Should I post my Idea?

#21 The mail trick does not work. Postmarks and registered mail slips can be faked easily and only have a registration date for a few years before they get dumped from the system. It may be different now that we live in a world of tracing anthrax terror, but I kind of doubt it.

#22 David is correct. The Poor Man's Copyright doesn't stand up in court:
www.copyrightauthority.com/poor-mans-copyright/


On the topic of unique ideas:

I came up with the concept of the MMO(not claiming to be the first, I had just never heard of the concept at the time) when I worked as a tape monkey at an insurance data center in 1990. We had an IBM mainframe array (don't remember the models now) with a 50-port modem bank for insurance agencies to dial in to. I used to daydream about gaming uses for that system. Of course they were usually just really cool multiplayer Nethack/Rogue/Zork ideas. After playing the game Drakken (the 286 title, not the pentium title), I quickly started wanting to share that (very flat) 3D environment with others and came up with a rough design concept that worked pretty much how MMO's work today. Man, had I only come up with that idea about 3 years later when the world was ready for the concept...

An environment similar to what I worked in at 1990:

Drakken:

The point being, no ideas are unique. Just like no stories are new. They are just mashups of existing ideas. Certainly there will be that special mix that makes it exceptional, and perhaps those are the ones to truely keep secret. But that's hard to judge, as everyone thinks their baby is beautiful...

#23 @Tyler - same age here buddy, good to see I'm not the only one

#24 Don't tell a sole till you have started/finished the game if its unique but then again every game is unique as you cant have all the very same stuff as in a game that is exact the same as another no 2 are alike. i have a unique idea as well but its not a game though but i still will never tell anyone till i make it my self/with help of others or if i am on my death bed then i think i will tell is so when i am dead i can watch them produce it even if its not exactly what i wanted to make. i know one thing is i will try my best to do it my self as i don't want anyone else to really do it they will mess up the hole thing the way it should be built not how they think it should be built.

that's why i am making my own game as well i got some good ideas there but nothing like my unique i will produce one of these games and hope i make lots of $ and then i can start on the unique.

to what Scott Warren said in the 7th part its very good to do this i have done it my self and i can count on your you will look so much more and you will make your game ideas 100%-500% better then what you thought of i have played well over 200 games and i have gotten many many ideas. there are allot of sucky games out there that could of been allot better if they changed one single thing so if i was you go exploring. i spent 3 hole years researching you should not take that many years but most of the best stuff i found on the 2nd year of researching. you don't want to know how many games are out there more then you could ever play in your life time i have looked up 1000s of games and picked games i think are good to explore and i explore them.

#25 Honestly anything less than a design document or a well written handful of pages will lead to -vastly- different games. Even with a completely fleshed out design document detailing the story, game mechanics (including the math, loot tables, etc), and many other details will almost always turn into a different game with different designers behind it.

Its been said about a million times but its no less true. Ideas are a worth less than a dime a dozen - what you do with your idea is what counts. Besides anyone who has the resources to complete a game has so many ideas of their own they want to complete that stealing someone else's is pretty low on the priority list.

#26 Tyler,

You are safe here. There are more ideas posted on this site than you can shake a stick at. The vast majority, and I mean vast, of people on this site have not the resources, patience, wherewithal, expertise, or any combination of those attributes to get through one tenth of the game making process. No one here will still your idea because they simply can't. In the event that someone actually does steal your idea and creates a fully playable game, so what. WoW is not original in any really meaningful way, yet it is considered by many the greatest MMOG ever.

#27 Well I kind of let this thread go about half a year ago. Lol

I decided not to start making a game until I get more experience, but I am horrible at 2d artwork, and that is needed for my game that I decided to make.

Infact, I don't even remember the idea I had then.

#28 Shoulda told us. For safekeeping purposes, you know :)