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A game idea is worth investigating when you can explain what players will experience that nearby games do not offer in the same way—and test that difference with focused market research and a small prototype. Distinctiveness is a reason to investigate, not proof that a game will sell. You do not need an unprecedented genre or mechanic; you need a clear, relevant difference that a plausible audience can recognize and that your team can realistically build.
Distinctive does not have to mean unprecedented
Most ideas have neighbors. A new game may share a genre, control scheme, setting, visual style, player motivation, or individual mechanic with existing games. That overlap is useful: it gives you reference points for understanding what players already know and what they might expect.
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The useful question is not simply, “Has anyone ever made something like this?” It is, “What will a player do, feel, or understand differently in this game, and why would that matter to the people it is for?” A difference can come from the combination of play, audience, theme, systems, structure, and execution. A familiar ingredient can still contribute to a distinctive experience when the combination changes how the game plays or what it offers its audience.
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#1 Best Overall
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- Distinctiveness: Is there a legible player-facing difference from close comparisons?
- Audience relevance: Is there a plausible group of players who would care about that difference?
- Feasibility: Can your team test and develop it within realistic constraints?
A promising answer to the first question justifies more investigation. It does not settle the other two, and none of the three guarantees commercial success.
Start with the playable promise
Describe the game in terms of what a player actually does and experiences, not just its premise. A striking setting, story hook, art direction, or list of features may help people picture a game, but it does not by itself explain what makes playing it different.
Write a short concept brief that identifies:
- Core play: What actions or decisions will the player make repeatedly?
- Player and audience: Who is meant to play, and what kinds of experiences might interest them?
- Objective: What is the player trying to accomplish, and what creates progress or tension?
- Intended experience: What should the player feel, notice, or find satisfying?
- Defining feature: Which mechanic, system, structure, or combination is meant to create the difference?
- Constraints: What technical, staffing, schedule, and budget assumptions affect that feature?
This is a working checklist, not a required pitch format. HM Revenue & Customs’ UK manual on distinguishing initial concept design from later development stages lists elements often outlined in a game pitch, including concept, gameplay, features, setting and story, target audience, requirements and schedule, staff, and budget estimates. Its discussion is useful here as concept-stage context; its tax classification guidance applies in the UK and is not general tax advice.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteKeep the brief specific enough to compare with other games. “A spooky adventure with a unique world” communicates tone, but not a player-facing distinction. “Players investigate a changing house by rearranging its rooms to reveal clues” gives you a mechanic and an experience to examine. That sentence is only an illustration of how to describe an idea, not a claim that such a game is original or viable.
Find the closest comparisons—not just games that look similar
Build a small comparison set by searching for games that overlap with your concept in ways players may notice. Consider genre, core mechanic, theme, player motivation, presentation, and structure. A game with different art or story can still be a close comparison if players make similar decisions and seek the same experience. Conversely, visual resemblance alone may not make another game your most relevant comparison.
For each nearby game, note what the player does, what the game asks them to care about, and how its main systems shape the experience. Then record which parts of your concept are familiar and which, if any, change that experience. Avoid using “there is no game exactly like mine” as a conclusion: an exact match is not necessary for comparison, and an absence of an obvious match does not demonstrate demand.
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| Comparison question | What to record | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| What does the player do? | Recurring actions, decisions, and interactions | Surfaces overlap in play that a shared setting or genre label might hide |
| What motivates the player? | Goals, challenges, rewards, tensions, or kinds of mastery | Shows whether the games may appeal to the same players for similar reasons |
| What shapes the experience? | Mechanics, systems, pacing, structure, and presentation | Helps distinguish a meaningful play difference from a cosmetic change |
| What is familiar in your concept? | Established conventions and recognizable reference points | Clarifies what players may understand immediately—and what needs explanation |
| What is actually different? | The specific feature or combination that changes play | Gives you a claim you can test rather than a vague assertion of originality |
GDC’s 2020 session, “Pre-Marketing Marketing: A Guide to Games Market and Competitor Research,” by Victoria Tran of Kitfox Games and Dana Trebella of Spoke and Wheel Strategy, focuses on market research, competitor analysis, and positioning. The practical lesson is to use comparisons to make your idea’s position clearer—not to prove that your game has no competitors.
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Once you have a comparison set, explain the difference in language a potential player could understand. One useful editorial exercise is to complete this sentence: Players who enjoy [reference experience] will get [specific different experience] because [core mechanic, system, or structure]. Treat it as a way to clarify positioning, not as a validated formula or a guarantee that the positioning will work.
If you cannot fill in the middle with something specific, the idea may still be at the premise stage. If the explanation depends on several paragraphs of lore, a long feature list, or claims such as “more immersive” or “completely unique,” narrow it down to the difference in what players do or experience. A clear sentence is not proof that the game is distinctive; it is a testable claim that helps you decide what to investigate.
Use comparisons to sharpen that sentence. Ask whether the stated difference would still be visible if you set aside the game’s title, story details, or art direction. If it disappears, you may be describing packaging rather than a change in play. Presentation can matter, but the core claim should accurately describe the experience you intend to deliver.
Check whether the difference matters to an audience
A difference only helps positioning if someone is likely to notice or value it. Name the intended audience as concretely as you can: not necessarily through demographics, but through the play experiences, interests, or expectations that make the game relevant to them. Then ask what the audience already plays and what part of your proposed experience might attract its attention.
Market and competitor research can help you understand the surrounding landscape and describe the concept’s position. It cannot establish future sales with certainty. Personal excitement, praise from friends, and a lack of an obvious competitor are useful prompts for further inquiry, not proof of demand. Friends may be supportive without representing the audience you want to reach, and a market with no visible close comparison may have many possible explanations besides an unmet need.
Rank #3
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Adam Saltsman’s GDC 2016 session, “Deciding What to Make: A Greenlight Process for Commercial Indies,” frames commercial greenlighting as a way to manage risk, not guarantee financial success. The distinction matters: you are deciding whether the next investment is justified by the evidence you have, not whether you can know in advance that the game will succeed.
Compare candidate ideas without inventing a score
If you are choosing between ideas, assess them against the same questions. This is a decision framework, not a formally validated scoring system. A numeric total can create a false sense of precision when your audience and feasibility assumptions are still uncertain.
| Decision axis | Useful evidence | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Player-facing distinction | A specific difference you can explain plainly | The case rests on “unique,” “fresh,” or a feature list without explaining the experience |
| Relationship to existing games | Relevant comparisons and a clear account of what is shared and changed | You have searched only for exact matches or considered only surface similarities |
| Audience and positioning | A plausible audience and a reason it might notice the difference | The intended audience is “everyone,” or interest is assumed from the team’s enthusiasm alone |
| Buildability | A credible view of technical, staffing, schedule, and budget demands | The defining feature depends on unresolved capabilities or resources you have not examined |
| Prototype evidence | Players can encounter the defining idea and show how they respond | The concept sounds distinctive in a pitch but the test does not express it |
The framework draws on the market, positioning, commercial uncertainty, and budget considerations raised in the GDC sessions; the concept and feasibility context in the HMRC manual; and work on game-jam prototyping and feedback by Alexander Zook and Mark O. Riedl. Use it to identify what you still need to learn, not to produce an unsupported originality score.
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Check whether you can make the defining feature
A strong concept can depend on a system that is difficult to implement, explain, balance, or produce. Identify the assumptions behind the feature that is supposed to distinguish the game. Ask what skills and tools it requires, what other work it creates, and whether it can be represented in a small test before you commit to a larger production plan.
HMRC’s manual notes that gameplay can contribute to a game’s distinctive selling point and that programmers may help investigate whether an aspect is possible and how it affects gameplay. That supports a practical concept-stage question: if your distinction depends on an uncertain technical or systems challenge, involve the relevant expertise early enough to determine whether the feature can work as intended. A feature that is feasible only after substantial production is harder to evaluate than one you can test directly.
Include staffing, schedule, and budget in the same conversation as the creative idea. The aim is not to demand a finished production estimate before a prototype exists. It is to notice when the concept’s defining promise rests on an assumption that could change the scope or even the experience. If the feature cannot be tested at all with the resources available, decide what smaller experiment could reduce that uncertainty.
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Prototype the central uncertainty
A prototype should let someone encounter the idea you are trying to evaluate. It does not need to resemble a finished game. Start by naming the most important uncertainty: for example, whether players understand a new interaction, whether a system creates the intended choices, or whether the central loop is engaging enough to support the promise. Build the smallest test that can produce evidence about that question.
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Drawings, cards, tokens, a whiteboard, or other simple pieces can stand in for game components and simulate rules before you write code. This is useful when the uncertainty concerns choices, rules, resource flows, turn structure, or how systems interact. Keep the materials simple; the goal is to expose the mechanic, not to impress playtesters with presentation.
Use an engine prototype when interaction matters
A small engine prototype can test movement, controls, timing, mechanics, or interface interactions that are difficult to simulate on paper. It can be rough as long as it lets a player encounter the defining feature. Avoid building polish or supporting content that does not help answer the central question.
Know which kind of prototype you are making
Zook and Riedl distinguish between test prototypes used to explore whether an idea is worth pursuing and iterative development of an idea already selected for development. These are related but different activities. When you are deciding whether to pursue a concept, it may be more useful to make several small tests of competing ideas than to refine one idea repeatedly before its central promise has been examined. Once you have selected a core direction, iterative refinement can help improve it.
Kellee Santiago’s GDC China 2014 session, “Prototyping for Innovation: How to Prototype Effectively,” describes prototyping and iterative design as applicable to conventional and unusual ideas. The method does not require an idea to be unprecedented: it helps make uncertain design claims observable.
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Run a playtest that can change your mind
When someone tries the prototype, observe what they do before explaining what they should notice. Watch whether they understand the goal, engage with the defining mechanic, and find the choices or effects you intended. Ask them to describe what they thought was happening and what felt different after the experience. Their behavior and explanation can show where the design communicates—or fails to communicate—its promise.
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Use feedback to refine the question and the prototype, not as a vote that mechanically decides whether the game lives or dies. A player may misunderstand a rough test because the prototype is unclear; that is still useful evidence about what the test needs to communicate. Conversely, a positive reaction to a brief test does not prove the full game will maintain interest or find a market. Record what the test actually showed and what remains an assumption.
The 2013 Global Game Jam study by Zook and Riedl describes mechanics and features being refined through personal or outside playtesting and feedback. Its figures offer context about that event, not a general estimate of how all game developers work:
- Of 16,705 registered Global Game Jam participants, 419 responded to at least one survey question.
- In the paper’s categorized material, 127 of 241 responses mentioned some form of prototyping, including 22 paper-prototyping responses and 92 engine-prototyping responses.
- Among 93 responses describing development approaches, 67 described iteratively building on a simple prototype, while 26 described quickly testing multiple prototypes before development.
The survey’s response totals and structure limit generalization. These counts do not estimate how common each practice is among game developers overall. They do illustrate the difference between testing multiple candidate concepts and iterating on a selected one.
Make a bounded decision about what happens next
After comparison and prototyping, decide whether the next step is justified—not whether you can declare the idea a guaranteed success. Continue investigating when the difference is clear enough to explain, relevant to a plausible audience, feasible enough to explore, and testable in a manageable next stage.
- Continue: The prototype exposes the defining feature, players can engage with it, and the next unanswered question can be tested without committing prematurely to full production.
- Rework: There may be a promising idea, but the current distinction is difficult to explain, the test does not express it, or the audience and comparison set need sharper definition.
- Pause or stop: The distinction exists mainly in the pitch, the prototype does not support the intended experience, or key feasibility and audience assumptions are too weak to justify the next investment.
This is a practical synthesis of the sources, not a formal industry standard. Make the decision proportionate to the investment at stake. A small, reversible next test needs less certainty than a large production commitment, and a test should be chosen to address the biggest remaining uncertainty rather than to make the concept look finished.
What distinctiveness research cannot tell you
The sources discussed here do not provide a current market-size figure, a sales threshold, or a predictive originality score that can establish whether a particular game idea will succeed. Competitor research can help you understand the landscape and explain a position. A prototype can test a design question. Neither can guarantee that players will buy the finished game.
That limitation is not a reason to abandon the assessment. It is a reason to keep claims proportional to evidence: describe what makes the experience different, identify who might care, test the defining feature, and use what you learn to decide whether the next step is worth taking.
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