Why I post a lot of game ideas

I would just point out that just because someone may not "care enough" to contribute their time and effort to your game idea does not make them a greedy jerk. I hope you don't see this as more negativity - it's just that a lot of people have other things they'd like to work on.

What does having Asperger's have to do with it? I have Asperger's as well and don't spam the forums with half-baked ideas. I'm sure there are probably a lot of posters here with Asperger's actually.

Look around, there are many extremely talented people, or mini companies, who struggle.
Some of them have great ideas, great concepts, who are worth pursuing and would need support.

Spamming forums and crowd funding sites with half-baked ideas has three bad consequences:
- it makes their project even more lost in the crowd (there are sadly way silly projects than good ones)
- it worsens the reputation of amateur/indy game developers (too much crap/noobish/abandoned projects around)
- it is a waste of money for those who spent and would have better been invested in a more solid project

So, please, out of respect and to spare our time, Asperger or not, spare our time by first working a few months on your project first until you have a demo, or by posting to help/assist others in their endeavors.

Thanks

There's always Kickstarter if you need funds, if you can make a convincing promotional clip with the game prototype and your idea is appreciated by people then there's a reasonably good chance it'll be funded. I never used Kickstarter so I'm basing all my facts on feedback from various other people... YMMV.

But if it's still at the "conception" stage, there's no real point in throwing it out there, nobody can actually use it.

You're asking for funding to develop a game. Investment requires scrutiny, if not a full technical analysis. You have shown a lack of understanding of copyright, and a lack of understanding your own limitations. Both of these things would threaten every dollar you get to develop a commercial product. These aren't permanent gamebreakers; these are obstacles that you can work through.

Work with your own limitations. Embrace them. Don't give up, but you have to work with them, and understand what you can and can't do. An MMO, for example, is out of your league. Infringing IP is also way out of the question.

Finally, before you put your name on something that you are advertising, make sure you are advertising (1) exactly what you say you're advertising, (2) make sure it works, and (3) why bother advertising for something that isn't yours and putting your name on it? Does that make sense? edit: If I were you, I just wouldn't bother advertising. Because, don't you have something more interesting to do, like work on your game, or read up on something that will make it better, or enjoying something else that's worth your time?

Hi,



I have, over the previous months, recieved some negativity (Especially by a member named Daaark) over me posting a lot of ads for game campaigns.


Do you want to know why I post these things?

First of all, I have Aspergers (A mental disorder that is part of the Autism spectrum). I have updated my profile so people know.

OK. Everybody has their own problems, believe it or not. Yours is just officially diagnosed. But everyone is going through their own challenges.

More importantly, it is very difficult for me to make a game by myself when I have so much anxiety holding me back. That is why I post game ads and campaigns, because I can't do it by myself (and God knows college is expensive).
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Even if you don't have Aspergers, it's still difficult to make a game by yourself, especially a Super Smash Bros clone.

But people don't seem to care enough. I know there are kind people out there, but most people are greedy jerks.
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We are talking about an online community and you are asking for money. It's not going to happen just like that. It's not that people don't care. The whole idea is not feasible, and you just can't send money over to stranger that talks about game ideas on the Internet. That's just not going to happen.

So yes, Smash Nation, Reality, and all my other games are still in my plans, I just somehow need the funds to do so.

I should probably ask for funds $2000 and below, because that is more reachable than others.
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Good. Keep it going, and keep moving forward. When it comes to money/investment, any internet forum is not the place to ask. There's a lot of complications and legal issues of sending money over to stranger on the Internet. Try something like kickstarter, instead.

Caption: "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog!"

So you have Aspergers. I particularly don't care. I'm going to judge you based on what you say rather than what you are, whether you're a dog on the internet, someone with aspergers, someone from another country, someone with a different culture, someone claiming to be a coding guru, etc. Who you are has next to no merit on the validity of what you say.
(Extreme example: imagine the most bizzarre, cracked out, ragged looking homeless person comes up to you on the street and says "Noah, 1+1=2", or the most esteemed professor from the mathematics department of Harvard comes up to you and says "Noah, 1+1=3.". Does their status have any bearing on the truth value of their claim? Nope!)

Ideas are a dime a dozen. We all have plenty of them

There's only one thing that matters: Being able to execute an idea.

Take a thousand ideas, wrap them into a pretty box, and put it on a store shelf.
Take a single, well executed idea, wrap it up in a pretty box, and put it on a store shelf.
Which one sells? the executed idea.

To even write out a thousand ideas is in itself a form of executing them. J.K. Rowling made billions by writing a story about a boy wizard named Harry Potter. It was just an idea in her head which she put down on paper and sold.

But for the most part, ideas alone aren't very useful or valuable. You've got to execute them to get any value out of them. If you can't write the code to make a game, can't make the art assets, or create the content, or sell ice to eskimos, then your only remaining hope is to be the best project manager you can be. If you're not going to make an effort at developing a talent in any of these areas, then your situation is pretty much hopeless, regardless of who you are.

Bottom line: Doers are what makes the world go round.

Sharing lots of game ideas constantly is not how games get made.

Games get made when a team or individual focus on one idea*, and continue to work at it until it's done. If you have some difficulty that makes it harder for you to stick with and complete a project then you need to find a way of dealing with that and proceeding with your project; it is not the responsibility of others to deal with your problems, and while most people will be sympathetic with your situation, in the real world people won't just jump on board and do things for you because of your difficulty. They're working with their own difficulties -- aspergers and other disorders, health problems, financial problems, and more -- as well, and they have their own ideas they would like to work on as well. They're not "greedy jerks" because of that -- some people are of course, but for the most part everyone else is just busy dealing with their own problems and trying to reach their own goals -- you're not a greedy jerk for not helping all of them!



I have a friend who was terrible at spelling and grammar all through school. There was no structure to what she wrote, punctuation was mis-used or simply left out regularly, the letters were jumbled or completely incorrect, and as a result even though she had very clear hand-writing it was almost impossible to read anything she wrote or typed. Her excuse for this was that she suffers from dyslexia, and all through school the teachers and other students excused her writing because of this problem. In our final year however, the English teacher didn't accept this excuse, telling her she had a known problem and that she needed to work harder to overcome it; some mistakes were expected given her situation, and he would be more lenient than with other students, but she needed to work on producing the best quality work possible.

She got an A for year 12 English, and her writing -- whilst still worse than average -- is now very readable. As it turns out, all she needed to do was work hard at it, and find clever ways of working around her difficulties. All through school everyone excused her bad writing because of the condition, but when she was forced to push her limits she no longer had dyslexia as a crutch and found all sorts of solutions to her difficulties; she practised every day, she came up with clever rhymes to remind her of things, and she made sure she set aside plenty of time to write her assignments so she could do multiple drafts and correct as many of the mistakes as possible.

Don't let people excuse your lack of progress because of your condition -- find ways to get real work done and make real progress in spite of your condition. Find what strengths you have to make up for your weaknesses, and figure out a process that makes use of those strengths and minimises the impact of your weaknesses.


You don't need to continue to advertise many different projects and try to find funds -- you need to pick one project and really focus all of your efforts on it. Write down the idea in detail, look for problems with it and fix them -- then show other people and try to fix the problems they point out.
Try to plan how you can make the project with minimal funding so that you don't need to ask for so much -- perhaps with less levels and a smaller but more varied set of enemies the idea would be more approachable. Maybe you don't need to use the latest and greatest technology if you can get an older (or new but simpler) but sufficiently engine or tool-set that will do the job.
Learn how things are normally done in other teams, and research what is and isn't possible.
Try to learn the skills so that you can do more of the work yourself, and just leave aside the things you can't do -- if you can program but can't create good art, then start programming and just use simple coloured blocks and shapes that can be replaced later.

Get the project really started, and then look for help and/or funding and don't give up till you get it. If people see that you haven't completed other projects, why would they want to contribute money to another one which you might also put aside for a newer idea?


You can succeed, but you need to focus, and apply yourself fully, and you need to do it -- you can't expect other people to do it for you. You can do it! Get out there and don't stop trying till it's done!

* It is obviously possible to focus on multiple separate ideas at once and follow them all to fruition, but it'll make the whole process significantly slower.

Sorry for double posting, but I just had a look at your profile and wanted to respond to something you said there:

Some people say I shouldn't bother with game development and just play the games other developers make.


Why should I have to? I want a chance as much as anyone else.[/quote]
You have the same chance as everyone else, but you need to really get to work to make it happen. Only a very small percentage of people who original start on the path of game development actually manage to make complete games for themselves, and an even smaller number of people do it well enough to create good quality popular games.

The main characteristic shared by all of those who succeed is that they persevere no matter what. When someone tells them they can't or shouldn't do something they take any useful advice and just ignore the rest and continue. When they run into a difficulty they keep on trying till they solve it. They don't just abandon their ideas unless they've really exhausted every possible option, and they don't simply let others tell them they shouldn't try something.

You do have the same chance as everyone else, but if you want to succeed you have to do exactly the same as everyone else and work for it. Anyone who continually posts game ideas without following through will have the same experience as you -- aspergers or not -- and anyone who succeeds at creating one of their dream games does so because they focussed on the idea and just kept on working at it and trying different approaches till it was done.

Pick one of your ideas that you really care about, and go make it happen!

Out of curiosity, what exactly are your skills? Are you a programmer, artist? I mean, if you know how to program, you can start making games. You'll have to adjust your expectations to what you can do; you can't make the new Gears of War or even Smash Bros, but a game with abstract graphics like Geometry Wars, why not. Now, If you know how to make decent 2D or 3D art, you have a pretty good chance to find a programmer that wants to collaborate and make a game, or an existing team.

On the other hand, if you don't have any of those skills and just dream up "game ideas" it'll be hard for you, and for good reason, precisely because you have to depend on others that have those skills(programmers, artists). But of course those people are not mindless drones that are just waiting for your idea, they have their own ideas too, and, based on the fact that they have more hands-on experience, their ideas are probably more fleshed-out than yours.

I know it must be hard for you with your condition, cause I have similar myself(OCD and depression). But in the end, it's very improbable that someone will just give you money so you can hire people to make your idea a reality. You have to do it yourself. Learn programming, or learn how to make art, or something similar, a skill relevant to game development that will allow you to not depend on others. It will probably take years and lots of patience, but better start now than never. Also, it's none of my business, but I'd like to point out that I'd worry more about getting into some college, even a community one, or finding a job than making games, but that's just me. Best of luck anyway.

From a bit of a look at Mastermind89's posting history, I see maybe one or two comments that I might say are overboard but various others that are criticisms that while they have the potential to be taken negatively, they are meant to be constructive.

What I find particularly interesting is the requests to visit webpages and donate or otherwise contribute to funding. If you were to remove those requests and read the posts again, I think they just come across as a typical person who's excited about getting into game development. It doesn't seem unusual or unexpected to me that a user here would post a dozen (I see MM has only 4) ideas for projects that they plan to pursue. It is also not at all unusual for these projects to be centered around some existing IP. Of course, strongly discouraging such a path is a good thing, but it's not unusual for someone starting out to be looking at going that way.

But if you were a noobie who wanted to get into game production and realized that you're going to need money and you know that today there's these sites out there that you can use to do just that, what would the results be? Just as using someone else's IP is a bad idea that is pursued in part due to a lack of experience, I submit for your consideration that MM has only gone down the path of poor fundraising techniques due to a lack of experience. And with new fundraising tools available on the internet that offer tantalizing possibilities, it's likely that we are going to see even more of this sort of thing from people just starting out.

I don't know exactly what is the best way to help people avoid going down the path of poor fundraising or marketing decisions would be. But if some good constructive advice or articles could be put together to refer people to, or if we're all more aware of them if they already exist, then perhaps negative experiences in the future could be decreased.

Mastermind, if you are still reading these posts, my advice to you is to re-read what people have written and as you do so take what they're saying in the most constructive way that you can imagine. Do this with everything you read. Consider the advice and learn from what you've found has worked and not worked and forge ahead. Ask for advice on fundraising, business, and marketing if you're unsure how to proceed. If you don't get that advice here, try looking somewhere else. Personally, if I was looking at trying to raise money for a project, I wouldn't know where to start.

Thanks. I am sorry I didn't tell you guys before.


I was just so passionate and hoping things would go well.

I am now focused on more constructive ways to start. I currently am seeking 2D Concept Artists & Pitch Writers.

Hopefully things would go better since trying with lousy pitch material doesn't work.


Wish me luck.