Your ideas are worthless

I was just thinking. Ideas are not worth anything because they are not yet tangible. I know this comes in stark contrast to some of my earlier positions.

You can not sell an idea if it isn't tangible. I'd say that whats really valuable is the implementation of your craft. This is why corporations have trade secrets (the krabby patty secret formula or coca cola formula for example). Patents and copyrights are tangible IP, they can be protected but trade secrets are kept so because they are crucial to the success of a brand, business, etc.

People won't steal your ideas. They will want to steal your methods, algorithms, and implementations because they do the job. I'm using the word "steal" loosely here when talking about this btw.

Now if you have something not completed but you generate some modicum of interest from potential markets chances are somebody is going to want to take it.

Just some thoughts. Applies to game dev too.

 

Epic found PUBG's ideas worth stealing. (Or at least that's one side of the argument.)

How about this: A good idea is worthless without implementation labor. Implementation labor is worthless without a good idea. Put them together and you might have something of value.

 

What brought this on???

I mostly agree with you...except....once you have a track record of successful releases your ideas definitely start to have value.

Case in point - At the moment, I'm self employed, writing apps for recent boardgame designs. I need to partner up with the boardgame companies for this to work. When i did my first one, I had to prepare a nice prototype to get them on-board. It's been out for over a year - 4.6 ratings on Android and Apple, good sales.

Started my second one earlier this year. I still built a prototype, but the sell was easier. This one is also going to do well.

For the 3rd one, I'm willing to bet I won't have to build a prototype any more. My idea alone will have weight. And it can certainly be stolen.

 

But it's not an idea. It's a service. And it's getting easier to sell because you're demonstrating prior success with providing that service. It's not the idea that has value. It's you.

 

It's just another matter of supply and demand. Random developer #2309's ideas aren't worth any money. If your name is Shigeru Miyamoto, pretty sure there's a whole market ready to buy your ideas.

Also I feel like there's a misconception where people believe one game is one idea.

Polishing a game is a combination of thousands of ideas. These ideas are just as important as their execution. The only difference difference between them is that lots of people are able to supply relatively good ideas, while way less people have the technical skills to bring them to life. Making the technical people far more valuable.

There's also this. If your leads have a great track record/tons of industry experience, the odds that they won't lead the team into dead ends/wasted iterations are vastly improved and this is where these "ideas" can be cashed in. Perhaps it's less the ideas and more the actual analysis of given ideas, but still fairly close.

 

Except this has less to do with the ideas themselves but has everything to do with the fact that the ideas were acted upon and executed well. If you and Joe McSadface Who Lives Downtown both have the exact identical word for word utterly fantastic idea, Joe McSadface is never going to see a dime. He won't even see a dime if his idea is better. This is because previously successfully acted upon ideas are the primary commodity, not the ideas themselves.

 

And keep in mind that Epic did not steal ideas about PUBG before it was playable and popular. It was only after millions of people were playing PUBG.

 

An idea is not worth stealing. Everybody has a surplus of ideas. However, if certain game mechanics lead to millions of people playing a game, then those mechanics are worth stealing.

 

Sure. Now say I don't have anything to do with execution, and nor does Joe McSadface. We're both your typical idea dudes and we delegate to the same firm to get our ideas done. I have no market in mind, no industry exp and I push random ideas, while Joe McSadface has a very specific target in mind, has exp in a select niche and iterates ideas around it, he's going to come out rich (or not), while I'm definitely coming out broke.

 

Except that there is no "typical idea dude" in any sense that carries any clout. All the people that people call idea people are people who had to work ridiculously hard to get where they are. Most of them have loads of industry experience and work in design roles rather than just churning out ideas.

Idea people do not exist as they are expected to.

 

I disagree. I have a million dollar idea. Of course, I can't tell you what it is or you'll steal it. LOL!

 

You seem to bounce from one extreme position to another. Sure, ideas without execution are fairly useless. But so is execution without decent ideas.

I have a register of ideas sitting on my desk at the day job. Its worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if we decide to implement them all. We've spent several thousand dollars collecting the ideas. One of the more brilliant ideas that we just finished implementing netted us $20K for only a few hundred dollars of cost. Those facts should indicate that ideas are at least worth something.

 

You're not a "typical idea dude" if you can afford to hire a company to make your stuff.

 

Ideas are not worthless. Ideas just don't have a tangible variable of worth. It's all subjective. Any idea can be a million dollar idea with the right focus. What the idea is worth to someone has no correlation to the value of the finished app though.
Every idea has inherent worth based on the traction that you think it can generate, but chances are slim that a third party will see the same value without a pep talk or a finished app to judge.

 

The problem with ideas is that everybody has them and most of them are of poor quality. Great ideas which lead to deep new innovations are very valuable, but they are extremely rare.

 

It's not a matter of having ideas or executing them, you need BOTH. You need to have a really great idea AND execute it well. All creativity starts in the mind. Whatever the mind is envisioning/visualizing, that's going to have a huge impact on what goes into the game (if it is executed well). You can see that many people actually do execute and make tangible games, but so many of them suck BECAUSE they do not have a great idea behind them. The mind is a very important factor in game development.

 

I think it's all relative.

Goat Simulator was a poorly executed, stupid idea but it was really great. There's other examples of games being terrible but somehow collecting huge popularity. Probably due to the comedic value or niche appeal.

 

Why not? What defines an "idea dude?"

 

For the Unity forums, and this often applies to other game development communities, the "typical idea dude" is someone similar to the links below. Basically they have an idea that they feel has potential. Some of them will be modest and simply feel like the idea is a cool one while others may try to make it sound like it's the next viral hit.

What makes them typical though is that they have little to no value to add to the project except for their idea. They almost never have any skills related to game development. They almost never have any resources (eg money) to bring to the table.

They almost always have just their idea... and nothing else.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/need-help-making-a-game.498927/
https://forum.unity.com/threads/game-idea-need-developers.495897/

 

I wouldn't say ideas are "worthless", as all hit games start with an idea for it. That means the idea itself had value prior to the game even being started, because without the idea the game would have never been made so would never have been the hit it became.

The idea alone though doesn't have value to other people until it either is proven in the marketplace or has at least been significantly developed. An idea for a movie for example is worthless to other people, but a compelling completed script that develops that idea, even though it isn't a finished movie yet with ticket sales, is something that may be purchased by a movie studio.

On the same line, a game idea itself can't be sold, it can't be copyrighted or patented either. A prototype of the game, or a game trailer based on the idea that is getting buzz, both do have value in that they are developments of the game idea that are generating interest in possible future sales.

So a game idea does have value alone, but it doesn't have value to anyone else until you do something to demonstrate the value of the idea to others.

 

It works that way in any business really. However it's not your idea that has the value. If you keep generating winning ideas, the real future value is *you* yourself.

 

I would take a bad idea with good execution any day over a good idea with poor execution. Honoring an idea (good or bad) is everything.

 

@Braineeee Thank you for sharing your idea with us.

 

So what?

I think everyone has an initial idea and then rules out the bad ones. It doesn't take but a little effort to discover what works and what doesn't. Unless someone doesn't have any knowledge of whats realistic or even possible (ie. something as silly as building a ramp to the moon) then I don't think bad ideas are too common.

I've not had time to read over everything posted here, but good discussion!

 

Suddenly I'm left wondering if there is an indie game compo where you purposefully pick bad ideas...

 

In life in general, most of the best positions are somewhere in the middle.

 

You are trying to set people up for jokes right??