Are the people that make the games usually the people that come up with the concept? Or could you send a concept to nerds so that they could make it if they liked it?
If so who would you send it to?
I have the greatest idea!

Game companies usually have professional writers working for them.

The most probable way for you to get your idea published is to start your own company with fellow nerds and a handful of cash. The developers I've known have all started out with a simple idea (board game, small useful app, etc) and gotten a bit of cash to finance the bigger project.

Although sometimes there will be some contest or another that leaches ideas from amateur writers for the prize of an X-box or somesuch.

Well, unfortunately you're probably not going to have a chance to turn your game idea into a reality unless you're already well established in the game industry.

Also there aren't any game companies which take unsolicited submissions for ideas, this is mostly because of possible law suits. If someone sends them some sort of proposal, they throw it out, and it just happens to have some features that are in a project they are already working on, then some angry crazy might sue 'em for using their ideas without paying him, or whatever.

DCLXVI is right, your best bet to get your game made is to get a group of nerds together and just do it yourself. This is actually a lot more feasible than it may seem. Go to a local college, put up flyers for programmers, 3D modelers and animators, plenty of these guys would love to add the fact that they've produced a functioning game onto their portfolios, and would probably do it just for the experience. Put together a team, and if it turns out well, look into getting it published, most publishers, though wary of taking unsolicited proposals, or investing in high-risk games that probably won’t happen, will be more than happy to take a game that’s already finished without their having to spend a dime on production, and put that on the shelves.

Once you've got something out there by which you can be judged, and if it works and is fun to play, then you could probably end up being hired by a real studio.

Weak.
What if you gave them an idea for free? Could you do that? Maybe sign a thing saying you won't ask for money, just make it happen?

Are the proffessional writers working for game companies just writers, or are they also nerds that need to be able to do nerd stuff?

Originally posted by Dr Lou Natic
Are the people that make the games usually the people that come up with the concept? Or could you send a concept to nerds so that they could make it if they liked it?
If so who would you send it to?
I have the greatest idea! Post it on a load of nerd boards and ask if they will help you program it, then distribute freely.

Actually if you wanted to get your game idea created you would have to analyse certain factors. Just recently I've been learning about software development at an Industry level, and within the development of any software project you need to work out things before any project can take place.

There is usually something called a System Life Cycle which contains all the factors of a projects start to finish (although it's not exactly finish, it's really getting a project to the point of having retrofitting or upgrading).

To begin with a person has to come up with an idea, in this case a game concept. Games are of course a fun thing to develop for the shear point that Games remain kind of theoretical until any code gets tested (The way I mean by theoretical, is that there is a continued evolution of development to make it a better game).

What games do usually have luck with is defining borders and boundaries, and most importantly the rules to which a game is to be built.

Once those things have been decided, a person then has to work out the Feasibility, Can they afford to build it, do they have the skills, software and time?

If you can answer yes to all of them, then your on your way to getting your project up.

What you have to do then is "Analyse and Design", basically create Flowcharts, SSADM, Story boards for both the flow of storylines and game transitions, you need to get all the Metaphysical entities and provision art work created.

From there you can either start to work out the code for yourself, or you can take it to a company to develop.

Ah well.
I actually just want to work for a game company, then make a game, but then again, my programming skill is hell terrible.... I actually have an idea too, but I just feel 'unhappy' not to develop it myself.... and too bad.....

Writing a game (as in a story) is the EASIEST part of a game. The magic happens in the game engine itself. Why do you think so many games now allow full mod conversions. Because the engine is so strong that you can basically attach ANY story you want. At that point you basically COULD make a game. If thats all you're interested in, look into that, get some 3D graphics knowledge, learn a bit of scripting and look into an already ready engine that allows full mod conversions.

-AntonK

Quake III engine is even used to make animated movie shorts...no games, just movie shorts...crazy huh. A while back Nvidia held a contest for the best shorts.

Dr Lou

A lot of people who work at ID (makers of Quake and Wolfenstein) got there through their work they did as gamers. Infact one of their top guys was hired after the developers saw the maps he made and put up on the internet, he was good at it so they hired him (and one of the guys was also good at making maps and his neighbor was John Cormack).

Unrelated but also interesting: Most of the primary animators working at Pixar never knew anything about 3d animation, infact most of them were talented sculptors who were taught the programs. Their kanck for developing and giving 2d drawings a 3d shape helped them out.

Originally posted by AntonK
Writing a game (as in a story) is the EASIEST part of a game. The magic happens in the game engine itself.
Exactly, what I want to know is does the person that writes the story necessarrily have to be the person that makes the game?
I guess I want the best of all worlds, i'd really like to supervise the making of the game as well and be in control of how the scoring and controls work etc, I just don't want to do it frankly because I couldn't and I'm not enthusiastic or interested enough to learn how.
I guess no nerd would put up with me... hmmm but then nerds are notoriously easy to boss around... this might just happen.
No it probably won't.
You know what screw it, i'll tell you my idea, perhaps someone will think to make it, that would be good enough for me I just want to play it.

Think 3rd person caveman simulation.
Hear me out, the game could start with you being kicked out of your family clan, perhaps it is run by your uncle after he killed your father and you know so he wants to get rid of you bla bla bla(I say that because you would need someone to face off with at the end)
Anyway you are a weak caveman at this stage and you have to start low, you join a pack of wolves. Or perhaps it could be a free landscape like gta and joining a wolf pack is just an option.
The goal of the game would be merely to survive(hunting and finding food and shelter, avoiding predation etc) and eventually join other human clans and try to go up in rank untill you head a clan and can battle other clans to gain territory.

I'd want it to be a brutally and realistically violent game, like bashing heads in with stones and being torn apart by unfriendly wolves and shit like that, cannibalism could be an option.
Violence against animals during hunting etc could be minimal and downplayed, and animals would generally kick your ass anyway.
Being solitary would quickly get you killed unless you were extremely experienced and healthy and strong(all things that raise over time and from beating goals etc). The main focus is trying to get into social groups.

Human or wolf.

In human groups you would need to follow orders untill you rose in rank and if you didn't follow orders well and became a liability you might end up being horriffically clubbed to death by the clan or in other cases merely banished or abandoned.
Clan wars would be another recurring theme, and much would be gained from destroying other clans, ie territory and I was thinking also females :D haha
Maybe sometimes the females would be loyal to their old clan and would object sometimes openly, other times sneakily by trying to sabotage your clan in some way.
You would raise in rank first by becoming friends with the entire clan by hanging around them and giving them things and when you were fully accepted there would be an obvious change in the way the clan members acted around you, maybe a little circle under them could change colour or something. Anyway you could challenge lower ranked individuals to wrestles and once you could defeat them they would naturally slip under you even though it was just playful wrestling.
Once you got in the higher ranks it would change. Not sure just yet how you could topple an elder.
With wolves you'd have to bluff out the alpha to become the alpha, and sometimes this wouldn't work and you might find yourself being attacked, in which case you get mauled badly by the whole pack. You'd need to become skilled at reading the wolf body language to survive.

To finish the game you would eventually take up so much territory with a large clan that you would start to infringe on your old clans territory. The inevitable battle between your clan and your uncles clan will happen and it will be a strong clan tougher than all the previous encounters(you apparently have awesome genes after all) and somehow it would end up with you facing your uncle one on one. And he is supremely tough for some reason, perhaps he is riding on a rhinocerous.
When you beat the game all the nice people from your old clan like your mother and siblings etc join your clan. Perhaps it could be implied that your uncle mistreated his clan and beat your mother etc etc the usual stuff. So kicking his ass will be really righteous.
And like gta you will be able to play on when the game is finished, running around with your awesome clan that probably has 30 people 8 wolves a rhino and some elephants by this stage.

This might not appeal to some but you have to admit I've spotted a gap in the market place. So many gun games, not nearly enough stone axe games.
Surely you agree.
There could be some kind of handheld catapult I suppose, if you really need projectories, and of course their would be spears, and you could throw stones like a mother fucker when you got a little further into the game.

In case someone is reading this that could possibly make it happen let me make one thing clear, I am not talking ice age here, ugh so lifeless. Before the ice age, in africa, I'm thinking african savahnah and the okavango river basin and forests etc, it was very lush and wet back then.
Very early humans.
And very historically accurate so it could be billed as educational and that would combat censorship and any other bullshit.
(so instead of wolves wild dogs or whatever)

I wouldn't be surprised if I'm like the only person that thinks this is a great idea:p its so me oriented, as in I'm really only thinking about what I would love in a game, I REALLY love this idea, but I tend not to have popular likes.
Maybe there could be a gun and car cheat haha, that would be funny as fuck. You'd finish the game in 10 minutes.

I really hope someone steals this, as long as they do it justice.

With my admittedly brief and tangential experiences with the games industry, I can pretty much tell you this:

1) Everyone has ideas for video games, they're like movies - every person who has ever seen a movie has an idea for a better movie, if only they had 200 million dollars like Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner continues making his own movies, even though they're generally not very good, because he can't make a movie for every other person in the world. Ditto video games, even if they only cost 20 million to make instead of 200 million.

2) The game designers that design video games come in three kinds:
- A few extremely rich people who can afford to create their own video game companies with a flick of their ego
- The talented visionaries who have finally reached some notoriety after being in the industry for 15-25 years, and must still fight desperately for the chance to produce their own ideas instead of other people's
- and lastly a preponderance of no-talent hacks who are given the position by a higher-up in the company as a favour or by accident, because the higher-up does not care or usually even understand if the games the company makes are good or not

This division of people closely mirrors those in the movie industry as well... there are independent film-makers, but you'll probably never see their films. At least with the Internet, if you make a game, you can put it on www.download.com and let people play it for free.

3) No matter how worthless a game designer is, even if they made Jumping Flash 2 or Odium, they would still rather make a game from an idea that they found up their ass than ever use yours. Don't feel bad - your idea is probably at least as good as theirs, judging by the state of the video game industry - on the other hand, recognize that if you were a game designer, you probably wouldn't want to hear anyone else's ideas either.
Similarly, no matter how awful a game company is, they would rather make a game based on a Neverending Story III license than use your idea... much the same as above.

AntonK has the best idea, IMO... make a mod for one of the existing engines. You'll need to be able to make and texture your own 3D models, which requires some specialized software. I believe Unreal II has some provision for hitting people with weapons...

There was a 3rd person caveman game for the PS1 called Tail of the Sun; more cartoony and less blood, but still good fun.

I personally agree that the GTA3 format - free-roaming with occasional missions that you can choose to avoid indefinitely - has been sadly neglected. I would have thought that this would be the perfect format for making a world exploration game, historical or science fiction, where the focus of the game was on finding new things and technological discovery/development.

As I said... everyone has an idea for a video game...

<b>Dr Lou Natic</b>, you've got quite possibly one of the most hilarious (in a good way) minds out there! You just have the ability to write what you think, while the rest of us plod along.

I've had an idea for a game as well...

<i>Reincarnation</i>
You start out as a bug, some insect or dung beetle. Your entire world experience consists of what bugs do, whatever that may be: procuring food, rolling shit, not getting stepped on or eaten by birds.

But there are predators constantly about and so you have to keep on your toes and your wits about you. If you get eaten or squashed prematurely, you get taken to an afterlife/judgement place where it is determined if you have gained enough experience to advance. If not, you go back as another bug. If so, you get to choose between 2 paths: worm or frog (something like that).

So, your new game is everything germane to what kind of creature you are now and your world perspective changes as well. You can see things a little more clearly or maybe you can jump better or something.

Anyways, eventually you could become a person. Then say you're a person and another guy in the world is a bird. Well you have a slingshot and so you're out taking potshots at this other guy who is a bird and he's flapping his ass off trying to get away from the crazy guy with the slingshot! As a bird, you'd be able to fly around the island and land anywhere basically, which would be pretty cool. But you'd have to watch out for all kinds of predators.

It just seems that no one's really made a food chain game and tied that into some amount of purpose.

Oh yeah, the game would definitely have good & evil paths. You could be a lion that just goes around Ghost-in-the-Darkness style and kills people randomly.

As far as language is concerned, I was thinking that you'd only be able to understand creatures particular to your species, though there would be exceptions—lions (king of the jungle), shamans (converse with animals), something else.

And the great thing is that the updates to the game (expansion packs) would play into this as well. In every expansion, there would be more animals, bugs, birds for you to reincarnate into. You'd also have the option of not progressing or regressing or staying the same animal if you got killed.

This would be a game I'd love playing. But, alas, I don't have the expertise or knowledge or get-go to make this happen.

There is a Gamecube food chain game called Cubivore. Sadly, I think it was taken off the market.

Originally posted by Dr Lou Natic
Weak.
What if you gave them an idea for free? Could you do that? Maybe sign a thing saying you won't ask for money, just make it happen?

If you don't have any history that would display to them that you are someone who could make the project happen, and make it a seller, then they won't dedicate any resources to you. In general you can not approach a game studio with an idea, and have them let you make your game, it's just not going to happen. But hey, maybe you'll get lucky and find that tiney startup studio who has a pool of tallented programers and artists, but not a single person with an idea of what game they should make, and you'll show up on their door just in the nick of time. . . right.

Originally posted by Dr Lou Natic
Are the proffessional writers working for game companies just writers, or are they also nerds that need to be able to do nerd stuff?

One thing people often fail to realize is that the act of hiring someone to write a story for you makes them a professional writer, so in essence all video game plots are written by professional writers.

Many larger studios recently have been hiring people with backgrounds in writing (that is, people who already have something to show) in order to write their plots for them. These people don't have to have any other practical game making skills, they just write. Traditionally, though the plot of the game is written in some spare time by the already overworked lead programmer/designer/whoever, which is why video games are not generally well known for their great story lines (Well not in general, anyway, there are certainly some shining exceptions).

Originally posted by AntonK
Writing a game (as in a story) is the EASIEST part of a game. The magic happens in the game engine itself. Why do you think so many games now allow full mod conversions. Because the engine is so strong that you can basically attach ANY story you want. At that point you basically COULD make a game. If thats all you're interested in, look into that, get some 3D graphics knowledge, learn a bit of scripting and look into an already ready engine that allows full mod conversions.

-AntonK

This is a good point, storey really isn't what most video games are designed for. It's the nature of the beast, imposing a linear narrative on a game does make the experience more accessible, but it's just not what video games do best. If someone really wants a strong linear narrative they should go watch a movie or read a book, a good game should emphasize the unique interactive nature of games, and allow the player to take full advantage of whatever systems you work into the game. In other words, something to keep in mind is that it's not all about you, and your story, it's also about the player and his own story, and what he wants to do with your game.

You know I could bullshit about this stuff all day. I’m taking a lot of game design classes right now, and am full with all sorts of useful rhetoric and theories.

Dr. Lou: My advice to you, just to get you started, would be to create a game design document. Lay out what you have in mind so that it’s accessible to others. If you yourself aren’t even sure of what all you’ll need, then I suggest looking for the “Chris Taylor Game Design Document” you can find this on just about any game design web site, it’s a pretty good template for all of those things that you’re going to need to work out before you start writing code, or designing models, or what have you. It’s not an industry standard document, so don’t think you can just submit it to an established game studio; they won’t take it. It is, however extremely useful for organizing and formalizing your idea so that you can encourage others to hop on board your project.

Many RPG's have what amounts to a linear narrative, although it's questionable whether they qualify because their stories are usually extremely simple... Final Fantasy X had a story so relentlessly linear that you couldn't get away from it.

It seems to me that designers most often come at game design from a mechanics point of view rather than from the narrative angle, which is why games usually end up with pretty tight control, decent visuals, and a dog's breakfast of a story.

Certainly with the group of nerds I know who are doing the startup thing, this is the tack they are taking.

P.S. Mystech - good luck with game design classes. Formal game design education may seriously change the face of video games over the next few years, or at least I hope to heck it does...