Wait, what do you mean it's been done!?

[the protaginist]

It would be ironic indeed if this thread has been done before...​

Let me tell you a story of a boy sitting in study hall. He is bored, having completed his classwork, and starts to think about what he often does when his mind wanders: Video Games.

He starts thinking about a concept for a game he's began putting together in his head the night before.

The plot was a classic version of 'The Magic Came Back', following the story of a normal college student(or something along those lines) in a big city who's just trying to find his place in the world, when, while walking home from college, he is mugged. After being shot by one of the muggers, a bolt of energy shoots from his hand. he makes short work of the others, and starts using his powers to increase his position in the town. He catches the news one night... "humans around the world are starting to exhibit fantastic powers that science can't explain!"
You can see where the plot goes from there. Villain is introduced, Villan X's The Protagonist's Y, Protagonist goes after X while trying to find out about where his powers came from.

The Gameplay would be an Open-world game, instead of using cars, you'd traverse the rooftops for the first half of the game, maybe getting some sort of flying object halfway around the middle.
Combat would be basic open-world game combat, using a free-aim crosshair like Saints Row's. As you got stronger over the game, you'd be able to do more things with your powers, both for combat and travel.

Now, the boy in the study hall owned an Xbox 360. He later told of his idea to his PS3 owning friend, and was almost immediately told that his idea sounded like a crappy version of INfamous.

The boy in the study hall was shocked someone else had thought of this, as he thought it was a unique concept.

It was hard to translate my exact feelings about the concept while typing this post, as i've forgotten some things about it. However, I've mentally changed the 1 game i'd get with my PS3 this year from Uncharted 2 to INfamous, and i'm looking very much forward to playing it.

After that long, long intro, i'll post the TLR below so you know what the thread is about.

TLR Thought of a game concept, thought it was unique, was told it's been done before.

Has this ever happened to you? It could be anything, something as big as my discovery, or maybe something as little as an idea for a forum thread.

 

[9NineBreaker9]

Everything is a copy of a copy - so long as you pull it off good, who really cares if it's similar to one game or another. Whenever I have game ideas, if I haven't already, I go back and try to compare it to any game I've played before, and every single one has found many, many elements from other games.

So... maybe it's been "done" before, but really now, what has NOT been done before?

 

[GoldenCondor]

Yes, when I thought of a way to make flashlights last forever. Now they have those Shake-and-Bake ones or whatever.

 

[guardian001]

Gotta love those archetypes, ingraining old ideas into our heads and making us think they're original.

I'm sure it's happened to me at some point, but I can't for the life of me think of an example right now.

 

[Hollock]

yeah when i was like 12 I had an idea for a superhero that was made of anti matter and blew shit up by touching it and then i found out about this guy whos 100X cooler than my idea because when he wasnt in blow shit up mode he was wrapped up like a mummy

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Yes, when I thought of a way to make flashlights last forever.

You too, huh? I thought I was so clever, ringing the lens with solar cells. How little I understood about how things worked back in the day.

There are only a handful of story archetypes, and I'm pretty sure Shakespeare snatched up all the ones that hadn't already been done before he got to them. But remember, there can be endless permutations on a theme, and even if you cover one that's been done to death, with some imagination and panache you can give it a new angle or variation.

 

[YuheJi]

You mean like this?
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TedBrown/20091028/3408/Ideas_I_Did_Not_Own.php
I think I'm one of the only people in this world that does not think he has any viable or halfway creative ideas, so it's never happened to me personally.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

You see, this is one of the prime reasons why I absolutely love TV Tropes.

 

[bcponpcp27]

Something like this happened at a game conference my friend went to. One of the people pitching a game idea basically described Kane and Lynch's dead man bank robbery mode. Needless to say, the judges weren't impressed.

 

[Jakkal]

Give it a cooking mode. Now THAT hasnt been done (except in Duke Nukem forever according to Yahtzee)
(and yes, that joke has already been done)

 

[badgersprite]

If you boil everything down to the basics, sure, everything has been done before. That doesn't mean ideas aren't creative or different, particularly because, even though two ideas might sound similar in concept, the execution is often completely different. I always say that it's the little details that make an idea unique, rather than the big, overarching plot. ^ ^

 

[Marble Dragon]

Once, when I was really young, I had an idea for a story about a girl who could turn into a cat. I didn't know exactly what the plot was to be, just that the girl would turn into a cat. I learned later that girl who could turn into a cat and was also very into martial arts had been done many, many times before.

 

[DrDeath3191]

When I was younger, I thought of DJ Hero. I am serious. Except the controller would've had two disks instead of the one with the buttons on it.

 

[kmiik]

When I was a young boy, I played a lot of Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie and I liked those springy-step shoes. So i set off to make a pair. They didnt work as well as I'd hoped, the only way that really seemed to work at all was to put 2 springs on the heel. a few years ago I saw a commercial for shoes almost exactly like that.

 

[Nmil-ek]

My ideas still good, seriously how hard is it to make a decent free roaming RPG pirate game the concept writes itself!

 

[Mirroga]

I had an idea about a third person which revolves mostly around stealth and traps. The main mission was just to get out of the city in the best way possible while unknown mutations roamed around a ruined city. The whole game concept is Survive, eating food or sleeping when there's time. Finding safespots and information and supplies needed to keep up with what's happening. There are also a fear system and multiple paths.

Here, the Escapist said that my idea is a hybrid of Clock Tower + Resident Evil 4 with an emphasis on traps and multiple paths.

 

[FalloutJack]

It is completely possible and rational to have brilliant ideas that have been put into play without having actually known that said idea is already in production. Or indeed have that wonderful idea, and then find out a few weeks later that somebody else is putting it into works.

This is not technically a bad thing. Nobody is stealing anybody's ideas. You should still be ghad that you have the creativity to arrive at such a notion without knowing that somebody else had. That's how life is sometimes, so at least you can still claim to be smart and work on something else that hasn't been made.

For instance, I label myself a great creative talent. I worked hard on that. And I don't mind saying that Hollywood has, on occasion, used ideas that were in my head long before they started production. In some ways, this means Hollywood is actually a little slower than me. (Especially since one idea I had that became a movie happened like I was 12.)