It's the team, stupid

Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror (one of my favorite blogs) had a fantastic post where he links to an interesting talk by Ed Catmull, president of Pixar. I think most creative teams out there strive to match Pixar's storytelling power.

Jeff points out a great quote from Ed's talk.

If you give a good idea to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it. Or they'll throw it away and come up with something else. 

In my experience, ideas distract. Execution is where the magic happens. And if you have the right people working on your project, the chances of success are good. In concept, most video games are pretty much the same thing. Shooters, for instance. You have a gun in your hand, you shoot stuff. Shooting stuff with guns in Call of Duty, however, is more fun than most shooters. Those guys have been iterating on shooting stuff with guns for several years across many games, they continue to get better and better, and I wager the next one will continue to make shooting stuff with guns fun.

Anyway, Ed's talk is great, worth watching.