Ideation and Game Designers

There's a common refrain from many successful game designers when it comes to the topic of ideas. You've probably heard it before. It takes several forms including "Ideas are cheap." "Ideas are worthless, it's all about execution." "No one's interested in your game idea." "Game design isn't about ideas." The list goes on. Game designers as pundits are often pretty down on ideas.

As a researcher, I've been trying to puzzle out exactly why this is. It seems odd to me that in registering their issues with and about aspirational designers who are self proclaimed "idea people" that many designers denigrate ideation itself. I understand the need to communicate to the aspiring designer, as Brenda Brethwaite rather succinctly did, that you and the colleagues at your game studio already have plenty of ideas of your own, and that you simply don't have time to produce anyone else's. However, she goes on in that same post to state that common designer trope, "Game design is not the idea. It is the execution." Yet if you analyze the actual activity of game design, it becomes evident that ideation is not only an absolutely necessary and recurrent component of design as an activity, but that it is also an aspect of execution and probably the single most important asset in the creation of a truly great game.

Let's start with a little clarification about what I mean what I'm talking ideas, and why that's somewhat distinct from what these designers mean when they use the word. From my perspective as a researcher, designer, and artist, ideas (in the context of generative work) are emergent and responsive thoughts focused on things that could be or ways things might work. Ideation then doesn't just include the initial concept of the thing or process, but also the subsequent extensions and iterations. In this sense, thinking and ideating is a core component of what tends to be clumped together as "execution" in the classic designer critique. To put it another way, execution isn't just technically carrying out procedures based on a targeted outcome. Execution also includes thinking through what procedures or techniques to use, and this means coming up with or otherwise filtering/finding ideas for possible solutions to your design problems. 

Note that game designers are using the term idea in a more limited manner to express the frustration they feel when they receive communications from aspirants about their game ideas. For clarity we might be better served by terming this specific type of idea as concept. Most aspirant designers are limited either in their capacity to ideate or in their ability to explain or document their ideation process. The result is that at worst they're communicating a pitch for a game concept in very vague terms (i.e. an FPS where you shoot bubbles instead of bullets, an MMO set in a gritty realistic medieval setting, etc.), or perhaps they have a jumble of loosely related design concepts. At best they've already created some sort of prototype, but I'm willing to assume that aspirant designers who have already made prototypes aren't the ones that professional designers complain about. Equally, I'm willing to guess that less ire results from aspirants who at least have started to develop some documentation as doing so tends to results in refinement of the initial concept into a more actionable artifact if you're doing it right.

So at this point we've cleared up some of the semantic issues, and it would be reasonable to state that my critique of these designer tirades is really just about language and tone. That's totally legitimate in that the bigger issue to me is the message that the pros are sending to the aspirants. Between word choice and tone, a lot of these rants come off as extremely negative and what actionable advice is given (learn some code, build a prototype, etc.) might be easy to miss given the harsh surface level of the message.

However, my critique goes down one more level. This is the part tied specifically to statements like "Ideas are worthless." This statement is just fundamentally not true. Among other things, it's entirely too broad a statement to hold up under pressure. Even the most limited form of ideation, that preliminary concept, is essential for the creation of something truly great or unique. Game concepts, like research concepts, and like design concepts in other fields are the essential substrate that provides the groundwork for the entire design process. The quality of those ideas matters a great deal. Needless to say, carrying those initital concepts forward and adapting them over the course of the process that follows is the hard work of creation. I know that this is the point designers are trying to get across. Also initial ideas aren't necessarily the most crucial element distinguishing good games from bad ones. Interesting ideas can of course be executed poorly, and very generic ideas can result in very solid gaming experiences. However, that initial concept is essential in the creation of truly innovative artifacts, be they digital games, powerful works of art, or ground breaking research papers. Even if the initial innovative notion is miles away from the final result, truly great products are never the result of bland ideation.