almost the same thing but its gonna be
a mat and all the colors will be on there just like on Guitar Hero.you wil be able to dance to
any songs.when the colors show up u have to step on the color!!!!!
love erica
if you have any questions please contact me on yahoo.com.type in erica.lopez90@yahoo.com and get updates from me.THANK U AND HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!!!!:):)
Thanks for sharing your idea with us erica.
The good and the bad fight to live. In a world of. A good wizard but his brother his brother is an evil wizard that tries to destroy his good brothers world of good but the brothers there are 6 brothers 3 are bad and 3 are good the good live in diffrent kingdoms in the good world the bad live in 3. Diffrent kingdoms in the bad evil world.
Hi Shavon. Thanks for telling us about your idea. I’m not sure I quite follow the idea of the good world and bad world and the brothers, but it sounds like it has all the right parts for an epic story.
Its a terrifict idea my friend I would love to make this game its so creative.
Hey Jeff, my friend and i have a idea of making a prison game, its going to be called”The Pen:Prison Unleashed. were talking about using the Uncharted2 and GOW series engine, the simple and painless controls of Batman ARKHAM Asylum. the story is about a man named Scony and his brother Andre aka Risky. they rob a bank with a childhood friend. thier friend shoots 3 guards and leave them to get caught. risky and scony are now serving life in prison, so what they do is fight thier way to freedom, until they escape, that means making shanks,knocking out gang leaders and recruiting other prisoners to help them escape.so they can get thier revenge aganist thier traitor friend. if you wanna hear more of my game just send me a e-mail Jeff
Great article. Thank you for your realistic insight. So here’s a question… What if you’re a guy like me…? You have a full-time job, that you love, away from the gaming industry… However, this brilliant idea for a game occurs to you one day… You go through the motions of excitement that you’ve described in your article, but can’t give up your life (career, 4 children plus 1 on the way , a wife, mortgage, car payments, etc.) to “climb the ladder.” I could turn this idea into a GDD, but could unfortunately never drag my family through rough times in order to go back to school. What push can a guy like me make to achieving this fantastic accomplishment?
Jordan
Hi Jordan. If you’re committed to your current career but still want to work toward making a game, you’ve got a couple of options. One is to make a small game in your spare time. A package like Adobe Flash is tremendously useful in putting together simple games with relatively effort or time. Even if your idea is big, you can still make a small prototype of it.
Indeed, on that note, many professional game development studios make paper versions of their games early in the game design process. They make a board game out of it! That’s fun, motivating, and has real utility toward figuring out how the game should work.
If you don’t have the time or skills to make the game yourself (even a small version of it), your other option is to become a financier. If you have the capital you could pay a small team of developers to build your game for you. But that takes a lot of capital—it would be rare to create even a very simple game for less than $10,000.
I don’t know of any other option—either build the game yourself, or pay someone to build it. Getting a publisher or other established game company interested in an idea is not going to happen. There are few absolutes in life, but that is one of them.
Again, thank you for your insight. I’ll make sure to keep you posted on my success.
If Iwould give my idea to acompany of game development and i want the Graphics be “Great” it will cost me somthing? I Believe gamers LOVE graphics and they have “Strong” PC’s to play those games on.
any way.. XBOX360 and PS3 gamers can still play “Heavy Games”.
To say the truth iam a”Grown up” 15 years old and ihave a special and awsome idea that is MUCH better than the other ones ican see here.(Sorry guys..). …….Iwant to know.. More better graphics means More money the company spends means i get less money?
I dont realy want much money. ijust know that less people will download a”Heavy game” and More gamers would prefer anew High Graphics game. [and the game may cost more so company earns more].
-Ihave another idea how to GET buyers.(ishare it only with the companys 0.o)
Hi Mike. If you read the article above carefully you’ll understand that the chance of you selling your game idea to a company is 0%. Not 0.000000001%. Zero Percent with a capital “Z” and a capital “P”.
You have two chances at making your game. Either (1) make it yourself or (2) build a career in game development and 10-15 years from now you might have a 10% chance of getting your game made into a game.
Jeff,
I am a college student. I am not going into gaming or anything. I have a beyond brilliant idea for the Nintendo Wii. How on earth do I get started on the endeavor?
Hi Andrew. A great way to start is to read the article above.
Hi Jeff
I have some very important questions to ask you…..now me and my friends have be designing a RPG video game for over 5 years…we have a story line…we have all 500 monster designs ” drawn by me”, we have all the items, the characters, the background, where the CG scenes will be, dialog, Key items, basically everything for a RPG… or video game period…now the first question is….how do religions and race affect a video game.. how to do we even get a directer and development team from a company like Bethesda Softworks etc. to even take a look at our idea, like whats the best approach…???…in your opinion
Hi Kellon. I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it, but you should read my latest article on game ideas and how to get them made. It will answer your question.
btw what games did u work on
Check my bio page for a list of some of the more familiar games that I’ve worked on.
WOW this was a great in site on the gaming industry and production of games. i myself would LOVE to publish my idea and create a great new gaming experience (about special dragons coming to modern day earth). however, im starting school for Surgical technician and i wouldn’t be able to handle that AND go into the gaming business. =\ seems im kinda s*** outa luck on that. i guess im just another one of the thousands of people saying “if i only had one chance to present it, i know it would be great” but i dont think i’ll give up on the idea. THANKS A BUNCH
Jeff … great article and very nicely worded sir!!
Like many of the readers above, I myself have moments of pure inspiration … at least I indulge myself that sense of intellectual superiority.
With regards to casual games and in particular those focused toward the Apple App Store, I came across a company called MEDL Mobile. They have a product/service called the App Incubator … if an idea is good enough and ticks their required development boxes, they’ll develop it FREE OF CHARGE and give you a percentage of the net revenues.
I have submitted several ideas to them and believe one of them is on their “ideas to build list”.
Maybe some of your readers could benefit from this …
They developed Boxhead (The Zombie Wars) for the iPhone/iPod.
i have a idea for a new Halo game. You start out as kid on Earth (to act as if a tutorial) when you are taken by the military for the SPARTAN II project. You have to go through the training, you can make your own person, you can either join a squad or make your own, since all halo fans know that not everyone made it as a spartan you can drop out or fail and become a marine (later work your way up to a ODST.) Thats all i have so far some ideas would be much appreciated =) email: thatguy146@hotmail.com
i came across this article. I have in my head exactly how the controls and gameplay would be. It would just like grand theft auto just more advaceed. Check it out. This is a definent money maker.
http://gameinformer.com/blogs/members/b/magicalsarai_blog/archive/2009/12/21/this-is-what-they-should-have-made.aspx
Ok so you’re telling me that….if i go to school to become a game developer, i wont get my ideas out there??? not after atleast 10-15 years?….
Right. If your goal in life is to make your specific ideas, you’re best shot is in the casual games industry—Flash games, iPhone, Android, and the like. The advantage there is that you can make a game essentially by yourself or with a very small team. If, on the other hand, your goal in life is to work on big AAA titles, forget about getting your own ideas made. If you work in the industry for 10–15 years or so, then you might get a tiny shot at getting your own game made. Maybe. Probably not.