"Original" ideas and variants of them
polycounter lvl 11
Shae Tanasychuk thread about game art cliches gave me an idea. Its quite hard for me, being immersed in a very popularity-driven society, to come up with actual original or even seldom used ideas.
What original or semi original game setting/world setting/game mechanic etc ideas have you guys come up with or even just heard of/read about?
There are two that come to my mind.
The first was a book in a series I read awhile back which I can not remember the name of. The setting was a world at war in a style similiar to ww1, but had magic. Most of the technology was magic derivatives of ww1 war tech with a few exceptions. For example the basic infantry gun was essentially a wand that could be used by anyone. It was charged by mages/sourcerers. There where also railroads that where restricted to traveling along lay lines because thats where they drew their power from.
Another interesting idea I read in a sci-fi short story involved a universe made up of multiple dimensions. In the story corporations where able to find other dimensions (theres a unlimited number) and then gain access to them to exploit that new found dimension. They would have total control of that dimension for 20 years.
Afterward it was fair game to anyone who could make the trip. The idea was that each dimension has different properties of course. The corporation would have to find a dimension close enough to ours to survive, but worthwhile to exploit. A dimension worth exploiting for example might have a lower melting point to metal or some such thing.
Oh yeah an I thought the movie "The Mutant Chronicles" was somewhat original, though a hybrid of several common themes.
What original or semi original game setting/world setting/game mechanic etc ideas have you guys come up with or even just heard of/read about?
There are two that come to my mind.
The first was a book in a series I read awhile back which I can not remember the name of. The setting was a world at war in a style similiar to ww1, but had magic. Most of the technology was magic derivatives of ww1 war tech with a few exceptions. For example the basic infantry gun was essentially a wand that could be used by anyone. It was charged by mages/sourcerers. There where also railroads that where restricted to traveling along lay lines because thats where they drew their power from.
Another interesting idea I read in a sci-fi short story involved a universe made up of multiple dimensions. In the story corporations where able to find other dimensions (theres a unlimited number) and then gain access to them to exploit that new found dimension. They would have total control of that dimension for 20 years.
Afterward it was fair game to anyone who could make the trip. The idea was that each dimension has different properties of course. The corporation would have to find a dimension close enough to ours to survive, but worthwhile to exploit. A dimension worth exploiting for example might have a lower melting point to metal or some such thing.
Oh yeah an I thought the movie "The Mutant Chronicles" was somewhat original, though a hybrid of several common themes.
Replies
Your ideas sound exactly like Wolfenstein though... The magic and multiple dimensions in a WW1/2 setting.
Failure to understand this makes creativity difficult.
Creativity is a rather simple process. Take things you know and add things you normally wouldn't expect to go with them. Analyze, experiment, refine, repeat. It doesn't have to be rigid on in that order, but the basic steps are always there.
WWI with magic?
WWI where both sides are aliens.
WWI where both sides are aliens that can teleport.
WWI where both sides are aliens that can teleport resulting in the exact opposite of trench warfare - never being able to sit in one place.
WWI where both sides are aliens that can teleport resulting in the exact opposite of trench warfare - never being able to sit in one place. but at a brutal stalemate nonetheless, providing an interesting message about the futility of war regardless of the specifics.
WWI, aliens, teleporting, anti-war messaging. All pretty generic stuff on their own but there's a decent chance that story doesn't already exist. It might, but doesn't strike me as particularly common at least.
Point is, there's no excuse for a lack of creativity beyond not thinking enough.
Theres a new film coming out soon called Conception, with Leanardo Di Caprio. I think this has taken some elements from the above game, the clip of the city moving upwards.
One of my own ideas is about this alien world, where upon everyones eighteenth birthday, they are gifted a tank. Fully armoured and ammoed up and compact controllable by a single person, then let loose.
Lets look at the recent zombie boom in video games. Zombies hadn't been done in mass but suddenly started appearing in MANY leading titles across consoles, handheld devices, and computer games. Why?
Zombies work in games because they work perfectly on an art, gameplay, and emotional level. Zombies all look the same, this saves texture space. Zombies are dumb and work in groups behaving in a similar simple manner, saving ai calculations, they also fight with their hands and mouth so ranged attacks don't bombard the player ruining gameplay. And last but not least, players know what zombies are and everyone HATES zombies, or at the very least loves killing them!
Were zombies completely original? No, they'd existed in other media for decades, but realizing that zombies would be the perfect video game enemy and getting it all to work took plenty of creativity.
So what could the next villian be? How about vampires? Real time lighting is getting better and better in games, an enemy that's destroyed by light could be very interesting to fight. Most levels would have hints of lighting and the player would be armed with flares, flashlights, flashbangs, maybe high powered lasers and interesting "light" weapons to fight off hordes of vampires. Lighting would double as a weapon and a gameplay element, players would have to light their way, but also save light for use as a weapon, items like mirrors or destructable walls would allow for additional light. Is it much of a revolutionary step from zombies? Not really. But it takes into account what's new on computer hardware. We're not limited in terms of ideas, rather we're limited by the platform we're developing for. Look at what's new there, derive your creative ideas from that.
http://www.news.com.au/national/spot-the-difference-artist-sam-leach-denies-plagiarising-dutch-master/story-e6frfkvr-1225853423386
he painted this:
based off
and won 25 grand in the process
rhythm game + mmo
spells are cast in a similar way to the hunting horn in Monster hunter, it would use the server based timing to arrange the notes like LOTR online so everyone is on the same timing.
the style I have in mind is totally off the walls crazy shit, I mean, in a world were music is a weapon anything is fair game.
Boss fight: giant floating monkey head spewing eyeball-doughboy monsters out of it's eye sockets.
WWI could still be the visual motif--
Where is your original idea, or do you just shit on other people's ideas?
Here is mine:
a multiplayer game where two teams of guys fight over the favors of a character played by a girl.
I would love to make a bird of prey simulator, just soaring around the thermals and then spotting a rabbit, diving down, grabbing it and ripping it to pieces! Violence with a context, lovely!
This idea is full of win. Kind of Assassin's Creed meets Thief, with a Dick Turpin theme. Maybe some RPG elements, using looted valuables to buy better flintlocks etc.
Unless you meant Sid Meier's The Highwaymen, a strategy game based on the country supergroup featuring Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. Now that would be original.
I've seen a few posts about having war torn settings, but with aliens or whatever. I think that actually could be cool. But so many games focus around war and conflict.
I think it could be interesting if someone could do an addative environment, that could be cool. In Mass Effect 2, on Jack's loyalty mission, you go to a jungle type of planet, and they mention that the reason you can't land on the actual surface is because the plants grow so fast that any landing pads built would become quickly overgrown.
I think the biggest hurdle with creating a place like that is obviously the tech, and we a just now getting to have truly destructible environments with Red Faction. But seriously, how cool would be a "Day of the Triffids" game be, with alien plants VISIBLY growing overeverything in front of you, not just after you come from a loading screen or whatever.
And thank you Elhrrah, that is the book/series I was thinking of.
I'm using a lot of inspiration from Dune, Bioshock, and the Dark Elf Trilogy. When I get enough time I'll probably write a book about it. I'll let your imagination wonder.
but he is an android:)
For some of my game ideas, I toss the concept of originality right out the window. The truth is, one of the best ways to design a game is to not design it at all. Game "designs" can't actually be patented. So it is a trivial matter to take an existing game design that you know is solid, and then simply create your own, hopefully more polished, version of it. This is commonly referred to as "cloning." Although this practice is commonly looked down on, it is hard to argue with some of the results. And it is definitely one of the more financially stable strategies, since a large part of the work has already been done by someone else.
The latest game concept I came up with was a point-and-click adventure of sorts.
You'd play as a lone, old bachelor, who always believed that destiny would, at some point, deliver him his dream wife. He has even gone so far as to outline her name, looks, preferences and quirks in his head, and with whatever he does, he imagines doing it with her.
One day, he is notified that the woman living in the appartment above him has died. They've never and he had, in fact, never heard of her, but it appears that she bore the same name as he had given his dream wife and looked exactly like her too. The man falls into shock; being retired, meeting his dream wife was the only thing he lived for. Now, she may have died before they even met. Is there such a thing as destiny? Can you waste your chance at it?
The 'game' would consist of finding out what actually happened. Was his upstairs neighbour really his dream wife? Did a former meeting between them that he forgot about form the image in his mind? The character would, for example, see a dream of himself and his dream wife/neighbour playing together as children. The task is now to find out, digging through archives and interviewing people, if they ever lived in the same town or attended the same school, to see if the dream could have been true.
Themes would be finding love, destiny, wasting your life, the ailments of getting older, the weakness of memory, and so forth. The art would be lively and warm in dreams, visions and memories, but dull in the real world, with the colours changing gradually, but unnoticeably slow, when the mood of the character changes. The only problem that stops me from actually making a mock-up is that counter-checking facts doesn't sound like fun gameplay.
Add some combat in there and I'd play it, for sure.
Heh...evolving that a bit. In a massive AI vs. Human war the AI Robots develop a nanomachine that turns everything into grey goo( (organic compounds left over after the nanobots break them down.)but is controlable by the AI of course.
Afterward the AI intelligence realizes what it has done (due to what "humanity" the AI has developed) and decides to create artificial life by synthesizing and organizing organic compounds, but gets some things wrong. Trees with blood and pulsating blood vessels, variants of organic life mixed with mechanical and electronic parts, etc. All "growing" ontop of the grey goo.
The player starts off with a small band of other "people" believing hey where survivors, but finds out later on that they where created by the AI to be approximate representations of the species they wiped out. The creation turning on the creator then the creations creation turning against the first creation.
Another option - after the Grey Goo incident, some robots are stricken with guilt, and go the OPPOSITE route of cyberpunk.
Rather than try to recreate organic life, they graft artificially grown organic parts onto themselves, in an attempt to be more "human". Where it goes from there, who knows.
Games havent really been around for that long. Roughly over twenty years compared to movies thats not alot and the other medias its nothing at all.
The art of games are still being developed, it has along way to go before it is perfected. Its only a matter of technology and time before it is. Most of game development now is based on copying and building off of flawed design elements, mostly because of monetary reasons.
Its only cliche because everyone is pushing towards the same ceiling, once thats, reached then we may see more creativity in games(perhaps also when the engineers have grown balls).
Another unique universe is Flatland by Edwin A Abbott.
There was a time when you'd never have heard people discussing ideas for their game and saying, "Well that's cool, but it doesn't really fit into the universe we're trying to establish". Everybody wants to make Star Wars, only theirs, now. People are thinking about what will and won't be in their universe or what the central conflict between the different characters might be, or what art style they might want to use for everything, before even knowing how the game will be played.
That approach makes some sense for something like an adventure or RP game, where the story is most of the fun, but for any kind of action game, it's just asking for the same old stuff to come up. Novel thematic ideas don't make games more original. You could take Quake 3 and make it into WW2 furries battling obese alien dominatrices for political control of the moon, with art made to look like 1980s Claymation and weapons all designed around Super Soakers-- But it'd still just be Quake 3 again. After playing for a few hours, when the art shock wears off, there's nothing new to be experienced.
That said, I always thought it'd be cool to have a game where you're a squirrel and you just do squirrel things. You get to run up walls and trees super fast and run across power lines and branches, and you collect food and eat it or stash it around the city for later. In mating season, you do their whole thing and try to produce offspring. There are cats and stuff too, and traffic. You can play however you want, but the implied goal is just to keep your squirrel alive as long as possible. The real fun is just getting around from place to place.
EG: Birdwatching, potentially fun hobby and use of time. Counts as entertainment.
Make a birdwatching game, and it will be called a waste of time, and or boring etc.
Likewise
Shooting anything that moves. Good for a video game, not so good for real life., also makes for a generally boring movie.
most of the ideas on these pages are about using realworld story mechanics to try and create something interesting, not interesting gameplay motifs to then build a world around which was much more common when you had no power to represent complex stuff so motifs or abstracted ideas worked better....this led to much more creativity IMO
games are currently going through a renaissance of sorts, theres a general struggle to produce the most realistic believable worlds (and were getting there in terms of graphics anyway), im hoping that games will follow painting, and that once the holy grail of realism has been achieved there will be a mass revolution of bored customers looking for new stuff and original creativity will once again be the mainstream of the industry not the periphery. all hail the giant button in the sky
original (pffffssst) idea- FPS you play a random AI character from COD4 (or somesuch) who by freak of nature (maybe a lightning strike on 360 while spawning) becomes self aware, first you escape the nightmare of the game your born into (agggh your a pacifist in a uniform, you never wanted to go to war, no one even asked you) and onto the harddrive, and into the other games....here it gets interesting...you play the games in FPS even if theyre mechanic shouldn't work in that IE 2d side scrolling platformer, you can beat each game traditionally, or in a portal esque moments by using the idea that your not really part of the systems design break it by going behind the scenes....say you meet up with the main character in this RPG whos a short ass with a big head, he says he always wanted to see what was out there, but coul never jump over the invisible walls, you being a realistic sized man could...
waffle and cheese
that was more sarcastic than i meant.:poly122: It sounds like a fun game, bu once you get through the characters backstory it sounds exactly like Reboot, and that pretty much brings you right back to the top of the thread doesn't it?
[ame]