Damn, Another Idea "Stolen"

It has been a constant bugbear in my career as a game designer that other people get games to market using ideas I'm playing with - and they do it while I'm still in concept stage. I reckon most game designers experience this. The latest is Chibi Robot. Just a couple of months ago I first touted the concept for a game provisionally called "Clean" in which the primary play activity would be cleaning (it's nine pages back in my project book).

It is as Shigeru Miyamoto says:

I think I can make an entirely new game experience, and if I can't do it, some other game designer will.

Perhaps the healthy way to look at this is that one game of the dozens being dreamed up by my team here has already been made, and just a few months after first being thought about. And we didn't even have to spend any time working on it! Hope they localise it quickly...

Comments

[Corvus]

It's amazing to me how many ideas I have and jot down for later, only to see an announcement of a very similar concept a few months down the road. Almost enough to make one believe in the collective unconscious, eh?

On a fannish note, I want that game! I was actually heading toward that exact same link in my history to re-read the article when I noticed your post. By sidetracking, I actually found the link more quickly than I would have otherwise. Another moment of serendipity.