Ideas are cheap

It's all about implementation

Published on March 3, 2005 By Draginol In Business

Quite regularly we get submitted a design document or prototype of some game or software idea or web concept from some ambitious young person. The proposal is usually quite vague but they insist it's a revolutionary idea that, once made, will make millions of dollars.

They are quite..generous as well in their proposal offering to split the proceeds that their revolutionary product would make 50/50. Others generously offer to sell us the concept for a reasonable cost. "All" we have to do is make the program and presumably wait for the money to roll in.

Ah if it only it were that easy. In the real world, ideas are cheap. In fact, I'd almost say ideas are worthless in themselves. Most people have neat ideas for products, services, whatever that they believe will make big bucks if they could get it made. But that's the thing, making something is worth a lot more than the idea.

Making a successful product or service is really a multi-step project:

1st: You have the idea. That's the easy part.

2nd: You have to then develop the idea. If it's a game, or other piece of software that means you have to probably pay software developers to actually make the thing or if you're a programmer yourself taking the time to make the thing in such a way that people would want to use.

3rd: You have to put together a way to distribute your product or service. That's a lot of work too.

4th: You have to then spread the word about your product or service. I.e. you have to put together the marketing. This is a whole different discipline that involves a lot of hard, tedious work.

Usually, people in a position to actually do step 2 have lots of ideas they'd like to do themselves. So when some guy sends me vague game design about doing "realistic surgery" offering to pay us a 50% royalty for each copy sold (after we make the game, then get it into distribution and handle the market) the answer is always "thanks but no thanks". We have lots of ideas too.

So if you have some revolutionary idea, your best bet is to find a way to make your idea come true yourself. Because it's not the idea that matters, it's the follow-through.

Comments

Cordelia

on Mar 03, 2005

"your best bet is to find a way to make your idea come true yourself. Because it's not the idea that matters, it's the follow-through."

My God, is that ever the truth. The people who are successful are the ones who do something every single day toward making their dreams a reality. Sometimes it is so hard, it's easy to lose sight of your goal. Making video games, writing books, developing software...all of these are skills that are learned over years. An idea can take some time to work out in detail, but it probably won't be the same as the years the implementers have put in to learning their skills.

joeKnowledge

on Mar 04, 2005

true

Gene Nash

on Mar 04, 2005

Hmm, I'm surprised this didn't get more comments. Maybe people don't want their bubbles burst?

Most people never get beyond the fantasizing phase. They imagine they could have all this success, but they've never had their fantasies tempered with the realities that come from actually attempting to accomplish. They've never faced the setbacks and the indifference, the long hours and the crushing blows. They've never learned that you can do everything right and still lose, or that no-one really cares about "the best."

I kind of envy them in their blissful ignorance, but I wouldn't want their lack of combat-earned successes.

Gene Nash

on Mar 04, 2005

true

Did we both decided to bump it at the same time?

Draginol

on Mar 04, 2005

The game proposals and software proposals are the ones that are most common here (naturally). Someone who has a "incredible idea" but unfortunately they don't know how to program it so they want to (ahem) "contract" us to program their vision for them.

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on Mar 04, 2005

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Mobin

on Mar 05, 2005

Ideas may not be a value worth 50% of the total revenue, but a good idea is always worth something depending upon its success. I think we should encourage good ideas since they can be considered as feed back for the developers. This is also true that there are very difficult steps invloved beyond the idea stage in the development process.

ParaTed2k

on Mar 05, 2005

Tell me about it!!

I've had a patentable idea for a product for awhile now. I even went so far as to draw out graphics, and talked to a few mechanical engineers on the best materials and manufacturing methods. The idea was cheap, as was drawing it out. Apparently talk is not only cheap, but since those engineers were friends of mine, it was even free.

What is not at all cheap is applying for a patent! While I never thought it woud be free, WOW!! Apparently for now, my idea will reside in my head and on paper (where rent is free)! ;~D

Kobrano

on Mar 05, 2005

At any given time I have about 30 really good ideas in my head. Probably 5-6 of them might be considered "Brilliant" by most peoples standards.

Now that I have lotsa money to make something a reality, the biggest problem i'm finding is to isolate the idea that will be the best and most likely to succeed. Thats the hard part, the ideas in general are quite easy for me to come up with. Picking the best one, and moving on it in the proper fashion is the hard part.

I remember about 20 years ago I wanted to open a quarter wash in a small town we lived in, there wasn't one, and its something I knew everyone would want. At the time I didn't have the money to build one, but a year after my idea was brainstormed someone came around that had the money AND idea, then built TWO of them. Last I heard, hes quite wealthy and all he does is collect quarters twice a day from two boxes.

So yes, ideas are cheap.

Draginol

on Mar 06, 2005

There's a saying: "You don't know what you don't know".

And so many people just don't know what's involved in actually taking an idea and making it a reality.

Cordelia was telling me the other day about an author who constantly gets "book ideas" from fans who are willing to share the proceeds 50/50 with the author.

So the author wrote something like this: "No thank you. Taking your idea and spending a couple years of my life to write it into reality and then splitting the income with you equally is not my idea of a good thing."

The ideas we get submitted most often are video game ideas ("I have a great game idea - fantasy vs. sci fi RTS game!") where the people want to a royalty on the idea (often an immense royalty).

The reason I taught myself how to program was so that I could make my own ideas a reality.

ParaTed2k

on Mar 07, 2005

Cordelia was telling me the other day about an author who constantly gets "book ideas" from fans who are willing to share the proceeds 50/50 with the author.

A bunch of years ago a friend of mine came up with a boardgame. He carefully thought out the rules, making sure they worked together, changing them to better enhance the play of the game. He drew out the tokens and other unique pieces. He designed a board, again working long hours, making sure the board design would move the game along, making changes where he thought the design bogged down the game.

He researched all the game companies that might be interested in the type of game he had designed. He spent a small fortune on large sized envelopes and postage, sending them all over the world.

Every single package ended up back in his mailbox, not one of them were opened. "RETURN TO SENDER" in various languages stamped on each.

Crushed, but not beated, he wrote a form letter to each of the game companies (in words much nicer than mine), "how come you guys just rejected my game idea, without even bothering to open the package?"

Only a few replies came back, but they were all the same. "We're sorry but we cannot accept game ideas from those we do not employ. Too many are too close to ideas our employees have spent months developing. If we were didn't return your package unopended, and released a game even remotely close to your proposed game, we would be opening ourselves up to lawsuits and accusations of plagerism."

For those in any industry, ideas aren't cheap, they are the future.

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