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April 24, 2006

Comments

Martin Kochanski

On the other hand, the model of "you take 100% of the financial risk, you get 50% of the profits" is a common one in the restaurant industry. A talented, experienced and ambitious waiter teams up with a financier and they split the profits 50-50... in fact, the waiter often gets paid a salary on top of that.

The big difference between that scenario and this one is that the waiter is selling expertise, not just An Idea. You *can* imagine situations in the software world where the same kind of thing could happen-- but the Big Idea people don't usually fit the pattern.

How do *you* avoid the risk of being approached with a proposal, refusing, and being sued later on for appropriating the idea?

Mark-Jan Harte

I completely agree with Tom. There is nothing arrogant about it, just common business sense.

Tom

"How do *you* avoid the risk of being approached with a proposal, refusing, and being sued later on for appropriating the idea?"

That's easy. People with good ideas aren't going around emailing people to execute them for them, they are executing them themselves.

Most of the time, the emailer doesn't tell you his idea. But when they do , they generally fall into two categories:

1) the idea is stupid.
2) the idea is obvious and everyone is already doing it.

Either way, you don't have to worry about it.

GBGames

Heh, I have a post scheduled to publish later this week, but it is about businesses worrying about people stealing their ideas.

Jason Lefkowitz

That quote you were looking for is this one, usually attributed to mathematician Howard Aiken:

"Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats."

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Aiken.html

Gregg Seelhoff

>There are always two major characteristics of these emails:

I get these regularly as well, and there is a third characteristic that most of them share:

3) They massively overvalue not only the idea, but the potential of a completed product.

Some of these types of mails I have received have invoked an (unnamed) authority that told them the finished game would be guaranteed to sell in the tens of millions.

I always wonder why the banks are not all over such a gold mine of an idea. :)

In response to the suggestion that we would "steal" their great idea, I tell them that we have more ideas for projects than we could ever complete, so I have no interest in borrowing a concept from anybody else (and I have never seen one of these that has actually been unique).

Common joke at the CGDC: "Yeah, it would be the greatest game ever. It is just like Doom, but with a flame thrower." :)

Winter Wolves Games

The problem is that even the best idea is worthless. What matters is the execution.
Ther are lot of ways to completely ruin a good idea making a horrible game, and vice-versa :)

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