Week 20: Creativity

Well it's the big subject and it is something that everybody is in possession of. Creativity is an anomally really. It is something that is hard to put into words or describe since it can come in many different forms. This can be from cooking a brand new meal to solving a maths problem to thinking up a new species of creature to put in a game.

I suppose the most prominent form of creativity is the Arts. All manner of things such as dance, music and art itself. Anyone can go to a theatre and see a brand new play that is the genius of the playwright. The story and characters can be completely new and different from anything else that exists and that makes him creative. This is just an example of an obvious form of creativity.
(I'm gonna be sick of this word by the end of the blog)

Not everybody is so outwardly creative. There are so many other ways of showing it. There is nobody on the planet who would not be able to think up of an idea for a story. These people may not have the tools or equipment to follow through their ideas but certainly it is better than having all the tools but no ideas. Sure this is contradictory to my other statement but many people do get blocked alot of the time. I personally want to create something new but more than likely, decide not to do it because its so cliche, would seem like copying someone else or just that it was a fleeting idea and didn't have enough flesh to it.

Thinking of games today, all of the big mainstream titles don't seem creative because there are just too many of the same things. Looking across the room at my DBZ game, I recall that all the games in the series are the same but with more characters. As far as I know this is the same as almost every sports game that is out there. Sport can only get more real therefore perhaps someone will be creative and think of the next step for sports games. Or games as a whole. Nintendo have broken the tried and tested 'use a controller to play' ethic with using a stylus to control the DS and a remote which has numerous attachments (1) to free the arms and give a sense of immersion. What did we have before that? Rumble. Right now its still really all we have with the odd bit of shaking the wii mote or six-axis to get the feeling that we're there.

We always say how we want to get new styles of playing games and it makes me wonder; do we not get new ways to play because developers know what works and it earns them money? Or could it be down to people not thinking outside the box? Some games nowadays do push the boundries. This could be in the art style like when cel-shading was first introduced. IT could be in the storyline engrossing the player into always wanting more. It could be how we actually play the games with peripherals like light guns and guitars coming out. Surely if we pushed the limits that we have now, we would have all sorts of brand new things that will change gaming forever.

How far can console gaming really go before it isn't home gaming anymore? Nintendo certainly can't go back to a standard controller after the Wii and I dont think microsoft or sony will think twice about doing something similar to get up there with Ninty. I ask for immersion but the most extreme immersion is a simulator which defeats the point of home gaming. I don't have room in my house for an F-Zero machine nor do I want to run on a treadmill everytime i want to go somewhere in my game. In response to the point, yes creativity is limited alot by availiable technology. Right now we don't have time machines or human teleporters. Hell, we don't even have the flying cars we were promised back in the 60s. Then again, are we really limited with what we have or are we limited by what we believe we can do with it. I'm pretty sure before cement was invented that you could build a house out of sand and water (and other stuff).

Maybe if we got everybody in the world together and sat down to work on a problem, or were given a solution to solve we'd get billions of ideas. Those billions of ideas can be joined together and developed to produce the solution we need. There are not two people who think alike so therefore we can get so many ideas there is bound to be one that works and can actually be done.

We don't need to leave these things to our modern day genius' or even those of the past. We all have the potential inside of our brains to come up with ideas. Using the ideas we can overcome problems. Once that set of problems has been overcome, you're evolving and new things are happening. Materials are being used differently, people have different views towards anything and everything. Seeing something, and being inspired to merely think of anything is creative.