In today’s gaming landscape, we find ourselves surrounded by clones upon clones. Yet, the need for innovation persists—not merely for innovation’s sake but for practical, purposeful creativity that adds genuine value to the gaming ecosystem. This article explores concrete, actionable approaches to generating new game ideas and mechanics, drawing from mathematical principles and thematic innovations.
Before diving into specific techniques, it’s crucial to understand what creativity is. Many people envision creativity as a mystical process where inspiration descends from the heavens accompanied by divine music. However, research shows creativity typically emerges from “scenes”—urban environments where different cultures, subcultures, and disciplines collide and mix.
Creativity isn’t about conjuring something entirely new from nothing. Instead, it’s about:
Just as an aquarium needs a proper substrate—the seemingly dull but essential layer of gravel and beneficial bacteria—to function, game designers need their substrate of knowledge and understanding. For game design, this substrate consists of a deep understanding of games and how they’re constructed.
We must break down our notion of what constitutes a game to build this foundation. Consider this hierarchy:
Take poker as an example:
Or in video games:
Before diving into specific techniques, it’s important to note that most of our creative work in video games is done within genres, with simple variants at best. Creating truly new games is vanishingly rare in video games, though it happens frequently in tabletop games. When we see significant mechanical innovation in video games, it tends to be at the casual game end of the spectrum. While we’ll discuss techniques for creating entirely new games, these approaches can be used for smaller-scale innovation within existing genres.
The first step in practical creativity is learning to break down games into their most minor components. Games are built from more miniature games, and mechanics are usually games themselves. This is particularly valuable when working on large-scale projects: