Making A Fun Game

[Suraknar]

Hi I see this thread has been a while here no answer. I wonder where your at with your project too. I dabble with Game Design myself so it got my attention.

The truth is that Ideas abound for such games, so go for it is what I have to say as a short reply.

As a longer reply, here is a bit of my story with ideas over the years.

Believe it or not I envisioned a game very similar to the Total War Series back in '96, at the time as I was taking a "Multimedia and 3D for Cinema" Course using Alias Power Animator, Maya (1.0) and SoftImage and even Strata Studio (on Mac) as well as Macromedia Director, Adobe Premiere, and Photoshop. This is a time where Schools for Learning to make Games did not exist and 3D graphics Classes were new.

One of my classes in that course was "Scenariography" in which one of my assignments was to come up with a "Pitch Idea" and I came up with Game like the TW series, full with a storyboard I drew etc I got a nice A for the project, and I still have it filed away.

I completed my studies but never got in the Game Industry and never got to realize that project.... I ended up having a career in IT instead (life happens). I did however use my acquired skills to mod games over the years as a hobby and a way to keep em fresh and for creative satisfaction :)

Anyhow, when Shogun TW launched and I discovered it, it was like "wow so similar to my school project", it was like a dream come true to play it!

Honestly though, I always wondered if my School Project ended up as a Pitch on some Studio's desk. (I remember of some Scandals like that In University back then, some corrupt Instructors even Professors stealing Student work passing it for their own for their own profit without benefiting the students).

Then, over the years, I realized that Ideas flow and are not necessarily unique, even if we think of them like that at times when we are younger so I stopped wondering. And besides, I do not even know if it is possible to find out.

Nevertheless, here I was having an Idea in Canada one moment, and then few years later someone else had the same idea over in Great Britain across an ocean, what are the odds right?

Well I believe it is testimony of how alike humans really are, so much so, that we often tend to come up with very similar creative ideas too.

Which is why in Copyright Laws, Gameplay Ideas cannot be copyrighted.

And it is also why you can have many different games with same Gameplay, such as FPS games and RTS game and MMORPG's and Strategy Games, even different Strategy Games covering same historical Periods, nobody owns History right it belongs to all.

Now this does not mean that you can go and make a game with Warhammer Specific Characters and Races and elements etc. But you could make a High Fantasy Game that has a Strategy Turn Based part and a Real Time Battle part, because that is Gameplay, and of course including your own version of High Fantasy as per your own vision and creativity, which then becomes your own creative IP.

Since TW games are you inspiration, I also invite you to brainstorm and ask yourself, if at any point, when you play TW games you wished that there was such and such mechanic or feature in the game, these can be elements which enrich your own take of such a game and make it a bit different in terms of gameplay too and adds to the diversity and variety, milestone after milestone as you progress in your roadmap and the game changes as it evolves towards it various iterations.

Also, making Games is not only a Business process, it is not only a project management process, it is also Artistic process and you should do good as long as you manage to balance all these.

So I hope that you did not give up, and curious to find out :) Cheers!