Idea's and Concept Materials - The Computer Game Design Book

Design Inspirations

• Real life and Literature

'The best practise for any would-be designer is to seek out as many different kinds of experiences as possible.' 

Don't play loads of games - you will only end up making more of the same.

Look far and wide into other cultural activities such as literature, art, philosophy and history.

Deus ex designer's Warren Spector and Harvey Smith used classical and modern literature in the games, some of the environments are real places in the world and there is the feature of giving the controller moral choices. This freedom of choice made the game seem more real. 

Another two example's of real life is Pokemon - (Satoshi Taijiri) and Mario/Zelda (Shigeru Miyamoto)

Satoshi used to collect bugs when he was a little kid, this enthusiasm caused him to try collect as many as he could in many different ways. This later on in life lead him to the idea of pocket monsters (pokemon) when he discovered his love for games

Shigeru used to explore the countryside when he was young, seeing all the striking natural features, lakes and concealed caves. This later on in life lead him to provide material for landscapes in things such as mario and zelda. Then later on in life he was gardening and the inspiration for Pikmin came to him - the idea of exploring a microcosm. 

• Sketchbooks and Notebooks 

It's good practise  to keep a sketchbook or notebook on you at all times. Then you can jot your ideas down as they come. Collect snippets of things and images you find interesting. Use photographs of things from real life wether it be a facial expression of someone to sketch from or a building's shape you may like - use these photographs as inspiration. Also sketch real life, if you see something quickly you like or see sketch it down so you don't forget it. use your sketchbook as a place to work out hidden structures, designs will be more credible if you know them inside out.

REMEMBER - a sketchbook is a place your imagination can run riot - don't feel pressured into finishing a design or sketch - just experiment and see what happens.

• THINK LATERALLY

It's all too easy to give up on a good idea too fast - with the 'seen it before' response, to counter this force yourself to think of different responses to familiar situations - to think laterally 

COD 2 - for example call of duty two had 'magical' heath packs. You'd get hit then pray there was a 'magical' heath pack somewhere soon. This healed your character straight away, moving over the green first aid box - this wasn't very realistic. But then being incapacitated would be too realistic and become boring every time you got shot. So they created a solution - that if i player was shot the screen would flash red, player vision would blur and his ability to aim would be decreased. Add in a sound effect of the played in pain gasping for air the controller would know that they were in trouble. If the player received no further damage health would return to normal - personally i know that i much prefer this type of game play to old style picking up heath packs - it's so much more fun and realistic to have to wait and think about strategy instead of just rushing straight in.

This solution was made form the designers thinking laterally and asking the questions -

 'what if there weren't any?' - 'why are they there?' 

the answer is an innovative approach that wasn't seen in other games at the time. 

Learn to ask these awkward questions - then seek to answer them. 

• Independent games developers 

these are small companies dedicated to exploring subjects that big games companies don't have the time to do cause there busy making big hits. Smaller companies creating indie games can explore concepts and themes to their hearts content. Such as Beautiful Katamari - a game i absolutely love on the xbox, you roll rubbish around picking up more and more getting bigger and bigger - it sounds a little boring but it's really not. you end up being able to roll cities together and you just keep growing and growing - great game. 

There's also two main events for indie developers - 

The independent games festival 

Indie Game Jam 

many of games at these find their way to mainstream - i'm gonna look more into this, i'm very interested in indie games

Gathering Materials

• The internet - use all kinds of search engines and a variety of search topics
• Wikipedia - yes it can be unreliable but through this you could find related topics you never would have thought of before - use wiki!
• Gamasutra website - post-mortems of game productions written by games designers
• Game design site's - not only review and fan sites but also sites dedicated to discussing the profession, nature and sociology of games design. 
• First hand material - gathering information from your local surroundings and capturing images. 'Does that roof look like a ufo? maybe the old memorial in the centre of town looks like a pillar in a dark dungeon' 
• Use the environment around you - se how things may look turned upside down, put into different contexts, enlarged or reduced in size, things put in water. 
• Real life inspirations - travel if you can - see texture's, environments, meet people, different times of the day - sunset's, night time etc... get out into the world - it's there for your inspiration!