Original Ideas: Are there any left?

Original Ideas: Are there any left?

An Article by Coffee

Lately, I’ve been seeing many fangames and common genre games, like Naruto: Ninja Way by Geou which is a fangame based on the famous Naruto Anima series or Fractal Fighter by Cactus which is a vertical topdown shooter game. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these games or any games like these, both games are very good and have plenty of downloads. However, I’m not here to rant about fangames and such, I’m here to talk about original game ideas; if there are any left, and what you can do to make your game original, or at least unique. So lets think about it right now, how many original game ideas HAVE you seen? I’ve seen only a few on GMC and 64Digits but overall, not many, but it’s no one’s fault to be honest. Think about it, think about how many games have been made in GameMaker; over 250,000 games just on GMC, that’s including Work in Progress games, so making original ideas is very hard. I myself have made over 15 games, all of them close to being the same as at least one other game seen before. Many people on GMC have made a game that is similar to another game, and although that’s ok, I would, and I’m sure others, would really like to play a game that fits in one, and only one genre: Other.

The only problem with that is: How do you think of an original, possible, and fun idea? Well you’re not doing this alone; there are many people and places that can help you. One of those places being the recently discovered Three Hundred Mechanics website, where this guy will come up with an original game idea everyday for 300 days. Pretty neat, huh? Of course his ideas aren’t carved around GameMaker, so some of his ideas may seem “impossible” for GameMaker…because they are. But hey, 300 ideas, you’ve got to be able to find something to make, in fact, I’ve been eyeballing this idea of his for a while, called Side Scroll Tactics. It’s his fifth idea on his website, and I’ll just quote from his website to explain it:

“Very simply put, this is a turn based tactics game (like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea) set to a side view, platforming game perspective. Two great tastes that should taste great together. There are basically two aspects to a tactics game, that of movement and combat, which I will address here. The character abilities and balancing are largely secondary to the mechanical nature of just moving around and will not be the focus of the next few mechanics…Combat: Selecting the recipient of your actions is the second fundamental part of a tactics game. With a side scroller, you've got to take additional factors into account when deciding who you can hit. For instance, in an overhead view, either something is visible or it is not. This is usually a simplification of visibility, but it isn't distracting. Using a similar system for a side view game would be obnoxiously imprecise. Instead, I offer up a cone of vision method for selecting a unit to attack. Basically, from your character extends a cone and anything…”

And it does go on, but it’s explained very wall. Let’s think about it, is it really original? Not really, it’s like the Worm’s World Party game, yet this however is unique, remember that word? So that brings up the question again: are there anymore original ideas?

Honestly in my opinion, I believe for the GMC, I think there are only a few possible original game ideas. Still, people are constantly trying to come up with ideas never seen before, and even though they may be grand ideas and never seen before, it’s true that it has been thought of before, of course that doesn’t mean not to try to make it anyways, in fact a perfect example of that is the thread My Planet by Cbdman25, here’s the first paragraph from his post:

“This is just an idea I had for a game and I want to know whether you guys think you'd play it or not. The entire game will be set on a very, very small planet that just fits on you're screen. You live on this planet and you can walk around it and even jump, landing on the same spot. In this game there is no such thing as "falling off cliffs" because it's only a small ball on which you can roam around in.”

Soon later in the thread a member named Igl00 posted a link to a (I suppose)Flash game called Space Hopper which has the same game concept as the game Cbdman25 was making. Do I think Cbdman25 purposely copied of Space Hopper? Hell no, in fact I myself tried making a game like Cbdman25 is making and failed miserably.

So, to end this already is there really such a thing as an original idea anymore that is actually possible in GameMaker? Are add-ons to a game to make it unique the best anyone can do anymore? The only things we can do is make what we can think of and wait for someone to make another amazing, fun, and original idea, and perhaps more ideas will come from that idea itself. Making games now days that are truly unique is near impossible today, and we’re just going to have to try harder.