Quote:Original post by Swordmaster
I imagine there being some variables in this, but if I ever get hired by a gamedev company and I pitch my game idea to the owner and he/she likes it and goes about the process of it coming to fruition,(and lets say I just started at the company or I've only been working there a year)will I become the project lead of the game or will someone be filling that position and just work off the general basis of my idea or how does it work?

Depends on the size of the company. Since titles such as "project lead" only appear in reasonably large companies, I'll go with this, because in a smaller company it's usually more flexible and you get to negociate what your input is on a project.

The project lead is a person who is in charge of coordinating the various resources (including the team) in order to achieve the project successfully within both deadline and budget. This takes a lot of experience (you probably won't see the issues coming unless you've participated in developing at least one game) and work, and may be completely unrelated to actually designing the project: sure, you decide what goes in and what doesn't, but you won't be paid to think up ideas (and won't have the time for it) because you'll be busy managing the project.

So, I suspect someone else will get the position, but it's not like you would have wanted it anyway: it's boring, because you don't get to work on the idea, you only get to work on the people working on the idea.

Quote:If the answer is someone else will fill the lead position, then about how many years would it take me working at the company, for them to put me in a lead position?

Depends. If you're good at leading people, taking responsibilities, foreseeing problems and negociating with the publisher and investors, then you might get the promotion after a single project. If you're bad at it, you might need a longer time to wait, and might never achieve it anyway.

Quote:The type of game I want to create is a fighter, like Mortal Kombat for example.

Ask the company, although I suspect the answer will be no.

Quote:Original post by Swordmaster
I imagine there being some variables in this, but if I ever get hired by a gamedev company and I pitch my game idea to the owner and he/she likes it and goes about the process of it coming to fruition,(and lets say I just started at the company or I've only been working there a year)will I become the project lead of the game or will someone be filling that position and just work off the general basis of my idea or how does it work?

1. Depends on the company - if it is a small company and they think you are particularly good then you might.
2. A medium to large development company or publisher's in-house studio - much less likely. These sorts of companies invest a lot into games and won't want to risk that investment with an unproven project lead.

Quote:If the answer is someone else will fill the lead position, then about how many years would it take me working at the company, for them to put me in a lead position?

Depends on how good you are. You may never rise to a lead position or you may do so in a year.

Quote:The type of game I want to create is a fighter, like Mortal Kombat for example. Would the company be receptive to making this type of game? since I don't really know how well fighting games currently sell in the U.S. and Europe and if companies are cautious in making this genre of game.

If you want to pitch ideas to a company you better learn to research them because companies won't greenlight your idea just because they think it is cool. They will want to know its potential in the market. Being able to build a business case as well as a creative case is all part of the process.

Quote:Original post by Swordmaster
So what position/s has you working on the idea?

First of all design isn't usually an entry level position. You normally need to start off in test or possible as a level mapper (working on levels for other people's ideas) and work your way up to a senior/lead designer roll. Even then you may not get to work on your own idea as companies always have more ideas than they can make and they may choose to make someone else's instead of yours. - All of this depends on getting hired in the first place.

Swor,
The job of game designer isn't necessarily the same as the job of deciding what games are to be made, and the job of the game designer usually isn't to design games based on his own ideas.

Typically, publishers decide what games they want to publish, and they usually decide what games they want based on things like what's popular in the market, what technology they have, what IP they own, what their company is already known for, and what partnerships they have. They may have a process for considering new original ideas, but the barriers for those new original ideas are pretty daunting.

Where ideas come from:
- Licenses (company buys a movie license, for instance)
- Technology (company owns a particular engine, for instance)
- Gap filler (company identifies a niche they can fill)
- Coattails (company wants to make something like another company's successful game)
- Orders from above (the boss has a pet idea - you design it for him)
- Sequels
- Brilliant inspiration on the part of a game designer

You probably thought the last one was the most common source, but it's actually the least common one. The game designer's job is to design the game he's told to design. That's what Tooh was trying to tell you.

More often, the publisher goes to a developer, and says "we want you to make game X for us," and it's the developer's designer's job to figure out the details of the publisher's idea.