Designer's Block

I have a two techniques I use to generate ideas; juxtaposition and word substitution.

Juxtaposition is very much like the website already mentioned. Create a list of great bits from your favorite games. Could be a about game play (such as 'simultaneous trading a la Pit), a scoring mechanism (growing multipliers a la Carcassonne or Acquire), or component (mimer timer in Guesstures). Anything. Also through other fun 'play' items or values such as Magic 8 Ball, or squirt guns. This is an ongoing list, you will always be adding new stuff.

Then mix up the list anyway you see fit. My list, in MS Excel, with some 800+ items, I sort alphabetically, or cut and paste, or random code sort, or roll dice to generate numbers, whatever to put unusual things together.

Play with the list until something clicks, usually won't take longer than 5 minutes.

As for Word Substitution. I take some existing game or toy, and write a long sentence describing what it is and its play value, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 - 20 words. Then I randomly start picking 'key' words in the sentence and seeing what I can replace that word with. For example, I not too long ago took the kids game of Jacks.
"A children's game where you bounce a ball and grab an increasing number of jacks before the ball lands." One of the first words I substituted was Adult for Children's, which tickled my fancy, so I went with it. Then I started messing with 'ball' and 'jacks' trying to come up with something more adult. I ended up with Pub Jacks, a game playable in a bar from a bar stool using oversized poppers and bottle caps. Haven't sold it yet, but a cute idea whose time will come.

- Keith
KM Creative

I find the exact opposite the issue. I never have designer's block, I have designer's overload.

First, I think about interesting themes for which I've not seen any really successful games. For example, one idea I've been toying with is a Mafia game. Now, of course, there are organized crime type games and some of them may have been popular at one time or another. It's just that I haven't experienced any of these games and, therefore, have no preconceived notions about how one might play. If I were to try to think up a plantation management type game, I might find myself being drawn back to my experience with Puerto Rico.

Second, I take that theme and try to envision a game setting and core mechanic and overall goals for my design. For example, is the game setting about drawing and placing tiles (a la Carcassonne) or is it a card game about laying sets or something altogether different? After giving thought to this setting, do any core mechanics emerge which seem to suit the theme? Lastly, what do I want my players to labor over in their decision making process? What about that though process is interesting? These questions help me derive some of my goals.

For example, I might decide that the setting is a board laying out the downtown of a major city and that each crime family (player) starts off with zones/areas in over which he controls the organized crime. The players work to expand the boundaries of their regions until they start to butt up against or overlap the areas of other crime families.

From their I try to consider other dimensions. For example, perhaps each crime family is composed of a set number of family members (say 6) and that each of the members bring various strengths (unique game play advantages) to the running of the family business. Then perhaps there is a way to put hit contracts out and to attempt to assassinate the family members of a competing family. Now the players find themselves in a balancing act of trying to expand and maintain their business while trying to avoid hits. This balancing act creates complexities and tension in one's decision making. At least this might be one of my goals.

I don't want to belabor my example. It's just that for me the ideas are limitless. You could almost pick up a random magazine and flip open to any page and find something, some topic, around which a game could be designed. I think the key is to quickly narrow the constraints for the design and to try to find creative ways to work within them.

I guess the real question to ask yourself is, "What in the world interests you?"

I have to agree with that... Most of my ideas almost seem too obvious when they hit me... I also have alot of my game ideas from other games or products (or tv shows..)...
I have a tendency to buy a game, look at it and play it and say... "I could have done that better".. then I set out to do just that.... (Just as my Unofficial Nodwick Card game... I was made when I bought the official one, it's about 20 cards duplicated about 100 times... so-so game mechanics.. but really, if I wanted an easy to play/learn game that didn't have alot of text.. I'd have bought UNO... )

I also end up making alot of 'expantions' for games that allready exsist... (such as Film Frenzy, Age of Mythology and the like..)

But really, if you don't have the ideas allready pouring out of every orifice you should look into something similar but not quite design... Such as creating a company that will prototype games (in small quanities) cheaply (heck.. after being around here a few months it's be a big success... I'd sign up... ) or even starting a company that just sells blank perferated sheets of paper (all stock) for people like us... or maybe blank perforated counters (like small blank disks/squares for prototypes..).. I've often thought of just doing this instead of trying to get a company to do it for me...

Satori