have an idea for a game

Post Reply New Topic

who do I talk to, where do I send it?

I don't realy know but this is a video that springs to mind.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqXVINf1sTw[/youtube]

The short answers are: Nobody and Nowhere until you've checked out the options for patent protection, and then make sure that any discussion is in confidence. AIUI, once its disclosed, any chance of patent cover is lost. Read up a bit on patent laws in your area, and stay well clear of the outfits that will promote your invention- for a price.

Depends on the platform. Do you want it to be played on PC, Xbox360, DS, iPhone...?

Protect your idea first as mentioned above, then start contacting companies that make games for the platform you think it should go on.

"Copyright" is the operative word. Write out a description of your idea. Include the complete set of rules and illustrations. And then hire a copyright lawyer to register it all for you with the U.S. Copyright office.

Then submit the copyrighted idea to Hasbro.

Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast (WotC).

WotC bought TSR.

TSR owned the entire Dungeons & Dragons franchise.

Hasbro manufactures games.

I'll gladly take your idea

Anyway i can help?

Okay, it's not like it'll see the light of day anyway.

It's a take on the old text adventure "Bedlam".

You're an abused mental patient in some shady, out-dated, run down asylum. You have a host of mental disorders working against you, not the least of which is schizophrenia. You suffer from paranoid delusions and hallucinations - both auditory and visual.

As a patient at the asylum, the doctors don't listen to you. They just give you meds to shut you up and keep you sedated. The staff there make fun of you and you're lucky if you get a bath once a week. One attendant touches you in ways that make you uncomfortable and it triggers flashbacks.

One evening, an orderly forgot to make sure your door was fully "clicked". With some doors, you have to pull them hard to get the latch to click so it's secure. You make your escape.

You wander about the halls trying to make your way out of the hospital all the while fighting vivid hallucinations of fires, bugs and other horrors. When you interact with people, you're not sure you can trust them because of your delusions. Even though that person might be an ally and truly might be trying the legitimately help you, your paranoia is on full-force and you don't know who to trust.

In your travels, you have power-ups like meds to make you more lucid and to make your hallucinations less severe and less frequent. You can also find keys and notebooks as evidence so when you get out, you can provide them as evidence to the good hospital.

that bad, eh?

Cheerful stuff.

Try and take inspiration from one of the vaults in Fallout 3, Can't remember what it's called.

That would be really sweet to look at, sort of like a mix of Dark Corners of the Earth and Prey...would probably require quite a hefty engine to pull off.

Maybe you should take a look at design documents to get an idea how to present your ideas.
Here are some:
Planescape Torment Vision Statement (originally going to be called Last Rites, released 1999)
Doom Bible (released 1993)
Article on writing design documentation (gamasutra)

It may have already been done.

Play Sanitarium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitarium_(videogame) or Blackrock Chronicles and then decide if your game is different enough from those 2 that it needs its own game. Both of those came out in 1998 for PC.