What do I do with my great game Idea?

I've been playing video games for the last 20 years of my life and I'm starting to find that I am very picky. It's extremely hard to find a game that I find interesting anymore. So my solution is, why don't I just make my own dream game? for a while I used D&D as a dungeon master to get my friends together and payout my own game designs. I've written several documents describing my game design mechanics and essentially my dream video game. BUT I don't know how to execute any of it. I've messed around with Blender and Unity and researched what assets I would need to execute this plan but I just lac the skill and experience. And I really don't want to do all that work.

Are there developers out there who are looking for in depth game designs and are willing to buy these Ideas? or work with me while we create this masterpiece?

 

What you can do is first commit to learning a skill. You can choose to learn programming, 2D graphics & animation, 3D graphics & animation or Sound Artist (Music & Sound FX creation). Those are the core skills needed. So choose the one that interests you the most and commit to learning it the best you can.

Then you can check out some of the many dedicated sites out there to find people to help you:

Teamups
Indie Teamup
Ludust
DevelTeam

Disclaimer: Keep in mind I have not used any of these. I just stumbled upon them at some point while researching something game related.

Good luck!

 

No one wants to "buy" ideas just so you know, no company or single dev needs game ideas, cause we all have that "dream game" otherwise we wouldn't be trying to make games because its such hard work.

Now if you want people to work WITH you there are two different options you have

1) Have a unique skill that the other person cannot bring to the table themselves, may this be programming, 2d art, 2d animation, 3d animation, 3d modeling, you have to be VERY good at one of these though or be willing to compromise heavily on your ideas, as the person you would be working with would be putting in 50% of the work themselves too so they would want 50% of the input to what goes in to the game.

2) Pay them, these is the easy route, you can find many people on here looking to work for some extra cash.

Just remember no one wants to work on YOUR game idea for free without any input/hard work from you other than the idea/design docs, no matter how ground breaking an idea it may be it's just not worth it to anyone when they could be making there dream game, we've all got one.

If you're not willing to put in a lot of cash to some devs or some actual hard work for hundreds of hours to make your game idea come to life, it will likely never ever get made, there's no room in this industry for the "ideas man" there never has been there never will be.

 

Just throw it away. It's a rubbish idea anyway.

Pretty much all game ideas are generic rubbish. The gold only shines through after weeks or months or years iterating and improving the design concept. And this can only happen if you build the thing.

If you still want to build it, go over to the learn section and pick up programming or art. Then find someone with the opposite skill set willing to collaborate.

 

These ideas remind me of Dwarf Fortress. The original purpose of that game wasn't anything like it is now. It started off as a simple game where you directed a series of miners, manually one at a time, followed by exploring the mines in a roguelike fashion once you had either "won" or "lost".

Once the developer had a working prototype though he quickly realized how bad the game actually was.

 

Yeah. I have so many 'brilliant' game ideas that just turned out to be terrible once I'd prototyped them. All of the great designers I've followed or talked to seem to say the same thing. The first idea is never any good.

 

I'd agree the first simple idea - is never any good, but after iterating on the concept, prototyping and giving the idea time to formulate - it could turn into a good idea.
Everybody has that one awesome game idea (actually more like 10 ideas a day) they want to create eventually. We recently participated in a thread about it __can't find it though__ .
I say keep it as a backburner idea for when you are ready to create it. It will serve you as a motivator to improve your skills to the point where they need to be in order for the game to one day become a reality.
While you are improving your skills to build that one game, you will be creating smaller scoped games along the way. Maybe these games might include elements of the one game - so you can test your ideas. You can also prototype mechanics to see how best they work in a virtual environment. There might be more interaction or less compared to how you imagined or wrote it originally.
And the skills you need to improve might be a huge list ranging from programming to good design practices, learning 3D art to communication skills, team management to real-time PBR shader creation and lighting setup.
And you will probably need to form a team - so that is also part of the process. Maybe you strike it gold on one of the smaller scoped games - then you might have the capital to form a small team - that will eventually form into the team you have to build that one awesome game idea.

Eventually you will one day realize you are ready to begin development on your awesome game idea. Or you will realize how large the pile of crap the idea was originally, and how you want to create something similar but with a smaller scope, or with different mechanics.
It's a process but one that can work as a personal motivational driver.
Good luck -

 

What experience do you have creating games? I've lived in houses for 40+ years, and still, I struggle with anything more complicated than replacing a wall outlet. I could not design, plan, or build a house.

If you want people to blow smoke at you, then SURE! You can do it; there are hordes of idle devs waiting for an idea guy; and companies everywhere will buy your 'dream game'. And the reality is that none of that is true. Like anything worth doing, it takes years of try, improve, and repeat. The answers to your questions are here.

Gigi

 

Woah Gigi with a post bordering on cynical! Must have been a rough week.

 

True. My first prototype has so little in common with the current version of my game that it could even be sold as a different game now. If it were any good, that is.

 

I hope it wasn't too mean. I was hesitant about posting. I just felt like, 'Really? Are you even serious?'
Gigi

 

So, I'm a game developer who has far more than his fair share of awful game ideas. Just ask around here, the community has suffered through quite a few of them: the cut-down RTS, the JRPG attempts, The Hero's Journey...

I've had to come to grips with something. I call it the "XBox Paradox". New developers most often try to create games we play, even though most often games we play are far beyond our abilities to actually create. In short, gamers may set out to make Halo, only to fail so horrifically and miserably that they would have been better off doing something else instead.

...That 'something else', is a small game. Something doable in a couple of weeks (real-time.) Don't make a FPS. Don't make a Zelda-clone. Those genres are well-established, with lots of literature that most will find themselves unequal to creating.

Instead, start with Bejeweled, or a board game, or something. Make something small and dumb. Small and dumb is not bad - it's more sure to get made. Most people stop making games, because they find that they just can't finish anything.

Now...how do I get @Gigiwoo to make an episode about the XBox Paradox?

 

This would be a good idea. I find myself in a similar situation. I start work on a simple RTS concept. I go play supreme commander for a few hours. I add just a couple more things in. Then repeat the process until what I have is totally unworkable.

Not overly mean. Quite tame compared to some of the things I've said. Just a little out of character for you. Everything going okay?

 

I have ten more years on you, OP, so my ideas are better. Well, maybe. The difference is that I am doing it myself. And if you truly believe that your ideas are that great, you would, too.

But really, to come in here saying you want to make your own dream game, then proceeding to say that you actually don't want to do any work...

If your game ideas are as good as that idea, then you may want to consider a career in fast food, although I doubt they would appreciate your apparent lack of motivation.

 

Is any programmer with experience at all surprised by this, though?

I have a lot of friends who are always coming to me with their Great Idea for some mobile app. They've done all the hard work, all I have to do is type it into the computer and we're all gonna get filthy rich!

 

If you do that for your friends - will you be my friend?

 

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I don't think any of you have been mean. Just honest answers which is what I'm looking for. I may be a little lazy but what contributes most to that is thinking about how many other people have already figured out how to do most of what i need. How many of you have already figured out how to procedurally generate a Voxel tree. Ill probably end up spending a thousand dollars in the asset store and end up with a peace of crap prototype. How many people already own the assets i need but have realized their own ideas won't work out and need new fresh ideas. I was assuming that's what this forum is for and was currius how well you all colaberate your ideas together. Sounds like the general consinses is every man for himself. If this is the mentality of the devoloper community then i guess that explains why most of the games i see these days are disappointing.

I have taken your advice and am diving deeper into C# and I'm working my way through the unity tutorials.

 

The point isn't "every man for himself," it's that ideas are cheap and if your sole contribution is having an idea, not only are you not going to get paid for that, you also aren't likely to find anybody who is going to put in the huge effort to actually build that.

In fact, the forums have a Collaboration area for you to try to find other people to help you with a project -- but "help you" is not "do it for you."

http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/collaboration.17/

 

This would be a valid point if your ideas were any good. They aren't. You won't get them good until you've been through a dozen iterations.

How well a game does has very little to do with the actual game idea.

 

My opinion which might be agreeable with others as well.
As a engine forum that is setup to support developers, this forum is for gaining assistance with design and development problems or concepts you have not been able to solve on your own - after an honest effort to solve the problem has been attempted.
This forum is to post wip's that you'd like to get honest feedback on - to gain suggestions on how to improve on a mechanic, implementation or visual element.
This forum is great for supporting Unity specific workflow and tools designed to assist developers in creating games using the engine.
This forum is to present your finished works - to promote your ability to put all the bits together to create something that is your own.
And yes this forum is - also for collaborating with others - and finding people who can help you create your game.

However nobody needs an idea guy. I'd be willing to guess - 99% of the people on these forums have great ideas and are working hard to bring them to fruition. We are all idea guys - I'm also an animator and BoredMormon and MV10 are programmers/engineers. You need to bring something else to the table other than ideas.

 

That reminds me. I found this lying around on one of my other game design hang outs. It might help explain the typical industry position on ideas.

https://davidmullich.wordpress.com/...is-no-idea-guy-position-in-the-game-industry/

 

In all fairness, this guy did say "I've written several documents describing my game design mechanics" which puts him in the Game Designer category according to that article. It's still the back of a very, very long line.

 

That's true. I'm not saying the guy has done no work. What I am challenging is the quality of his work. Working in isolation and without any iterative testing, it's likely that the dosenta aren't worth the paper they are written on.

I'm willing to be proven wrong. Heck, I'd love to be proven wrong. But so far I've not seen a single person that can produce fully fledged useful game designs without testing and iteration. And years of doing other games also helps.

 

It is one thing to be confident in your ideas. It is quite another to be condescending and admittedly lazy about them.

The fact is, ideas are worthless to everyone but yourself. If you document them, share them, garner interest in your ideas, and build a team, then they only become slightly less worthless. Right now, they are actually nothing more than hearsay and a rumor, which make them less than worthless. I.e. Counter-productive.

No one is going to be interested until they actually see the ideas and then they can determine for themselves whether they are worthy of contributing time to. Or, hire someone and pay them to be interested in them. Until then, there is an internet's worth of ideas that can be looked through freely without having to buy them.

But the bottom line is that your ideas are not worth money. Nobody's are. Not even mine. Not until I bring them to fruition and then let people see the fruits of my (and/or my team's) labor and let them tell me if those ideas were worth anything.

Good luck with your ideas.

 

I'm sorry to sound condescending. maybe I've phrased my question wrong... but you all have provided very good feedback.

I guess what I really want to know is did all of you start with an idea as motivation? did you get discouraged? How did you over come motivation issues? have you ever seen you dreams come to fruition? is buying a bunch of assets from the store a good place to start? how did you discover your strengths and weaknesses?

I approached this forum with a perspective that most beginners probably have, and I would hope your answers would not only serve me but anyone that walks into game development blindly.

sorry to cause a stir...

 

I don't think it caused a stir or problems. People are just shooting straight here. Games are a huge amount of work for everyone involved, and there are a lot of people with the attitude we all assumed was on display here.

This place seems to be a more even split between people who started out programming and people who started on the artistic or modeling side of the fence -- more evenly split than I expected, I thought it would mostly consist of developers. That probably shows my bias since that is my background.

It is extremely difficult to even get started on a real project, even more difficult to finish (if it's any good), and then you face getting it out there and getting people to try it.

If you spend time reading through the game design section of the forum you'll find more than ever wanted to know about what motivates people. Some are looking to cash in, some like me are doing it purely as a sideline hobby, for some it's just a job, and others are chasing some vision. It covers the spectrum here -- which makes it a pretty interesting place.

 

I have probably hundreds of game ideas. The trick is finding one with a small enough scope that it can actually be done and something you know you'll be able to stick with for the long haul. Only you can answer that one. I wouldn't get overlay attached to any one idea or design. It's often better to start with a loose design and let it evolve as the game is built and play tested.

Phrasing it in terms of your "dreams" is maybe a bit much. I would say that I've accomplished my goals. A "dream game" could quickly escalate into something in the $100 million budget range, or even to something that couldn't realistically be accomplished with today's technology for any amount of time and money. Even huge budget games have limitations. A "dream game" implies something that could be pretty far out there. I'd rather finish "real" games.

On the ideas thing. Even Blizzard has had "great ideas" and spent millions of dollars developing projects that they ended up canceling. If they can't predict what ideas will make good games, you can't either.

No. Asset store content comes in two basic flavors: art and code. If you happen to find art that fits your game, it's something you'd plug in at the end, once everything's working. Purchased code is for getting a jump start on solving some specific issue and is not generally how to build what's unique about your game, and isn't going to teach you how to tie everything together. You need to get far enough into a project to know what specific issues you could use a jump start on.

By making a small game where I did everything myself. I did a game where I did all artwork, all programming, and even all the music. When it was all done, I realized that I don't have the aptitude (or interest) on the art side of things. So now I try to focus more on programming, which is more fun for me and I'm better at it.

The main takeaway is that game development is hard and takes a long time. It's probably far more difficult and far more time consuming than you're thinking.

You don't just snap asset store assets together like LEGO and out poops a fun game. The reason you aren't likely to run into people lining up to make your dream a reality is that they're already working on one or more versions of their ideas and probably don't have any time left. Unless you're willing to show that you can put in that sort of time yourself, you won't be able to attract collaborators. Makes sense, right?

 

And even this seemingly simple bit of advice implies a huge amount of effort...

 

If you don't have a strong passion for games, you probably don't want to or should not make them. Some are only in it for the money and usually will discover quite soon that pretty much everything else is a better way to make money, if you aren't an established gamedev yet.

yes, on a regular basis

not at all, please let me know if you find the magic solution!

no

no

trial and error

 

Just get started. Take your idea and do your best to break it down to its simplest form.

If your idea features an entire world start with one tiny area. If your idea features 24 different enemy types start with 2 or 3. Basically work on "building blocks", modularity, establishing patterns, workflows and so forth. You can read and read and type and type and you won't learn a tenth of what you will learn from just getting started and doing it.

EDIT: What I mean is sure reading & asking questions is good. You can certainly gain some good knowledge that way to start out on a "better" path from the very beginning. There is value in it.

However, IMO it is more valuable to just "do it". Take a chunk of your game and start building it. After a day or two a couple things will happen. Either you'll like the approach you are using, you won't like it for various reasons or you will simply run into an obstacle.

If you like the approach and are making good progress continue on. Otherwise you can do some research including asking questions. Difference is you'll have a frame of reference and be able to ask "better" questions. The answers to such questions will be of more help to you because they are more specific to the exact challenge(s) you are facing at that time.

Basically just approach it all as a series of experiments. Figure how to best (for you) do this and then figure out how to do that. And so forth.

 

Really great advice above from some knowledgeable developers.
Defining your own "dreams" is something important to do. And breaking those dreams down in a similar fashion as GarBen described breaking down a game idea above helps with attaining small steps towards your dreams.
I'm guessing you either think having the finished game product in hand or either making a pile of money on one of your game ideas would be your "dreams" coming true.
Break that down into smaller, attainable goals and work towards each one. Before you know it - you'll be well on your way towards attaining the ultimate end goal.

I find motivation in overcoming the very difficult areas of game development (everything). Things that are beyond my knowledge and ability - I find the very challenge of creating something I'm not supposed to be able to (artist in a coder world) motivating. It's hard, and daunting and challenging and - that itself is very motivating.

For a lot of people - the process of actually creating games on there own, creating there own ideas/concepts IS the dream come true.

Personally - I think this is done away from game development - but that's just my opinion. I would of never realistically even considered creating games or assets for games before I knew how to animate.
Adding extra layers of complexity (real-time game engine stuff) to an already difficult and time consuming process (character creation from concept to final output) is going to result in crappy animations unless the person is well versed in the character creation process already.
Is this similar to how programmers think about learning to code with the added complexity of a game engine, Unity?

 

I'm not trying to make tons of money, and I've never been interested in getting into the game development business. I have a job that I love and do well at. I only game as a hobby. I've just found myself very critical of any game I try lately. for example how did Assassins Creed miss the boat of being a revamp of Thief? they were close but just missed it. then Square Enix comes along and derps it up. anyway its stuff like this that make me think "if you want something done right you have to do it yourself." not that I want to remake Thief, that ship has sailed off the edge of the world. hens my reluctance to diving into this world. but I see no other choice.

I consider this thread Answered.

 

Experience tells me that you will find everything crappy that you'll have worked on for a very long time and games take a very long time. If you want games that are more fun to you, the answer isn't making them themselves imho. It may be a good driving force, but I don't think it ever plays out that way. It's more likely you'll keep changing stuff endlessly because you're bored again already from all the playtesting you'll do yourself in the process.

I don't think so. I feel like most of the time the seasoned programmers here tell the noobs to just dive in with tutorials and simple games and keep doing incrementally bigger projects, starting at the absolute smalles thing possible.
Maybe it's similar to how a classical animator might start learning by drawing an animation of a jumping ball and work up from there?

Exact same thing for me btw., also works for composing music.

 

Ooh questionnaire!

Definitely true for me. I would think this is true for most of the people trying gamedev. I've got some ideas that are about 20 years old that I still want to implement.

If you want your game made, either make it yourself, get some friends together as already suggested, or make enough money to pay people to make it for you.

Definitely. Say I was at level 10 game developer now.
I was discouraged because:
Level 1: I couldn't figure out how to program, and gave up multiple times.
Level 2: Whatever I programmed wouldn't compile, and when it did, it wasn't doing what I wanted it to.
Level 3: My program would crash all the time and I wouldn't know why, spending days trying to figure out what I did wrong.
Level 4: I couldn't figure out how quaternions worked, and whenever I even tried to stick with matrices, they kicked my ass, and can still kick veteran developers' asses.
Level 5: I'd try my game on a friend's machine, only to find out it would just crash to a popup without any useful information.
Level 6: I wasn't sure if my code was clean enough, fast enough, and if it was the best way to implement it, spending countless hours on trying things a different way.
Level 7: I'd write larger systems and then spend days debugging it, cursing at it, and swearing that it should work, and then finally discovering the problem and asking myself, how the hell did this ever work, and how many more of these will I have to go through until I finish this damn thing?
Level 8: I'd upgrade a third-party system that integrates with my codebase, only to find that it entirely breaks my game, and thereby spend the next week fixing the compiling and linking issues, and then the week after that fixing all the logic issues.
Level 9: Life problems take precedence, and the day job continues to demand more of my time, especially during crunch time, making me feel that my game(s) will never get done in my lifetime.

I can guarantee you that anyone who's dared to finish their dream game knows this list, and will recognize that this list is only a sample of the "adventures" they've had. There are plenty of war stories to go around, and that's how insane game development is.

Depends on the situation. People have 3 different reasons why they aren't motivated (that I just made up right now):

Unmotivated to start:
If you have difficulty starting, then you probably don't have a good enough idea, or you really don't think you'll enjoy game development. Time to look at other hobbies, or find a game idea that you really like.

Unmotivated to continue:
During the course of development, you usually have some "friction" crop up while you build your systems. You find that the game is just not turning out to be fun, in which case, you try to make it fun, or scrap the idea and find something else. Or, you run into technical issues that slows you down to a halt, in which case, you have to ask the right questions to the right people to find answers, or start looking for ready-made solutions, or compromise on your idea/design and rework the game.

Unmotivated to finish:
Most people who get this far either are just too burnt out, or anxiety of finishing sets in, or it's something from the "unmotivated to continue" category. If you're burnt out, take a rest, take a look back at the big picture, re-evaluate, and return with your strength and motivation returned. If it's due to anxiety of finishing, stop bitching and finish it already.

Ultimately, finishing a game is extremely motivating, because you have a sense of "I can do this." for your future games.

I wouldn't say dreams, but I'd say I've actually finished a couple of small games, and I'm really proud of them. They taught me a lot about my own creative and physical output, and how to scope some of my dream games to become more achievable.

It's a good place to start only if you already know what you are doing. Otherwise, I think it's a horrible place to start. Beginners shouldn't rely on store assets to learn. That's a way to get discouraged really fast.

Best way to discover your strengths and weaknesses is to build small games, because it gives you an idea of how long it takes to complete a game, and at what quality level you can physically output, in a finite amount of time. If you aim too large, as almost all of us with our dream games have, you don't get a sense of what it means to finish, and you can't tell what part of the process eats up most of your time.

Personally, it took over 10 years of me building unfinished, overscoped projects to realize that starting small is the best way to learn.

 

No. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. The last question is why I've spent a hundred hours creating podcasts. When you're ready to go beyond just ideas, considering listening to a few Game Design Zen podcast (link in sig). Ask around first to get some other opinions, then dive in.

Game Design Zen is free, portable, and answers your questions.

Gigi

 

But most importantly? It's pluggable. Heck, even I plug it...and it's not my podcast!

Seriously, listen to his podcast, you will find it useful.

 

Also... keep in mind there is a lot of sense in building smaller games first whether it is a completely different game or a miniature version of your dream game doesn't matter so much other than I think the latter may be a better use of your time.

Making games is like anything else. If you want to get great at it you need to make a lot of games. You'll see this in play all around and throughout history if you dig deep enough. For example, IIRC John Romero completed about 90 games before working on Doom. Think about that for a bit. How many of those have you or most others heard of? There is a lot of value in honing your skills on a bunch of little games before you tackle your industry changing genre creating game.

 

Can you share a reference? I'd like to learn more about it. Unfortunately, searching yielded no fruit. *scratches head*
Gigi

 

I can try to find something to back that up. It's something I read long ago most likely in a paper gaming mag. But if I find an online ref I will post. Of course, I could be dreaming but I don't think so. Most of these huge successes are people who put in tons of time developing and mastering their skills before "the big one".

 

They were doing very small games that were distributed monthly on floppies. Generally they were simple platformers. Over in that "what can we learn from Doom" thread I posted a link to a "history of Id software" video that's worth a look.

 

That's exactly right. They used to create games for a mag or at least a company. Softdisk Publishing IIRC. But that was only a small number of the games he made. He was making games before that time. That was 20 years or more ago I read about that stuff and things fade with time so yeah I might be off on the number but I remember he had made a hell of a lot of games.

 

@Gigiwoo well I found two things online that provide at least some evidence to the number of games the guy created before tackling Doom.

His wikipedia page lists about 64 games leading up to Doom.

And in this interview on Kotaku John Romero said "Doom was the 89th game that he'd made up until 1993".

So the latter supports my memory of about 90 games from decades ago and the wiki supports that yeah he made a hell of a lot of games even if it wasn't quite 90ish.

Actually, thinking about it... he was basically "the idea guy" in a sense. I think his role in these games was solely (or at least mainly) game design. Not sure on that but I seem to remember Carmack being the one who did the programming. In fact, he was hired on for that role.

EDIT: Ah nevermind. I see now from watching that vid that Romero was programming too. It was later on when he hooked up with Carmack that he moved more and more into the design side. Anyway, it's interesting stuff but not really the focus of the post. I was just trying to provide a little inspiration for the "make many little games to hone your skills" approach.

 

Good link to Romero's past. Thanks.
Gigi

 

While people in this thread have made some decent points, they are absolutely wrong in dismissing the game designer role.

#IdeasMatter

But seriously, while it depends a lot on the genre, game/level/content design can take a huge chunk of the total development time. If the game can be developed and playtested as a board game, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from making the complete ruleset and polishing it to perfection. You can present this when looking for team members and I think you'll do alright. But obviously it's always good if you can help with the coding or art.

 

Maybe people see gamedesigner and idea-guy as two different roles, at least I tend to do that. Most idea-guys don't seem to have much skill in gamedesign. I fully agree that the gamedesigners are of great importance.

 

I worked recently with a small, growing studio. Of their 100+ employees, they had 2 designers. TWO. And both had many years of experience. They had zero 'idea guys'. Execution >>> ideas.

Articles: "Have an Idea for a Game" and "Here's why Nobody Cares"

Gigi

 

I've been going through Gigi's podcast and have made it to episode 10, which he recommended a few posts up. Now I see why this thread has gone the direction of "there is no idea guy in the industry". I will try to clarify my intention. I think and idea guy is seen as a visionary, they live entirely in their heads, with nothing tried. I think that the idea guy can turn into the game designer. I guess you get lots of these types of posts. and for the most part they are people who have only just come up with some unique plot and want to run strait to the nearest program and say "hey, make this and we will be millionaires".
I don't have a plot or story or even characters. I'm not trying to make something unique nor do I have dilutions of millions of dollars. I've simple made a list of all my favorite games. followed by a list of mechanics that hooked me to that game. and have been working on modifying the mechanics that will allow them all to be woven together. what I have is a ruff draft that I'm trying to polish and eliminate things that don't flow.
The reason I didn't say what my idea is, is because I know it doesn't matter to any of you. The next step I'm working on is creating a prototype, And the following steps have been laid out here.

My perspective on Uniqueness: Competition is important for marketing. when you try to pull the hipster card and act like you are unique, people will immediately think of several instances where they have seen that exact thing then dismiss your idea completely before looking into it. If by some chance your idea is truly unique. there is probably a good reason no one has ever done it before.
It's important for people to feel like they are on some familiar ground. your whole life you make choices and you learn from your choices by the consequences. If you plant a new wrinkle in the brain that doesn't tie back to anything they have ever experienced before you elicit all the possible emotions to stand on end waiting to classify the experience. and if you aren't perfect you could accidently give the wrong impression. This is why making a clone of another game is the safest way to go... how long have we been waiting for a Pokémon game that is 3D? I'm not sure if it can be done or we end up with the Diablo 3 situation. Instead we have been given ARK, which is not a dinosaur game. there have been games about dinosaurs and failed. this is a game about catching training and fighting monsters.
The Diablo3 situation: some people Like Diablo 3 while others are disappointed with it. On it's own it is a great game, but when you come from the comparison of Diablo 2 it is jolting to the system and unpleasant.
... anyway sorry for the unrelated rant. If I didn't say it, it would have just kept bouncing around in my head.

 

You have no idea. The statement in your original post "And I really don't want to do all that work" practically needed a trigger warning.

 

I wanted to make my dream's MMORPG. If you think this thread is a reality check for you, should of seen mine.

24/7, but then I make something great and it's all gone

Tunnel vision and coffee till I got better. Now it's la la land and pink unicorns all over the place when building something.

[TRIGGERWARNING] Possibly. If they help you finish your project, and that project then feeds you motivation to keep creating new projects, and you gradually decrease the asset store's content used, I would imagine so, yes. [/TRIGGERWARNING]

This is the challenge of an entire life. To figure some of them out, I'd say don't be too emotionally attached to your projects and accept that you don't do everything right the first time.

5 days late but I really wanted to answer that questionnaire!

 

A good idea is all you need - Narbacular drop, slender, aeon of strife, but if you want to capitalize off your own idea you are going to need to have the next level (IE five night at freedies)