Thinking up
new ideas is always important at any time of designing a game. When I was
young, there were always many things in real life that I
couldn’t understand. However, as I grow up, I feel the truth is that I didn’ t
understand myself. Creating virtual worlds is a process of knowing ourselves as
the guests and applying them in a proper way in your games. I believe
that unique ideas come from people’s raw feelings and unprocessed inspiration
in real life. Except for common ways like reading/watching as much as we can or
researching on your topic, here I am going to share my methods to fill myself
with personalized new ideas.
Pull yourself out of current scene or
have a short trip to somewhere else.
When I was in college, I used to commute between the city I studied in and my
hometown three months a time. The trip was short so I didn’ t fall asleep and
couldn’ t do anything deeply. So I would like to pick a random topic about what
I was focusing on at that period of time, and thought about it. To my surprise,
I could always come up with new thoughts which were strikingly different from
my original thoughts because of the rapid change in distance. It’s like doing
experiments on your topic by putting it into different environment and taking a
trip physically can always be effective. You were restricted in a cage and now
you are free. On the train, you are not bothered by outer factors and are ready
for meeting strangers but don’t really need to care much. So when you run out
of your ideas about a specific topic, try to put your objects in another time
or space, pull yourself to another perspective, redefine the relationship
between various objects, and something new will come along.
List whatever weird about yourself. Everyone is unique. I personally can
easily write down a long list of strange things about my habits or settings,
which can be aspects we consider when designing a new character or start a
story. They don’t necessarily to be too wild or unusual. By putting them
together or modifying to an extreme will make them more dramatic and fun to
play with. They are nothing about right or wrong, so don’t be afraid of talking
about them. Here is a list of examples of myself:
1. Good at using chopsticks, can use
with both hands.
2. Can tear up in one minute.
3. Fall over on flat ground very easily
no matter how focused when walking without heels.
4. Can remember a number/letter sequence
up to 50 digits.
5. Forget lyrics almost every time when
step on the stage, which used to kill the drum of a band.
6. Can put on makeup on a jolt bus.
7. Have beautiful handwriting. Copy
others homework and convinced herself to be the original author by handwriting
without words in high school.
8. Forget what just happened in the last
minute.
9. The last to wake up, the first to
arrive at classroom.
10. Like gambling, seldom win.
Do some slow physical exercise while
thinking. Having a
good idea means saving lots of work and solving the problem in a smart way. The
key to this method is to follow the flow and slow down the cadence of your
whole body including your brain. I found this super helpful when I was also in
college. It was an extremely stressful time when I was working on a wide
variety of activities, promo-videos and assignments. But I kept the habit of go
swimming twice a week. It was a precious chance to relax and not to think about
anything stressful – at least it was my plan not to think, but it turned out
that I couldn’t keep my brain empty and simply focus on doing exercise. So I
compromised and started dissect the problems I was encountering in a very slow
pace. To my surprise, I was able to notice the inner reason of the crux or come
up with solution by slowing down to the pace of exercise I was doing.
Try new routines of your daily
curriculums. I used
to walk to school every day, and it was within 20 minutes’ walk. It sounds like
what I listed above, taking exercise. But here what I want to address is that
always find new paths to reach your destination or even simply pay attention to
the other side of scenery or go through the same road from the opposite
direction. Sometimes I would set out 10 minutes ahead of time to leave some
time for exploring new path although I’m going to exactly the same place every
day. It helps people improve the intelligence level according to research. To
my own experience, this helps me discover new ways to a specific place, learn
the construction of the city, and gain the sense of space. I used to be
terrible with directions. But after travelling through some squares, subways or
other landscapes for a few times, I feel much easier to remember directions and
project the positions from the map. As an environment artist and level
designer, I feel it very helpful to practice understanding and visualizing the
structure of the environment in real world.
Get ready to take notes on your
thoughts at any time.
Defen Zhang, a famous Taiwanese writer and creator wrote in her books, ‘can’t
bear not writing down my fleeting ideas, use whatever I can grab, even a lipstick
or eyeliner…’ I agree with this, and I think having a pen and notebook with us all
the time is very useful, taking pictures or recording voice can be good choices
too.
Connect anything to your game. After doing a bunch of design, I feel
sometimes it’s possible to pick random objects and create a game for it. It
doesn’t mean that comparing between all the options is useless. But to some
degree it is true. Creation is sometimes about combining unrelated things in
incredible ways. Pushing yourself with a certain subject is more effective and
can be good exercise for your brain.
Apply a mechanism in industrial
design to your gameplay.
In Chinese there is a saying ‘Da Dao Xiang Tong’, which is from Lao Tsu’s
theory, Tao Te Ching. In my opinion, it basically describes the situation that
the world has a shared rule set and everything in a substance world obeys these
rules. Game mechanisms are always about verbs. By learning how a machine or a system
works, we can always understand the ways to control different shapes and some
tricks in design.
Link your design with your special
experience. Game is
about having whatever can be useful for players to capture an experience and
make them a whole. Everyone has his own stories. Any specific experience or
feeling you want to share with others can be revived through a game. Have you ever taken an unforgettable journey
which is as fascinating as a dream? Have you ever be betrayed by your friends
owing to a misunderstanding? Have you ever had the feeling of growing up after
a night? Have you had a secret that you never wanted to tell anyone else
because of any concern? … I’m sure there is something in your life that only
belongs to yourself; it’s hard to look through others eyes. What you can do is
to dig into the feelings, why you feel that way, what you want to do, what you
wish to happen, what you can/can’t do in that specific situation, and turn them
into ideas, which can be an indie game about transformation or an adventure
game about a wonderland.
After
talking about many ways to get new ideas, you might think I feel it very easy
to come up with new concept. But the truth is, whatever we do is not fully
inventing something from zero, they are raised by someone else in the past. In
the Game Developers Conference 2014, there was an indie talk that each indie
developer had around five minutes to express their indie thoughts. One of the
speakers, a female developer started her talk with “Don’t worry. Whatever we
are doing has been done by different people for many times in different ways…”
But what we are doing still worth to be done. I can’t agree more, I believe
that the countless ways to organize and present an element make each work
different. As what Garfield said, the thing worthy of being done worth to do
again and again. What we should do is to get new ideas and dig out unique
inspiration from our distinguished life and turn them into games that have something
worth sharing.
