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How to find amazing game ideas
🕑 Added 2025-02-25 16:00:12 +0000 UTCHello Patrons!
So this is the start of a new series I'll be running throughout 2025. It's called Game Dev 101 and it will walk you through the indie game production process.
You can watch it on YouTube or Nebula, or read it as an article on Substack.
It's kind of like Developing... but with the hindsight of actually releasing the dang game! In fact that's kind of the impetus for the series - I didn't really understand how a game actually got made, which is why MOM took so long to produce.
I talked about this a little in my interview with Rock Paper Shotgun. I said...
"I started to think of it like this: If you’re a weak programmer, the game might have bugs; if you’re a weak artist, it might be ugly; if you’re a weak designer, the game won't be fun. But if you lack solid production, the game simply won’t exist. It will just never come out."
So let's learn about solid production!
Episode one is about coming up with a game idea. How do you find solid inspiration for a new game concept? But it's also about evaluating that idea - is this worth spending a couple years of your life on it?
Future episodes will be about concepts like prototyping, planning / scope, production, playtesting, and marketing and release. Each one will have a special guest, memories from MOM's development, and lots and lots of developer stories.
(In fact, this video has 39 sources - I think the most ever for a GMTK video. And footage from 95 different games!)
Anyhoo. I'm now going to be focusing a bit on game development of my next game so I have a solid build for GDC in mid March. But I'm sure there will be some short videos - Weekender and GMTK Mini - along the way. And look out for your Patreon rewards later this week.
Speak soon
Mark
Comments
Germanos
Love the idea of this series. The first episode was great... BUT the waterfall like process of development is not something that should be followed. I do know countless devs still work this away, and even some successfully, but the risk in it could be mitigated using more Agile methods of developing a product/game. Terms like MVP, increments and iterations come into play. Looking forward to the next episodes and if that comes up.
Josh Foreman
The really cool thing about doing a new thing a second time is that it often takes half the time and is twice as good. Enjoy that acceleration, as it's the last time you'll experience those improvement ratios!
Nick Westwood
Great idea for a series!
Ruaidhri Lumsden
I'm so damn excited for this series - glad you got Jonas involved too!
Game Maker's Toolkit
Nebula version is currently uploading, sorry for the delay!
