I was having a conversation with an acquaintance of mine earlier this week. Now, this kid is smart and has a level of creativity, with stuff that interests him and is based off familiar topics. I said level of creativity, not -creative-. Let’s call him Willy for the sake of argument. Willy, is an above average artist in most regards, particularly in the areas of environments and props and I’ve seen him pull out some compelling and solid ideas. However, when it comes to characters, he frequently gets frustrated and stymied by what he calls ‘boring or half-cocked characters.’
I decided to contact Willy earlier in the week, just to see how his progress at his school was going and he expressed frustration about creating a character, especially since he needed like 3 solid ideas and 30 silhouettes for each solid idea by class time that afternoon. Most of us know that Willy is up a real creek, especially since he had not come up with one idea he considered interesting. He asked me for help, so I offered him my solution as a writer and artist, when I have difficulty thinking up a character — I whip out Ninjawords (App for iPhone) and use it to pick a random word. I generally throw away a lot of words because on their own, they don’t work for generating an idea. Common nouns and verbs don’t work. Ten dollar words, the kind of words you see on the SAT or any number of placement and achievement exams are great starts. After shuffling through some fairly mundane logisms, I came across conurbation.
This interesting word means: noun – an extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities.
Within seconds, I was dashing out an idea for him. From conurbation, I came up with this idea of a middle aged, unreconstructed hippie who had broken off the grid and was living off the land in the rural areas outside a major metroplex. Now, urban sprawl had taken over and plowed his little paradise under. Now, he has to use the skills and instincts he had tuned after years of living in the woods to adapt living in the urban jungle. From there, I, myself was thinking of a lanky, athletic man, medium height with a short beard and short dreadlocks (don’t get caught in mechanical doohickeys), wearing utilitarian leather and linen clothes, decorated with pigeon and hawk feathers, while retaining his old walking stick which he also uses as a defensive device and to let him vault over things.
Sadly, Willy rejected it as boring and gave me all the reasons why he hates hippies. Despite your political views, I think it pays to be open to varied ideas. I mean, I had come up with that entire idea in less than five minutes and had a rough backstory for a character who potentially could be very striking, both visually and from a design/story standpoint. Craven, the idea of a reasonable coward soldier comes to mind almost immediately, but why is he a coward? Has a wife at home who is pregnant with their first child. He already had a close call and would like to be off the front lines. As a result, his anxieties take a hold of him and he hesitates. You could build a game around a character like that if you stretch your imagination a bit.
The point here, is I could come up with 5 interesting ideas in thirty minutes using my method, on a given day, just by playing with my little dictionary app a bit. I recommend giving it a try to see what you come up with.
Now, getting back to Willy, he is also a fan of anime and usually prefers things epic (think Transformers, 2012, lots of big explosions, out there concepts, so on and so forth), so it doesn’t surprise me that something like an unreconstructed hippie maintaining his lifestyle in new urban sprawl might not be super appealing. But it left me thinking, has the glut of ‘epic’ imagery, huge, sprawling storylines, and other artforms and the continuing encroachment of interactive media actually hampered creativity? Another colleague of mine was literally incapable, or at least claimed he was, unable to do anything other than fan art as it what he was comfortable with. Another fixated on two very narrow subjects and had little other interest. All of these individuals had varied talent in artistic medium, but they had a certain level of creative rigidity.
Mind you, this is not a knock, but a personal observation. It also led me to wonder if people who were aspiring to enter the gaming and entertainment industries were actually getting less creative as they increasingly relied on entertainment to be spoon fed or focused on very narrow subjects. From an (quasi-?) outsiders perspective, there seems to be a good deal of annualization going on as well, something a mentor of mine told me to fear as it dilutes creative processes — though I don’t know if it is a good thing or bad, as long as quality keeps being produced. The thing I want to posit, is if anyone in the industry, indie or big-company, or into modding, or just shooting the breeze about ideas, concepts, and characters has noticed a decrease in creativity lately and whether this is an effect of forces within the industry itself or extrinsic forces of more and more people trying to break in for their myriad reasons. I would like to hear your thoughts.
I have had some similar thoughts on this topic. I think it affects all areas of games and not just the art. I feel that too much of the inspiration behind games seems to be other games or movies. There seems to be a somewhat limited pool of ideas that include things such as war, anime etc. and games rarely go beyond these areas. The interesting new ideas come from looking where other people haven't looked. This could be in other mediums but more importantly it could be in *real life*. Explore the world (not necessarily by literal travel) and the sea of ideas that it holds. There is so much strangeness and wonder out there and if you can hold up even a dirty and broken mirror to reality, you will find something much more compelling than you would by using your imagination in a vaccuum.
Look at films and books. When someone has a unique life experience and they want to share it with the masses, then a film will be made or a book written. Why not have a game as the first port of call? I'm sure part of the reason for this is the lower barrier to entry for creating films and books and the wider audience that participate in them.
Edit: No doubt this is also because films and books are much more suited to telling stories.
Your "dictionary attack" method sounds like a good way of just getting your mind to places it would not otherwise be. Maybe you could add this method by actually visiting the part of your city that people like your character might inhabit and really observe them.
One must wonder...
If they've been exposed to this much media regarding the same subject they should know exactly what not to do.
If they want to make games that's one thing. If they want to make a difference in the game dev world, that's another matter entirely.
Within the ranks of aspiring game professionals, I've met a large number who have fixated on a particular genre, platform, series, or even a single game, accepting or rejecting ideas based on a perceived fit with their fixation.
I don't think these are youth problems, but more experience problems, though the two often correlate. I worked with a 30-something graphic designer in the 90s who was convinced he had explored everything he needed about the discipline and just made the same designs over and over. The Web killed his career, because he couldn't adapt. Similar problem, later in the career path.
On the original point of the article, I had a similar experience on a school project. I asked (as lead) a fellow designer to come up with 50 different ideas (for levels, for characters, etc). I didn't ask for anything specific or detailed or complex, I just wanted a bunch of ideas we could brainstorm around (plus to have as a back up later down the road). When he eventually gets back to me, he has two ideas in lengthy detail with six in his pocket that he didn't want to show because he didn't feel it was up to snuff. This sort of thing continued to happen during the project; he'd be so focused on trying to be 'awesome' that he became inflexible about everything. If I asked him about a defining thing in a level, he'd get stymied for an answer; as before, I wasn't looking for something that blew me out of the water, just something that we could say "This is the X level".
The unfortunate part is that one of his ideas that he mentioned off hand in a private talk would have made for a much better game and project, in hindsight. But this idea he felt too simple, not cool, etc.
On a different but related thought to the original article, I bounce around the internet on various trips (as it were). Often times, I stumble across various web games. I've noticed a trend that in most any sort of open ended free form game, people tend to create a very limited set of characters. They want to create awesome characters from the things they know so they create Superman or Conan or whatever... just slightly different. But in games where things are much more restricted or limited, the characters tend to veer away from strict formula and stock value. The restrictions force them to adapt and find creative ways to do what they want.
Perhaps then, the ready available of tools and such has, as a result, given aspiring developers the illusion that they can do anything (which, isn't an illusion, true, but one would hardly expect someone with no experience to create Half-Life 2 with a two-man team in their spare time or even any successful mod). And with this lack of barriers, they get so many choices that they can't do anything. The lack of barriers means they start of trying to create something (scope wise) big instead of taking one step at a time on something focused. Minecraft probably didn't start off as "Make a world with physics like Dwarf Fortress" but as one feature.
This, I suppose, sort of ties in to what the first thing was. People trying to be like Braid or whatever; they're trying to be the rock star that shoots out of no where to fame and fortune with one big hit. And if they miss that first hit, they feel like they've failed forever. Despite the transparency in the video game industry and the semi-ease in understanding what goes on, I think it's precisely this creative side that is so mysterious that people on the outside or at the bottom forget about it. I always mention to people that mention Braid that yes, Braid was made by two people in their garage... but Mr. Blow also spent something like 200K of his own money to fund the project and he also had a professional career before Braid. Most mod projects and most indie projects are as much the product of professionals as they are amateurs and it's often just as good to make a modest project as to make an underground critical darling. Scope and scale is as important as critical acclaim; if you don't make something, you can't make everything.
I think it was Malcolm Gladwell that said something along the lines of "By providing too many choices, we become paralyzed by the choice. Too much choice is as bad as no choice at all."
This isn't to say I'm not a creative person, but perhaps more that my creativity ends up being goal-directed and depth-first instead of exploratory and breadth-first. I'm far more comfortable improvising and iterating within a set of predefined parameters (genre, theme, etc) than I am at generating ideas without the safety and familiarity of those constraints. While not necessarily a terrible thing, this strikes me as constraining and possibly even stifling.
I think that a relevant question to ask here would be: how can one cultivate a more exploratory and less constrained sense of creativity?
I unintentionally followed this exact path and am hugely appreciative of it, but it really is an expensive route to take, both in time and finances.
Please note that I'm just saying "in theory". Of course, higher education isn't the only way to get creativity-building life experience; I've often envied my friends who have taken off to the four corners of the world for months at a time, hearing all their unbelievable stories and imagining all those untold. But no matter how you put it, four+ additional years of systematic schooling is definitely a way to be exposed to a good number of ideas and experiences you wouldn't have otherwise.
Actually, I now see that you wrote another piece about almost the exact same topic, "The Case For Traditional Education For Prospective Industry Candidates", so perhaps you agree somewhat :)
Roughly, 30% of the projects are about naruto, another 30% are MMO, 10% is BOTH naruto and MMO, and the rest are other staple stuff (survival horrors 3D shooter or adventure, fantasy RPGs, anime fighting game...).
There are like 0.1% of the games, that are something actually interesting.
There were friends of mine who went into the art department as relatively normal, happy people and who emerged frustrated and angry. The reason, as far as I could see it, was that they were being told that their artistic gift was worthless unless they could come up with some unique "hook" for their work. They weren't encouraged to develop their creativity -- instead, they were told that they didn't *have* any real artistry unless they could find some gimmick that clearly distinguished their work from everybody else's.
The result was that a lot of good artists became disillusioned and bitter because they believed their teachers who told them their work had to be uniquely great immediately or they simply didn't have any real talent.
As someone with no artistic skill, and who thus appreciates that gift, I hated seeing this process. Sadly, it sounds like people might still be hearing the same nonsense today: be astonishingly great immediately or you have no business working in that field.
Baloney! Do it because you love it and you enjoy the process of getting better at it. If the stars align and something you create clicks with a lot of people, you'll be capable of enjoying your good fortune.
And even if the stars never align, you'll have had a satisfying life doing something useful that you like and are skillful in. How is that a bad thing?
Or young/old, really any designer could also be too "proud" to honestly consider the ideas and criticisms of others. But that's something you must choose to do on your own...
I definitely hear you on that, and it's something I've always tried to actively avoid doing myself. Nobody is immune to feeling proud about their creations or the inherent bias it leads to. The best game designers are often the best at not just accepting good constructive criticism (many people simply won't listen) but also having the ability to act upon it properly (many simply don't change things).
It sucks, sucks, sucks to take something you made and love and rip it apart, but 100% of the time it turns out better in the end, and usually a LOT better. And besides, you've always got backups :)
And it's not that someone can't learn how to be creative. I just get the impression that when young kids with artistic skill enter the industry, they think by virtue of skill that they are artists... and artists are unquestionably creative.
It's hard for me to find fascinating details in the mundane as well.
You both have different "wells" from which to pull ideas from. So what if Willy wants broad-shouldered ronin that transcends dimensions? Is "hippie with a stick" that much better?
Willy's young. He's still trying to find a strategy that works for him. What you think is "less creative" is the kind of awkward fumbling that everyone in a creative process goes through. Although your process of attacking the situation is solid, Willy will probably find a completely different approach that will satisfy his needs.
Andrew Calhoun's friend liked Anime and Maurício Gomes talked about the Naruto rush on his website. One thing leads me to believe (partially as a studier of Anime) that they are both fascinated with one type of anime and not the broad spectrum. Comparing Ponyo to Samurai Champloo to Akira you still see a vast difference in the medium. However, its none of those being talked about but instead just Naruto.
With Video Games brings the same problems. Fan-girls and boys obsess over series of games like Final Fantasy and Call of Duty. Both of those are specific aspects of their respective genres though. Comparing WoW to Eve just because they are MMO's and deciding which one is better brings about a massive problem.
We emulate what we like and fail to use good concepts in games we dislike. I think Morrowind had some great concepts, but combining it with concepts from Divinity 2 and the Witcher would make it better. Pigeon holing yourself from not using anything good from the God of War like games just because the games have rubbed you the wrong way in the past will limit choices to stuff you do like. If all someone likes is Persona then all they will try to replicate is Persona. Creativity is strangled then when we try to make a "fps like MoH" unless we try to innovate by stepping outside that niche.
I think its crucial for any game that is in the development process to look at what they have and ask are we doing anything new and innovative. Character and level design are some of the most expressive ways you can change an entire game to give a better experience. Team Fortress 2 and Star Wars: Battlefront took apart fundamentals of what it was to be a FPS and they struck on gold.
because people like playing that awful dante's inferno nonsense...
in a game dev class, a boy was trying to make a "civil war mmo" but what he really meant was "red vs blue". what? this is the future of games? get some artists, some architects, some philosophers, some novelists in there that respect video games and want to further what it means to make a video game. oh wait, none of those people took csc 101 in college and will never be able to get a job with a game company : /
He sets out with the idea "I cannot make good characters" and thus each new idea he creates he rejects. He sets himself up to lose. The reason he rejects your idea is because he doesn't like it and if he doesn't like it why would his target audience, people like him (which he is ultimately aiming for) like it?
The thing you don't mention is if you asked him how many character ideas he originally had and why he rejected them. He might have had dozens of ideas and rejected them for valid reasons (maybe not) but you don't know for sure unless you ask.
Another somewhat related point: Some people just don't find many things all that interesting. We all 'draw' inspiration from things we like and if someone only finds three or four things interesting then they are bound to be unproductive and uncreative in a sense. It may not even be their fault, maybe they haven't been willfully ignorant and maybe if they knew how to distinguish between things they dislike and things they like inside things they dislike they would prove to be much more creative than They originally appear to be.
Influence and interest go hand in hand.
I mean if I ever made a film it sure wouldn't be about big robots blowing shit up.
As you stated, different strokes for different folks as the old saw goes. Willy tends to err on willfully ignorant in my experience with him, but honestly his heart is in the right place most of the time. Like I said before, there is a long maturing process of being an artist and/or designer, as I've seen it in myself and others around me.
I have another question, is there anyone who is in the industry and leads a team or hires that has come across 'narrow-subject' artists and designers, and how did it work out? I'm curious.