How do you guys come up with ideas for games?

[Mashew]

Besides copying ideas from pre-existing games. How do you guys come up with ideas for your next game?

I have been sitting around for a day and a half trying to find a good and not already done game to (try) to make. Any ways you find useful to think of your next game?

[papillon]

How do you *not* come up with ideas for games? I have ideas coming out of my ears and not nearly enough time to do them. :) And I also have the annoying tendency to, whenever faced with a new challenge/concept/task, to think '... how would I make a game out of that?'

[esrix]

Sometimes, I will look at games and think specifically what I don't like about them. Then, I might try to come up with an idea with something along the lines of "It would be interesting if you could do this..."

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

[Ratboy]

You could mix the mechanics of two unrelated games, stir in a random genre, and see what that inspires. For instance: Cosmic Chasms + Super Mario Bros + Lovecraftian Horror = a game where you are running around the squamous, peristaltic insides of a giant elder god, trying to plant a holy hand grenade by its foul otherworldly heart, and escape before the beast dies.

[lennard]

How do you *not* come up with ideas for games? I have ideas coming out of my ears and not nearly enough time to do them. :) And I also have the annoying tendency to, whenever faced with a new challenge/concept/task, to think '... how would I make a game out of that?'

Totally. Way too many game ideas, not enough time in a life time. Current events, walking down the street, having dinner with family - game ideas constantly present themselves. The real trick is culling them down and making the best choice for what to start next.

[Musenik]

The Witch's Yarn came about because I was trying to solve what I thought was the problem with adventure games (at that time). I was mainly wrong about the problem, but my attempt at a solution has a lot of potential I hope someday to mine again.

The idea behind Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble came from playing a better than average card and dice game. A series of epiphanies resulted after realizing its structure was a incredibly simple, party based RPG.

To sum up:

Play lots of games.

Never be satisfied. :-)

[Spore Man]

Besides copying ideas from pre-existing games. How do you guys come up with ideas for your next game?
I've bolded the key point in his question... It *IS* really hard to think of games that are completely original.

For me, most of my ideas are derivative, unfortunately. I have a hard time finding the luxury of pure research and experimentation time. :(

[GolfHacker]

I get ideas all the time. Some are good, some not so. Some are based on other games I've played that I have liked, some aren't.

For me, my most original ideas come when I'm not looking for them. That's how Fashion Cents got started - wasn't even looking for a game idea about dressing up dolls, but it just materialized out of thin air one day.

Just about all of my ideas come from experiences I've had, things I've observed, places I've visited - none of which are necessarily game-related. You've just got to slow down, evaluate what's happening around you, and watch for ideas.

Here are some good features on creativity in games. Maybe these will get your creativity furnace going (note, you'll probably need a free account here if you don't already have one):
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050429/adams_01.shtml
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041203/koster_01.shtml
http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050307/postcard-diamante.htm
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050207/carless_01.shtml
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020531/adams_01.htm
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010129/adams_01.htm

[moose6912]

I am a geek, so I get my ideas from reading about mathematical puzzles, strategies and algorithm and think, "Hmmm, this algorithm could make a nice puzzle game, or a strategy game".

A lot of TV helps me too :)

[Nikos Beck]

I usually look at a game, pick on it, then try to fix what I don't like.

Another approach is to pick out what makes a game unique and see if it applies to different game.

For example, I hate losing my Queen in Chess. In Stratego the Spy can only beat your best game piece (initally Marshal, then General if the Marshal is killed). Can I replace the Queen in Chess in some way if it's lost? I have a royal family of a King, Queen, Prince (moves like a King) and Princess (moves like a King). If the King dies, the Prince becomes the King and the Queen becomes the Queen mother; I've not lost the game but I've been hurt. If the King and Prince die, the Princess becomes a King/Queen. There are now four targets that need to be killed before the game is over. This will probably extend the game by hours. But, now I can afford to lose a Queen because I have a spare.

I prefer the "take something unique and try it somewhere else" because sometimes trying to fit a square peg into a round hole is the best part. You usually wittle your square peg into a polygon and drill your round hole into a polygon so that they fit together.

After an hour of additional brainstorming this idea might turn to mud. If so, pick something out that seemed like a good idea and try again. Maybe have a royal family that all move like Kings and give Queen movement to a General. If the General dies, then a Knight is promoted to General and a Pawn is promoted to Knight. Now I have what I wanted, an endless supply of Queens, and I can survive if my King is killed. I can tinker with this idea for hours.

[vjvj]

I get lots of ideas all the time as well. Though the best ones seem to come when I'm either dreaming or flashing back on some of those college drugs, haha.

[Sol_HSA]

Figuring out game ideas is often an excersize in reducing the toolset. If you start off with "everything's possible", you may find it difficult to figure out what you can play with..

In other words, pick up a dictionary, flip open a random page, stab the page with your finger, and take the word that you hit. If it's too general, (like 'have') repeat until you end up with something more specific. Then think about it for a day or two. Weird things may happen.

If you look at game contests on the net, they often rotate around having a theme, and these are very often single word themes - like gravity, shadows, liquid, horde, infection, fire, springs, etc.

You could also start off by limiting yourself in another way. For example, take drawrect() as the _only_ graphics element you may use. Think about it - it's surprising how interesting games you can end up doing with it.

And now, after you've pondered on the ideas for a while, you may find that you're trying to bend the theme towards some idea you fell in love with, just to satisfy the theme requirement - forget the theme, do what you love instead.

[Applewood]

This is like asking "How do you actually prove that 2+2=4 ?"

If you're struggling for game ideas, surely nothing said here is going to help.

[Nikos Beck]

I asked a writer the same question. He shrugged his shoulders and said "it's a black box". He wants to get a point across so he puts a couple of people together to discuss the point. He plays with words and mannerisms, environment, setting, relationship. Tweaking all of the things around this conversation can generate back-story, why these people are talking about it. But, in the end, writing is a talent more than it's a skill that can be learned from scratch.

[Cartman]

I read retro magazines, play some MAME (arcade) games, old DOS/Mac games. Then I think about which games I liked the most growing up and focus on those. Everyone has their different ways of research. Some people I know(myself included) get inspiration from RPG strategy guides.

[Coyote]

You know, I struggled with this at one point, until I started just actively looking for ideas all the time in everything I did. "How can I turn this into a game?" is the question I'd ask no matter what I was doing.

The amazing thing was that after doing this for a couple of months, I found I didn't need to ask the question anymore. Ideas would come. Most of them wouldn't be any good, but there were probably a few marketable ideas in there.

I haven't really cultivated that for a while, but I think it IS something that can come with practice.

[ProgrammingFreak]

I play multiple games. Then I try and think of a way of how I can combine the things I like about the games and try and put them all into one, leave out the stuff I don't like.

[Twitchfactor]

When I first started making games, back in the 80's, I would look at another game and think, "I like it but..." or "that's a good idea, but..." and start from there. That still is my motivation from time-to-time, but not so much nowadays.

When I used to "work for da man" and made "those evil retail games", a lot of the ideas I had stopped coming. Or actually, they came but because I knew; how much, how long, sales potential, I shut down the ideas.

Nowadays, I guess I'm "indie" and the ideas have come back. Actually, I just stop suppressing them. I don't stop any idea, whether they; off the wall, rip offs, sequels, remakes, evolutionary, "innovative", whatever...

In short, don't throw any ideas out. I'm sure you came up with many valid ideas and threw them out. Just roll with it.

(BTW, ideas are free, execution costs.)

[Dyno Kid]

Alot of my ideas come from games long gone, as an older developer (37 soon)
I played too many games in my childhood and still remember the excitment when C&VG came through the letter box (a video games magazine)
The spectrum, the amstrad, the C-64 ahhhh what memories:) 30 minutes for a cassette to load almost in a trance watching those multi coloured lines and then.........crash it didnt load, no big deal try again:)

Then i remember going into Mays in Leicester to buy my Sega Master System with outrun and ninja and not going out for 4 weeks:)

To say I was a hard core gamer was an understatement, I got an imported Snes (American) because the UK pal was 17.5% slower and had massive black borders top and bottem and hey i wanted to play games at the proper speed full screen:)

Still remember going into Loughborough to pick up Snes Bomberman and a multitap for some 4 player fun so im glad im an oldy as i would of hated to miss out on all those great games.

Darren.

[AnttiKi]

To elaborate a little on this subject, I think the answer depends a lot on what you consider a game idea. Is it a "need" for a game (I'd like to make a two-player sports tactics board game that wouldn't take up three hours of my life as BloodBowl does) or do you just consider core game mechanics or those combined with the main game story to be the idea?

For me, the starting point for a new concept is usually the "need" or the utility of the game or whatshouldicallit. The example given above is one of my actual starting points for a game design. Another one was: I'd like to create a social game that promotes story-telling as the main mechanic making it a competitive but not too fierce a story-telling game (my kind of "bad examples" of these kinds of games where "Once Upon a Time" (the quality of the stories isn't really included in the mechanic) and several methods of improv storytelling (no game there)).

If the need is unique (there isn't a game that would fill the need already) I think that the most of the time the game mechanics that fill the "need" will be unique, too. So the rest of the work is "just" figuring out what kind of game would "ease the itch" in question, so to speak.

So, I think I managed to say just about same as everybody else, but with a lot of more words. Sorry 'bout that.

[Tr00jg]

Whenever I had to "think" up a game, it sucked horribly. The best ideas "come" to me. I guess that doesn't help, but like the people above me said.

Actively ask yourself, "How can I turn this into a game?". Ideas will come.

In fact today, I came up with a totally new (awesome) idea quite accidentally when I misread someone's text on a chat channel. :P

[Jamie W]

I just steal my ideas from other people, doens't everyone?

[Nikos Beck]

I just steal my ideas from other people, doens't everyone?

Yeah! But you stole those from me too!