One idea for drawing in a larger crowd would be to create a design competition. Several things come to mind here:
First of all, the Game Developers Conference usually holds a session titled "Games that would win the Nobel Peace Prize" or something similar. The idea is that they draw several famous designers together into a panel to present ideas that they create about jobs that provide social value. In 2006, Cliff Blezinski (Epic Games) and Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy) presented their ideas. From the audience perspective, it was interesting to hear.
Gamers and game designers both frequently hear and complain about the status of creativity in the industry. While many designers are overflowing with creativity, they work for corporations that limit their work to popular franchises and sequels. Providing them with an outlet for creatively participating may draw interest, if approached properly. One potential stumbling block here is that many game companies force their designers to sign non-compete agreements that might prevent them from participating. (Perhaps the best approach would be to contact well-known game development and publishing companies to see if they would allow their designers to participate.)
A competition featuring well-known game designers would draw a lot of community interest. However, such a competition should allow for individuals to submit their ideas, too. Ultimately, the community could vote on which ideas they liked best, and the winning ideas could be further developed and put into production.
Recently, the website My Game Ideas was started with the idea that individuals with a good idea could submit it and perhaps be noticed by developers. Its mechanics are similar to Digg.com, with voting and commenting. It is an interesting model for the design of a competition portal.
Ultimately, this idea is one about advocacy and awareness. Developing games is a completely different beast, though the beginning of any successful development process is a solid design idea and specification.
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In terms of technology, perhaps the most accessible platform for 'small' games is Flash. However, as a proprietary format, the development tools on Linux are very limited, which makes it a less attractive platform for this project.
Comments
voting = best?
Voting is definitely good publicity and will draw people in. But since games depend so much on execution, is there some way to make sure it carries through? Or push for a certain amount of detail in game concept entries (pushing it closer to a workable spec)?
I agree...
I agree that voting is not necessarily the best way to make a game (in fact, it's not a good way to MAKE a game at all). However, as an advocacy bit to raise awareness for the project, it may succeed. In the end, to make the games, the project must contract people (or find volunteers) to write design documents and program applications.
Re: voting=best?
Clearly people can game a voting system in a way that the best ideas don't always get the most votes. However, the process here is about the community identifying concepts they like and getting those a little more exposure, which hopfully means more comments to refine the concept.
I should probably put up a page explaining the use of voting on the site, actually. It is less about, "the most votes win," and more about voting being a way for people to quickly give feedback. Hopefully, most people will comment as well, but even a quick vote can help a developer get a sense of whether or not their idea resonates with others.
GDC examples of "Nobel Peace Prize" Games:
Gamasutra write up of the games: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060324/diamante_01.shtml
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