How can you generate engaging game ideas based on popular culture?

A subset topic I like for more core projects are “niches.” Niches can be a very exciting place to be authentic and to speak with audiences that are both passionate for specific content and great evangelists. Niches can also be quite wide if you choose the right ones and drive significant commercial success.

We are living in the age of rapid information exchange. Trends appear and die very fast. So there is an extra difficult task to understand what cultural aspect that is active at the moment within your target audience will be relevant in the nearest future. Games take time to make. The cultural reference you were making in the game might turn stale and become irrelevant when you release. The best way to use cultural references is when they are still fresh - for short seasonal activities within a live game or in your marketing materials.

Prototyping is my secret weapon in the development process. Crafting a polished prototype before diving into the production stage allows me to envision the final product in advance, It's a game-changer that transforms ideas into tangible, refined solutions. By sharing a refined prototype early on, i can see the idea's effectiveness in the target audience.

Different stories lend themselves better to different audiences and different presentations. Let's take Marvel, just for the sake of example. Even just the different characters would lend themselves to different types of play styles, storytelling motifs, genres, audiences, etc. For example, Hawkeye and Black Widow are superspies/assassins. You could make a game focusing on either or both more like a Metal Gear Solid-type or Splinter Cell-type of game. However, if you design their games like what would work for any other individual Marvel hero, it would lose sight of the audience, the storytelling philosophy, the design aesthetic, etc.

Depends on the game you're making there are various different approaches. If you are a AAA company, then don't touch pop culture. Since the development cycle is so long and we're living in the age of the internet, some of the interests can disappear halfway through the cycle and then what? Do you need to change the game? So stick to super-known pop culture or something, that will feed on old references. If you are making a small indie game or working on a gamejam then yeah, you totally can, and maybe even need to, take the references from something fresh. Just to make your life easier and to give quicker information to players, since the topic is new.

Engross yourself in culture. Anything can be a source of inspiration. Travel, go to museums. Watch obscure films. Read old newspapers. My key bit of advice though is to focus on the part of the world that is closest to you. You'll find you can do this location and culture the best justice.

Don't mix references, unless you are super experienced, and even then think about it A LOT. If you mix at least two pop culture things, you have an opportunity to get hated by both of the fandoms around it. Just because people like gory things, it doesn't mean, that you can mix Dracula: Dead and Loving It with Jennifer's Body (please don't). Choose one, work on it and you can add a small touch of something if you really need it.

Taking inspiration from big hits is something we all do, it's how ideas are created. But it's important to create something new from that, otherwise, it would be like a "cheap copy" of the big hit. I always like to do regular things when searching for inspiration. The brain works better when it's relaxed. The most important thing is that you like your own idea. Never go with popular culture, that's how soulless companies are born. Always try to do something you truly believe is breathtaking, even if it's not gonna be a big hit.

Being on top of the new cultural bomb and working on your toes is essential. As you very well know, the new big thing on the cultural space will not be that big soon, therefore you have to decide and act very rapidly. The examples I remember from the short past was around Squid Game. Within the release of the show O saw dozens of hypercasual games based on "Red Light, Green Light" game. Those games will not make you a successful publisher but will help you to make your pile in a short period of time. On the other hand, don't ever ever ever forget the copyrights and act accordingly.

You absolutely can copy and imitate original source (if you have permission to do it). Not every story needs to be another spin on something. There are many books, movies and even podcasts that I would love to walk the same steps as the characters are. As Engineer Mamoń in a Polish movie "The Cruise" said - I only like the song I already heard. Many people say, that they love new things, but in the end they will go to a restaurant and have the same thing they always had. Same thing with games - that's why we have so many sequels and prequels. If you want to play safe - play safe and don't over think it.

Modify the original source to your own liking, if it's similar that's okay; if it's too different, that's okay too. But, remember this: if the original source is better than your product, and there's not even that much of a difference, you will only serve as a channel to promote the original source. We are all a little creative, own your idea, and do crazy things with it.

In my experience, the best approach is to get the first audience feedback as fast as possible. Do you have a great idea? Decomposite on phases and focus on the first core phase and publish for a few weeks. Might be target audience will not need your game or you will get valuable feedback and will be able to adjust and apply the necessary transformation for your idea. Next please sure you have all channels to get feedback and get insights from analytics. For mobile game dev, it can be d2retention, session average time, CPI, and of course feedback on stores. The latest trend is to test creative, visual concepts of your idea before any dev and at least check the fast high-level interest of the audience to install your game.

Fail fast. As with any idea, it's important to determine as early as possible if your game has potential. You can rapidly prototype using physical objects if necessary, drawing inspiration from board game design. Then, gather as many people as you can to test your prototypes until you discover what makes the game enjoyable aka "find the fun".

As others have said: fail fast. Fear is the killer of success. You'll see many flaws in your product, so what? Just do it, try it, get some people to test it, and fix everything. Don't try to make a perfect product, because that's not going to happen. You only need to make it good enough and learn enough things from the feedback you recieve, so the next game you make is even better.

You can use whatever you want, just get permission. Also check, whether something is in the public domain or not. If it's in the public domain, adding credits about your source of inspiration is purely due to respect.

If something isn't in public domain and you want to use it, get permission and the necessary licenses to build within that story. Individual creations and worlds have their own legacy. And there has to be a certain level of respect for the origins in order to get the permission. If the creator wants a certain level of creative input and that is part of the terms and conditions for the license, you have to follow through with that.

Don't be afraid to admit that your game is inspired by some other games. It's totally fine that your idea is not original but a combination of three or four different games. Just make sure to use your own settings, create your own world, use original or free-to-use commercial assets, etc. Always check licenses for assets if you plan to use them commercially.

The game has to be fun! Which means you need game designers and a core game loop that sticks. It doesn’t matter how well-loved an IP is, the mechanics have to rise to the occasion!

There's an opposite to this that I think is worth mentioning. You need to be aware when your content might be too aligned to something negative happening in real life. I worked on a game where we had the inciting incident be a bomb going off at a gathering in a popular port city. We were about three weeks out from launching when the Boston Marathon Bombing happened. We had to change the content, out of respect for the dead and injured. We didn't want to look like we were taking their pain and commodifying it for entertainment. It would've appeared ghoulish, opportunistic, and a superficial exploration of terrorism...and we knew we could do better. We could explore that topic later, but now was not the time.

You need to time these ideas right and have a pulse on the trends your inspiration comes from. A long standing nice community will likely be a gauranteed audience albeit smaller than a recent major blockbuster. Jumping on a pop culture Trend too late could mean you have “missed the boat” so to speak or the market is over saturated with that particular IP.

Have fun. There's something incredibly rewarding about working 16 hours per day on your own product, but it burns like hell. In no time, you'll be hating your own game and be very negative about everything. Give yourself some space, explore new ideas, and don't be afraid of doing a game for a small audience. They are usually the best fans your company can get. If you are a game developer, you love games. Don't fall for popular culture. Be your own culture, and share it with other people.