Week 20 - Creativity

I hope when I graduate from university that I would have gained new skill sets, that will allow me to qualify for a job in the games industry. But I also hope to come out with a new way of thinking of and looking at things. A question that I've heard so much is 'can you teach creativity', and I can't think of a good answer to that.


I suppose I think of myself as quite creative, I can generate ideas and think 'outside' the box (sorry), but in this type of work, would it be advantageous to be the most creative person in the world? This work has limits, for example, how high-poly something can be , and if you were to put a cap on how 'creative' you can be would it work. Or maybe being creative is not just how unique or brilliant you're idea is, but how much can you get out of those limits.

Some people say that Halo was a brilliant game, one that re-defined the genre. I don't think it was very creative though. The story was pretty much non-existent (unlike the novels written by Eric Nylund, which I recommend to everyone, even if you don't like the game), the levels were samey and weapons were nothing compared to Timesplitters. But it was a good (not excellent) game and sold by the bucket load.

So you don't NEED creativity to make a good, successful game. Of course there are always going to be those people who buy Fifa every year, and that's not a bad thing because that's the market. Loco-roco was a very creative game that used motion sensing and had an appealing graphical style (not to mention little coloured blobs that you had to wake up who then sang in Japanese, each one with its own unique voice! anyway...)


Maybe we should be using creativity to take the games industry forward instead of churning out WWE 2013. Maybe the games industry should be trying to overtake the film industry. With the growing amount of real actors you see in games these days maybe they are.

You may have noticed me being creative by doing week 20 before week 19, now that's thinking outside the box.