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I like making game concepts for fun, as a hobby. I don't think that all my game concepts are amazingly awesome and have to be created and would revolutionize the industry. I just want some people to talk to that have the same hobbies as I do. To be able to discuss ideas and point out the pros and cons.

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A question this significant surely has more answers - or we game developers have failed to make a real contribution to our community. Take note, those of you who can do something about this: if this question ends up with no good answers, it's your job to do something about it and create a site which would make a spectacular answer. We do what we must because we can. – Jonathan Hobbs Apr 22 '11 at 11:41
What are you implying, Jonathan? That the links posted are too few in quantity, or not of the right quality, or that you feel the industry is lacking in good game concepts, or... what? – Kylotan Apr 22 '11 at 12:07
I'm suggesting that the quantity of discussion is lacking, or this is an important question not receiving enough attention. At the time of posting the bounty, the answers amounted to two subforums and a chat room. – Jonathan Hobbs Apr 22 '11 at 12:15
I don't entirely agree, but I've elaborated on this in an answer below. – Kylotan Apr 22 '11 at 12:36

6 Answers

up vote 10 down vote
+100

Hobbyists, independent developers, and prospective developers discuss these things on this site, Gamedev.net, and various forums such as TigSource and Indiegamer. These are pretty much only the places where this sort of discussion happens.

By comparison, professionals tend to carry out their high-level discussion of game design in a similar way to much academia: they publish books, papers, articles, give conference talks, and post blog entries, which are then discussed and cross-referenced. There's no reason why you couldn't start your own blog about your ideas, but you'll have trouble getting any traffic, because the average person's game concept is not going to be of much interest to the wider community. This is why typically you'd go for the first route, of game development forums.

The reason there isn't anything more for this is partly because the professionals do a decent enough job of exchanging and discussing ideas, and partly because the ideas and concepts that a typical prospective developer comes up with are considered nearly worthless in the professional arena. (And as such, only of interest to one's peers on forums and the like.) This perception of worthlessness is because most professional game developers already have more of their own pet ideas than they have time to create (making ideas far too abundant for the average one to be worth much), and because the quality of a game is almost never intrinsic to the concept itself, meaning it can be almost useless in isolation without a full prototype or technical specification behind it - and usually the only people capable of making such a prototype or specification are already either in the industry, or are able to make the game themselves without presenting it to others.

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+1 Thanks, that was a very compelling response. – Jonathan Hobbs Apr 22 '11 at 12:56
up vote 7 down vote

There's a design board on the TIGSource forums. It seems pretty full and diverse.

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up vote 3 down vote

There are game development communities on http://www.gamedev.net/ and http://www.indiegamer.com/

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up vote 2 down vote

You might try the GDSE Chat Room. It's occasionally pretty well-populated, and has proven to be a pretty good sounding-board.

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up vote 2 down vote

I have a website myself that I am using for game design discussion called Ascension Protocol. You can visit it at: http://www.ascensionprotocol.com, be sure to visit us on facebook as well!

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Ascension Protocol seems to be about discussing your potential game and its design. It's an acceptable answer since it still seems to allow people to talk about MMO concepts in general (without necessarily having to discuss your game), but you should have frank and full disclosure or else it's effectively false advertising! – Jonathan Hobbs Nov 12 '12 at 2:41

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