Step 1: A Game Idea

Pretty much there is no great way to come up with a game idea. For me, I end up lying in bed listening to music trying to find some inspiration, and then think how I can turn that into a game. I like to think that my ideas are top notch, and are more valuable than anyones else's, lol, but that is just me. I feel that what I bring to the game development table day-in and day-out is worth someone's time to hear me out.

That comes with experience, and from building up you own confidence. If you're convinced that your idea isn't ready to pitch, or you feel that someone may have a better idea. Most likely don't mention it, but it is always good to even throw out bad ideas. As long as your team knows that the idea isn't the best, they can either work off of it, or they stay away from ideas like it. It will sting a little, the rejection, but you will learn from it, and next time you'll be ready.

So here is how I do this. Just recently I was asked by our technical lead at work to come up with a game idea. This was on our way to the airport, he asks me to pitch him a game idea. Now I usually have 2 or 3 idea floating in my head. Of course I may sometimes have just 1, or none, or a million, but usually I try to have enough to keep me thinking about new ways to make a game. So while we were driving to the airport, I had 2 well thought out ideas, and 1 idea that wasn't smoothed out yet. So I told my technical lead Mark "yeah I got this one idea. It was similar to a game I had made using XNA a couple years ago". So I go over a brief summary of the game. Saying that it is a zombie game, of course, and that the main character is trying to save his loved ones who are trapped in the middle of the city. Now the game isn't a AAA FPS with a $200 Million budget, but it would be a cool iPhone / Android / iPad game. So I gave him my pitch in the car, he liked it, and he gave me a few pointers for what he thinks needs to be smoothed out some more. Mark said he'd get back to me, and when I can be ready to pitch the idea to the whole team I'll pitch it. Simple as that. Whether or not you're an intern, a team lead, a indie developer who lives in a dorm, you should always have a second party to bounce ideas off of. It will keep you leveled out.

Now after mentioning XNA, iPhone, Android, etc... I think a good thing to always keep in mind is what you're building for. Sometimes my best ideas I can only vision as that "AAA title FPS with a $200 Million budget", and some of my ideas have been called out for feeling that way (if only I had tons of money like $200 Million to make a kick ass game), but that never deters me from throwing away a good idea. Like I said at the top "I think my ideas are more valuable than anyone else's". So I store all of my ideas that I think are good. I have a copy of Microsoft OneNote, and that works very well if you want to jot down notes quickly, but there's also no shame in makings notes in .txt's. 

Honestly, even if your going into development with a AAA idea that requires millions and you only have pennies because you don't have a job and are making games from home, what you can't develop you'll know about as you get into choosing your game engine. I'll get into that in my next post, about the game engines out there, and I'll give some examples of ideas where a lot of that game can't be developed because of either time, money, or the engine itself.