GDCNext 2014: Practical Creativity slides

 Posted by (Visited 7704 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Nov 032014
 

Slide1Today I delivered a lecture at GDCNext that was my tips for “practical creativity.” Basically, it’s a collection of techniques, habits, and ways of thinking drawn not only from lots of reading and research into creativity in general, but also my experience in visual, writerly, musical, and ludic arts. It touches on breaking down craft elements in games, on choosing ambitious and unusual themes, on simple lifestyle habits, on the power of “scenius” and collaborators, and much more.

I wanted this to be deeply practical. I myself have been using these methods a lot in the last year — maybe slacking a lot on the “get regular exercise” one. And it’s been very fruitful for me, almost too fruitful, pushing my prototype hit rate over 90%.

I really wanted to emphasize the fact that in all this, the craft is inseparable from the art, too. Creativity in craft drives creativity in art, and vice versa.

The talk was recorded and no doubt will appear, given time, on the GDCVault. In the meantime, here are the slides, presented without notes or anything. So you’ll miss out on the many times I interrupted the presentation and put the attendees directly on the spot to create new ideas on the fly using the techniques presented. My favorites: the game that actually taught dancing in psecific dance styles like the tango, and the game about learning how to ride a bicycle.

The eagle-eyed may spot a slide with the description of a new boardgame of mine that is testing really well so far, a romance novel game…

  15 Responses to “GDCNext 2014: Practical Creativity slides”

  1. Angel says:
    November 4, 2014 at 12:38 am

    . But Raph, we don’t care about that, we want a new UO!

  2. Andrzej Marczewski says:
    November 4, 2014 at 3:12 am

    Fantastic presentation, added to my must read collection!!!

  3. Jonathan Baron says:
    November 4, 2014 at 5:54 am

    That’s a LOT of content for one talk, Raph….great content though. Loved the Gone Home example. Also enjoyed the almost Victorian art style – a nifty contrast. Outstanding!

  4. Dr. Cat says:
    November 4, 2014 at 9:38 pm

    How do you measure “prototype hit rate”? Is it based on “whether I think my prototype is good”, or some other criterion?

  5. Raph Koster says:
    November 5, 2014 at 8:51 am

    In the past, I would get ideas, strt to try them out, often even have to get them through prototype and play them for a while before I realized they didn’t work. Maybe 10% of ideas actually worked out well enough to go with, and often they weren’t great, just OK.

    Now, I triage most stuff when still in the note-taking stage. If it makes it past a couple of sentences, I can likely get a playable that is actually fun within a few hours, and the games overall are more fun than they used to be, as core loops. They also all test beter — I’ve been aggressive about just taking them places and demanding that people play them. 🙂

  6. Anonymous Game Journo Interview – CritPoints says:
    June 7, 2015 at 2:59 pm

    […] anyone wrangle what innovate means? It’s been done: https://www.raphkoster.com/2014/11/03/gdcnext-2014-practical-creativity-slides/ There are a billion and a half ideas that nobody is considering for the genres we’ve already […]

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.