Why are you creating your game!

WARNING LONG -----------------------------------
Preface:

It is more important to know what you can't / shouldn't or don't want to do that what you can / should / want to do, because if you know what not to do, everything else is possible.

- Jarrod Roberson


I used to be a game developer, way back in the day before 3D! Even before 2.5D, all we had was 2, no D even! :-) I did commercial art for a living before that, and 3D animation for a living after my game developer days. I did professional audio / video production as well.

Anyway as a 30 something going on teen something and a professional OO Architect now, I decided that I am tired of trying to find "my perfect" game. No one is going to write it for me ( at least not for free! ).

So I am tired of playing "Other Peoples Games" and what their idea of entertainment is.

So I am old school, I like games with deep game play, that requires thinking and strategy. Simple understandable rules make for complex game play if those rules can be combined and supply predicitable results.

Most games in the past 5 years try to give deep game play by offering to many keys and controls and lots of inconsistent behaviors that reward learning "how to play the game" rather than thinking.

Any FPS where practicing covoluted keystrokes / button presses to acheive an advantage is a good example.

OR

they make the games so over the top in huge worlds and awesome graphics that something else suffers.

Example:

One of my favorite games of all time was a game for the C64 ( and later the PC ) published by EA - Wasteland.

It was the first RPG that really brought Pen and Paper RPG game play to the computer.

Now years later comes Fallout as a "sequel", yea it was more sophisticated, it looked better, it sounded better, the gameplay was at best the same. Problem the world was so open ended, and the missions so poorly designed that it was an exercise in frustration trying to figure out what to do next!

To many game play mechanisms at the same time is just as bad, one reason I don't like RTS games! It comes down to who can click the fastest and has the fastest gfx card to scroll/zoom like a madman around the screen.

So my main reason for buying TGE is, even with the thousands of games available, I am still have not found what I am looking for!

That is probably why someone was lamenting the number of projects that are "announced", to them everyone of them looks the same, and to be honest 99% of them will never have a single line of code written, 99% of those that do, will never be finished, 99% of the ones finished will just be a clone of someone elses idea, and 99% of those will be bad.

But that 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% will workout and suprise some people!

I have found that most of the people posting, "Revolutionary Game idea" threads are kids trolling for someone that they think will write their game for them. Also, ones that say, "My game will be awesome, just like ( insert hot genre game title here ) but better!!!!" or "with ( insert what they think is clever ) instead of ( what ever the game currently has )"
are trolling also.

I do think I have an intersting concept for gameplay, not just a game, for one and one reason only, I have not seen any other game implement the game play that I am interested in. Some have parts, others have poor implementation of great ideas, etc.

So if you see me asking about where to look in the TGE code for what appears to be some bizzard half-brained "feature" to implement please bear with me and help point me in the right direction, I don't need the code written for me, I am MORE than capable to do that myself, and you just might be suprised that this whacky seemingly useless impractical "feature" that I add is much more interesting and useful that it was at first glance.

So you won't see in my .plan this massive list of features that my game is planned on having, nor will you see "If you like ( insert most recent Commercial Success here ) you will love my game", nor will you probably even see a name or anything else other than the working code name for my project ( THE_GAME ) until I get ready to do some kind of public beta or technology preview.

I hope some other people will give their motavations for taking on the huge massive task of writing a game, game engine, etc. You don't have to be as long winded, but I am sure people will realize why there are so many individual projects announced, because there are an equal number of unique motavations.

PS: thanks to everyone that has helped me try and get a good understanding of the TGE source over the last 3 days since I bought it, you have been very helpful.