How to get Game Ideas

Question

Getting a good video game ideas is difficult sometimes. I often have trouble getting ideas and narrowing them down. I thought I'd start a thread for people to post ideas on getting the process started. Thanks in advance for any replies!

Answer 1

I think reference is always the very first thing you should look out for during creative process. I'm a graphic designer, been workin as such for the past 6 or 7 years. Telling you from experience... nothing is 100% new. Everything has little bits and pieces from here and there. Start thinking of games you like, then think of games with innovative and cool mechanics and systems you like. Then narrow it down to your skills and what you're capable/willing to create. Starting from there, it'll be way easier to have new ideas. Hope this helped you :)

Comments

Thanks for your reply, its very true that you get a lot of ideas from video games you have played. I appreciate the input. :)

Answer 2

Play all the games you can from the 80's. "Computers" like the Commodore C64 and Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and others had games where the concepts of today's games were created. Almost everything we play today was "invented" back there.

The "trick" is to rediscover the concepts, ignore all the artwork and think on a twist or two to make that concept new again - think on Castle Wolfenstein ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Wolfenstein ), how it influenced so many games and how, even today's releases have that concept in their genes. It's almost the same thing with new technology and other enemies (police, military, terrorists, zombies, whatever you can think of).

We live in a time where "new" is just a remix of "old" - we call it reengineering :-D
Does this makes any sense to you?

Comments

thanks for your answer. A lot of my good ideas have come from my thinking about the games i like :)

Answer 3

Just try to observe around you or to say view your surroundings with another dimension to get game ideas.you can also get goood game ideas from other games.(you can even copy some ideas which are not officially released but just for demo or tutorial )

Answer 4

While the other answers already help to find inspiration, there is another way to "Get game ideas": by asking for one.

People around you might have amazing game ideas that they will never make themselves; but that you could try to make for them (and yourself). You could even ask for an idea in the Projects section.

Another, slightly different approach, is to tag along on an existing project. By working with someone else, or even in a bigger group, you can discover many tricks while working less.

Answer 5

The pain of wishing that a game you love had certain features or didn't have others but there is nothing you can do about it (unless you can mod it) gets my mind racing. I guess you can create a game like the one you love but loaded with other tons of feautures and without the boring stuff.