What do you do to spark your creativity?

[Dennis Ploeger]

Hi everybody!

Do you know the feeling, when you're lying in your bed and the best game idea ever pops up in your mind, you stand up and the second you turn on your system you only stare at your desktop and suddenly lost the will to actually create that game?

Well, I know that feeling -- a lot.

With adventure game developing being the ultimate creative work there is - at least when doing it all yourself - it's really hard to get the creativity you need to actually be developing a whole game.

Well, think about it. Adventure game developing means writing (game development), drawing (backgrounds+sprites), composing (music/sounds) and doing logical stuff (programming/scripting).

So with all you developers, that I admire, who actually done games - and great games, that is - my question is: how do you actually spark your creativity - and hold it -, so that you can create complete games in only a few months?

I actually have all the ideas I need; I even nearly completed a game design document. But that's it. My creativity only lasted during making "One Day A Mosquito" - and that game's nearly thirty seconds long.

I'd like to do something great, a medium-length or even a full game and I really think, that I would have the abilities to write, design and compose. But how?

Help me here, please.

Thanks!

deep

[Raggit]

I've never finished a game, but I've written many stories.Ã, 

You're not always going to have inspiration.Ã,  If you can find inspiration by reading your favorite book, watching your favorite movie, or playing your favorite adventure game, great!

But sometimes you have to sit down and FORCE yourself to write even when you don't want to.Ã,  Once you get going, you'll see it start to come together, and you'll get really excited.Ã,  That, in turn, will help motivate you to continue.Ã, 

That's how I keep moving with stories and things I get stumped on.Ã, 

P.S.

Sometimes it's easier to recruite a few helpers to do the things you aren't too good at, and would only slow you down to have to do yourself. 

[ManicMatt]

Not claiming my game is "great", as that would be egotistical of me, but I suffered motivational issues, not creativity ones.

Still, to keep the making process interesting I would make sure it's varied. I know some people will just make all the backgrounds first, then the characters, then the scripting etc, but I did a bit of each thing at a time, so it never got boring. More or less, one room at a time. (Or area)

For inspiration to spark - with anything - for me, sitting down and thinking hard doesn't result in the best ideas. For me, the best ideas come to me when I'm relaxed and not trying to force it. Sometimes I'll just be in bed in the middle of the night and get an idea, and I have to write it down before I can sleep again. Or having a shower for some reason.

[Babar]

For me, at least, there is no nice way to grab hold and keep hold of the creativity. Once I get the idea, I have to start working. The creativity might last me enough for a few backgrounds. Maybe a character or two. The story even. But then, there are going to be points where I hate the idea of making the game. And there are going to be points where I just want to give up. The only way I held on was by remembering what an awesome idea it was, and how great it's gonna be once it's finished.

Unfortunately, I haven't had the willpower to complete anything recently. My AGS folder is full of almost completely empty game folders. Of the 2 games I've displayed, one can be completed in 3 minutes, and one can be completed in 1 minute.

....It seems Game Creation is a bit like constipation.

[Squinky]

I find that when I need a little pick me up creatively, it helps to crack open a bottle of Crown Royal and wander down to the rail road tracks and pay a destitute woman to vacuum my floor. Sometimes it helps if I throw ping pong balls at her while she does it....

[Raggit]

Squinky, that's very special. 

[Dennis Ploeger]

Gosh, I sincerely hope, Peter Selleck is not my dad...

[Gregjazz]

Everyone runs into that issue: how do you hold your creativity? How do you get and keep inspiration?

The trick is that many people are only good at working when they are inspired, but what you really need to practice is working without inspiration. That could be writing a song without inspiration, making a game without inspiration. You will soon find that after working on the song, picture, or game for a little bit, inspiration will show up. It's just starting without inspiration that's the hardest.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

But sometimes you have to sit down and FORCE yourself to write even when you don't want to.  Once you get going, you'll see it start to come together, and you'll get really excited.  That, in turn, will help motivate you to continue.

This isn't really true, at least not for me.  After having written 3 novels now, I find I can only write productively if I'm 'in the zone'.  If I sit down and have no desire whatever to be there, the writing is stale and my lack of excitement is reflected in what I write.  The same is true of making games:  whether or not other people enjoyed Dance Til' You Drop, I had a great time making it and just had fun the four days it took to throw together.  You have to realize that even if you are excited about something and go all out people may still not like it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it anyway.

[Gregjazz]

That's the way it is with most people--you can really only work well when you're "in the zone." How do you get in the zone? My point is that working well when you're not in the zone is a skill of itself, although it usually leads to bringing you into the zone.

Being a musician I have to deal with this all the time, and I'm sure Nikolas could tell you a thing or two about having to write songs when you're not in the zone, or when you have no inspiration. This semester I'm in a Jazz composition class, which has been great practice for writing tunes when I don't always have inspiration or feel like writing a tune. But the deadlines dictate otherwise.

As for writing, I'm sure you've experienced that feeling where you have the greatest difficulty writing just a paragraph in the beginning of your writing session, but after that, this flow starts, and you can't stop writing! In this sense, inspiration and creativity is generated when there was previously very little or none.

[Baron]

While sitting down and forcing yourself to be inspired does work for me -eventually - it does so often at the expense of the joy that making AGS games otherwise brings me.  Booze helps, although I've never tried that ping pong ball thing.....  It is not that I encourage anyone to become an alcoholic, but the decrease in inhibition and intrinsic fun of drinking by itself make it hard to argue against as a motivating factor.
    What I find works best for inspiration is intentionally ignoring the project.  I keep myself relatively busy with work/school/sports/ travel/camping/gardening etc., and inspiration strikes at the strangest times.  Then I can't wait to implement that inspiration in my game, but being busy keeps me from it.  The longer I spend from the game, the more eager I become to work on it, until at last there is a spare moment and I'm in peak form both inspirationally and motivationally. 
     Other things that work:  Don't overdo it all at once.  I know the feeling when you're on fire and you're making real headway -it's awesome!  But then there's the crash afterwards and you can't even bear to think of sitting down at the project again for a week.  Little bits add up quickly if you're consistent.   I find that in general if I work on my game for an hour first thing in the morning or between 9-11pm at night I'm at my best, but I'm sure it's different for different people.  I'd recommend experimenting with different work habits -shake the boat, so to speak -and see what happens.

[Nikolas]

Well...

What exactly is inspiration?

In my case it is a single idea (a message rather), or a mathematical thingy, or a form, or maybe a single musical texture. The rest is hard work, or experience. Where do the ideas coming from? Have no real idea, but usually they hit me while doing something else. Or better, they are taken from something else. Silly example: You see a movie and then you decide how cool it would be to make a game out of it! While there was a while in the past a game about MacGyver, it took soooo many years for something to come up with it. So it is something special, even if so obvious!

You CAN tell a story in a few lines. You CAN make an idea with 2% of work!

Other than that, without inspiration you can always work and produce good results.

I've checked with other composers as well with the main question of "how much music do you compose annually?". The answer is around 2-3 hours! Which seems to be as huge. (BTW, this is 3-4 computer games, or 2 movies, or 3-4 albums, or 10 ensemble pieces, or... It's a lot!). When I checked on how they do it, the response was unonimous (since I don't think that I could ever come up with that much music, although I have to this year): Quality varies. After a while the basic "talent" one has is to produce what he is wanted to produce, when he is needed, in the deadline. It won't be a masterpiece, but it will do the work. Then in vacation you can worry about masterpieces...

A simple and brilliant example of the "forcing" to work is the 1 hour games, no? Somebody throws an idea and then 2-3 games come up in an hour or so. I don't think that everybody will "want" to make the game with that given theme! But they maybe in the mood!

Of course when talking about fun having (game making and so on, as in AGS for example, which is the case in most games...) then no one should be "forced" to do it...

But indeed having the 1-2%, which is the main idea, the inspiration if you will, is enough to keep you (me) going to the end.

As Greg says, it is a skill and it takes practice. People who have an open source of inspiration or will in their head, are really lucky...

[LimpingFish]

Cocaine.

[Afflict]

Its always been the same for me.

I can relate to deepgames comment, well let me tell you what i know.

Creativity is sparked from everything, every person you meet every time you hear something that touches you, the face of the special person in your life. I cannot but help be inspired in any event in my life.

A fight, love, anything.

I have taken one lesson to heart, Write don't let anybody ever stop you from writing doodling drawing anything! You will read it later... And go wow! I was reading documents I wrote in 2004, 2005. I stopped to write back then. Well The lost love I experienced, drived me to stop writing. The last things I wrote was the poetry songs and literature I wrote to her.

She was touched by the emotion that one person can have for another. (Thats a whole other story.)

Regardless any event in your life can inspire you, I can sit down (relating to the force topic mentioned above) and force myself into that mind set of hate, anger, passion, love or any other feeling i can remember to become and generate those feelings.

Ps: Don't wait to boot your PC, have a notepad and start sketching your images dreams creative talents immediately when you wake up, or cant sleep. Don't wait! My most creative moments where at like 2 am in the morning!

Regards,

Afflict.

[Adamski]

Deadlines help. As Geoffkhan has said, it's possible after much practise to switch the "in the zone" mode on and off which is something anyone who wants to be a professional in their chosen field must be able to do. When the deadline is looming there's not much choice other than to get that creativity forcefully sparked!

When it comes to my own personal game where there aren't any deadlines I tend to be inspired when I recieve a new bit of art, or when the people helping me out are busying away creating stuff - some spore of creativity is let out into the air and I find myself unable to do anything but work on new assets or work with the assets other people have gracefully done for me. Other people's input can fire off dormant neutrons in odd directions and give rise to new ideas and usually rejuvanated excitement/interest in what you're doing.

[Vince Twelve]

I find that never switching the "in the zone" mode off works for me.  I do all my best designing in the shower.  (both Anna and WLBSWHEAC were conceived and designed entirely in my head during showers) I also do all my best coding in the shower.  Not that I have a computer in there or anything, I just puzzle over ways to get around tricky bits of code (lots of that in WLBSWHEAC) while in the shower. 

Unless I have more people with whom I need to coordinate development, I rarely keep a real design document.  I find that it's much easier to keep it in my head where I can edit and change things without having to deal with computery things.

When I'm out of the shower, I'm still working in my head.  I usually carry around a piece of scratch paper and a pen (I need to upgrade to a notebook) and write down ideas, plans, code, whatever, so when I get interupted by real life, I can start right back where I stopped.  This way, I never really lose my "in the zone mode."

However, my wife has insisted that I stop writing notes during sex.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

As for writing, I'm sure you've experienced that feeling where you have the greatest difficulty writing just a paragraph in the beginning of your writing session, but after that, this flow starts, and you can't stop writing!

Not really.  I either know what I'm going to do or I focus on something else until I do.  In that way I guess I can maximize the quality of what I'm creating rather than a bunch of non-creative garbage before getting a decent idea again.  Then again, I'm very rarely without an idea to work with.  Ultimately I'm not really a fan of the 'suffer through it' school of creativity.  I think that when it comes go with it and when it's not there just shift gears to something else that interests you for awhile!

[LimpingFish]

Notepads are handy. Keep mine close at all times. And a pencil too, not a pen. A pen is hard to write with when you're lying in bed. Unless it's one of those NASA, upside-down, anti-gravity doohickeys. Which it isn't.

[TheYak]

I think forcing yourself is sometimes important.  It at least helps with finishing a project you didn't have the drive to complete.  Depending upon the medium, you can often go back and add some inspiration to the parts you just muddled through. 

One thing I didn't see mentioned was New Stuff.  It often gives me a new boost of enthusiasm for something whether it's material, theoretical - as long as it's new and interesting to me.  A game I'm playing but stopped after awhile often gets finished after I get a new video or audio card.  I've never released an AGS game (aside from a for-friends one), but I do tend to progress quite a bit if I'm trying out some new shareware graphics program, or downloading and playing with one of SSH's or Strazer's new modules. 

I usually don't end up using the plug-in or module, probably won't continue using the new unfamiliar pixeling program (aside from Pixen for the Mac, which is pretty handy), but it makes it all look new and interesting again, and it always feels good going back to the comfortable programs or code base I'm used to. 

[Oneway]

The consumption of certain liquids is forcing me to be completely honest so you can trust me on this: Inspiration is only 5% the entire process.
Once you get an idea that YOU can get excited about, it is worth exploring. If you've explored the idea and are still excited about it you have a potential game on your hands.

From this point on, everything you do is a gamble. Even if you think after careful concideration that your game is revutionary, it may not be. If you keep thinking it's going to be the next AGS corker, it may not be. Keep telling yourself this: "If there was somthing that kept me interested while i thought out the details, there WILL be someone that will find this game worth playing. DON'T have the ego to think that your opinion is unique. If you thought about it one way at a certain point, chances are you'll be able to find a public who thinks likewise.

My last point should be your mantra throughout the entire game-development process; "My game is worth making." It is inevitable that at some point you'll start doubting your skills, creativity, insight, being enough to be able to make a decent game. GOBBLEDEGOO!!
There are enough games out there that deserve merit on their concept alone, not their execution. Trus me, a good idea is the most inportant thing you need. The rest will come to you via the critics lounge and lots of practice. If, after caferull thought, you game still seems worth creating, then it is. No matter what!

Indeed, at some point during development there will be a stage where you question the point of it all, and if you'll ever be able to offer the players the experience you had envisioned. But trust me, once you've passed the conceptual stage and are still certain of your idea being a good one, go for it all the way and don't give up untill you have released at least something.

Even if it doesn't end up to be the new buzz around the AGS forums, people here are friendly enough to offer you their critisisms and alternatives in a way that can help you develop your style and skill without the need to feel embarressed about yourself. So don't keep yourself from releasing someting you don't deem worthy, it may be the best thing you ever did!

Good luck!