When holding the box of a game, it’s difficult to realize the amount of work required to make it real: thousands and thousands of hours spent by artists, developers, planners, musicians and others. But it’s often harder to imagine how, in the very infancy of the project, an idea turned into a game concept, which itself turned into a game.

While, fortunately, there is no universal rule for finding the next great game idea (this is a creative industry after all), there are definitely some patterns that are worth exploring:

 Games designed in accordance or in reaction to a genre,
 Games inspired by a specific theme,
 Games that showcase a new technique.
 Games focused on an interface innovation,
 Games that illustrate a given graphical style, and
 Games based around an activity,

Of course, most games innovate in several of these categories. Every game has a theme and a graphical style, virtually all of them propose technical innovations, most of them belong to a distinctive genre and quite a few of them have innovative controls, or enable the player to do things that they weren’t able to in other games.

But in this article, we will focus on the ideas which are at the very beginning of the game design process, the ideas that turn a white page into a game design draft.

Evolution of the genre

In quite a few cases, the developers know that they want to work on a definite genre. This decision will strongly structure their game design. From a production point of view, a genre is a set of conventions, which can cover display, interface or game rules (i.e. how does the player win, why does the player lose) among other things. But game genres are much more significant from the player point of view. The way the game market is organized today encourages players to have preferences in terms of genres, that is, to define themselves as fans of such or such genre. Therefore, creating a game of a definite genre is a customer-oriented decision, which enables players to perceive the game better, according to their preferences.

These genre conventions have been shaped by the many games that belong to one given genre. While what an "FPS" is is clear for most players, each time a developer creates a new FPS, they will interpret these conventions and naturally, they will bring something new, something that had never been tried before, even if this is a minor feature. Sometimes, the ambition of the developers is to take the genre to the next level by actively questioning those game conventions, which form the limits of the genre. That was probably on the mind of the fine people at Valve when they designed the seminal Half-Life. Technically, thematically, artistically, the game is not very different from the standards of the time. But from a design point of view, it is the first serious attempt to create a scripted adventure using the FPS media.

Other examples include Final Fantasy, which gave depth to the RPG genre by revolutioning the progression system, then the combat mechanics; or Warcraft II, which, among many features, introduced the "fog of war", which is now present in almost all modern RTS games.

Sometimes, the game definition could be a reaction to the genre game rules. Tenchu, while firmly entrenched in the adventure/action category, broke the tradition by which it was considered a good thing to finish a level as quickly as possible. Tenchu players are encouraged to take their time to finish a level, and are rewarded if they are not seen. Likewise, Prince of Persia is a platform game, but instead of letting the player die a fixed number of times, the rules give them a certain time to beat the game. Each time the hero dies and has to start the level again, the player loses time.

Illustration of a theme

If you were commisionned by a big publisher to create a game about skateboard, chances are that you wouldn’t think of a card-trading game first [1]. In many occasions, the choice of a theme comes first - especially for license games. The theme is then naturally translated in game terms.

Like genres, themes are more significant to players than to game creators, who chose a theme because they estimate that it will gather public interest - again, this is especially true of license games. Indeed, players are also encouraged to define their preferences in terms of themes. Starting a game concept from a theme is also a player-centric decision.

While some themes are very classic (ninjas, robots, sacred swords and laser beams, among others), some are quite unique - which doesn’t mean that they can’t be integrated in a classic game form. The world of Skies of Arcadia is composed of islands floating in the skies, where the heroes travel on some kind of flying pirate ship. While the game is indeed a classic RPG, with levels, weapons upgrade, special attacks and end-level bosses, its settings allowed the game designers to include flying ship battles, and to turn the game experience into something really novel.

Some games have been so successful at illustrating a theme, that now that theme belongs to them and other games using that very theme will be suspected with plagiarism - this could be the case for Resident Evil and zombies, or GTA and gang wars.

Some themes have been so overused that their evocation won’t convey anything special to the player. An RPG could take place in a fantasy middle-age, but as opposed to what? And some will be so far away from their centers of interest that they won’t bring any value to the game either. Like, Wall Street Kid for the NES wasn’t a very fortunate choice of themes. Just because a theme is unique doesn’t mean it’s good.

While from the gamers’ side, the demand for each theme has been relatively stable over the years, on the supply side, some themes receive much developer’s attention during short periods of time. Over the last 5 years, there has been quite a few games related to WWII, especially FPS (Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Battlefield 1942, Brothers in Arms), a theme which was not very popular until then. Likewise, there are now many crime-based games, following the success of GTA. But there are fewer, say, alien invasion games or cop games than in the 90s.

One technique that, if properly used, can yield interesting themes is that of uchronia. It’s about imagining how the world would have evolved if some event did or did not happened. You’ve seen it work in Red Alert (Einstein invented a time machine and used it to kill Hitler before WWII, so Russia grew in power unhampered and eventually battled with the West in the 70s), Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams (space travel in the Victorian era), Lionheart, Iron Storm...

Introduce a technique

The progress in the science of videogames enable developers to use techniques which they often know well in theory, but which they haven’t been able to use in commercial games because the previous generation of hardware couldn’t handle it. Players don’t really care about technique per se. Sure, they will appreciate if the game lives up to its ambitions. Some will also buy in what the press says about the technical prowesses of the game, which is the tip of the iceberg. They don’t know what were the programming choices of the team, what tools they developped or how such or such routine was cleverly optimized. For these reasons, unlike genre and theme, basing a game concept on a technical breakthrough is very much a developer-centric approach.

The main justification of these games is to introduce an innovative technique and to base the whole game on how to showcase that. The best example are engine games, that is, games that are powered by engines that are commercialized separately to developers (such as Doom 3, Unreal, Far Cry). The features of these engines need to be demonstrated in the games. For instance, the very impressive monsters in Doom 3 are a textbook example of what can be achieved with relatively few polygons, relatively small textures and an engine that can do normal mapping.

Historically, there have been plenty of other examples, such as:

 StarFox, on the SNES, was a proof-of-concept that real-time 3D could be used in console games. The people who played what was just a technology demo then liked it so much that Nintendo asked it should be developed in a full-fledged game.

 The 7th Guest implemented streaming, a technique by which game content could be continously read from a mass storage media, in this case the CD-Rom, as opposed to stop the game each time more content was needed than the system RAM could hold (which, back then, was not much). This allowed games to utilize much more content, especially sound and video.

 Resident Evil dared using real-time 3D characters but photo-realistic, pre-rendered backgrounds. While this was more of a technical regression than a breakthrough, this enabled the game to break free from the strict constraints of a full 3D game and offer the player a gorgeous experience.

 Dynasty Warriors II was the first game to pit the player against hundreds of opponents - at once. Until the PS2, consoles couldn’t handle that many 3D objects at once. The beat’em all genre, which was popular in the early 90s in its 2D format, couldn’t be transposed to 3D because the number of opponents would be too limited. But with the new generation of consoles, it became possible to face up to 100 opponents at once. That was the idea behind Dynasty Warriors II, which became a successful franchise.

 While MUDs have been around since the late 70s, it wasn’t until the late 90s, when there was a sufficient base of people with home internet access, that the idea of MMORPG resurfaced. It was finally possible to produce RPGs that met current quality standards of their 1-player counterparts, but in much wider universes and with a degree of social interaction never achieved before. Ultima Online and Everquest were the first MMORPGs to enjoy considerable commercial success.

Use the interface

This approach is similar to basing games on technique. As hardware evolves, so do input interfaces and ways to use them. Before Street Fighter II, who would have thought that it was possible to enter complex commands in an arcade game through a sequence of moves and button presses such as down, down-right, right and punch ? Game designers have progressed on both fronts, and, when the ideal input peripheral didn’t exist, they invented it, be it bongos, cameras, fishing rod, ultra-complex mecha command system, or, more recently, guitars.

Like games inspired by a technique, this approach is developer-centric. There does not exist a body of players who are actually looking forward to playing a game using digital maracas (new interface) until such a game is created, while there are some players who are actively expecting music games or games with funky animals (existing genre, existing theme).

More interestingly, they have found new ways to use the existing input systems. Molyneux’s Black and White is based on a multitude of commands that can be executed with the mouse such as dragging the floor to move in any direction or tracing pentagrams to use magic, among others.

Today, both the major console systems and the PC offer more freedom to innovate using the interface than ever before. A modern joypad has approximately 15 buttons, 2 analogue sticks and one directional pad, and PC games take advantage of the flexibility of the keyboard and the mouse. That’s a lot compared to the days of the Atari 2600: its joystick had just one button and one digital stick. The possibilities that are offered are limitless: for instance, console gamers have finally admitted that two analogue sticks are just fine for FPS. Special peripherals are also now getting a wider acceptance. In Sega’s days, microphone-powered Seaman was an oddity. Now, quite a few games make heavy use of vocal commands. Sony also managed to release several games for its Eyetoy camera, making it precisely more than a toy, and exploring new ways to interact with gamers.

But no one takes the interface issue more seriously than Nintendo, with the DS and the Wii. They have put a lot of pressure on developers to make them use their unusual input devices to the fullest. This is how we got pencil-based games which couldn’t exist on any other devices such as Meteos, Trauma : under the knife or Wario ware : touched. The Wii takes the concept to a whole new level with the much-anticipated wii-mote controller : Wii sports shows how much this can add to a seemingly simple game, and everyone expect to wield their wii-mote, Luke-Skywalker style, in the upcoming Zelda game.

A new graphical style

When a game is consistent, it usually shows and the game naturally acquires a graphical identity. Sometimes, that identity is what is really sought after in the game creation process: the game comes as an aftertought. Because the main reason why gamers expect games is illustrated previews they read in the press or on the internet, working on the style, which can be conveyed by any screenshot, as opposed to the engine, which is better expressed by a video or a demo, is not a bad idea. Basing a game concept on graphical innovation is mostly a developer-centric approach: it does not meet a player need. There is no market demand that dictates the use of such or such style, rather, the personality of an art director that tries to insufflate something new.

There are a few games where graphical style apparently preceded gameplay. Jet Set Radio could be one of them: while this is not the first game to use cel-shading, but the gameplay, the characters and the levels seem to have been designed from a to z to emphasize the choice of this technique. As a result, this is the game which is now associated with it. Since then, there has been many usages of cel-shading. Worth noting in that section are Zelda: the Wind Waker, which shocked one half of the gaming planet and delighted the other, and Killer7, which horrified everyone, but that was the intention. The choice of the Wind Waker graphical style is fundamental in its gameplay, as key features such as facial expressions would not have been possible otherwise. Similarly, Killer7 abstract aesthetics are the only way to make this game’s extreme degree of violence acceptable by a normal player.

PaRappa the Rapper took the unique artwork from Rodney Greenblat to a further level: once animated, all characters are as flat as paper, while their environment is in 3D. A similar style has been used in the aptly named Paper Mario series.

Rez, from United Game Artists and Testuya Mizuguchi, is another example of a game based on an aesthetic vision. Officially, Rez’s idea was to provide a synaesthetic experience, tightly integrating video and audio sensations. Each level is designed to blend enemy waves with the rythm of the music and the evolution of the background. The result is unique in the history of gaming.

The Gamma Bros, a free flash game from pixeljam, is a very nice showcase of the pixelart technique. Clearly, the ambition was to create a fine work of pixelart, then a game, then this game. A game is pixelart is an oddity: theroetically, all pre-3D games are in pixelart, just as all non-poetry is prose. But in the last 10 years, a new approach to pixelart was explored by some artists - while early game artists tried to make their players forget about pixels, using anti-aliasing and palette effects to smooth their lines, post-modern pixelartists are not afraid of letting the pixels show, using blocky sprites with sharp edges and strongly constrasting colors. In Gamma Bros, for instance, explosions are square. - this would never have been tolerated by game artists in the 80s.

Compared to contemporary art, videogames are extraordinarily conservative. Despite isolated attempts to produce something new, the game graphical paradigm remains rigid. It has evolved from pixels to sprites, then, after a vector parenthesis, to polygon-based 3D, and that is it. Innovations, like cel-shading, are swallowed by the paradigm which adapts them and uniformizes them. There is enormous room for progress in this domain. An illustrator with a strong style can bring a personality to a concept which can in turn inspire a game. And there are many techniques used in CGI which have not yet found an application in games.

Games based on activities that people like

Eventually, a game design document will describe what the player will do in terms of activities. Rather than starting from an overall concept and breaking in down into individual activities that people may or may not like, some designers have tried to think of what people like to do at a very basic level, and have based their games on that.

This approach is rather player-centric, but is aiming at latent player needs rather than at clearly existing needs such as the genre or theme approaches.

According to legend, famous game designer Will Wright had learnt that at some point, the best-selling home utility software was home mapping software. That’s odd: who really needs to map a home? Architects? but don’t they use professional stuff? People planning their move? yes, but that would be a punctual use, and can there be so many? Will Wright therefore concluded that if people bought home mapping software, that’s because they liked that activity in itself, for itself. Drawing the floor map of a house just makes people dream. The Sims, which takes the Sim City concept at the family level, was born.

Likewise, no less legendary game designer Peter Molyneux must have noticed that people loved making movies based on games and publish them on their own little corner of the internet. Gamers like to make movies and publish them? Let’s make a game about making movies! As for Shigeru Miyamoto, he explains that when he designed the original Zelda, he wanted players to experience what he felt as a kid, exploring the fields around his house!

These examples may seem simple, but it’s probably the most difficult way to find a new game idea. It makes sense to innovate at the activity level. Personally, I don’t enjoy beating other people or shooting them [2]. I much prefer, I don’t know, spending quality time with my family, receiving an unexpected large sum of money or reading a great story, among other things. Still, games tend to feature activities such as fighting because they are easy to integrate in a game concept, as opposed to things that people genuinely like to do, like leading a civilization of cavemen to space age - Sid Meier. But just because a game is based on an activity never used before doesn’t make it a great game. Sim Tower, which originally was an elevator load simulation programme, comes to mind. It is innovative, interesting but not hugely entertaining (and wasn’t intended as such). Finding an activity that is both original and has a wide appeal is just like digging for gold, but this is probably where the next great game idea will come from.

Conclusions

Despite the massive amount of games that are released every year, there is still ample room for innovation in many directions! And even though ideas at the origin of a new game seem to fit in categories, the "next big thing" may just challenge that!