New Game Ideas

The game industry is really becoming a bit stale with re-hashes of the same old game ideas. Sure, there are some amazing new graphics, great looking characters, and flashy visual effects. But, for the most part, games mechanics and themes are mostly the same. This is becuase professional game development has become more like feature film production. Spending upwards of 15 million dollars in a AAA game is common and even expected. Game studios spend millions on a title and need to have confidence that they will earn that much back. The end result: designing and producing games that must appeal to the broadest possible range of potential shoppers and the games become bland and generic.

Since big game studios can’t afford to take risks, it’s up to the independent game developer to create new and innovative game concepts. Much like their independent film counterparts, the independent game developer is not risking millions, but rather thousands of dollars. And tens of tousands in earnings is typically enough for independents to live off of, especially after producing a small collection of games. The key is to break away from the fixed mold that big studios follow. Independents may not be able to compete with a 300-person studio on a polished FPS game, but they can take them on with a fun and quirky independent game that everyone must have.

Independent game developers need to really leverage their strengths against big studios by using their flexibility and creativity. Crazy new game concepts may not appeal to all consumers, but it will likely appeal to enough of them to make an independent game profitable. Here’s a fun tool to help think about new game concepts: The Game Idea Generator.  It requires the Silverlight 2 Web browser plug-in for Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox.

The tool is just for fun and meant to show how creative thinking can lead to an interesting game concept. Clicking the “Generate Idea” button, I ended up with “You should create a Pirate style RPG Quest Adventure game that features Aliens.” Why not? Imagine if the film “Predator” was set in the late 1700′s on the pirate occupied Turtle Island. No single pirate could take on the alien, but with their loot and Rum threatened, pirates might work together to take on the alien hunter. They might even have a temporary truce with the British to work together to defeat the alien. It’s not likely a game that a big studio might take on a game like this. But an disciplined team independent game developers with some artistic talent, programming skills, and a flexible game engine should be able to turn this into a winner.