Practical Creativity

In this 2014 GDC Next session, MMO designer Raph Koster explains what science tells us about creativity, and offers practical straightforward steps that any game designer or developer can make use of in order to get more creative.
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[@i_am_the_arm]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="539">8:59</a> "As the budgets rise, we will see less creativity in the industry" Couldn't be more true after 7 years

[@xplodegg]

This guy knows his shit!

[@TheZenytram]

The best technic for creativity is "let your self be BORED for a couple of minutes". Go some where without internet and smartfone, sit and look to a wall in silence, watch the grass grow. You'd be amazing how quickly you brain come up with ideas on those situations.

[@MeRenegade]

Yea, I aimlessly let the pencil wander over a blank page and in a minute or so my mind starts. Or do something inconsequential, or tell myself I am not working just going through this idea, etc. The moment the mind is "free" it just pours creativity.

[@graver067966739]

I second this. I did a nature camp out with no electronics or books or mental distractions of any kind and I left after a weekend with about 2 months worth of inspiration. Definitely would recommend

[@dailymeme4you]

Thank you this technique works very well

[@zianzhang7582]

Totally agree. And sometimes you don't even need to go that far. Just grab a book, and while reading it , influx of ideas just pour in. The key is to get rid of smartphone and internet.

[@bunnybreaker]

This is one of the best GDC talks I've ever seen. So much food for thought.

[@Lunareon]

This is probably the best practical guide to creativity I've seen so far, and it could easily be applied to any industry. Thanks for sharing! :)

[@marspharaoh]

Pmloo lol lol look good yuh b u TV. You vu vuu u

[@SumanKumar-tm1xr]

, vhb

[@origenward3845]

@@marspharaoh Isha boo boo doo doo

[@helloofthebeach]

Everyone interested in making games should watch this. There is a game about gluing though and it's Katamari Damacy.

[@MGHOoL5]

Practical Creativity [Summary]: -Don't look at the core of the game but break the game down into modular inputs and subsystems and build yourself a mechanics library. Then, try to link and reskin those patterns in uncommon ways. Changing inputs (e.g. making them discrete or relative, adding force and build-up) and topology is a common way to change the theme of the game. -Extending a stat like adding more damage and moves is not innovative. Instead, add new rules like time limit and critical damage, or maybe on yourself to push your innovation in development, such as imagining making a tactical RPG with no violence. -Adding a verb or a goal like "cause damage" and "don't take damage" leads to a game about fighting. Adding "rescuing" gives you a defender game. To platforms, adding "fast" gives you speed-runs. Too many goals is a sandbox. You can also modify this by changing its metaphor. For example, instead of Pac Man's 'visit all spaces', you get Bristles that has 'paint all the walls' which also adds 'jump' and 'paint over' and thus 'competing'. Do that to mechanics too. Instead of 'visit all spaces', make them 'visit some spaces' which adds collectables. Then maybe make these spaces hidden, 'find those spaces', and you get secrets. -Tell a story that isn't often hold, which you easily can get from memory. For example, you experienced learning a bike, adopting a child, traveling to a new place, moving to a new house, etc. make it into a game. Or a feeling and concept rarely expressed like Romance (how do you make a game about romance? What are the mechanics in romance? e.g. It is about flawed characters that help complete each other, they sacrifice to one another and gain things like confidence)

[@dorukcoskun601]

"Too many goals is a sandbox." This should have been in reverse. Lack of explicit goals create a sandbox environment, thus the player can decide her own goals. Cheers

[@bagandtag4391]

This talk was amazing. So much stuff that could come out by doing simple things.

[@fernandorendon8618]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2402">40:02</a> not only i'm from Argentina, i'm also a student of "recreology" and you'd be amazed at the amounts of games that you can come up with using just a chalk and the floor

[@3333218]

Hola hermano! Saludos de Brasil! I'd be really interested in learning more about recreology! Can you point me some reading material?

[@scrub_jay]

It's funny to think that the most beloved game in the world, football (soccer) is just a matter of kicking the ball through the correct segment of a giant chalk rectangle. A huge number of the world's sports really boil down to chalk on the floor, with differing levels of equipment.

[@baronvonbeandip]

Dude, this talk is immense. It's like a brain massage.

[@benjoe1993]

"Think back to your last vacation or a childhood memory to tell an original story." <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2900">48:20</a> "Adopting a child." That's one wicked vacation!

[@KroltanMG]

Or an even more wicked childhood memory!

[@benjoe1993]

@@KroltanMG Ohh yeah, haven't thought about that possibility :D

[@wowlecks]

I've seen probably hundreds of talks from people that I really admire, and this guy seems like one of the smartest out there.

[@iCodeForBananas]

This is TRUE out of the box creative thinking. I love it.

[@louiscorbett3278]

Best talk from GDC i've heard, I love this guy :-)

[@donnysen]

I have watched countless of these GDC talks.... Raph, if you somehow see this.... Thank you. Phenomenal presentation.

[@Schematical]

Just discovered this guy and I am loving his work. Mad scientist brilliant!

[@muzboz]

I've had to come back at this a few times, over the years, and this time through, I really think it all clicked! :)

[@lhmsc]

Diablo 1 actually started as a turn-based RPG. The dev accidentally lowered the turn timer by a lot which made it basically real time and thus the action-rpg genre was born.

[@scriptyshake]

I bought his book last summer along with a few other game design books. I haven't gotten to it yet, but having listened to this brilliant talk - I'm picking it up RN

[@nemesisurvivorleon]

A bunch of things I did for fun as a kid are apparently special creativity techniques. I thought imagination and experimentation was a norm, but a lot of people Ive encountered over the years cant seem to even visualize things...

[@einholzstuhl252]

There is this thing called Aphantasia. A large percentage of the population in america and other countries do not have the ability to visualize mental images. A friend of mine and my syster also have Aphantasia. Me and my dad on the other side have no problem with visualizing. It gets rarely talked about.

[@et6794]

This is by far, the best lecture I've heard on game creativity. Time to purchase his book! :)

[@Ok_Eul-Tae]

This presentation is really getting my creative juices flowing.

[@harshivpatel6238]

You know it goes both ways right?

[@Ok_Eul-Tae]

@@harshivpatel6238 What?

[@harshivpatel6238]

nvm

[@revimfadli4666]

@@harshivpatel6238 creative juices can flow out, you mean?

[@harshivpatel6238]

@@revimfadli4666 creative juices can also mean the juices that create life, you know what I mean, ;-) That kinda juices.

[@enrico7049]

This is my favourite talk from GDC. Thank you so much.

[@arheru]

Incredibly inspiring talk! Thank you GDC, and thank you Raph!

[@eywhatswrong]

Very pleasant to listen to. Simplicity is a king. I think this is one of the most vital talks game designers have to watch / listen to. Maybe I'd go as far as to say essential.

[@dimomarkov8937]

That's probably the best lecture on GDC I've encountered so far :)

[@proksenospapias9327]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2873">47:53</a> "Nobody has modeled the stages of grief". Gris did a year or two later! Btw what an interesting speech.

[@tobyk5091]

I think Celestes chapter 9 does too in a way

[@northrain0462]

Great talk... his book "A Theory of Fun" is also amazing

[@lunardust201]

Is that the book where he comes up with an actual definition of fun, "pleasure with surprises" ?

[@DamianSzajnowski]

@@lunardust201 xD

[@Runslik3Wind]

I've watched a ton of these and i think this is the best one.

[@aarikk]

This is one of the best talks I've seen so far.

[@wheelskis]

Very helpful talk from Paul Giamatti 🤣After making the connection, I can't unhear it. Raph and Paul sound nearly identical to me. But seriously, Raph's presentation covers multiple modalities of gaming, various examples, and many practical tips for creativity in game design. I occasionally come back to a game I have been gradually working on for a year, and this was what I needed to hear as I approach my game again.

[@cam4722]

What an amazing talk, Raph. Makes me want to go back and read your book again!

[@fullanalysis93]

Holy smokes this talk is incredible! I might need to watch this again, and then thrice so I can take notes.

[@50shadesofskittles9]

I created a whole new space in my clickup task management app just to explore these ideas thoroughly! :D my fav ever video on GDC!

[@BatteryExhausted]

✅This is superb. The ideas about context and the cards analogy is so easy to understand and yet incredibly deep and inherently useful. At <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1689">28:09</a> he breaks into a captivating poetic interlude. Such a well rounded, entertaining and informative lecture. Raph is a total dude.

[@gxharrypotterdvd25]

One of the best talks I have seen.

[@diogow3]

Very insightful. A must watch.

[@018FLP]

I love how randomly old GDC videos keep popping in my TL. and all of them are amazing. This is a topic i love too much, and it's the core of my game development. BTW> A AMAZING game about Romance: It takes two. And the creative approach is exactly the same premisse he said. Flawed individuals helping each other to overcome challenges.

[@benjoe1993]

I think I will watch this 10 more times I think.

[@muzboz]

I've come back to this about 4 times, and this time it really clicked into place at each step, for me. :) I think I had to go out and try to make more digital games, learn more programming and algorithms, think more abstractly about design, start playing D&D, play more board games, and then it all made more sense to me, some years later. :D

[@olivierballou392]

Fascinating

[@Ermude10]

I'm interested in what the people who disliked this video thinks. What in this video made it bad enough to warrant a dislike? I'm genuinely interested!

[@NipapornP]

If it's really relevant, i.e. for educational purpose, here we go: It's well known, that showing loads of text on a screen, different to the speech, is a no-go at presentations, as people are NOT capable of that kind of cognitive multitasking. Luckily, in a recorded video one can stop- go, stop - go and read the text separately. Maybe people find this guy just disgusting. Maybe he did something bad to someone in a complete different context, like beating his wife/children. Notice that different individuals have different opinions and are always more or less emotional as well.

[@Ermude10]

I agree with your first point, but as you also said, since it's a video where we can pause, it's not as relevant. The other points, well... I wanted to hear from people who actually disliked it, rather than someone speculating about it ;)

[@UndeadSoldierE]

Fantastic talk. Inspiring and very informative.

[@Somewhere_sometime_somehow]

best GDC talk I watched

[@Captyr_____]

Really solid concepts. Reaffirms a lot of theories about creativity I have had.

[@rungus24]

As a songwriter/writer with a ton of mental illnesses, I have to say that creativity can indeed be a heavenly spontaneous event.

[@PharmacyBrain]

I actually have Raph's book on my shelf and haven't read it yet. I'm going to now. I've been missing out. And, wow, I was literally sitting on a base framework of a game with no defined mechanics and this video literally helped me come up with a really fun idea. 💡

[@brandonallen2301]

Really interesting to see someone who studied poetry try to distill creativity. Great example of the creativity that comes from interdisciplinary synthesis, that's he's talking about

[@ViniSouza93]

Awesome talk! I watched it right after studying the book "A Theory of Fun" - it complemented the reading very well!

[@Altrue]

Such a great talk given by such a great person!

[@osakanone]

My all tame favourite GDC talk.

[@vladimir_ckau]

Thanks for the Raph's talk video!

[@KaSophie]

Thank you for finally giving me a reason to explain in an articulate way why I have my desk messy! This was a great talk - I wish I was in the public watching, only to make some noise hehe :)

[@MrGoodbye23]

Plz, more talks from this guy.

[@kamehamegamer]

Really great talk I'm gonna pick up his book.i love the idea of a prototyping kit think I'll head to the craft store later

[@Halopedian]

Incredible talk and the underlying concepts are applicable to any creative field

[@FFehse-dk9is]

this one of the best video on youtube I've ever seen 😀😍👌👍

[@michaelgagnon5535]

Doing my first video games these days and this is soooooooooo interesting !

[@christophernixonart]

This was a really excellent talk!

[@loekTheDreamer]

Wow, this is an amazing talk! Thank ou so much for sharing!

[@WhiteLotusZuko]

the best video i ever see

[@SaiNarayan_]

Truly fantastic talk. Thanks!

[@sergeylysyi511]

the high note really got me

[@mrslake7096]

Great talk, Thanks very much, will definitely check the book

[@fabiboiii]

Games being made of minigames has been stuck in my head ever since playing the Ratchet and Clank series, they truly excel at that!

[@Agret]

Have a look at It Takes Two, it's exactly what you say. A game composed of minigames.

[@fabiboiii]

@@Agret my partner and I play it sometimes and it rocks! thanks for the recommendation!

[@YOUCANTDOTHATONTELEVISION]

Great talk. Great advice and insights

[@samohickey]

Another amazing talk.

[@randysewell3199]

This guy is a genius!

[@jean-baptistegrosselin7310]

Probably the best GDC talk I've seen so far.

[@presauced]

Gotta agree.

[@devanorth2119]

This guy is brilliant!

[@vincentchou9036]

Amazing talk, so inspired by this video!

[@NoTengoIdeaGuey]

This dude is a damn G. So used to speakers just reading the slides back to us.

[@camille-jeanhelou4444]

Great talk. Love it

[@ADITYA3GAME]

The books he mentioned at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="930">15:30</a> were Game Design Patterns and Advanced Game Mechanics

[@RaulRiveraArroyo]

Excellent talk!

[@andvaribekho]

love how You used the ultima online font ❤️

[@DailyFrankPeter]

Tactical RPG that must fit in a cube and be non-violent: a team house renovation game - Doorfitters! (OTOH, not sure this one would turn out non-violent...)

[@JamUsagi]

Renovating a house with extreme violence sounds awesome actually

[@technicallyluke9993]

this is an amazing talk!

[@II00I00]

Great talk. Made me think of a... thing I learned recently created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt called Oblique Strategies. It is meant to help you out of a creative block by providing directions, ranging from simple to inscrutable. Fun and I think similar to the ideas presented here.

[@robrobusa]

The relaxed bit clashes for me with the cluttered environment i create better in a clean and orderly environment, because my brain is calmer. That said i love this talk.

[@Yadeehoo]

Wow that was truly amazing thanks

[@ashleyneku5432]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2873">47:53</a> "Nobody has modeled the stages of grief" Assuming you don't subscribe to the notion that Majora's Mask can very easily be a representation of every single stage, in their defined order, featuring characters whose personalities are literal representations of each described stage and very little else.

[@JoeDigital9]

Seriously good talk!

[@SpikeTheSpiker]

Amazing talk!

[@RglMrn]

Great talk. Thanks!

[@absurd0000]

Timeless Talk

[@MacShrike]

Thank you, all good.

[@DePistolero]

I have watched this on 1.5x speed and still watched it for about 3 hours.... Was thinking it would be better if I just screenshot the slides... and then he said writing by hand is great.

[@chakibbenssoum5723]

Hey, i got your book at home ! Such a good video :D

[@sub-jec-tiv]

I will always listen to people who have played everything from boardgames to Choplifter, Jumpman etc.

[@pixboi]

About statistics slide: I think that these kind of statistics can work, if they're just abstracted into an aesthetically pleasing way. You could think about the time attack again: How about rising water levels? Or a poison cloud that finally surround the map?

[@gazereaper]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="539">8:59</a> wow was he spot on about the AAA industry.

[@egoalter1276]

Closest thing to RTS without a map I can think of is incremental games like cultist simulator. Though balancing resource flow in realtime based on abdtract nodes is probably closer to grand strategy.

[@IcyLucario]

Awesome talk.

[@marc4708]

Really awesome! Thanks so much'

[@YouOpaOpa]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2420">40:20</a> "How cool would it be to play Space Invaders where your method of attack was Breakout?" that's basically Sky Racket and we started it in 2015 haha. It's available on Steam and Switch =)

[@DanielDroegeShow]

The part about the constraints reminds me about strategy. Often people think about a strategy as what you do or mistake it for a plan, but in reality a strategy is more about what you don't do, so you can do something else better. What does it mean when I can't see the wheelbarrow, but just an abstract idea of all wheelbarrows I have ever seen combined into one continually morphing image?

[@futurama140]

Very interesting. I love having my personal thoughts confirmed by a professional like this; I spent four years in prison, during which time I spent permuting the mechanical abilities of board games, card games, dice games, and so on, as well as creating new games. If you've ever played Uno using a deck of regular playing cards, if you've ever made a multi-player tabletop version of Harvest Moon, if you've ever adapted the mechanics of D&D to use binary checks rather than the bidenary (20 possible outcomes, I believe I have coined this term by cursory Googling) system, you may know what I'm talking about. I seemed to have reinvented the wheel (created and taught myself game theory) in absence of a wheel of my own, and it's so nice to know that I was not off in my conclusions!

[@EvgeniPetrov]

How did u end up in prison?

[@futurama140]

At 19 I allowed 16-17 year olds to bring liquor to, and drink at, my apartment, after I heard they were going to drink in the park before that. They call it "contributing to the delinquency of a minor by facilitation". No harm was meant... Learned my lesson though.

[@EvgeniPetrov]

Wow :( I wish you all the best I hope you have grown from that experience to be stronger person.

[@maddiejaksa]

I would love to hear about your trial and the conclusions of the judge to punish you so harshly.

[@futurama140]

There was no trial, I took a plea deal for a couple years probation. There usually isn't a trial when you admit what you did. However, I repeatedly violated probation each time with harsher penalties until I ended up in prison. That's more of an explanation than the situation merits, to be frank. That was nearly a decade ago now. The point I was trying to make was about the connections I had made in a situation where my tools were limited, agreeing with the lecturer.

[@bini420]

good talk

[@Metadaxe]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2505">41:45</a> Codex: Card Time Strategy is, as the name might imply, exactly this.

[@chaosordeal294]

If you don't play board games, you really don't know what's going on in gaming right now. The originality puts the video game industry to shame, honestly.

[@agentmith]

I know it has been a year after you posted this, but I’m curious as to what you meant here, or what you were referring to. Could you maybe provide some additional detail or insight? Thanks!

[@tymondabrowski12]

​@@agentmith There is a huge board games/card games/etc. physical games industry boom, at least in Europe. I think they just mean there is more innovation there.

[@DJVisser]

There's been a ton of innovation going on in board games the past 15-20 years. Lots of really interesting designs, systems and mechanics. These concepts are slowly finding their way into video games. Things like deck builders are just one example. You can see how that mechanic, and cards in general, have become prevalent in videogames over the past few years.

[@marfin4325]

It's sad that so many gamers think video games are upgraded board games. In reality the majority of board games are much more elegant and creative than the majority of video games.

[@sylenzos6869]

addition to adding axes idea: change the importance of axes too. A vertical fighting game. A shooter in anti-gravity space.

[@99TopHats]

When I listen to these talks I play sudoku because it helps me focus on what’s being said and I usually don’t have to look at the screen too often... so when he mentioned sudoku I was a little shook lol