Game design is like many other creative fields in that there are many ways to approach the creative process that will eventually lead to a game. If it were a science, we’d have programmed a computer to do it, and it would be making all of our games for us. (Though some have theorized that this is what Reiner Knizia is, some kind of sophisticated German AI gone rogue, sort of like the movie War Games in reverse.)
The approach that is the closest to scientific involves being able to just sit down and come up with game ideas. One friend of mine, a very good designer, operates like this. He says, “I want to design a press-your-luck game”, then sits there and writes down ideas for a couple minutes, that refines one of those ideas. As a result, and because of how he thinks, his games end up feeling more mechanical: but he gets great results.
Another popular method, often used in writing, is one where constraints are placed upon the designer (generally along with a time limit.) For example, years ago at the Origins game convention, I was involved in the “Iron Game Designer” tournament. We were seperated into teams (and I specifically joined another team to play against the team with all my friends) and given a list of components that we could use, and we HAD to use the “secret ingredient”: little plasic dump trucks. All of our teams were beaten by the Iron Game Designer (Games Workshop’s Andy Chambers), but my team came in second. In this case, it wasn’t a good game that we created… but at least we ended up with a semi-playable game within an hour! I’ve seen other approaches to this concept, like being given a theme and having to design a game around that theme; generally, the theme ends up being fairly specific. Just this week, a site launched with the intention of taking random disperate themes generated randomly and applying them to games. Check out The Mix-O-Tronic Challenge if this interests you.
Finally, the method I’m most familiar with, is the “random bolts of inspiration.” I was watching an interview with a “Saturday Night Live” writer the other day and he talked about how he gets most of his ideas in the shower, and ends up doing silly Hitler impressions while there. Well, I can relate (not to the Hitler part), as the shower definitely seems to be where inspiration particles hit. I also have a lot of success being creative while driving… the only problem is that when I finally arrive at my destination, I lose a lot of it, and it’s usually a bad idea to take notes while driving on I-95!
I think the key to the last one is to constantly have input. (This is important to all of them, but especially the last one.) If you’re designing a board game, playing a lot of board games is important. Likewise with video games, rpgs, etc. This isn’t because you’re looking for parts to steal (though that’s important too) but because your brain is going to be geared towards thinking along those lines and be able to spit out more ideas when it’s immersed in what you’re trying to do. It also drives that impulse that I know drives ME crazy: that creative impulse that says “I could do this better.”
Next week, I plan to talk about the “Triangle” of game design approaches. Any ways of being creative I missed?
While it’s not exactly creative, you did fail to mention the “Let’s take X and make a game out of it so we can make money!” Generally this ‘technique’ is applied to recently released movies, tv shows, books, etc., and generates bad games. But it makes money!
A sub-type of this technique is the release of variant games which use the same rules as other games but have different appearances (i.e. Monopoly variants).
Yep, you’re totally right. Maybe I left it out of my memory because I don’t consider it creative, as you point out.
I guess that’s what you make when you’re neither disciplined or creative!