the myth of a great idea

probably a bit cynical but perhaps a means to refocus.

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/the-myth-of-the-great-idea/

 

It's perfectly true from my experience.

Plus ideas are the easy part. It only becomes a GREAT idea when its successful. You can stumble across many great ideas but then call them bad ideas when they don't work. Is that familiar?

 

There is something to be said for what seems like a good idea not translating quite so well into physical form.

I do think good ideas are very important, everything starts in the mind.

When you look at the huge amount of badly made games and very boring violent ideas that go into them you realize they come from a mind that doesn't have beautiful ideas, but rather one that is just as violent as the ideas that spring from it. I don't think you can have really good ideas if your mind is not in a good state at the time. But that said, inspiration comes from within and from beyond yourself.

 

I didn't read the whole article, but here are my two cents on what I skimmed:

The existence of bad ideas proves that there is such a thing as a "great" idea. There are some ideas that, no matter how excellent the execution, are just terrible. Good ideas are the opposite of this; if the execution is even decent, the result will be good.

There is a point to the article, though, that people overestimate the value of an idea, not realizing that it's worthless until it's made reality. I have about ten ideas for games that I think would be awesomely fun, but I haven't had time to make any of them, so the ideas are worthless. Somebody else probably has them, too, and lacks either the time or ability to make them reality. Or maybe somebody actually has executed "my" ideas before and the reason they seem original to me is that the first time they existed, they flopped so horribly that they faded out of history.

As Mark Zuckerberg (or at least, his actor) said in The Social Network, "If you had come up with Facebook, you would have made Facebook." I think a better paraphrase would be "Maybe you came up with Facebook, but you didn't make Facebook. If you had, you would be the rich ones."

 

I think it also comes down to the fact that most ideas aren't very well formed, no matter how good or bad they are. When I pictured my current project in my head in it's completed state, my mind glossed over lots of the small details, things you only see when you're planning it out it, and these things often have more of an impact on what it ends up being rather than what you see in your head from the start.

But I definitely agree that it's best just to do something rather than sitting around waiting for an idea to hit.

 

I think the lesson of the article is this...

If I had come up with the ideas for: angry birds, plants vs zombies or braid that would not have made me rich. Even though I would have a decent shot at creating these games.

But I certainly would not have executed them as well... (if at all)

Sitting around and waiting for that great idea is a waste of time you could better spend developing decent ideas.

 

That sounds very Zen but infact is very patronising... I could go into the role of violence in video games but that is probably better left to another thread.

 

its absolutely a myth

you have to start experimenting otherwise you are never going to make anything because you are waiting for that killer world changing idea , i oftenly fall victim of the "thats a great idea" moments in which just the moment i start prototyping them i think, that sucks or simply not viable to realize in that particular moment due to skill or resources constraints, or the idea starts great but with time and feature cuting and changes needed to make it a viable project, makes it end looking something very different as originally visualized

i also noticed that in the real world the common phrase that i heard with indie developers, " make the games you want to make" its almost always not true, you certainly start and will keep doing for quite some time the games you can make not the ones you want to make, actually making something you want exactly the way you want it, its a privilege that just a few have managed to do successfully.

there are cases when the games success is merely a happy accident, portal comes to my mind, it was just an extra in the orange box to accompany half life 2, however with the time the portal fame right now i would dare to say is bigger than half life itself.

theres no way to know how good an idea is, until you try to materialize it, thats what matters and unfortunately your current skills and resources will sometimes get in the way of a proper realization of such idea if thats the case, get over it or move on, but never get stuck

 

I agree that sitting around trying to think of an idea that will get you success without hard work won't do you any good. But I also think a good idea is still a good idea, and bad ideas will lead you to ruin.

My philosophy is:

(Hard work + In the right direction) * Good Idea = Success

Perfect equation!

 

so how would you proceed, without a master plan ?
what are the bases that are not idea specific ?
http://4ra.in/blog/Selling-the-Picks-and-Shovels.htm

 

So basically what this article is doing is convoluting an idea that was summed up years ago by one of the most intelligent men of the modern era?

"Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration." Albert Einstein

Good ideas come cheap. It's the follow through that is costly.

 

Wasn't that Edison?

 

Maybe... but the sentiment is still the same.

 

Good ideas will advance us forward. If it was not for Narbacular drop there would have been no portal.

Back in the starcraft days if there was no aeon of strife map there would have never been a DOTA or HON, DOTA 2 etc. If there was no turret defense (with the terran turrets) there would have been the genre it is today.

 

Nothing beats prototyping. Just make boxworld with a few cubes and try it out. If it stinks, you'll know within a day.

 

The article is not arguing that ideas are irrelevant, obviously having direction is still necessary. He's just talking about how being an entrepreneur is not about sitting on the couch waiting for inspiration to strike. For 99% of us it's going to require actual work. Many people have the romantic idea that being successful is about being the first to come up with something novel (like post-its, facebook, or angry birds) which leads to boundless riches for little effort. "The One Big Idea" is a fantasy, a harmful one that leads people to stagnation and frustration.