{"id":538,"date":"2017-01-18T03:39:49","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T03:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/idea-to-thing-the-idea-part\/"},"modified":"2023-02-23T04:09:22","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T04:09:22","slug":"idea-to-thing-the-idea-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/idea-to-thing-the-idea-part\/","title":{"rendered":"Idea to Thing: The Idea Part"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since I don\u2019t have anything new to talk about on the Cinemechanix front right now (I\u2019m in the process of implementing all the things I\u2019ve already talked about), I\u2019m going to spend at least a few posts musing about the \u201cidea debt<\/a>\u201d concept I rationalized my way out of believing in a few posts ago. I ended by suggesting that maybe there was \u201cgood idea debt\u201d and \u201cbad idea debt,\u201d which isn\u2019t hard to translate into the idea of an \u201cidea investment.\u201d From there the trick is deciding which are good investments and which ones are shitty default swaps that threaten to collapse the world economy (or at least waste your time).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In order to talk about \u201cidea investments\u201d (possibly including examples of my own often-terribly misguided day-trading), I think I first need to go through a rundown of how an idea goes from an initial concept to an actual product (and therefore actual money). It\u2019s kind of like that \u201cHow A Bill Becomes A Law\u201d Schoolhouse Rock cartoon, but Bob Dorough won\u2019t return my phone calls and all of my artists friends hung up on me when I offered to pay them in nickels and glory, so instead of a delightful cartoon and a catchy little song, we\u2019re going to have to make due with the glorious magic of text.<\/p>\n

Before you can turn an idea into a product, you have to have an idea. This may sound obvious, but I\u2019ve met a surprising number of people who don\u2019t understand how crucial this step is. \u201cI want to design a game\/write a novel\/create art\/start a band,\u201d they\u2019ll say. \u201cOh really,\u201d I\u2019ll ask, hoping that feigning interest in their (almost certainly) dumbass idea will make them more likely to buy some games. Sometimes they\u2019ll tell me their idea, which is usually \u201clike D&D, only BETTER!\u201d Other times, though, they\u2019ll stare at me like a Kardashian trying to solve a calculus problem and say something like \u201chmmm, I don\u2019t really know, but I\u2019d really like to [do whatever]\u201d Then they\u2019ll start drooling on themselves or telling me about their RIFTS character and I\u2019ll question my life choices.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the point is that you can\u2019t make an idea investment without first having an idea. It doesn\u2019t have to be a good idea, or an original idea or even a non-moronic idea (see last week\u2019s blog<\/a>), just an idea. The first step is having the idea. Sometimes an idea comes from wanting to create your own version of the things you like (QAGS<\/a>), sometimes it comes from a random thing that catches your attention (Sharktoberfest<\/a>), and sometimes it just pops into your head for no easily-explainable reason (American Artifacts<\/a>). A lot of my favorite Hex products came about because we were sitting around talking about something completely unrelated to gaming and someone said \u201chey, we should turn that into a game!\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, if you just have an idea and immediately try to turn it into something you can sell to people, you\u2019re probably in for a bad time. Not all ideas are workable. The first test is whether it leads to other ideas. If you think (or someone says) \u201cthis should be a game\u201d and are immediately compelled to start thinking or talking through the idea, you may have a worthwhile idea on your hands. If you immediately get distracted by other things, it\u2019s probably not very compelling and chances are that you\u2019ll forget all about it before you get started.<\/p>\n

Of course, just because you start thinking or talking about an idea doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s one worth pursuing. People think and talk about and even do stupid shit all the time. If they didn\u2019t we never would have gotten \u201cAte My Balls\u201d pages or the Hamster Dance in the early days of the internet. That\u2019s why just spending time thinking about your idea when it first comes to you doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it\u2019s a good idea. If you start working on it at this stage, you might end up with \u201cTed Raimi Ate My Balls.\u201d That\u2019s not something the world needs (or is it?)<\/p>\n

That leads to the second test: time. If you wake up the next morning and don\u2019t remember the idea or find yourself asking \u201cwhat the hell was I thinking?,\u201d the ide probably isn\u2019t worth pursuing. If it still sounds like a good idea in the cold, hard, sober light of day and you\u2019re still interested, you can move on to the next step, which we\u2019ll discuss next week.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

You can support my dumbass ideas by supporting me on Patreon<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I don\u2019t have anything new to talk about on the Cinemechanix front right now (I\u2019m in the process of implementing all the things I\u2019ve already talked about), I\u2019m going to spend at least a few posts musing about the \u201cidea debt\u201d concept I rationalized my way out of believing in a few posts ago….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2000],"tags":[62,72,114,1532,1749,1750,1791,1793,2040,2041,2127],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-design-ramblings","tag-game-design","tag-gaming","tag-games","tag-ideas","tag-writing","tag-publishing","tag-creativity","tag-idea-debt","tag-bob-dorough","tag-ate-my-balls","tag-creative-process"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3326,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/3326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}