PAX East 2010: Think Your Game Idea Is Any Good? Think Again!
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
Hmmm, well my opinion is that the whole purpose of the panel is to find reasons something would be overturned more than anything as a joke.
That said, there have been plenty of more serious articles and such over the years about why your unlikely to get any idea for a game accepted. In many respects, it's much like comic fans who have "this awesome idea for a comic book", or how every busboy in Hollywood has some script he "knows" would be a massive blockbuster.
In the end it comes down to being able to put up money nowadays unless you have a ton of connections already at which point your not worrying about breaking into the industry. Hence why most of my own game ideas (which everyone has) are "if I ever win a massive lottery jackpot" or whatever. Chances are with modern game budgets I'd still have to line up at least one or two co-producers though, but having a bunch of money of my own to lay out would probably help me make the needed connections.
I have a ton of ideas, and honestly can see the problem with most of them. Truthfully though my favorite idea is to make a sandbox horror game in the over the top style of 1980s movies where players could create their own maniac (supernatural or not) and engage in a reign of terror in a variety of ways (and I actually thought up a storyline campaign for it). I even thought it would be interesting to try and set up something similar to real world police systems to plot how law enforcement responds/investigates based on things like the old "VICAPS" system and the like. Of course since I'd want to include torture, rape, and the most gruesome violence ever coded, I'd be aiming to intentionally release with an AO label.
Basically I'm a huge horror fan, and sort of figured that if your going to run around cutting up hookers with knives and such in a Grand Theft Auto game (or whatever) why not just flat out play a rampaging killer in the Jason Vorhees mode? With some of the games of this sort that have introduced stealth and such it also occured to me that you could also see ways of doing this in a more subtle way as well. The big thing hold developers back seems to be fear of an AO rating, and I kind of figured if I was a producer I might actually take a shot at it.
Of course out of my ideas (which I have mentioned before) that's probably the least likely one to ever see fruition.
That said, there have been plenty of more serious articles and such over the years about why your unlikely to get any idea for a game accepted. In many respects, it's much like comic fans who have "this awesome idea for a comic book", or how every busboy in Hollywood has some script he "knows" would be a massive blockbuster.
In the end it comes down to being able to put up money nowadays unless you have a ton of connections already at which point your not worrying about breaking into the industry. Hence why most of my own game ideas (which everyone has) are "if I ever win a massive lottery jackpot" or whatever. Chances are with modern game budgets I'd still have to line up at least one or two co-producers though, but having a bunch of money of my own to lay out would probably help me make the needed connections.
I have a ton of ideas, and honestly can see the problem with most of them. Truthfully though my favorite idea is to make a sandbox horror game in the over the top style of 1980s movies where players could create their own maniac (supernatural or not) and engage in a reign of terror in a variety of ways (and I actually thought up a storyline campaign for it). I even thought it would be interesting to try and set up something similar to real world police systems to plot how law enforcement responds/investigates based on things like the old "VICAPS" system and the like. Of course since I'd want to include torture, rape, and the most gruesome violence ever coded, I'd be aiming to intentionally release with an AO label.
Basically I'm a huge horror fan, and sort of figured that if your going to run around cutting up hookers with knives and such in a Grand Theft Auto game (or whatever) why not just flat out play a rampaging killer in the Jason Vorhees mode? With some of the games of this sort that have introduced stealth and such it also occured to me that you could also see ways of doing this in a more subtle way as well. The big thing hold developers back seems to be fear of an AO rating, and I kind of figured if I was a producer I might actually take a shot at it.
Of course out of my ideas (which I have mentioned before) that's probably the least likely one to ever see fruition.
So, other than being a friend of the creators of Penny Arcade... How exactly is Scott Kurtz qualified to judge video game pitches? At least Gabe and Tycho actually have a couple of games based on their IP under their belt; Kurtz just has a webcomic with a tenuous link to video games that seems to get shinier and less funny with each passing week.
