Game Design9/11/15: Inspiration

“Go ahead, ask me the dumbest question a writer can be asked: ‘Where do you get your ideas?” My answer is always the same – since there is no answer to this query. At least neither Plato nor Socrates nor Shakespeare could make the codification. When some jamook asks me this one (thereby revealing him/herself to be a person who has about as much imaginative muscle as a head of lettuce), I always smile prettily and answer, ‘Schenectady.’...

...and when the jamook looks at me quizzically, and scratches head with hairy hand, I add: ‘Oh, sure. There's a swell Idea Service in Schenectady; and every week I send 'em twenty-five bucks; and every week they send me a fresh six-pack of ideas.’ And would you believe it... there is always some demento who asks me for the address.”

-Harlan Ellison

• Think of an idea

• Try it

• Change it until it’s good enough

The Process

Questions of Inspiration

• What is an experience I have had in my life that I would want to share with others?

• In what small way can I capture the essence of that experience and put it into my game?

• “When you know how to listen, everyone is the guru.” –Ram Dass

• Your creative subconscious is:

• Non-verbal – communicates through imagery and emotion

• Impulsive – lives in the moment, doesn’t plan ahead

• Emotional – feels things more deeply and powerfully than the conscious mind, and gets swept up in whatever you’re feeling

• Playful – constantly curious, loves wordplay and pranks

• “Irrational” (unsound) – not bound by reason, comes up with stuff that doesn’t make sense, sometimes can be the clever perspective you’ve been seeking

Listen to Yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE6lHJXcnV8

• Idea – The shortest answer to “What’s it about?”

• Concept — The idea or seed that evolves into a platform for a game. Highly empowering when expressed as a “what if ?” question. The answer leads to further “what if ?” questions in a branching and descending hierarchy, and the collective whole of those choices and answers becomes your game

• Premise – Concept plus some characterization

• An idea is to travel to Florida

• A concept is to travel by car and stop at all the national parks along the way

• A premise is to take your estranged father with you and mend fences while on the road.

• What if Leonardo da Vinci implanted clues to his views on Christianity and the veracity of scripture within his painting of The Last Supper?

• What if Christ didn't die on the cross after all? What if the entire Christian religion is a contrivance and a deeply held secret resulting in a conspiracy?

• What if there is a highly secret group of men whose life mission is to preserve that secret? What if they are willing to kill to protect it?

• What if there are other secrets? What if the fabled Holy Grail is, in fact, the womb of Mary Magdalene, bearing the child of Jesus? What if that child survived, and the lineage continues to this day, meaning the ancestors of Christ are walking among us?

• What if Leonardo da Vinci was a member of yet another secret group that knows this to be true? What if da Vinci gave us clues to this fact in his paintings, especially The Last Supper?

• What if the museum curator at the Louvre is killed because of what he knows? What if he leaves clues about the hidden messages, and about those behind his murder, written in his own blood?

• What if members of a secret group of priests are being killed in an effort to expose the truth behind the church's two-thousand-year-old conspiracy of deceit?

• What if the hero of our story is called in to decipher the curator's cryptic messages, and finds himself accused of his murder?

• What if the woman who is helping him is not who or what she seems to be? What if she is connected to the truth in a way that is more significant than anyone knows?

• What if someone known to the hero seems to be helping him, but has manipulated him to apply his skills toward his own dark means, and intends to kill him once he has proof of the underlying truth?

Questions of the Problem Statement

• What problem or problems am I trying to solve?

• Have I been making assumptions about the game that really have nothing to do with its true purpose?

• Is my game really the best solution? Why?

• How will I be able to tell if the problem is solved?

• What the game means, what it’s illuminating about real life

• How the game relates to reality and life in general

• What the game says about life and the infinite roster of issues, facets, challenges, and experiences it presents

Theme

Thematic Continuum

0 No theme

5 Exploration

10 Propaganda

Theming

• How the aesthetics relate to and reinforce the idea/concept/premise

Questions of Resonance• What is it about my game that feels powerful

and special?

• When I describe my game to people, what ideas get them really excited?

• If I had no constraints of any kind, what would this game be like?

• What is driving my instincts that tell me how this game should be?

Brainstorming

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qby0ed4aVpo

You need

• Space

• Time

• Time

• Confidence

• Humor

Intermediate Impossibles

• Cheese and motorcycles

• Moral courage and light green

• Bananas and international cooperation

Brainstorming

Looking ahead…

• Who here has experience running a tabletop roleplaying game?