The Motivation and Creativity Page
For programmers who procrastinate or have writer's block.

It's Possible (Les Brown)

 

How to Make New Games from Old Games

One way to invent your own game is to take an old game that doesn't quite work for your purposes and change it around. You might make some minor revisions in the game or you might totally overhaul the whole thing so that it's completely unrecognizable, depending on how much of the original game is attractive to you.

1. Identify your goals.

2. Brainstorm a list of all the games you can think of that relate to your goals.

3. Put a plus sign next to the games you feel positively about, and a minus sign next to the ones that have negative connotations for you.

4. Choose one of the games that has a plus sign next to it, a game that you like, but one that's not perfect for reaching your goal or goals.

5. What is it that you like about the game?

6. What is the part of the game you'd like to change? Describe that element here.

7. Brainstorm a number of ways to replace that element with something else.

8. Choose one of your new elements and describe what you like about it and the way that it might fit into the old game.

9. Does the game still work? Is it still fun to play your new way? Are there any more changes that will be necessary because of the element that you've just changed?

10. Is there anything else from your brainstorm in part 7 that you can incorporate in your new version?

Have you completely recycled this old game so that it meets your standards? Are you excited about your new version? If you are, then why are you still reading this? Get going.

Adapted from the book Playfair by Matt Weinstein and Joel Goodman

Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.

Charles Caleb Colton

Begin with another's to end with your own.

Baltasar Gracian

Nothing is new except arrangement.

William J. Durant

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

Dean William R. Inge

 

 

 

Creativity and Flexibility

Even though it's fun to crawl inside a computer and play with its potential, it's really important to look at other aspects of your life as well. That's where ideas for programs will come from.

Marcia Burrows

K-Power Magazine, April 1984

While tight with concentration on what is being written, the writer has a thought, an insight, a partially articulate concept. The natural response is to think, "I can't stop what I am writing. I'll remember the idea," and continue writing. The writer is wrong. He will not remember it. The thought, the insight, the concept will disappear. It may return, but you will not need it then, or recall when it might have been appropriate.

Insights and perceptions pass through the mind like fleet fireflies. Lit for an instant, then gone back into the dark. They are precious, irreplaceable. Stop what you are writing and write them into a notebook, onto a napkin, a scrap of paper. ANYWHERE. They are more important than what you are writing now. What you are writing now is there. It is visible, tangible. You will not lose the mood, the flow, the roll.

From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by Leonard Bishop

Write it, even if you think it's terrible. Don't prevent yourself from jotting down a word, phrase, or paragraph just because it "isn't quite right" or "it won't work." Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it's better to write it down, you can always edit later. And you don't want to stop yourself before you even get started! The point isn't to use everything you write. You can't be expected to pop out perfect prose your first time out! Write now, edit later.

Cristine Grace (adapted)

If you fall in love with an idea, you won't see the merits of alternative approaches—and will probably miss an opportunity or two. One of life's great pleasures is letting go of a previously cherished idea. Then you're free to look for new ones. What part of your idea are you in love with? What would happen if you kissed it goodbye?

Roger von Oech

Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.

Frank Tyger

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.

George Kneller

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Erich Fromm

Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.

Mary Lou Cook

He who never walks except where he sees other men's tracks will make no discoveries.

Unknown

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Antonio Porchia

 

 

 

Things to Think About

The zero-sum game: that's the way it is if you're a competitive person and you see capitalism in that way. Zero-sum game implies winners and losers which I don't agree with. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose, it all comes back to zero (minus eight, plus eight). But I don't agree with that because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films can help other films to be open. There's a different psychology at work. If you're overly competitive, you'll be exclusionary and say it's a zero-sum game (I must get eight and he must lose eight). Gekko simplifies it down to a painting. He says he bought this painting or this building for X and he sold it for Y and he made that profit and he assumes that somebody else got beat, but that's not necessarily true. You don't always lose.

Oliver Stone (adapted)

Director's commentary from his Wall Street DVD (2000)

A good game has to have a fun core, which is a one-sentence description of why it's fun.

Paul Reiche III

Compute Magazine, January 1992

'The player is paramount' is a phrase all game developers should remember. Great game designers have a certain amount of love or respect for their players. If you're not helping your players feel happy and fulfilled in some way then you shouldn't be making games at all. Don't make games just to express yourself. Don't make games just to impress other game designers. Think about the players too. Make games that are fun, games that satisfy, games that make your players feel like you care.

Duane Alan Hahn

Keep the rules of the game simple. Ideally, first-time players should understand and enjoy the game without instructions.

Mark Cerney

Next Generation Magazine, January 1997

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

Charles Mingus

The really blisteringly original games are incredibly simple.

Paul Reiche III

Compute Magazine, January 1992

People want to go back to a simpler time where you walked up, read two lines of instructions, and knew the game. People want clean, simple challenges, and are tired of the 45-move joystick/button combinations it takes to do a roundhouse kick.

Curt Vendel from Weekly Wire

Pinball is a good example of what makes a great game—a mixture of luck and skill. That's a very critical aspect. In the long run a more-skilled player will do better, but in the short run anyone should be able to win. There should be some randomness, which offer challenges over the game. When you get to games like Pac-Man or Mortal Kombat where there's a documentable sequence that you can execute to succeed, to me that's totally antithetical to what a game should be.

Howard Scott Warshaw from a Digital Press interview

One of my best tricks is to make every damn possible thing random. If something repeats (for example if your character looks left and right) don't make it ping-pong in perfect timing like a metronome. Always slip in randomness so that something that does repeat never looks the same twice. Nothing in your game should move to a "beat."

Dave Perry

Next Generation Magazine, January 1997

I used the random object placement in level 3 for variety. I didn't want it to be like a puzzle, where once you've solved it, it's not very interesting to do it again, and I wanted to avoid that. The bat was also added as a confusion factor, to move objects around a bit, so that the game wasn't too predictable. (I did make a mistake in my random object placement code, and there is a 1 in 18 chance that the yellow key will start out in the yellow castle, making the game unwinnable. This only happens in level 3.)

As you may gather from the above, I think that randomness in a game is very strong medicine, and must be very carefully controlled.

Warren Robinett from a Good Deal Games interview

Don't ever take control away from the joypad/keyboard unless you really want to piss off the player. When you press jump, make him jump. Fight animators or anyone else who tries to get you to do anything else. Instant response is key.

Dave Perry (Adapted)

Next Generation Magazine, January 1997

It is said that our leisure activities no longer give us a break from the alienating qualities of the work we do; instead, they have come to resemble that work.

The chief reason our recreation is like our work is that it has become more competitive. Sports, for example, have always been competitive and never really qualified as play in the first place. Although it's not generally acknowledged, most definitions of play do seem to exclude competitive activities.

In an experiment with five-and six-year olds, Janice Nelson and her associates found that "success as well as failure in competition produced consistent increases in aggression, as compared with the effects of noncompetitive play," although failure made the children more aggressive. Another study discovered that boys who won a subsequent competition were more aggressive than those who failed. Even winning is not enough to eradicate the frustrating elements of competition. The hostile act of competition, on the playing field and in other contexts, for both participants and spectators, leads us to become more aggressive.

Any activity whose goal is victory cannot be play, if you are trying to win, you are not engaged in true play.

Adapted from No Contest: The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn

Play is supposed to be the opposite of work, but most video games are just jobs with a little bit of fun thrown in. These games can leave players feeling abused, frustrated, and overly aggressive. What your players need is freedom from competition and aggravation. Give your players a place to play where they don't have to win anything. Let them have fun without having to follow a bunch of rules. Give your players a chance to overcome challenges that have many solutions. Your game can either irritate or alleviate. Which would you rather do? If you want to add to the happiness of your players, give them freedom.

Duane Alan Hahn

For science fiction, you establish a framework; you establish the rules. Now you have to be honest in those rules. You can't just do anything you want to because it's science fiction. Otherwise it doesn't become particularly believable.

Joe Jennings (Production Designer) from the Designing Khan featurette on the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - The Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition) DVD

 

 

 

Finishing Your Projects

Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.

Florence Scovel Shinn

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Leonardo da Vinci

The last 10% of game design is really what separates the good games from the great games. It's what I call the clean-up phase of game design. Here's where you make sure all the elements look great. The game should look good, feel good, sound good, play good.

Gary Kitchen

Gary Kitchen's GameMaker Manual

Even if your first game doesn't turn out the way you'd like, it can give you ideas for other games.

Christopher Chance

K-Power Magazine, April 1984