I realise that this post sounds ridiculous and sounds like a noob hoping for some game idea fix, but it’s not quite like that.
I am doing my final year of college on a games design and development course. When the course began we were told we could choose our own discipline’s, focus on them and build our skills in them. Throughout the 3 years of the course I have stuck with programming, game engine design and development and 3D modelling.
Now as, a more technical person I have always enjoyed the development side of things, rather than the creative idea generation and ludology. But, for our final major project (which is where out entire 3 year course grade comes from) we have to think of an idea, develop it, plan it and make it. Now, as a programmer and technical minded person this has really screwed me over, as we are not being marked on out ability to create the project, but rather the cleverness of how the project is designed and how we develop and involve emotions and critical perspectives. In the real industry, I’m fairly sure the programmer would not be responsible for crafting the entire game concept, emotions and storyline, in an indie game maybe, but not the industry. Nonetheless, I’m now stuck and if I am unable to think of an idea and get at least a merit on my project I will not be able to get into any of the Comp-Sci courses I applied for at University.
I have to think of an idea that could be considered interesting, but that seems to be a pipe dream for me. So, I was wondering if anybody could offer some helpful tips on how to generate game ideas and embellish them, or even offer some rough, unplanned game concepts that I could work from to build my game idea?
Before anyone points out, I am aware that this is considered unfair and a bit of a cop out, but in reality, I did this course to be a games and engine programmer, not to become the next Shigeru Miyamoto or Hideo Kojima which it seems this course is expecting from me even though that is not what they originally stated in the beginning. So, can anybody help me out?
Procedural game development, could be ideal, you get to focus on something that is technical that generates your game.
The rougelike genre is ideal for this style of game. And the game mechanics tend to be simple turn based play. There have also been some interesting adaptations e.g. Superhot and FTL.
Sounds to me like you are being graded on something specific rather than the entire spectrum of the course. Maybe clearing up this dichotomy with the instructor could clear up any misunderstanding with the course and the final project. Or maybe it might bring to light how odd it is to allow for students to ‘specialize’ in subjects not specifically related to design, only to grade the student at the end on specific design ability.
I like to think of characters and how they would handle situations, then I attempt to think of how this could be translated into player interaction and if it’s fun or not. However - I think focusing on gameplay/mechanics might come more natural to you as a more technical thinker.
Browsing the game design forum might lend some ideas in this aspect.
For some reason - when I was reading your post I began to think about a character in a shuttle flying uncontrollably because of the massive force of gravity, towards the sun - having to figure out how to - not die.
Just a odd random thought while I was reading. Use it if you like - maybe it came from you originally and I just picked up on it while reading you post.
It could be a series of different puzzles that represent fixing systems in the damaged shuttle. There could be two people on board the shuttle, one representing the player and one representing his/her friend, and some form of cooperation between the two is needed to solve the puzzles. And then when everything is solved, it turns out that their solution to escape the gravitational pull of the sun is to force eject the science lab module of the shuttle towards the sun with enough force to catapult the rest of the shuttle back towards earth orbit. But of course in typical scifi drama style this “has to be done manually” with one person sacrificing themself and the player has to make the choice who gets to live.
Holy Crap - that is totally what I was thinking! kind of.
Wait - Isn’t this already a movie?
LadyMuffins - if you don’t use this concept - Martin_H and me are going to team up in a couple years when all ideas are exhausted and totally make this game - maybe VR even.
