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> “So, what’s the hardest part about designing a game? It must be coming up with the ideas, right?” This feels like a point of view that's so far detached from

by hnarn 5y ago

> “So, what’s the hardest part about designing a game? It must be coming up with the ideas, right?” This feels like a point of view that's so far detached from reality that you almost suspect it was made up, but judging about the amount of people I've met who have "priceless ideas" I guess it's depressingly common. It's also a point of view that you can only keep if you've literally never built anything in your life. Anyone who has tried to take an idea from theory to practice knows that there's -- in comparison to the amount of work required to formulate the idea -- an excruciating amount of work. Unless you're extremely motivated, more often than not you will quit half way, because of vastly underestimating the amount of effort needed. This blog post is much too forgiving in saying that "your idea is valuable" in the first place: it's not. Ideas are useless. They're a dime a dozen, and most successful ideas that materialized in the world were derivatives of ideas that already existed, just executed better. Facebook wasn't a new idea. The iPod wasn't a new idea. Google wasn't an new idea, it was just a better search engine. The amount of "winning ideas" can be counted on one hand, everyone else just had to put a massive amount of work into improving something that kind of already existed.

chrisco255 5y ago
What I think is interesting is that a lot of people really do struggle to come up with good ideas. They lack creative thinking, or don't exercise it very much. Then there's the types that have so many ideas but so little focus and persistence to see an idea all the way through. So the spectrum of people that have a good idea that they understand well, and a vision for that product, and can also either build it themselves or lead a team to do so is pretty thin.
indymike 5y ago
> > “So, what’s the hardest part about designing a game? It must be coming up with the ideas, right?” > This feels like a point of view that's so far detached from reality that you almost suspect it was made up, but judging about the amount of people I've met who have "priceless ideas" I guess it's depressingly common. Sometimes, the idea is the hard part. Sometimes, execution is the hard part. Sometimes money is the hard part. When you are building a product or a business, there are always things that you have to do that you don't know how to do, can't afford to do, or don't have the time to do. Sometimes, there's no one in the world that can. Ultimately, the things that are hard are the things that end up being costly to solve - be it money (hiring someone), marketing (great product if only the whole universe knew), equity (cofounder), runway (I need three years). The answer is different every time, and once in a while, the idea is the hard part... not very often, though.

by hnarn 5y ago

chrisco255 5y ago

What I think is interesting is that a lot of people really do struggle to come up with good ideas. They lack creative thinking, or don't exercise it very much. Then there's the types that have so many ideas but so little focus and persistence to see an idea all the way through. So the spectrum of people that have a good idea that they understand well, and a vision for that product, and can also either build it themselves or lead a team to do so is pretty thin.

indymike 5y ago

> > “So, what’s the hardest part about designing a game? It must be coming up with the ideas, right?” > This feels like a point of view that's so far detached from reality that you almost suspect it was made up, but judging about the amount of people I've met who have "priceless ideas" I guess it's depressingly common. Sometimes, the idea is the hard part. Sometimes, execution is the hard part. Sometimes money is the hard part. When you are building a product or a business, there are always things that you have to do that you don't know how to do, can't afford to do, or don't have the time to do. Sometimes, there's no one in the world that can. Ultimately, the things that are hard are the things that end up being costly to solve - be it money (hiring someone), marketing (great product if only the whole universe knew), equity (cofounder), runway (I need three years). The answer is different every time, and once in a while, the idea is the hard part... not very often, though.