How to come up with a good idea for a game?

Over the last few months I've been working on a lot of different systems from weapon/player customization, data saving, random map generations and more. Though I love creating all these systems and game mechanics I lack in model design, but I've decided it'd be time to create another game but this time to do it properly and I just can't find any ideas I like. I've sat down for hours researching and looking at other games trying to find inspiration but just can't seem to come up with an idea I like for a small mini-game.

 

Think about something fun that you'd like to do in the game. Really anything. Something you think would be super fun for the player to do. Then think about a place where it would be awesome to do that fun thing. Then think about what would stop you from doing the fun thing (the opposing forces).

When you have those ideas, come up with a reason why you, the player character, would be in the place, and what you need to accomplish while doing that fun thing (the goal), and then think about why and how your opposing forces (enemies, environment, etc.) will prevent you from accomplishing that goal.

Start putting all of those ideas together, building as you go, taking notes, and you might just come up with something cool. It very much helps to have a friend you can talk to about the idea, to get their input and excitement, but even if you're working alone, try talking out loud to the room about the ideas, as if you're talking to a friend. It sounds goofy but it works.

That's one way to come up with game ideas. Have fun and good luck!

 

You can try doing some "this" plus "that" mental experiments.

For example: Street Fighter plus Mario. Okay, so how about a 2d Platformer where you have all the fighting mechanics of Street Fighter: special moves, combos, appoaches, and character spacing. That sounds like it would work well with a Metroidvania type game set in Gothic Fantasy with spells and what not.

Try it out some time, just take two games you love and figure out how you would mash them together.

It may not give exact ideas, but it will get your creative juices flowing.

 

General brainstorming is good. I often pick a theme to get started, game jam style, then start drawing a vaguely mind map type thing on paper: write the theme in the middle, then write down the broad ideas and questions it sparks around it, then the ideas or questions they spark around them, so on and so forth.

Then, like @Ony's approach, look for combinations of an activity + a setting + some challenge that makes the activity hard.

 

I often start with being annoyed with a game that I like that has some really annoying aspects that gradually wear away at me until I give up. I think how it could be better if they did x instead of y, let the mind wander through all this "actually that would be good if this also happened" until you get to "all of that should work" & you realise that you've wandered a long way from the original thought.

Eg, what if pong hit the paddles causing them to rotate if you don't hit the ball dead centre?

 

Starting with a completely blank page is way too intimidating. Go through all the past Ludum Dare themes and brainstorm ideas for each that you could prototype in 48 hours. Nothing spurs creativity like limitations.

 

I pick a challenging mechanic and build it. First time around it was buoyancy and wave physics. Then it was rope physics. Then it was a self sustaining economy. Then a learning AI.

Once I have a strong mechanic built the game play defines itself. Buoyancy became boats fighting on a lake. Rope became a spider moving on a web. And so forth.

 

Have an imagination?

 

Well that's a bit condescending. I get where that comes from, though, if it's anything like how I feel sometimes -- full of ideas, but frustrated that I don't have enough time in the day to pursue them all.

Sometimes having an imagination is the problem. It's easy to be overwhelmed with imaginative ideas. And it's even harder if you then give yourself a blank slate, because all those ideas tumble around in your head without any structure, and you have no idea where to start. It can help to pick an arbitrary restriction to help pare down the ideas -- like BoredMormon's suggestion to pick an interesting mechanic, or pick a Ludum Dare theme, etc.

 

I wasn't trying to be condescending, sorry if it came across like that. But if you are asking how to come up with IDEAS, then that is purely sourced in the imagination. The OP is looking outside of himself at everything that already exists instead of looking within and drawing up his own imagination to come up with an idea. I understand some people go about this more methodically but where's the creativity?

 

You could also say that creativity is a process. @Ony's suggestions are really good, here. I disagree that all game ideas are already contained in your own imagination so don't look outward. Inspiration and a good methodology for focusing inspiration into something tangible are essential, the quality and maturity of that process is what enables some people to be so wildly creative while others never really do much despite always having "tons of ideas".

This thread could be a good one. If we can talk about different studios and designers and how they purportedly came up with their ideas.

 

My suggestion is always the same for ANYTHING creative, although I come from a music background, so maybe its different. IDK just started working on games myself (SUPER FRASTRATING lol). K.I.S.S - Keep it simple stupid. Occam;'s Razor holds true everywhere; the simplest ideas are usually the best. Everything else is window dressing. Focus on the fun simple idea you have, whether its solve a puzzle, blast pixels, or blazing punk rock guitar , and you can't go wrong

 

A harder way is to almost try to gamefy a boring task just to see where that leads you in trying to build it as a mechanic & then follow that mechanic into various scenarios.

E.g. Cooking toast is pretty boring. What if the toaster fired the toast out in different directions with different force & you have to catch it. Extend that & you end up with the old Popeye lcd game where you are in a boat trying to catch cans of spinach that Brutus is throwing at you.

What if waiting for buses is so boring that you hang onto the outside of a full bus instead of standing for hours hoping one comes with space to let you on? Then you may need to climb on top to avoid being scraped off the side but then up ahead is a low bridge - which side do you climb down? What's coming up on each side? As you level up maybe you then catch a train which is similar but much faster (Note, this may be close to true for riding buses in some countries).

Not the most exciting examples but don't restrict your mind to spotting the first mechanic & trying to shoe horn it into a game based on the original scenario that prompted it. Just go with the flow no matter how ridiculous it might be getting.

 

Yeah I was about to say, "isn't that how everyone rides a bus?" but realized I'm either doing it wrong or I guess I just live in one of the countries where that's how we roll.

 

I'm kind of sold on the bus thing.

You can also get game ideas by viewing threads about game ideas. I don't have any data but like 90% of people don't complete their game ideas...

Actually, you can also find an idea guy to work with. They can be a little... different... but some people are idea factories.

 

I won't be making these ones (I don't think) so anyone is welcome to those if they want them (or are desperate)

I'm also available to be an ideas guy, rates negotiable

 

*facepalm*

 

Plenty of good suggestions on google.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ideation

 

I can never come up with ideas, so I just end up doing a clone or making other people's ideas. Haha. I don't know why, but I get a serious case of analysis paralysis with game ideas. I can imagine too many possibilities and I can't decide anything.

Like it starts off a space shooter and ends up a twin stick shooter with a fantasy setting... which turns into a mini rpg. And I just can't stop the slide. But if I work with someone else, I have to stick to the plan.

 

I'm slightly similar with how the ideas keep evolving except due to my skill level they all evolve to be the same (broken, disfunctional poop ). But one day I might be able to get something to a stage where I can actually tell if the idea is as much fun to play as it is while it is still just inside my head.

 

I don't think I've ever heard of or read about any game developer or designer who can tell if a game will be fun just by imagining it.

 

Three Hundred Game Mechanics

 

Wow, so many ideas my mind is spinning

 

Look at a photo for which you have no context. Make a story about what you think is going on. What is in the photo? What happened before this photo? What's happening in this photo? What is going to happen after this photo? I'll get you started with this lovely picture in which context is very important.

Now... look over this image very carefully and let your imagination run wild.

 

Yeah, so many unique ideas I never thought of... I guess some people just have it and some others don't.

 

Gotta disagree there. The author's been working on that list since 2007. That's a lot of time and effort. He doesn't just have it; he worked for it. Creativity's a muscle. Everyone can take it to the gym.

 

I've got boxes of notebooks in my garage full of scribbles, that go back to at least 2006. Still nowhere near 300 unique ideas, and almost no complete ideas. And most of my ideas are basically take [x] game and then think of a couple modifications and change the art style to something I like better. Do you have scientific evidence for what you're suggesting here?

 

I feel like I've read that in a fortune cookie before.

The thread has risen to 239,000 scovilles and is now under mod watch D:

 

James Cameron and Stephen King lucid dreamed for some of their movies.

 

Oh Tomnnn... you're such a clown.



Oh, that's intentional. Carry on, then.

 

Stephen King benefited from a very altered perception of the world. I'm sure his imagination was a wonderland of horrible and wonderful things.

"he spent most of the Eighties on an extended drug and alcohol binge which so fogged his mind that even today he cannot remember working on many of the books he wrote during that period."

...from the article

 

I believe I've seen that episode. One of my wife's favorite shows. Apparently she likes slightly crazy engineers.

 

You noticed?

I usually take screenshots of things that almost kill me from laughing too hard.

 

That's an entirely valid question. Creativity training has been a field of scientific research since the 1950s. A Google scholar search turns up studies like The effectiveness of creativity training: A quantitative review: "...creativity training programs typically induce gains in performance..." and Types of creativity training: Approaches and their effectiveness: "11 common types of training were identified, all of which appeared to have some value. However, some types of training, specifically idea production and cognitive training, proved particularly effective..." and No idea? Evaluating the effectiveness of creativity training.

 

You can become more creative if you work at it, and the environment you're in can affect your attitude toward coming up with ideas. I think that's perfectly reasonable. But does that necessarily mean that every person can do absolutely anything they set their mind to?

 

Never said that. Just said that practice helps. The science seems to support this. And, frankly, compared to some other activities, the bar is low enough with game ideas that anyone can eventually come up with several. They won't all be gems, but as you can see on the Three Hundred Mechanics site, the author gets better as time goes on. I think that's an inspiring message.

 

Separating training from natural talent is difficult. Most successful people gravitate towards training in areas they have aptitude for. So it's messy to split things up.

I can attest that formal creativity training works. I did a fair bit as part of my green belt certification. This past week in my new job there was ideation training. I majorly outperformed my colleges who had not had formal creativity training.

 

I think creativity is one thing, but novelty and uniqueness of ideas is another.

 

Novelty and uniqueness can also be trained. Forced word association is a common technique used to create novel ideas. There are also others.

It's also worth noting that the best creativity occurs in small, diverse groups. Went to a game dev networking event last night. One if the activities they had us do was come up with a new game design with a group of virtual strangers. Ideas bounced back and forward with incredible speed.

 

So maybe I shouldn't give it up just yet...

 

If you have hundreds of unworkable ideas before you get a moderate hit, you're still ahead of Thomas Edison. Just start prototyping everything that comes to mind.

 

A few months ago I was trying so hard to figure out my own unique turn based strategy game. I was getting so mad because I could not figure out something unique, only clone ideas from other games...this was depressing because I played games my entire life and couldn't think of one myself

A few months ago, I got in a fight with my girlfriend and I was on the highway at night dazing off at the big lights glaring on the highway floors. I found them odd because of the way they were formed ( I call them UFO lights ), anyways I was inspecting them and the way they were formed gave me ideas I started spitting out loud to my girlfriend. Right there she added a few ideas and at the end we both deemed it retarded game idea. The next morning I guess my brain kept thinking on that idea from the night before because when we went on our morning walk, it hit me right there and finally came to me!

That is how I got my unique game idea lol, let in everything around you and chill and it might come to you

 

I came up with a game idea this morning around 2AM while browsing the diablo 3 forums and being disgruntled over the focus on making games look good instead of being mechanically interesting. I decided the best way to try to achieve both is with a turn based game. While making decisions, you can crunch all the numbers, play out your role and strategize. Then after you've made your move (or moves... ) you can sit back and watch the uninterrupted action.

The best part of the idea is that it plays to my strengths and weaknesses. The mechanic is the entire game

 

Have you seen/played frozen synapse? They do that sort of thing. Really simple graphics (in version 1) but really deep movement strategy. I've never managed to get past the first level. I carefully plot out my moves, run the tests they give you, hit end turn & then the enemies move completely differently to how I planned & how they behaved in the test runs.

 

I haven't. I'll check it out later to see how similar it is. My idea is that your "action points" are a combination of time and stamina. Almost like toribash now that I think about it, but a turn based strategy 'dungeon crawler'.

 

Quite the contrary, for the last few months I've been noting down a lot of ideas I've had but it's as TonyLi said and he's right I start working on an idea I've had but I start to overwhelm myself with more ideas and creative ideas without the manpower to do such a thing, as I try to go too far ahead and I'm limited with models/art so I fail to reach that potential.

I'm not looking for others to give me ideas or anything, I'm trying to learn how others find an effective way of creating their idea. So that I can apply the same to myself.

 

So you want to work on limiting your scope by defining constraints. Building constraints is a great way to limit yourself. These limits can then lead to a stronger, more focused idea.

 

Whenever I think of constraints, I'm reminded of a podcast (transcript) by the Battlestar Galactica writers. For the highly-praised episode "Scar," which is entirely about fighter pilots, Ron Moore restricted the writers to one dogfight. The ensuing discussion and all the unexpected ideas they generated to work within that constraint are well worth reading.

 

I try to do one game mechanic, scoring (with multipliers if needed) per game & that's it. It severely limits scope creep & keeps most of my ideas within my prototyping abilities.

 

To some extent, I tend to have a lot of ideas for something that would be amazing to create and play but with lack of resources for art to showcase or model creation leaves me with just programming and free assets I can find/buy. Not exactly ideal I guess, during creating any idea I have I tend to have 50 more whilst creating the first and either stray away or begin creating another idea and giving up on the last for better or worse.

So in hindsight I'm just trying to get an insight into how others go through the stages of game design and creating that base idea that leads to a game.