Everyone has ton of ideas. Ideas come so often that it is mind blowing that there really isn’t a flooded market for games. The issue is really how do you refine those ideas down in to the one you want to make.
To do this my team has done a fairly simple process. We take a meeting or two and brainstorm all the crazy ideas out on the board. During this phase there are no dumb ideas. Throw everything on the board. Violent Sol Worlds came out of a combination of a destruction derby top-down game and a top-down survival game. You never know what saying one idea with another will do to your head and what will come out.
Once you have your list simply start eliminating, for now, the ones that either you don’t like or cannot do. The list should get smaller and smaller until you get down to a few. Talk about them, see what you love about them all. One will jump out at you as something that should be created. To me this is not enough. Just your idea is not enough to say it should be made.
You need opinions. So what I do is simply start marketing it. Go to social media and start talking about it. As you are creating your POCs, you should POC everything, be telling people about it. If they react well to the idea you will feel it. Show concept sketches, Show game-play POCs. Show everyone anywhere about the idea. The people of the internet will tell you if you can sell the game.
To me at this point you have the two vital questions answered. Do you love the idea, and will people respond to it. If the answer to both those questions is yes then your idea is validated and should be created. If one of those answers is no then go back to the brainstorming stage and find one that will work better. Remember if this current idea is not good there are 500 million more in your head waiting for you to get all excited about.
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