About Game Design

I was going to write about how to iterate effectively, but then I realized how boring my post actually was. So I started thinking “how can I be creative about this subject” and boom there it was; How to iterate on creativity. Now this might be somewhat “out there”, but just let go for a while!

Let’s say I’m working on an action game and start designing a combat system for it. But I need it to be something new and different! How do I go about it? Could iteration be applied?

I personally find it very hard to just come up with something unique out of thin air; I usually need a basic design to start from. So before this first design for something “creative” I try to look at other games, or possibly other media, to see what they are doing and then I try to do it differently. However, I also need to make sure that what I end up doing really is creative.

So once I have my design, I take a step back and compare it with other games. Was I really being creative or just ripping something off? I find that I quite often apply designs from games that I like unconsciously, and there’s nothing wrong with that except if the design that I “stole” is the bread and butter of my own supposedly unique design. But most important, I ask for feedback from other people on how creative and unique they find my design to be.

So I take another swing at it and go through the same process again. I think one important point to make here is that you should iterate on the creativity first and then the actual design. What I mean is that you should separate the process of trying to make something unique from trying to make something that works. Making something that works should take priority in the end and therefore should be able to override creative decision in later iterations. Going the other way around doesn’t really make sense and you could end up with a broken game.

Regardless of that last point, this is iterating on creativity wouldn’t you agree? What kind of process do you use?