Game Proposal

[ThatJagoGuy]

I think everyone, at one point or another,has thought, 'Woah, now THAT would make an awesome game'. I tend to spend my idle time thinking about such things and have come up with a few fairly substantial game concepts.

Not to get all Dragon's Den on you, but is there an established way of submitting proposals to games companies. If so, is there a formatting standard too?? Or, alternatively, do developers get their ideas from in-house or 3rd parties that they buy solely for their idea?

 

[Quadtrix]

I'm more of a person who looks at a particular game and can almost instantly come up with several dozen ways it can be improved in pretty much any aspect.

 

[Rickyvantof]

I'm more of a person who looks at a particular game and can almost instantly come up with several dozen ways it can be improved in pretty much any aspect.

Same here.

 

[arf19]

I'm more of a person who looks at a particular game and can almost instantly come up with several dozen ways it can be improved in pretty much any aspect.

yup i do this to any game expect the ones i really enjoyed but still i do think what could be improved

 

[iain62a]

I don't think you can.

Try and stalk Peter Molyneux, and ambush him with your idea when he's in the pub.

Only thing I can think of.

 

[Nimbus]

Ideas are not good enough. You need a roughly 1000 page-long design, not just an idle thought.

 

[ThatJagoGuy]

I think everyone, at one point or another,has thought, 'Woah, now THAT would make an awesome game'. I tend to spend my idle time thinking about such things and have come up with a few fairly substantial game concepts.

Not to get all Dragon's Den on you, but is there an established way of submitting proposals to games companies. If so, is there a formatting standard too?? Or, alternatively, do developers get their ideas from in-house or 3rd parties that they buy solely for their idea?

Yes, there is a format. I take a Computer Games Development course and there is a format in which you must submit your game concept. It's called a Design Document. In this document you must explaing and describe everything in the game and such in a certain format. It's the next level of a Concept, but if your not known in the industry or even have any experience then you'll be needing this to give them. I highly doubt that any publisher, in the current economic crisis, would hand out money to someone that gave them a Concept to go develop a Design Document.

Here is a download of a general computer game Design Document. These documents are EXTREMLY IMPORTANT!! THEY ARE THE HOLY BIBLE OF YOUR GAME! http://www-personal.engin.umd.umich.edu/~bmaxim/cis488/BaldwinGameDesignDocumentTemplate.doc

Awesome, thanks!!

I agree with the rest of you guys too though - thinking of improvements is really easy to do. Some games are so piss-poor that I honestly wonder why people like us aren't employed to tell them what needs to be done. Don't they even have informed focus-groups?!

Still, I need some kind of project over the summer and even if it sinks like a brick, I think it'll keep me busy.

 

[Strong Intelligent]

Staction game.

I wish I had a full design team called "Sticky Toffee Studios"

 

[grenideer]

Sorry, you can't submit game proposals to developers or publishers like this. It is simply not the way the business operates. The truth is that there are an abundance of ideas so companies are not waiting on ideas from outsiders, even if yours happen to be better.

 

[Ben Legend]

I'm more of a person who looks at a particular game and can almost instantly come up with several dozen ways it can be improved in pretty much any aspect.

Same here.

Yup, same here.
Maybe developers enjoy missing obvious improvements out and save them for sequels.
e.g. the ability for the main character to swim.

 

[FooFire]

You can talk about ideas all day but not many people actualy do the hard part.

To be honest there are alot of publishers out there still looking at High Concepts.
Making a Full Design Document before a publisher is interested in your idea is not the best way to go. You wouldent want to spend hours and hours with a team making a full design document on your game idea only to find nobody likes it and nobody wants to make it happen. (What a wast of time money and effot!)

With a High Concept Document, at best you could find yourself beeing invited to a meeting with said publisher and have a chance to sell your idea, this would get you onto the radar. But remember Publishers get 100's of ideas a day! and the chance's of you getting a first look let alone a seccond is 1 in 100's.

As for grabing Peter Molyneux in a dark ally and telling him your idea... I mean come on hes a busy man! (well actualy I could see that working with Peter) but your best bet, if you have no experiance, your not related to a world renown designer, or friends with the head of a software publishing company, or have £Millions in the bank. Is to start at the bottom, get yourself in the door with a QA job and learn from the inside. You may find that game design is more complicated and yet even more bizare than you could ever imagen!

Then again it might be your job