This book is meant to be a page-turner—literally. I want you to turn the pages often, using different sections of the book as you produce original ideas and concepts for your games. I see this as the equivalent of your own built-in brainstorming process. By using the many sections of this book, the lists, and the concepts, you can produce your own ideas, test and expand them, and challenge yourself to go beyond what I’ve presented here.
I call this a brainstorming book because brainstorming is one of the most effective ways to discover new ideas. In a group of creative individuals, brainstorming can uncover options and directions that one individual would rarely discover. Using this book, you can expand your ideas—and ours—to create the most original concepts possible, while staying within the context of effective game design.
In this chapter:
One of the best ways to get great ideas for your games is to hold brainstorming sessions with your whole staff—designers, artists, programmers, producers, marketing and PR people, and so on. Not only does this produce some really great and original ideas, but it reinforces and builds teams and gets the whole group invested in the result. For those without a design background, this book can be especially helpful, because they can instantly look up different solutions to design challenges.
Hold on, whoa, did I really say “PR and marketing people?” In a game design brainstorming meeting? Absolutely, the more minds in the room (that are willing to speak up), the better. Even if they don’t play games and they have bad ideas, sometimes really bad ideas spark thoughts that lead to really good ideas, so don’t filter the room to just people who like what you like—that’s really going to tone down the potential breakthroughs.
Brainstorming is a very specific process. It essentially consists of freeform thinking out loud. Here are some suggestions for conducting effective brainstorming sessions:
Have a whiteboard, chalkboard, or flipchart to write ideas on. Expect a lot of ideas, so plan ahead. (Ideally, the person leading is focused on the group, not on drawing.)
Provide some pizza and beer. Seriously—depending on the company and its personality, have some snacks and drinks. For marathon sessions at some companies, that might be pizza and beer, or for shorter sessions, possibly chips and sodas. Coffee and tea can be useful, too. Caffeine actually lowers inhibitions and makes people talk more freely. (That’s why cops are happy to offer you coffee or cola during interrogation.) The particular fare is entirely optional and based on the company culture. In more formal meeting structures, snacks may not be appropriate, but eating sometimes makes the session seem less formal and therefore encourages a freer expressive atmosphere.
Agree as a group on the objective of the specific session. Concentrate on specific areas of the game instead of trying to design everything at once.
Agree to a time limit. When people get too tired, they may start dropping out of the process. Limit sessions to a time that works for your group, which could be anywhere from half an hour to several hours.
Set ground rules for the meeting.
Make it clear to the group that there are no bad ideas or stupid suggestions. You want to encourage complete freedom.
The facilitator of the session should make an effort to get everyone to participate.
Encourage people to be brief and concise. Discourage long, drawn-out stories and descriptions. Find ways to condense an idea into its essential elements. One- or two-word descriptions often do the job.
Ask the group initially not to comment on, and certainly not to disparage, anybody’s remarks. Some people are very sensitive to criticism and will withhold their ideas if they feel attacked. Yet those people may sometimes come up with ideas that are original and can lead to innovation and great new design elements.
Establish a respectful process for people speaking, one that encourages blurting and spontaneity but that also recognizes other people when they are speaking. One way to look at this is that the session should be ordered and structured, but with considerable leeway for spontaneous outbursts, humor, and off-the-wall ideas.
Write all the ideas down as they are expressed. If ideas link, draw connecting lines. Limit discussion to clarification only. Designate someone to be the writer and/or facilitator of the session, or just record it if nobody can back you up. Note that you can sometimes recognize that an idea is a variant on something already expressed, and, if so, you can combine or refine the original idea.
If you get stuck with nowhere to turn for new ideas, backtrack and clearly state (aloud) all the reasons why you are following this path and what restrictions are trapping you. This commonly leads to new paths.
Once all the ideas have been expressed—or at some point based on time or energy—determine that it is time to examine the options listed on the board.
Have the group look at each item on the list and discuss its merits and weaknesses. Some will simply not work, and that will be clear from the beginning. Eliminate any obviously inappropriate or unusable options.
Document the ideas that have been found acceptable, possibly ranking them by their usability and popularity with the group.
Determine what action steps need to be taken following the session. Perhaps some ideas can be implemented and tested or further refined and fleshed out. Be sure those responsible for the follow-up know who they are, what they are to do, and when it is to be completed.
Determine a procedure for evaluating the results of the action steps and, optionally, schedule another brainstorming session.
Some brainstorming techniques suggest that participants periodically engage in silent times of reflection, notating their ideas without speaking—even to the point of writing down their best guess about the ideas other participants might be having. Though this may seem odd, it actually opens up the creative process even more by having the participants get outside their own concepts and ideas and attribute an idea to someone else. In reality, the ideas they attribute to others are their own ideas, but the process of attributing them to someone else opens a different creative channel.
This concept can even go further, to the point where each participant not only guesses what other participants are thinking, but what other participants are thinking about each other’s ideas. Confused? Participant A not only writes down his own ideas, but also the ideas he thinks B is thinking and the ideas he thinks B thinks C is thinking, and so on. This is called the Kaleidoscope Brainstorming Process and was developed by Dr. KRS Murthy.
As convoluted as this sounds, it can exponentially expand the creative process if people are focused enough to engage in it. However, this may be too formal a process for most game design teams, and the basic steps may be sufficient.
Brainstorming is often thought of as a group exercise, but in reality a designer often brainstorms alone. The way to brainstorm alone is to examine all your ideas from as many angles as possible. Ask yourself questions about your ideas and concepts, such as:
What are you trying to accomplish with this idea? What is the specific result?
Is your current solution a cliché? (Want to know more about clichés in games? Check out Chapter 22, “Game Conventions and Clichés.”)
If it is a cliché, is there a more innovative way to accomplish the same result, or is the cliché a necessary one? If so, why?
Assuming you are past the cliché issue, is there any more interesting way to accomplish the result? How many alternative ways can you think of? List them and consider whether any are useful in the current situation or elsewhere. Here’s where the lists throughout this book can come in handy. Check your ideas against the ones suggested. Use my lists to expand your thinking as you ask yourself these questions and list your answers.
Might you change other elements of the situation? For instance, what if the environment was different? What if the characters involved or the properties of the objects radically changed? Could that make the idea more interesting? Again, there’s plenty of information in this book to help you find alternatives to issues of environment, characters, and objects, as well as plots, puzzles, obstacles, and even types of scenarios.
How much freedom of choice does the player have? Check out Chapter 17, “Game Worlds,” Chapter 19, “Objects and Locations,” Chapter 25, “Barriers, Obstacles, and Detectors,” Chapter 26, “Traps and Counter Traps,” and even Chapter 28, “Controlling Pacing,” and Chapter 29, “Time Limits and Time Manipulation.”
Thinking from the player’s perspective, is there a way to make the player’s experience more interesting, more powerful, more fun, or more emotionally intense? Check Chapter 12, “Character Design” and Chapter 30, “Ways to Communicate with the Player.”
Let’s do an exercise. Suppose you take an object...say a nuclear bomb. Now consider altering its properties in the following ways. For each alteration, imagine how that change might affect how the bomb can be used in a game and what result it might have on the bomb’s effect, portability, versatility, power, and so on. For instance, how strong would a microscopic nuclear bomb be? And where would it be most useful? Could it be used in medicine? Could it be used as a tiny assassination weapon? We once designed one for our MDK game, to open door locks. For each of the following ideas, consider the effect of each individual change and then consider combinations of changes and how they would affect the object and its uses:
Make it smaller (a nuclear bomb that fits in a car’s glove box).
Make it really tiny (a nuclear bomb you hide in a hearing aid).
Make it microscopic (a nuclear bomb in a syringe).
Distort, disfigure, or contort it. (You can separate the flash/cloud/explosion.)
Make it bigger. (You can blow up the universe.)
Make it heavier. (The cloud crushes everything.)
Make it lighter. (The radioactive material heads off into space.)
Make it weightless. (The radioactive material floats in the air.)
Change its shape. What shapes could it take? (It’s stored in a cigarette, a baseball bat, or a football.)
Change its dimensions. (Its blast is extremely wide, but only one inch from the ground.)
Change its strength/power. (It’s so weak it can’t blow over a deck chair.)
Change its frictional properties. (Its blast gets hotter the farther it goes, becoming plasma in the outer rim.)
Change its temperature. (It sucks all the heat out of anything in the vicinity.)
Change how it looks or appears. (It’s pretty, like fireworks.)
Change its translucence. (It’s invisible; you can’t see anything until it’s too late.)
Change its appeal. (It’s a cure to a plague.)
Change its speed or motion. (You can walk away from the explosion.)
Change its value. (Every nation on the planet now has them, so they are worthless.)
Change its colors. (It sucks the photons out of the space it explodes.)
Change the rules that control it. (It goes off when you sneeze.)
Consider its side effect(s)—good or bad. (It could turn people into ticking time bombs or it could boost their abilities for a finite amount of time.)
Consider its byproduct(s)—good or bad. (If triggered in the right place, such as in the heart of a volcano, it could create a new material never seen before.)
Consider what it would be useful for in a fantasy world. (It’s a way to summon a demon.)
Consider what happens if it captures something. (That flying beast chokes to death in the plumes of toxic smoke and ash.)
I typed those in real time, meaning over 10 minutes or so. As you can see, something pretty clichéd, such as a nuclear bomb, can have tons of new directions in just minutes. If you want more ideas, just restart the list and come up with a bunch more. We could have been talking about cars, weapons, buildings—pretty much anything—and really getting creative with them.
In the end, the goal is to question the normal assumptions and go beyond the ordinary conception of things into the extraordinary and the original. If you find yourself stuck following the obvious, don’t give up. Use flexible lists (heck, make your own questions if you need to) to force yourself to think outside the box.
Remember, you can also change the situation at any time. That might help you then play with the physical properties even more. For instance:
Change the weather. (For example, it’s raining bodies.)
Change the environment or location. (For example, you crash-landed on the ear of a dog.)
Change the altitude. (For example, you’re at the bottom of the deepest trench of a crack in an ice cube.)
Change the temperature. (For example, don’t face north.)
Change the footing—make it uneven, with more or less friction, wet/dry, and so on. (For example, you’re knee-deep in dust; it’s all that remains from the bones of 1,000,000 warriors who were wiped out in a single day.)
Make it underwater or in the air instead of on the ground, or vice versa. (For example, it’s a space probe that splashes down underwater on a newly discovered planet to scan for life.)
Change the time period in which the event takes place. (For example, is it before civilization? After civilization? One day before man becomes extinct?)
Change the weapons available. (For example, the hero has something living in his body, and when it takes control he becomes the weapon.)
Change the items in the environment. How could they be used? (For example, you are the guy who actually invents the weapons that Q presents in James Bond movies.)
In the following examples, imagine that the lists included were proposed by members of a brainstorming session. The first step is to identify the purpose of the session—in this case, to create one or more very cool weapons. The next step is to identify as many qualities of the weapon(s) as possible. No idea is too outlandish at this point. Finally, you try to put together the most useful qualities into something everybody is excited about. Then you work on creating and testing it, once you have come up with a viable design.
Weapons come in all shapes and sizes, but they share some properties. By looking at the range of options available, you might come up with some interesting weapons. Let’s start with basic weapon design.
Imagine you are brainstorming a weapon. You want to create something more or less from scratch. One way to approach the task is to model your weapon on something you’ve seen before or something you can find by research. Another way to create a weapon is to start from scratch and consider all the properties that go into a weapon. With an understanding of those properties, you can make adjustments and even create improbable (but cool) new weapons. So first, imagine you are brainstorming all the qualities a weapon might have, and you come up with a list like the ones in Chapter 33, “Historical and Cultural Weapons,” and Chapter 34, “Standard Modern Weaponry and Armor.” Imagine the weapon taking shape, and imagine how it would be used. Then, once you have designed the basic weapon, move on to the next section and consider magical properties you might also assign to this weapon.
Using the lists from Chapter 33, you could come up with nearly endless weapon concepts, but even those lists are only the beginning. In a simple example, for instance, you might have come up with an unusual weapon with a heavy hook inside a daggered bludgeon, and this weapon could remove a heart from a body in one single move. But you can go even further. When selecting the qualities of your weapon, for each element, such as length, weight, balance, materials, and so on, think of unusual ways to define these qualities. For instance, with weight, perhaps it is lighter than air. Maybe it’s alive or maybe it’s made from an exotic corrosive gel. For materials, think about nonstandard materials, such as fiber optics or maybe even alien material that is endlessly reconfigurable. There’s no limit.
Next, let’s imagine a different kind of weapon with a slightly more specific initial description.
How might you create a sword with magical properties? What might make it interesting, fun, and unique? Let’s explore some of what you might do with a sword to give it unique qualities. Remember, in a brainstorming session, not all the ideas are necessarily good. But even bad ideas sometimes lead to great inspirations and unique concepts or implementations. So what magical properties could a sword possess?
It can sense the presence of fear. When it does so, it:
Makes a sound, such as a low hum, or it vibrates, rings, or sings.
Glows a beautiful radioactive glow, meaning enemies can’t resist coming to take a closer look, but they die on the way there.
Powers up, and you can leave it there to guard an area. Like a sentry, it leaps into action as enemies approach.
Creates a force field around you to protect you.
As a result of a certain move, creates a magical shadow warrior to fight along with you.
Opens its mouth and takes a bite out of an enemy it is swung into.
Turns invisible when an enemy picks it up.
Flies through the air (under its own power), taking you with it as it’s thrown.
Can be thrown through the heart of an enemy from a mile away if it is aimed in the right direction.
It can change shape. It can:
Elongate instantly, piercing the heads of your enemy and the enemy behind him.
Divide into two blades, so you can charge an enemy and remove his torso section in one piece.
Turn into any other weapon when a special move is performed. It might turn into an axe, a quarterstaff, a pike, or even a sharp-bladed boomerang.
It can shoot a projectile of some kind or emit something. For instance, things you might have seen in the past are:
Flames
Fireballs
Ice
Electricity/lightning
Bullets or other projectiles
Serpents
Frogs (death by angry frog!)
Slippery substances, such as oil
Smaller blades
Sonic waves
Blinding light
Traps, such as nets
Plasma balls
Graviton fields
Poisons or diseases
Sticky goo or webs, such as a spider web
Spinning blades
Skeletal warriors
Bombs/grenades
Alien creatures that suck out the enemy’s brains
Energy beams
Strong winds, hurricanes, tornados, and so on
Typical effects a sword might have include:
Fire
Ice
Gravity
Sound/sonic effects
Electricity/lightning
Poison
Paralysis
Disease
Confusion
Fear
Bright light
Blinding
Bleeding wounds
Slowing the enemy
Lower enemy protection
Increasing protection
Hypnotizing the enemy
Summoning a storm
Summoning a genie or elemental
Knowledge
Added strength, speed, agility, dexterity, wisdom, and so on
Unerring accuracy
Enhanced damage
Calmness
Happiness
Ability to quell anger
Ability to convert an enemy
Ability to force an enemy to dance
Ability to force an enemy to start sneezing
Ability to give the enemy a nasty headache
Ability to call for help
Ability to clone itself
Ultimately, you will come up with ideas for very unusual and original weapons using a combination of basic weapon qualities and, optionally, special abilities. The ideas presented here are only the beginning of the process, and I challenge you to go beyond these ideas and create a magic sword unlike any you’ve ever seen or imagined.
Although many games are based on completely original ideas and set in completely fictional worlds, many are based on historical subjects, real-world subjects, literature or movies, or even current events. To name just a notable few:
Civilization (all versions)
Pirates!
SimCity (and other Sim products)
Age of Empires
God of War
Medal of Honor (series)
Rainbow Six
Every flight simulator and most racing games
Almost all sports games
Numerous movie-based games
Even games that don’t appear on the surface to be based on any specific subject often are inspired by or influenced by other stories. For instance, many of the Japanese RPGs borrow liberally (even if loose on accuracy) from various world mythologies.
The value of research cannot be overstated. The more you know about a subject, the more you can add to your game and (with really good research) the more convincing it will be. Even if your game is completely fictional, research into a variety of subjects can add depth, value, and new ideas to your game. In fact, it often happens that an idea you come across while researching can provide you with some game ideas you had not previously thought of. For example, suppose you are doing some patrol sequence. It’s good to study what patrol guards do, what they say, and how they interact to make them real. They don’t just walk in a straight line from one corner of a building to another and ping-pong back and forth 24 hours a day, yet you see that kind of thing all too often in games. When they talk on their radios, do they say really clichéd stuff? “All clear on the west perimeter,” or does it sound fake? In Hollywood, the writers who get a million dollars a script research this kind of thing constantly so they can cover the details and make things feel tangible and real.
One of the main benefits of good research is that you have a lot of good data at hand, and that data can lend authenticity to your project. But perhaps even more important is the often unexpected inspiration that can come from studying a subject more deeply. Often, you will gain an insight or have an inspiration based on the real facts or the true story you have read—something you simply would not have considered on your own. Even a small fact or comment by a character or a minor bit of information can give you important game structures, hooks, or even whole concepts.
When you are doing research on nontechnical subjects, look for the following:
The main characters. (Who matters most?)
The secondary characters. (Who else fills in the social network?)
The relationships. (How do they interact?)
The main settings (the actual locations and so on).
The main objects/activities. (What do they do hour to hour?)
Their beliefs. (What are they?)
Whether they have a façade. (Do they need to appear a certain way?)
How money enters into it.
How love, affection, or lust enters into it.
What they do (technically speaking).
What they are really good at.
What they let slide.
What dangers there are.
And so on!
Among the most useful elements is the information you can get from themes and cultural aspects of the subject you are researching. These can lead you directly to many gameplay options. For instance, look at a game such as Grand Theft Auto. The activities and missions you receive are pretty much inspired by the specific culture depicted in the game.
Of course, some games will be based (in whole or in part) on very technical subjects, such as flying aircraft (in a flight simulator or air combat game, for instance). Games based on modern battle scenarios will need information about modern weaponry, and the research you conduct on those subjects is more straightforward. Even so, when you start investigating technical subjects, you may be surprised to find that there are very cool innovations, technologies, or products that you can incorporate in your design. For instance, you may not have known that there was a gun that could see around corners, using optical fibers. How cool is that? So now, perhaps you can give a gun like that to your main character or even to his enemies! Or maybe instead of looking around a corner, it watches your back.
But suppose you are creating a battle game based in a specific era, such as ancient Rome, World War I, World War II, or World War III? Clearly, each of these eras will have different equipment, military knowledge and tactics, settings, and even command structures. In Rome, you wouldn’t have guns and lasers, though you might find some interesting and little-known weapons and formations if you do some research. And between WWI and WWII there were many changes and advancements. As a simple example, tanks in WWI were rudimentary and not terribly effective or widely used. By WWII, tanks had become highly sophisticated and played significant roles in some theaters of operation. By WWIII, who knows what may happen. Here, research can help you extrapolate from the latest research to the possible future of warfare. For instance, the military is experimenting with special exoskeleton suits that will turn their fighters into super soldiers who can run faster and carry much heavier loads, more ammo, bigger (more powerful) weapons, and at the same time have greatly increased stamina. Nanotechnology allows us to look at naturally made things, such as red-blood cells, and redesign them to work even better, so now this soldier can hold his breath under water for 35 minutes. Maybe he can comfortably breathe thick, black, sooty smoke. Basically, take an idea and run with it. Ask yourself, “What if?”
For technical research, you want statistics—lots of statistics. What is the rate of fire, the top speed, or the kinds of bullets the gun takes? There are lots of very factual statistics for different machines and devices you might use. And there are many resources that list those specifics.
Why? Well, because these days gamers commonly look for character/player growth and leveling up (sometimes over a hundred levels), and we can help that process with weapon improvements. So you want a range of constantly improving weapons for the player to look forward to.
You also may want to look into how things are used, and this aspect of the research can be more interesting. For instance, suppose you have all the flight and mechanical statistics for a specific supersonic jet. That’s great for doing the computer model of the jet, but how is that particular aircraft used? Is it an air-to-air combat jet? Protection? A reconnaissance craft or a strafing weapon? Maybe it is used in several contexts. At any rate, knowing how something is used as well as what makes it tick is all part of the research. That doesn’t mean you have to stick to the uses you find, unless you are going for absolute accuracy and authenticity. It may be that you can extrapolate some information and create new (improved) uses or new situations that allow its weaknesses to be exposed.
In any case, with a few keywords, you can generally come up with books, videos, and websites full of useful information on just about any topic. This is often the first step in designing a game—knowing the subject and using that knowledge (with the aid of Google) to help inspire the creative thinking that ultimately will yield new hooks, concepts, characters, objects, situations, stories, and game flow.
Of course, there’s no secret to research. It’s pretty straightforward, and with the Internet it is much easier; however, at the same time, it’s a bit more perilous. Your main sources of information when doing research are:
Books on applicable subjects.
Internet sites.
Experts on the subject.
The actual sources (firsthand experience).
Eyewitnesses (when possible).
Movies/documentaries.
Myths and fables.
People who have access to information. (Yes, you can call a library!)
Other games.
One concern is the lack of standards of accuracy on the Internet. Although there is a lot of very good information available on various websites, there is also a lot of inaccurate material. People can write anything they want on a website, and often the information found by Internet searches can be inaccurate, incomplete, poorly prepared and written, and/or misleading. What makes the situation worse is that, often, other websites will gain their material from an incorrect source, so even checking multiple sites doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll discover errors. Some sites are better than others, and some sources are far more credible. So use the Internet, definitely, but use it with caution, check your sources, and check multiple sources if in doubt, especially those with more credible authors and those that document where they obtained their information (especially if you are going to hinge your entire game on a certain fact you read somewhere).
Another way to get some ideas is simply to ask gamers: “Tell me some of your favorite video game moments of all time.” Then just listen (carefully) to what they say. What are they really saying? What really became such a great memory? How could that be enhanced for a different game? When you watch a movie, read a book, watch TV, or even read a newspaper, always have that filter going: “Hmmm...that’s a really neat idea. I wonder how I could springboard from that idea into something never seen before in the video game industry.”
Done right, it won’t be long before you have more ideas than time.