What are your game concepts?

[Leemaster777]

Search bar approved.

Basically, I was watching Extra Credit's recent "How to be a Game Designer" vid, and I thought to myself, "what are some good game concepts I can think of?".

So, this topic is where you can share with the world any cool concepts you think would make cool games. Who knows, maybe that idea you've been kicking around in your noggin might have already been made.

Off the top of my head, one idea I've had is a zombie appocalype game. But not as a survivor. As the original zombie, the one that starts the outbreak.

The gameplay would be similar to Pikmin. Basically, you start each area with no zombies, but you "recuit" them by feeding on humans. Once zombies, they'd fall under your control.

Different kinds of people would become different zombies. Fat guys would be able to spew vomit at long range (kinda like L4D), but they'd be slow. Athletic guys would be fast, and ideal for picking off individual survivors, but they'd have low health. Muscular guys would become huge hulking monstrocities. You get the general idea.

The trick would be that you can't send too many zombies at once. Sending a huge mob of zombies after a small group of survivors would be the easy way out, but they'd tear the survivors to pieces before they could turn. You have to balance sending enough zombies to get the job done, without reducing the survivors to shreds.

Later in the game, as the humans become more aware of what your doings, levels would become more populated by military, amping up the difficulty.

That's the basic idea, anyways. What are some of yours?

 

[Twilight_guy]

Don't post game concepts on a public forum, they can be stolen easily and proper ownership can not be established as to who had the idea originally.

 

[Leemaster777]

Oh... I didn't think of that.

Oh well, I don't really think I'll ever be a game designer, anyways.

 

[TheWwwizard]

Don't post game concepts on a public forum, they can be stolen easily and proper ownership can not be established as to who had the idea originally.

Pretty much this.

 

[James Nixon]

A bit like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stubbs_the_Zombie_in_Rebel_Without_a_Pulse

 

[Leemaster777]

A bit like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stubbs_the_Zombie_in_Rebel_Without_a_Pulse

Oh, I guess my idea HAS been done.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

What are my gaming concepts? Largely secret, that's what.

 

[CodingMonkey]

I'm a game designer and I have to say, unless you're Will Wright, no one cares about your game concepts.

Most experienced developers have an idea or two that they are keeping secret, but ideas are easy and we all have a hundred of our own we'd like to make, let alone caring enough about your idea to steal it.

Check out TIGsource.com, and the forums: forums.tigsource.com
Lots of game designers there, sharing all sorts of stuff, ideas, code, advice, you name it.

The EGP is a site that has (for years) been filled with game prototypes, openly showing off lots of game ideas. http://experimentalgameplay.com/

Also, Leemaster777, it's hard to become the lead design at Ubisoft, but it's not hard to start being a game designer. Gamemaker is an easy engine to learn, so is AGP, or GamestudioA7. Lots of people who just want to design (not code or do the art) make lots of cool games in it.

Check out your local IGDA chapter, and google around for game design / indie game events. Most cities have GameJams (places where people go to make small games over a weekend). These are lots of fun, and worth going just to hang out and make friends with others who are interested in game design, even if you don't yet know how to make your own games.
The game jam in Toronto (my city) gets a couple of hundred people for 3 days.

Other game jams that are over the internet are the Global game jam, and Ludum Dare (This one is very frequent, with something every month or so). Check it out here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/about-ludum-dare/

Other then that, anyone on this post can feel free to email me with any further questions, np. My email is: michael AT spyeart.com

- Michael.

 

[Lyx]

My devtime is currently more involved with the design of programming languages, but there have been two generic ideas that i have been kicking around for years. They aren't so much "game concepts", but more like "game-styles" - bit like genres.

The first one is that we've got those IF-games (interactive fiction - basically text adventures), where one can do a lot of different things, but the UI is far from accessable, and textonly imo is too dry (i understand the "imagine it"-part, but i think that one may still use visual aspects, without "showing" every detail. Heck, the UI of IFs isn't even "skinned" in an atmosphere that matches the story). On the other hand, we have games that mostly show every detail - those have great interfaces and are very accessable, but there's nothing left up to imagination, and content is highly expensive.

My idea is, that a "text- and room-based game" doesn't need to look and feel like it's from 1980. I think that one could do this stuff with a nice and aesthetically pleasing UI, and that one could improve presentation and atmosphere with media in addition to the text output. With media, i'm not talking about something super fancy - just depending on the location some background soundloops (i.e. blowing wind), and a single static image of the current location, but done in a way so that it's purpose isn't to show what it is like, but instead to "imply" it. So in other words: Use text to explain, and aural and visual cues to imply atmosphere and feeling.

Why i consider this interesting, besides of imagination, is that content would stay almost as cheap as with a pure text adventure. One could still implement all kinds of features each with just a few codelines. I mean, in addition to text, we just have some background sounds, and a static location image - this media could probably be recycled for a lot of things (i.e., you need just one image to tell the player "you're in a forest", rather than one image per location in the forest.). That in turn also means, that content stays generator-friendly - thus, the machine would be able to understand it, and it could even generate gameworlds.

If you managed to follow my train of thought until here, then you may at this point be guessing, that i'm after "sandbox"-style gameworlds with a lot of dynamicity. Your guess would be right. You see, i always had this dream of having gameworlds where you basically can "live" in that world, and do all kinds of things. Like: We've got two cities, and now think about letting the player book an airplane ticket and fly from one city to another? In other games, that would require a lot of code and custom media. Here instead, it could be implemented in no more than 10 minutes.

The other "game-style" that i've been thinking about, owes it's inspiration to the IF "Galatea". Galatea wasn't really a textadventure in the usual sense. It was more like a dialogue between the player, and an NPC, that often felt as if it has an own consciousness. So, it was more like a chat between the player, and an AI, with both thinking about life, their views, etc.

I found this very fascinating and thought, that one could do much more in this direction. Besides of galatea, i don't really know about any "game", where the interactive medium was used like a tool, to let the player introspect himself. This is - besides of galatea - untouched land.