Game design is a creative field that requires constant learning, experimentation, and innovation. However, sometimes game designers may feel stuck, bored, or uninspired by their own projects or the industry trends. How can game designers improve their creative skills and keep their passion alive? Here are some tips to help you boost your creativity and become a better game designer.
One of the best ways to improve your creative skills as a game designer is to play games. Not just the games that you are working on or the ones that are popular, but also games from different genres, platforms, cultures, and eras. Playing games can expose you to new ideas, mechanics, aesthetics, and stories that can inspire your own work. Playing games can also help you analyze what makes a game fun, engaging, and memorable, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of different design choices.
Play games from different perspectives: -As a gamer what do you enjoy about them and why. What is it you are missing, anything that annoys you. - As a designer. How do the mechanics work? What did the team want to achieve? Can you see which emotions were targeted? How are they teaching the mechanics of the game? - As a critic. Compared to other games of the genre and market what is executed well, what is not hitting the standard.
Play the good, the bad, and the ugly. Research is the cornerstone of a good design, otherwise you risk a tonedeaf result or a lackluster experience. Knowing what makes players tick and checking the reviews (user AND critic) lets you understand reception. Play games with a Designer’s mindset. Try to understand what kind of model is the Game’s Designer attempting to install in your head, and what kind of Player Experience is being served. It’s OK to try to be original, but being too original is a double-edged sword!
Game design is not only influenced by games, but also by other fields of art, science, and culture. Learning from other fields can help you broaden your horizons, discover new connections, and generate original concepts. For example, you can learn from music, literature, film, architecture, psychology, history, sociology, and more. You can also learn from other creative professionals, such as writers, artists, programmers, and entrepreneurs, and see how they approach their projects, solve problems, and express their vision.
Game Designers are essentially polymaths! Take Worldbuilding as an example. The list of topics and disciplines involved grows exponentially based on Genre, Setting, and Theme. You need to tailor an experience where you can turn world concepts into mechanics and gameplay. There are cases where an IP is not a good source material to create a Game. From a production standpoint, fields such as Narrative, Screenwriting, UX, and even Project Management provide Technical, Creative, Theoretical, and Practical input for Game Design. This is crucial when dealing with specific domains and themes. Get an expert and learn from that field. You don’t want your players to call you out on things you got wrong from one of their hobbies or beloved topics!
Before game design, I had experience in music production, and having knowledge of music helped me increase my artistic consciousness.
Another way to improve your creative skills as a game designer is to experiment and prototype. Experimentation and prototyping are essential parts of the game design process, as they allow you to test your ideas, get feedback, and iterate. Experimenting and prototyping can also help you explore new possibilities, challenge your assumptions, and learn from your failures. You can experiment and prototype with different tools, methods, and formats, such as paper, digital, physical, or hybrid. You can also experiment and prototype with different aspects of game design, such as gameplay, narrative, art, sound, or user interface.
Fail fast and be smart about prototypes. Try to nail down the core of your Player Experience first, and build around that. Keep hammering until it takes shape, or be ready to discard it eventually. Don’t discard the idea, just the prototype. If not today, that idea can be useful in the future! Use quick tools provided by engines (such as Unreal’s Blueprints) to help you out and don’t focus on technical prowess at first. Try to nail down the “flow”. On the other hand, If you’re in production use your toolbox and think carefully about requesting changes or new features just to test things out. Those cost time and money. If you’re going for the core of the fun, focus on gameplay and use placeholders (check Splatoon’s Tofu Prototype!).
Take a game that already exists and challenge yourself with problems: what if you had to add a new feature. What if you change the theme/setting. You have to get rid of one of the mechanics of the game: which one and how would you still make it work.
Game design is a collaborative and communicative field, as it involves working with other people, such as team members, clients, players, and stakeholders. Collaborating and communicating can help you improve your creative skills as a game designer, as they enable you to share your ideas, get feedback, and learn from others. Collaborating and communicating can also help you develop your interpersonal, leadership, and presentation skills, which are important for any game designer. You can collaborate and communicate with different people, such as peers, mentors, experts, or communities, and use different platforms, such as online, offline, or hybrid.
The last tip to improve your creative skills as a game designer is to reflect and improve. Reflection and improvement are crucial for any creative professional, as they allow you to evaluate your work, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and set your goals. Reflection and improvement can also help you grow as a game designer, as they enable you to learn from your experiences, adapt to changes, and overcome challenges. You can reflect and improve with different tools, such as journals, portfolios, feedback, or metrics, and use different strategies, such as self-assessment, peer review, or performance evaluation.
This may be controversial, but my personal take is that creativity is the human skill of connect or bridge two concepts that seem to not be connected. So, one way to improve your creativity is to work with exercises like 100:10:1 where you write. 100 one-liners for game ideas you pick 10 from those and expand them into a paragraph and you pick 1 and create as much detail as possible.
Practicing is a good way to improve and a good way to practice is participating in events and having personal projects. Game Jams are the first thing that come to my mind but sometimes there's other events that work too like Blocktober. Having a game to work on in your free time helps too. You can also try to make games of different genres that you are used to. Playing different kinds of games helps you to learn more ways to design a game.