Is it secret? Is it safe? When to go public

I'm a solo no-name nobody working on what I think will be the greatest game ever (in another couple years that is) because I'm human and we all do it.

I've been very secretive about my game though and have not shared any screenshots (albeit very ugly still) or any really meaty details about why this game is new and why I believe it will be successful.

Am I being stupid?
It's not that I don't want to share my ideas with other people. I'm very excited to start building a community and take in interested people's input. It's mostly that I'm scared my "new ideas" will get swallowed up and churned out but someone/some company and make my "new and amazing" into a "seen that before... clone!"

Am I being paranoid?
My website http://www.solacecrafting.com/ is really just me talking to myself. Ahaha. Should I make a WIP thread and turn my website into a picture filled blog of all my glorious crappiness?? I do already update the forums with my progress almost daily....

The main cause for my fear is that I'm a married, full-time employed, non-professional building this with every second I can find every day to try and make this my living. Now I know a lot of people are quick to shoot down anyone who is looking for "success" in the game industry, but I'm not looking for motivation or anti-motivation. I'm curious what others think about the safety of openly explaining new technologies and ideas before they are fully implemented.

Thank you for any input.

 

In an ideal world, everybody would share progress, and much better products (and lives) would result from this increased collaboration and no competitiveness. Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world...
Some developers have had enormous success by sharing their work early and got away without copycats stealing their profits. Minecraft and Star Citizens are spectacular examples of this, but there are numerous success stories on a smaller scale. Minecraft is an outlier because the concept of the game was so new that it probably looked like something it would never work and nobody would bother to copy it, until suddenly it became big and been growing since. But its success was so swift that Minecraft became a big brand before anyone could quickly copy it out of the market.
Star Citizen, on the other hand, has nothing original about it, but comes from a celebrity game designer that has a proven record on working in this genre, and it tapped into something many people would so much want to play that many have spent thousands of dollars into a game that is still years far away from an alpha. What Star Citizen created so successfully is a fantasy of living a life of space explorer/trader, and it proves that you don't even need a video game to create this fantasy that so many people yearn for.

I'd say it depends very much on the kind of game you want to make, how big incentives to clone the game are, and how difficult to clone the game is. If you're making small cool games, you can share and still get away nicely even with clones greatly eating into your profits, such as the case with Vlambeer games or Threes!. They had their games cloned to infinity, but still made great deal of fame and money from them.
If you're a single developer working on a big ambitious projects, chances are that your idea can be snatched by a bigger team that can be quicker to bring it to the market.
Ideally would be to make some teasers which would generate interest in the game without revealing anything. If it works for your game, the best route would be to raise interest in your game by creating and sharing the fictional universe that the game takes place in, without revealing anything of the actual gameplay.

 

There's nothing to gain from being secretive when you're a nobody. There's a lot to gain from keeping what you're doing under wraps as a successful developer, because successful developers are likely to have successful rip offs. Nobody cares about an unknown though.

Successful developers won't clone anything from you either. It's too risky since there's no proof your ideas are commercially viable in the slightest.

Flappy bird wasn't new. It was however, successful.

 

And angry birds is just an even more casualized version of the old flash trebuchet games

True. If you're a nobody with a good idea, Valve will adopt you rather than steal your idea. Such is the mercy of GabeN.

Oh my feels. No pls. No talk about the world we should have rather than the system this species put together D':

Throw a test demo at valve and you can be in the next big-[color]-box product!

 

Bear in mind minecraft wasn't suddenly sucessful, it was a long slow growth and he blogged about from day one. Also it started as a clone, he set out to clone another game as an experiment. As his following grew he expandeded it. It was all out in the open and he engaged his players. It is a great example of public development.

 

@zombiegorilla how much of his success would you attribute to the name he managed to get? "MineCraft" just kinda sounds right for what it is.

 

People will use others ideas pretty much only once they are proven. No one is going steal your idea until it is a hit. So make sure do a solid game right out of the gate. They will attempt to improve on it, try not to give them a lot to improve on.

 

That made me want to take a shot at telltale. There's little to improve on because there isn't much there to start with. You'd think a company that invented an engine for movie-simulator-2014 would have better graphics since hardly anything is going on in game...

I think telltale got their idea from a broken dvd player that paused the CEO's movie every 5-15 seconds at random and s/he pulled a shamalan-level twist thinking that would make a great base for interactive games!

Ah, that still feels good for some reason.

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Was their prototype / proof of concept windows media player with a background script to hit the pause button at random?

 

Dunno really, but you are right a good memorable name that is clear is a huge help. The game he initially cloned was infiniminer, doesn't really roll of the tongue.

 

Absolutely agree with all the above, actually my long post completely missed the point that it is absolutely a MUST to share/market the game that is in development (unless you have a couple of million $ to throw into marketing).
So the questions I wanted to poise is not whether to share or not, but what kind of material is best shared.

Great point, and one of the main reasons Ridiculous Fishing got the credit it deserves while no one will remember Ninja Fishing.

LMAO

 

Did you ever play the old Sierra/LucusArts adventure games?

 

Have you ever played the longest journey?

I know these awful games all exist xP But the problem is that they were super commonplace some years ago, but now that stuff just doesn't fly anymore. Or shouldn't. I hope one day youtube celebrates/ pranks telltale by having videos pause at random and prompt the user to press a key to continue.

Hmm... I guess that depends on the value of each. Art is nothing by itself, but anyone can create cubes / basic shapes that scripts can use. Artists can make models and animations. What is the value of each? Which is more valuable?

 

No, you're being extremely smart. As we all (should) know, the first impression is absolutely crucial.
As someone who subscribed to the Unity engine on IndieDB, I tell you one thing:
There's no faster way to completely ruin your first impression and make people write you off than by revealing your game to the public without having anything to show.

I see this every single time when I check out my feed on IndieDB. 50 new games, 48 of them not even worth a second of my time. Typically it's the ideas guys who have no experience, content or team. Another thing you see very often is "developers" who only have a piece of concept art or two to show.

Yes, you are.
The typical response to ideas guys or people who are thinking like this is "Ideas aren't worth a damn, everyone has them."
So, somebody "stole your idea", what now?
If they churn out a S***ty version of your game, they are no competition to you so they might as well not exist. Granted, you won't be remembered as "the first one who did it", but still "the one who did it right". If it's your ego you're trying to satisfy, that should suffice.
If their version is serious competition, all I can say is that competition is what breeds excellence.

I wouldn't. There's a reason why artists only select their few best pieces for their portfolio. It's there to show people what you're capable of and not how you got there.

Furthermore, I think the best way to handle it is to use the WYSIWYG principle. If you remember the huge backlash against games like Watch Dogs and Aliens Colonial Marines, you'll remember that violating this principle was part of the problem.
Don't lie to your players. Don't show, carefully rendered images or videos of your models/scenes since they aren't representative of the final product.

If everything you show them are screenshots being taken in the engine, they'll know what to expect and they'll be grateful for it.

As I said earlier, I think you ultimately did the right thing.

Speaking for myself, I'm handling it pretty much exactly as you do. Despite working on my game for slightly over a year already, I haven't revealed it yet. Not because I'm afraid that people will steal my ideas. It's also not because I think that the systems I've programmed aren't good. It's because I don't want to show them off in crappy looking test environments full of placeholders.

When I create a profile for my game on IndieDB, when I create a post in the WIP board here on the forums, there's a short time window where people will see it for sure. That's guaranteed exposure. And I want to make that count.
I don't want anyone to see my game and dismiss it as something by a delusional hack biting off more than he can chew. I want them to look at my game, the same way I looked at Distance on Steam.
When I saw this game I've never heard of before, my first thought wasn't "Oh look, another crappy looking Early Access game where the developer wants 20 bucks despite being unable to guarantee whether the finished product (if it ever reaches this state) will justify that price." Instead I thought "Man, this game looks AMAZING!"
This developer has done Early Access marketing right, by not doing what most of devs on Early Access do (i.e. promising the world), but by making sure that what they already have is an absolute eye-catcher.

 

WIP can also be good for personal motivation and bouncing ideas... even with a WIP you don't have to give away the farm in details and you don't have to even really talk about your mechanics if they are unique and you don't want people to know about them... however if you have some decent progress and you find yourself hitting a plateau where you either aren't sure where to go next or you feel like you're losing motivation just from the sheer length of time it takes to develop your game, the WIP thread can be a good place to get that mojo back.

You'll get feedback generally equal to the amount of effort you put forth in creating the thread... and it might not be all positive feedback, but even when people aren't signing your praises there are generally great nuggets you can learn from those comments. And you don't have to agree with all of them, everyone has their own taste.

 

I've been dying to share more info on my current project, but I'm holding off until I'll have a shot at making a great first impression. It's one thing to share an idea of something, and quite another thing to share something that looks like it's well underway. Unfortunately, I just haven't had the time recently to invest in my game, so it may be quite some time until I can share.

At that point, I don't think I'd want to hold anything back, unless there was a specific value in not revealing it (surprises in the story and such). When you're really close to something, it can be hard to see the flaws. Or more accurately, you look past them because you know everything is early stage. Others can point out issues you may otherwise have overlooked.

Really, though, don't show until you're ready. If all you're going to be doing is withholding info out of worry, or obsessing and freaking out over negative impressions, the sharing experience won't be a positive one for you.

 

However, people not liking your WIP is a very good way of loosing it.
(Agree on the rest though) I just don't think you should reveal too early.

 

Share early. Share often. Build buzz in the open, so there will be a ready audience for your game when it is done. Do not use secrecy to hide your game out of fear that somebody will steal your idea. Everybody who has enough skills to steal your idea is already busy working on their own ideas.

Having said that, it is usually a good idea to wait to share until you have something cool to show. A short paragraph of text is no substitute for good YouTube videos of a working game demo. Once you have some cool YouTube videos made of your game, it is definitely time to share. Start by showing your video to friends and family. Improve based on the early feedback. Then expand by posting in the WIP section of the forum. Take that feedback and implement more improvements. Then expand by posting in more places online. Keep a detailed blog of your progress complete with screenshots and videos.

 

Yes! I think it was the last multi-CD talkie I played just before the point and click dry spell of the early 2000's. I played it with my girlfriend and we had a great time puzzling out the different challenges. It still gets brought up occasionally 10+ years later.

I enjoyed the adventure game genre as a social experience, I grew up playing the first Kings Quest with my mum young enough to need help with spelling for the parser. I played the Larrys, Space Quests, Monkey Islands, Gabriel Knight, Day of the Tentacle, Broken Swords, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Beneath a Steal Sky, Kyrandias, etc with friends and family. They made for a great time where we would spend the night talking about and enjoying a common narrative, discussing what we thought would happen if we did this thing or what the NPCs would do if we did the other thing. The standalone games were large enough to present detailed and nuanced worlds and if we got stock for a little then we would just solve some other puzzles in a different area while we turned it over in the back of our mind.

I think that might be what is missing in the modern episodic format. The reduced scope and limited exploration leaves them feeling like a closed room puzzle, and if you can't solve the current puzzle there are not enough other branches to explore. As a result they can feel like an interactive cut scene where you are just applying the half dozen items in your inventory to the two dozen hotspots in the environment it progress the dialogue.

The two best modernish takes on the genre that I've played were The Walking Dead (damn we felt bad when clementine gave us that judging look) and Zack and Wiki (great tool based puzzles, and cute enough to trigger laughter). The next one I plan on playing when we have time is The Cave it looks like fun tool based puzzles in a comedic platformer environment.

If you feel that Tell Tale is doing it wrong, is there anyone that you feel is doing it right?

 

There are about ten posts on this forum a week by people with a new great idea that hasn't been tried yet. So far they have all gone nowhere. So yeah, I'm not going to be stealing anything from here anytime soon.

Nobody develops in secrecy. Generating buzz is important. Even the big guys working on massive projects with big marketing budgets generate buzz early. They shout very loudly "We are making a new secret game! Don't try an guess what it is". As soon as the internet stops talking about it a screen shot is leaked to the press. "We can neither confirm not deny that this is what we are working on". Sure, there is plenty of work that goes into managing buzz. You need your biggest hype at launch time. But no one does it by keeping this secret.

Can you imagine Blizzard coming out tomorrow saying "By the way here is Warcraft 4, we've been working on it for three years, I hope you like it".

 

I would say don't bother talking about it till you need folks to test your beta (not your alpha). Better to spend your time working on it than talking about it.

Or as Elton John once sang, "The less I say the more my work gets done."

(Note to self: Quit spending so much time on the Unity forums!)

 

people wont bother ripping you off until you're making cash money.

Also, having people comment on your work to date is a GREAT motivator.

 

Hmm... Phantasmagoria lol. If you're going to make a playable movie, you might as well go all out It also felt more like exploring a world than the modern quicktime events on rails. You also can't get better graphics than real life, so devs should at least take advantage of that aspect of this barely-qualifying-as-a-game genre. The world & interactions at least felt like a game. I've watched tales from the borderlands, game of thrones, walking dead, etc. Hopefully they don't screw up minecraft too badly, that would really be the nail in the coffin for my opinion of them haha.

*Branch [&link] rant - What the hell, Microsoft!? You buy the IP for the most open world and creative game there is, and you want to let telltale make a game out of it!?! They do the exact opposite of what minecraft is at every level!! I can't even...

That's a nice way to sum up a handful of my criticisms, well done.

I finally dragged an answer out of everyone at my college. People are so afraid to say anything negative about this telltale title, haha. The final verdict turned out to be...

"The Walking Dead is a wonderful movie, but a terrible game."

*Branch & link - I'm taking cs252 this semester. Being able to make that assembly joke is the first [only] time the class has [will] been useful to me.

 

Yes, I can imagine that. And it would be the coolest thing ever. I hope they actually do that. Although keeping a large companies' large game completely secret would be almost impossible me-thinks. But I would be so happy

 

QBasic ... "Bananas".

 

Thanks for the discussion all. I agree, in my case, for the most part with the general concesus that it's really more about keeping your first impression, which only happens once, in good standings than keeping everything secret until the last minute.

Companies like Blizzard or even a team of five with -any- budget is completely outside of what I was asking though. They have teams and money and community managers and fans. I have zero of all the above. If I move too early and it is clearly a good designed product still six months out from sales a team of any size can outpace me.

I think it's clear I share what a lot of us probably experience; a sort of desire to be more open. Probably because we know the waiting benefits of community interaction with the honest and kind folk. But the short and sever folk are equally important, and waving a few napkins of scribbles in their face is a good way onto the subconcious ban list.

What Tomnnn is talking about with throwing demos at Valve I'll admit I don't understand. They're so filthy rich they take on projects if they look clearly successful? Of course Steam is the platform of aim for yours truly as this is not a quick mobile game. You're talking about some sort of support from Valve though?_? What is dees

 

Does that help put things in context? In one of his more lucid moments he told us he changes his personality multiple times a day, sometimes mid post, in order to stop the spy agencies ever doing a personality analysis on him to pin his identity down. It leads to some entertaining posts and comments.

That said valve owns steam. Steam will pretty much green light any half decent game these days. However this means steam presence and the valve logo is no longer the mark of quality it used to be.

 

There is a subtle, but notable difference between "secret" and "not making an announcement". With large studios, most of the time games are not announced or talked about until very late stages, pretty much for the reasons mentioned above... good (controlled) impressions. Games change through development, the bigger the game more chance of change. Also, it is not uncommon to scrap games very late in dev. We just scrapped two big titles because they just weren't working. Since they were never announced, there is no disappointed fans, public confidence issues, etc. In fact when our studio was casual/social, we only ever shipped about 50% of the games we made.

Sure we do actually have some "secret" games, but that comes with being tied to films, but most the time our games are not so much "secret" more we just aren't ready to talk about them. For example, I am working on 2.5 games right now (3.5 counting SWC). One is legitimately secret, one is so early stages that there isn't anything to talk about, and the last is due out this year, so it is pretty locked down and press will start for it soon. (Spore is still cited as what can go wrong if you say too much too early.)

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Telltalte... I would love to provide some comment on that company, but I won't.

But I will say they are a pretty good example of one of the big trends in the industry now. Specialization. Games are getting bigger/wider/deeper. And especially games feature large amounts of new content. More and more, studios are becoming narrow and developing one type of game, and other companies use them instead of building there own. Telltale makes narrative types games, you go to them if you want a narrative game, or invest much more heavily in creating your own tool/engine.

I don't have a strong opinion either way on this. On the one hand, these company know the space and game type very well. On the other hand, they all start took the seem.

 

The real question is, is it under my control? You can't trust those internet types.

It was a nod to Portal. Probably. Like @BoredMormon said, which is probably accurate yet my memory doesn't reach that far back, I've got a rotating persona for reasons. Could just be an extreme attempt to protect my identity IRL. The last thing in memory I can verify as true that I've stated on these forums is that I thing pistol shrimp are cooler than mantis shrimp.

Ha! Never saw that one. QBasic --> Trebuchet --> Angry Birds. What a fascinating evolution. We had animals toss inanimate objects, then inanimate objects that tossed inanimate objects, and now... inanimate objects tossing animals! I guess that means the next iteration will be animals that toss animals?

 

Snake and Tank Wars mofo! I actually built my first "game" in QBasic. It was killer... a target moved up and down the right side of the screen and you pushed spacebar to shoot an "arrow" (with amazing CGA style graphics I might add) across the screen and try to hit the target.

 

Feedback is incredibly important in the development process. The more of it you can get, the better.

You can get zero feedback if you try to keep your game secret throughout its entire development. ZERO.

Making a good first impression is nice. But you don't need a finished title, or even a demo, in order to do this. You can make a decent first impression by simply being polite and receptive, and presenting your ideas in an open and appealing manner. I'd recommend some simple but humorous prototype sketches. While explaining your game with words is good, having one or two visual examples can help a lot more people to wrap their brains around what you are attempting to achieve.

Secrecy is a mistake in game development, and one that larger publishers are obsessed with. Ideas are wind, and no one is really all that interested in "stealing" them. You can't copyright game mechanics, so anyone is going to be able to "clone" your efforts at any time. You need to just accept that and more forward. Missing out on that ever-so-valuable user feedback is not worth whatever tenuous security that secrecy can bring you.

Once you actually start getting feedback, don't defend your ideas. Ask questions instead. If someone says they don't like, or even despise your ideas, don't try to convince them they're wrong. Ask them why they hate it, and what they think you could do to "correct" it. Even internet trolls who spew vitriol for fun usually succumb to this approach. Asking questions is a form of attention, and everyone loves it when people pay attention to them. And what's most important to you as a designer is that feedback. You don't ever have to use the feedback you get, but you are still going to want to have it available. Sometimes even bad user suggestions can help guide you to good design decisions.

 

Honestly you're not being stupid but also honestly most that see it won't think it's the next big hit because they won't see your ideal from your perspective.

You can implement and publish a simple game and grow the game based on feedback though. The game is likely well over 90% variations on existing game play styles and you can release the game based on the unoriginal gameplay and tack on in pieces as you have both time and motivation, the original parts that you feel make your game so great after you are sure of the stability of the base.

Don't worry about this talk of if a game isn't a hit within 2 days of release it will be a flop. Not true anymore as in my experience the sort criteria for 'new and popular' really means 'popular and from a big business'. Keep refining your game until it is original and fun and you get feedback that verifies that. Once you are somewhat sure of that it is originally fun in some way, then you can try to market your game. Plenty of pop music flops on 1st release and becomes a hit later, although often by other artists, it happens often enough with the original work not to be dismissive.

If someone else basically copies your game ideal and they profit and you don't you really can't do nothing about it. Even with as few copies as I have had downloaded of my game I can tell some were downloaded onto virtual machines with archives of apps that ideal scrounges are weeding through. The same thing has being going on in the music and movie/tv industries since the beginning.

Really, if people dismiss the house brand of products to buy and pay more for Nike and such products and your game is rejected in favor of one nearly the same as yours that is brand name do you really have a leg to stand on when you are probably wearing and own more expensive brand names over house brands yourself?

And likewise with potential people that might play the game.

Honestly, I forget ideals almost as fast than I can think of them. Most in isolation are boring so it's good I didn't pursue them. Most big business have policies that refuse ideals from the public. There are inventor websites if you are into that. LOL, there are infomercial businesses willing to take money from you to implement your great ideals. Most people reading your ideal will dismiss it as fast as they read it or simply not care. If they don't care then how can the evaluate your ideal? They won't profit from it so why should they care to evaluate it? That's the marketing part you do at the end.

All these businesses that want your money and the only thing you have is your ideal and not near enough money to ever satisfy them. Keep your ideal, keep your money, and when you are finished frugally spend what little resources you have and maybe you'll be successful.

The ideal if it's any good will be copied. So publish an unoriginal game to start with and expand it in a way that you get feedback as you add original features in whether the new features any good or not but do it in the app stores where the likelihood of the interest is in your game not that you are developing a game. That is a huge difference in obtaining an unbiased answer.

Publishing to an app store is easy and updating in the app stores is easy. Once your game becomes interesting and fun you can advertise but likely if and when it does become interesting and fun, new and still current users will be the best advertising you can have as I doubt you have the budget to saturate the market with ads for your game or even a drop in the bucket at $1000 unless your game earns that money.

 

Actually, this pattern is quite common at Valve. I wouldn't necessarily suggest pitching every idea you have to Valve. But if you have a solid prototype and you want some stable employment, or just want to cash in on your idea, Valve is a pretty good option. They have a long history of "buying" smaller studios and developers who have solid prototypes, and then turning those prototypes into commercial products. This is what happened with Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and DOTA. Valve didn't originally own any of those ideas. But once they were proven to be popular, Valve cracked open the old wallet and acquired what they had to to make them their own.

The catch is that Valve is only going to be interested in games that fit well into their corporate business model. Your game would have to be a solid potential money-maker before Valve would be willing to bite. Also, if you are just one guy Valve would likely "acquire" you as opposed to some ridiculous pay-out. If they think there is value in your existing IP you might get something for it, but Valve can easily take your work and re-brand it, and if you're already in their back pocket there's nothing you can do to object.

Also, being secretive wouldn't help you in this situation either, as Valve would only be interested in safe bets that already have a considerable following. And you aren't getting any of that without a little public interest.

 

@RichardKain that's exactly what I was getting at.

I thought your game just couldn't have iron sights or have more than 1 sequel

 

Let's face it, if you had good original game play and Valve was interested in it, you'd keep the IP but let Valve market it. Under no circumstances should anyone sell a potential 'Mickey Mouse & Crew' to a 3rd Party. Not in the USA at least.

 

Well, that's the thing. Valve wouldn't always need the IP. If the gameplay is solid, they don't technically need anything from you. They can clone your gameplay idea without paying you a dime. And your IP would only be valuable to them if it already had a fairly widespread following. (was already popular and successful) Portal was originally an indie student game called Narbacular Drop. Valve didn't need the IP associated with the game. They hired the team that had created it, and re-branded/re-designed it as Portal. Once the Portal IP was successful, Narbacular Drop became meaningless.

So keeping the IP is only valuable if the IP is already valuable.

 

Not much to add. Bout the only thing missing are the standard disclaimers: NO ONE CARES about your REALLY COOL GAME IDEA. And that statistically speaking, attempting a multi-year effort as your first project is an inefficient way to learn that will almost certainly end in failure. In game development, only execution matters.

Gigi

 

Some companies like Bethesda are so tight-lipped that they may as well be considered secretive.

Once upon a time that gameplay might have sold.

 

D4
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/09/18/swerys-d4-gets-surprising-xbox-one-release-date-tomorrow/

 

There are worse people to hand over your idea to. Imagine what would happen to your idea if you gave it to activision or EA.

 

As a nobody, I don't think one has to worry about "making a good first impression". If you are a nobody, you won't really make an impression! If your stuff looks awful, the twenty people that see your site won't remember it, and it won't taint any later impressions. If its notable enough to remember, then it gets better later, then you have a narrative in some people's mind, and they will remember it even more. Are you worried its so notably bad that bloggers and news sites will cover it or something? You have very little to loose.

I'd say there are three reasons to stay quiet:
1. You already have a massive brand name and need to consider impressions (like if you're blizzard)
2. What you have to show will garner so little traffic its not worth the time and effort to be public about it.
3. You're idea is so novel and brilliant, yet so easy to implement that any random developer with no pride could make it in a week (never seen an idea like that)

Even if #3 is the case, it may not hurt your sales. In fact if your idea really is so fresh, it may even build up interest in a new genre, and you'll be first on the scene to capitalize on the interest the other game generated. You'll have the post dates to prove you were first, so your pride can remain in tact.