Creativity: Unleash your hidden superpower!

Creativity is a great thing because each of us possesses it, even those who don't want to admit it. Sometimes it lurks in hidden corners and you don't even notice its presence. You do things and you're insanely creative and you don't even know it. That's why creativity is so powerful, precisely because it determines our lives like hardly anything else, like a gray eminence pulling the strings in the background, jumping out of the shadows, only to disappear again immediately.This power created Batman and Superman, the Lord of the Rings, Snickers, the Leopard tank as well as the power steering, let us invent the wheel, fly to the moon and, unfortunately, wage wars. Creativity is like the Force in Star Wars, it permeates everything and you can use it for good and evil alike. Sometimes someone invents a drug for incontinence, sometimes a mafia boss comes up with a more efficient torture method with cucumbers. Behind all these things is our ingenious creative power, which makes us godlike.

And although this invisible superpower is omnipresent, very few people can conjure it up or even control it. It often feels like it's not there when you need it most. And when you're in a flow, it's not uncommon for you to think of crazy things that may be creative in themselves, but are also absolutely impossible to implement.

Stephen King opened my eyes. "Life and Writing" describes our subconscious mind as an independent being that lives in the depths of our self and is the channel of our creativity. This second self is always suppressed by our superconscious, because it is always there, but its voice is nothing more than a whisper. You have to learn to listen to it and you have to take what it tells us seriously. Stephen King considers his subconscious mind to be an equal partner of himself. He describes it as a smoking, boozing scumbag who gave him all his good ideas for his bestsellers. But in order to get good ideas, you have to take seriously everything that your subconscious mind gives you. Most of these flashes of inspiration may be crap, unworkable crap, but underneath all the chaff are some little gems to find. Unfortunately, the subconscious mind is only a human being and when it realizes that you ignore it or don't take it for everyone, the quantity and quality of good ideas decrease massively.

Unlike Stephen, I have not yet been able to clearly identify my subconscious. I've been talking to him since I was a little kid, but I don't see him as a person in my mind's eye yet, I'm still working on that. But I always carry little notebooks around with me and write down everything that comes to mind, no matter how stupid, ludicrous and impossible the ideas may be. I always think of my subconscious and tell him "Yes, I take you seriously! Keep up the good work!"

I like to tell impromptu stories, these are little short stories that I just suck out of my fingers. With this I constantly train my subconscious. So it's pretty easy for me to write something in a very short time – often it doesn't make much sense, but I always come up with something for everything.When I'm brainstorming, I also write down everything that comes to mind.

The other day I came up with spells for a game, 80 pieces in about an hour, four pages of my notebook, without thinking, simply: BAMM! BAMM! BAMM!

"1: The player is getting faster."

"39: The player deals fire damage to an opponent."

"67: The player turns a low-poly model into a high-poly model to make the graphic artists sweat."

The last one, of course, is nonsense, but it occurred to me in the process of invention, so I didn't repress it, I just wrote it down. As a result, I killed two birds with one stone. I've shown my subconscious that I take it seriously and thus improved my cooperation with him and at the same time I've cleaned up my thinking, because when you write something down, it's crossed off the "I have to think about it right now" list in the brain and you have room to think about completely new things – very practical.

Let's take the level design. When I build levels for a game, I usually start with sketches and notes. I write down and paint everything as I imagine a level. In doing so, I let out everything that goes around in my head. Only one thing is important: to start.

Nothing is worse than the endless expanse of a blank white sheet. I'll start with a few crackles, stealing the paper's white innocence. And the less white I see, the easier it is for me to continue. I get into a creative frenzy: my flow.I don't filter, I just hit the poop: BAMM! BAMM! BAMM! There is no one who looks at me stupidly when I write nonsense. There is no censorship, no foreign expectations. I can give control to my subconscious mind and become an observer myself. It's not easy, but it usually works pretty well. It is not uncommon for small poems, sketches of flowers, labyrinths or some notes for curry dishes that I have always wanted to cook. And in the end, I have an incredible amount of data and, with a bit of luck, a single little idea that is so good that I can work with it.

That's the warm-up process. They once said about me "Unbeatable with pen and paper" – I would absolutely sign it. It's never wrong to tell your subconscious that it's fucking awesome! That's what the little guy lives on.

Once I've brought the creative engine up to operating temperature through this exercise, I'll first build a dozen levels with the means at my disposal – whether it's blocked out as a paper prototype or already in the engine. I'll let the pig out here too. Can I place enemies and environments? Super! Then I build a level with 100 enemies and a huge tower in the middle that looks like a donkey with a hat. Or I recreate the Brandenburg Gate with opponents. For me, it's always important and liberating to do a lot with few resources, even or especially when it breaks the rules. I don't have to show anyone the result of this phase either. I can incorporate my idea from the warm-up exercise or recreate certain small game situations. Game design is all about experiences. I want the player to feel what I feel when I build a level. From this point of view, game design and especially level design is just another kind of writing.

Now that I've built my first dozen levels, I'm writing a journey. This is a little story about a player who experiences a level of mine. And as I write them, I mentally rebuild the level until my protagonist has the most fun doing it. I can think of hundreds of things that could be developed to make the experience even more awesome. I make a note of everything, even though I know that hardly any of it can be implemented. But maybe it will be useful to me in another project.

After a journey is before a journey. As a level designer, I write all the time. My head feels like a can of Coke that has been shaken for too long. The more ideas I let out, the more emerge and take their toll. The man in my subconscious jumps around, sings and celebrates and I join in the celebration. In the end, I create a single level that meets my own requirements. But as soon as one level is there, more will follow, easier and faster. It's like the blank sheet of paper, as soon as you start writing, the frightening white loses its uncanny power.

This text also comes to a large extent from my subconscious. Halfway through, I left him at the helm. I experience again and again how young, inexperienced designers are afraid to let their inner strength break out. I see their huge potential, but also the fear of themselves – like Luke Skywalker, who simply didn't trust the Force and therefore couldn't lift his X-Wing out of the swamp.

So: Take your subconscious seriously! Shake off your fear! And, damn it, hit the poop! BAMM! BAMM! BAMM!