WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:03.260 Thank you for sticking around until almost the end. I appreciate it. 00:04.000 --> 00:09.120 So yeah, my name is Mikael Fiodato. I am based at Tallinn University in Estonia. 00:09.640 --> 00:13.940 My background prior to converting to game design was in Japanese studies, 00:14.040 --> 00:17.900 which explains the weird Shinto priest costume in the picture. 00:18.300 --> 00:21.920 But I'm currently teaching game design and game studies in Estonia. 00:23.360 --> 00:27.100 And specifically, I teach in a program called Digital Learning Games. 00:27.100 --> 00:35.240 It's a master's program where we focus on largely creating games for educational contexts and games that address various kinds of societal issues. 00:35.660 --> 00:40.640 Serious games is the term that people seem to use, although I have my reservations about it. 00:41.180 --> 00:42.980 It's in my job title, as it happens. 00:43.500 --> 00:53.600 So we have this sort of practical focus on using games for the good of humanity, which begs for some exciting new ideas. 00:54.160 --> 00:57.520 However, that is the part that sometimes proves challenging. 00:57.980 --> 01:05.620 So original ideas, surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly, can be in short supply in the classroom in general. 01:05.620 --> 01:07.780 I don't know about your teaching experience. 01:08.100 --> 01:10.020 That's something I've been running into every now and then. 01:10.640 --> 01:20.260 Specifically in game design, there have been studies that indicate that the more experienced gamers in game design programs are also the more problematic students. 01:20.260 --> 01:23.780 because a lot of the time they're so excited about the new game they've been playing 01:23.780 --> 01:28.960 that they basically just try to replicate it instead of coming up with something new or different. 01:29.780 --> 01:33.360 So that is something that you can try and solve by using proper guidance. 01:34.160 --> 01:38.060 But creativity isn't something you can just order to come, right? 01:38.100 --> 01:42.640 You cannot just tell yourself to be creative for five minutes starting now and come up with an idea. 01:42.920 --> 01:44.520 It's a little bit more complex than that. 01:45.140 --> 01:48.100 We don't really entirely understand how it works either. 01:48.100 --> 01:58.540 But thankfully, the good news is there are some readily available ideation techniques that can at least get you thinking about how to do something differently. 01:58.940 --> 02:05.060 So try to prompt some original insights that might not occur to you naturally without other kind of stimuli. 02:05.840 --> 02:11.520 And I have to clarify here, has anyone studied by any chance psychiatry or those types of things? 02:11.580 --> 02:14.320 Because ideation is a term that's used very differently in different fields. 02:14.320 --> 02:17.800 In psychiatry, it refers to thinking of different ways to kill yourself. 02:18.100 --> 02:19.700 That's not what we're talking about. 02:19.700 --> 02:22.100 Here we're talking about ideation as 02:22.100 --> 02:26.260 generating new ideas for, let's say, good purposes. 02:27.740 --> 02:30.060 A conversation I've been having with a colleague 02:30.060 --> 02:33.260 from Finland a couple weeks 02:33.260 --> 02:35.660 actually got me thinking about why is it 02:35.660 --> 02:38.500 that we value new ideas so much in the first place? 02:38.500 --> 02:41.140 It might seem like an obvious question 02:41.140 --> 02:43.620 that doesn't even need asking, 02:43.620 --> 02:45.500 but actually if you consider the realities 02:45.500 --> 02:47.020 of working in the game industry, 02:47.020 --> 02:52.240 A lot of the time originality is not the most valued commodity that you can come across. 02:53.040 --> 02:59.980 That at least seems to speak to my short stint in a mobile game company like seven-ish years ago, 03:00.100 --> 03:04.160 where the business model essentially was looking at what's hot on the market, 03:04.320 --> 03:09.000 trying to make more of the same but slightly better, slightly prettier, slightly nicer sounding, 03:09.520 --> 03:15.980 and only original ideas that I thought I would be able to implement as assistant game designer at the time 03:15.980 --> 03:23.260 were quite simply discarded because there was no market data to prove that that was in any way convertible into revenue. 03:23.620 --> 03:27.840 So maybe innovation isn't something you need all the time to make all the games out there. 03:28.600 --> 03:32.260 And it's certainly also the case that most innovative ideas fail. 03:32.560 --> 03:33.920 That's the sad reality of innovation. 03:34.140 --> 03:35.160 Not all things work out. 03:35.760 --> 03:39.700 At the same time, there are some things going forward, obviously. 03:39.700 --> 03:46.700 New ideas are, as a matter of fact, what drives any industry or any medium or any art form forward. 03:46.700 --> 03:50.700 If it hadn't been for innovation, we would probably still be playing variations of Pong. 03:50.700 --> 03:54.700 We wouldn't be playing video games in the first place, I guess. 03:54.700 --> 04:01.700 And the other thing is it's mentally and cognitively a challenging but rewarding task to come up with new ideas in the first place. 04:01.700 --> 04:04.700 They are emotionally rewarding. They are intellectually stimulating. 04:04.700 --> 04:07.880 So it's a nice exercise in any sort of educational setting. 04:10.000 --> 04:12.120 So with that out of the way, 04:12.120 --> 04:14.420 let's talk about what kinds of innovative ideas 04:14.420 --> 04:15.640 are out there. 04:15.640 --> 04:18.800 And I'm using a book by Graham and Backman, 04:18.800 --> 04:20.540 which comes from more of a sort of 04:20.540 --> 04:21.680 business studies perspective, 04:21.680 --> 04:25.320 but it has a sort of a typology of ideas. 04:25.320 --> 04:28.280 So one type of list there is the derivative idea. 04:28.280 --> 04:29.940 So you take something that's already there 04:29.940 --> 04:31.300 and you adjust or modify it 04:31.300 --> 04:33.380 and make something different out of it. 04:33.380 --> 04:36.860 This is not sponsored by Coke either, although I wish it was. 04:38.720 --> 04:42.400 So the soft drink market has been around for years and years, 04:42.460 --> 04:45.180 and at some point people were becoming more health conscious, 04:45.560 --> 04:48.580 so the soft drink manufacturers reflected on the change 04:48.580 --> 04:50.860 and introduced sugar-free versions and stuff like that, 04:50.900 --> 04:52.760 which is a variation of an existing thing. 04:53.040 --> 04:54.300 That's what a derivative idea is. 04:54.700 --> 04:57.080 Then there's the symbiotic idea where you take two things 04:57.080 --> 04:59.860 that are already out there in the world, 04:59.960 --> 05:01.620 you mash them together and you see what happens. 05:01.620 --> 05:05.300 right? You take a mobile phone and a camera and then you have a camera phone. 05:05.800 --> 05:07.800 Two things in the same package. 05:08.120 --> 05:11.240 The revolutionary idea is the one type, again, 05:11.240 --> 05:16.700 I sort of have some reservations about, but the claim is some ideas are so entirely new. 05:17.240 --> 05:22.760 They knock it out of the park. They completely revolutionize the field. They introduce a paradigm shift and things are never the same. 05:23.640 --> 05:29.300 The example Graham and Backman uses is the World Wide Web. The problem with that obviously being that while 05:29.300 --> 05:32.440 While the internet did and did in many ways revolutionize 05:32.440 --> 05:35.160 the ways we communicate and exchange information, 05:35.160 --> 05:37.260 it was not without its precursors. 05:37.260 --> 05:39.220 There are all kinds of computer networks 05:39.220 --> 05:41.380 like ARPANET starting from the 60s, 05:41.380 --> 05:44.240 without which the internet would not have evolved 05:44.240 --> 05:47.380 into the powerful technology that it is. 05:47.380 --> 05:48.800 Then there's the serendipitous discovery. 05:48.800 --> 05:50.800 There's no easy way to facilitate that, 05:50.800 --> 05:52.380 but that's something that just happens 05:52.380 --> 05:55.300 by a lucky accident, right? 05:55.300 --> 05:56.980 I think many of you are familiar with the story 05:56.980 --> 05:59.400 Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin. 06:00.000 --> 06:03.800 Fleming was a brilliant researcher, but also not very tidy. 06:04.160 --> 06:06.160 He left petri dishes in his lab. 06:06.240 --> 06:10.920 He was not specifically looking to develop a cure for bacterial infections, 06:11.120 --> 06:15.940 but the next morning he comes there, and a substance, a mold, has formed on the petri dishes 06:15.940 --> 06:22.060 that miraculously can cure lots of diseases that were very causing severe casualties at the time. 06:22.500 --> 06:23.180 So that just happened. 06:23.460 --> 06:25.140 Sometimes you just get lucky. 06:25.140 --> 06:36.520 And then with the rise of digital technologies as well, we place more emphasis, I guess, as a society on using them for all kinds of purposes, including facilitation innovation. 06:37.040 --> 06:39.540 So one example, I wonder if I can actually show it to you. 06:39.820 --> 06:47.780 In our program, our students developed one of those idea generation machines, you know, the randomizers that give you some suggestions based on a database. 06:48.180 --> 06:50.540 This one is specifically for learning games. 06:51.400 --> 06:52.960 Let's see if anything happens. 06:52.960 --> 06:57.800 something is happening on my screen that I can just... 06:57.800 --> 07:01.120 Yeah, give me a sec. 07:04.340 --> 07:04.860 Okay. 07:08.860 --> 07:12.080 It's slightly smaller than I was... 07:12.080 --> 07:13.980 And the layout is messed up as well. 07:15.320 --> 07:17.700 Okay, that's... 07:17.700 --> 07:20.000 No, I'm not seeing... 07:20.000 --> 07:20.600 Here's the cursor. 07:22.060 --> 07:22.820 Okay, let's see. 07:22.960 --> 07:29.140 So one armed bandits type of thing, which basically if you're looking for some inspiration 07:29.140 --> 07:33.620 for a serious game, gives you some kind of a randomized zero player game for literary 07:33.620 --> 07:34.620 libraries that is. 07:34.620 --> 07:37.420 So anyways, it gives you a target audience, it gives you a problem, it gives you a design 07:37.420 --> 07:41.980 element, that type of thing. 07:41.980 --> 07:47.280 So yeah, you can use computers to assist innovation and discovery as well. 07:47.280 --> 07:51.840 But how is it that these different types of ideas emerge? 07:51.840 --> 07:52.840 What does it happen? 07:52.840 --> 07:55.240 Well, we actually heard earlier today 07:55.240 --> 07:58.500 about how in our daily lives we go about a lot of routines 07:58.500 --> 07:59.980 without really paying attention 07:59.980 --> 08:02.200 to a lot of the things happening 08:02.200 --> 08:03.940 in front of our eyes and around us 08:03.940 --> 08:05.560 because there's so much information 08:05.560 --> 08:07.340 we cannot be really bothered to process 08:07.340 --> 08:09.400 each individual thing and question everything 08:09.400 --> 08:10.240 that's happening. 08:10.240 --> 08:13.840 We rely on a lot of heuristics, mental shortcuts. 08:13.840 --> 08:18.080 That is how we're able to deal with the world. 08:18.080 --> 08:20.800 However, in order for innovation to occur, 08:20.800 --> 08:23.160 mental shortcuts are obviously not doing as much good. 08:23.160 --> 08:24.940 So we need to take the opposite route 08:24.940 --> 08:27.380 and break visual thinking patterns 08:27.380 --> 08:30.620 and try also not to think of the more recent stuff 08:30.620 --> 08:33.380 because we have a bias towards recently 08:33.380 --> 08:35.740 experienced phenomena, but also think about 08:35.740 --> 08:38.360 old and forgotten things in search of inspiration. 08:38.360 --> 08:41.720 That is partly why dreams that reconfigure our memories 08:41.720 --> 08:44.820 and counterintuitive associative ways 08:44.820 --> 08:47.720 are such a rich source of inspiration and ideas 08:47.720 --> 08:49.960 because there are no conventional thinking patterns 08:49.960 --> 08:50.920 that they follow. 08:52.740 --> 08:54.460 However, yes, as I was trying to point out, 08:54.460 --> 08:56.920 new ideas cannot be entirely new, 08:56.920 --> 08:58.580 otherwise we'd not be able to understand 08:58.580 --> 08:59.620 what's going on there. 08:59.620 --> 09:01.780 So once you've been able to produce 09:01.780 --> 09:03.520 some kind of a new combination of ideas, 09:03.520 --> 09:06.520 it's nice to have some contextualization for them 09:06.520 --> 09:09.780 in familiar categories, otherwise they don't make sense. 09:09.780 --> 09:12.660 So you use some techniques to break your 09:12.660 --> 09:15.440 habitual mental shortcuts, you come up with a new idea, 09:15.440 --> 09:16.740 but then you need to make sense of 09:16.740 --> 09:19.140 what is actually going on, how does it work. 09:19.140 --> 09:20.580 Let me give you an example. 09:20.580 --> 09:25.580 So let's try and think of a different form of video games 09:25.720 --> 09:27.400 by eliminating one of the, 09:27.400 --> 09:29.000 that's one technique you use in innovation. 09:29.000 --> 09:31.700 You take something and you eliminate an element 09:31.700 --> 09:32.540 that's present there. 09:32.540 --> 09:34.560 I'll also introduce the technique later. 09:34.560 --> 09:36.700 Eliminating one of the key features of video games, 09:36.700 --> 09:39.360 let's get rid of graphics, okay? 09:39.360 --> 09:41.700 So what we're left with is audio games, 09:41.700 --> 09:43.880 video games that do not have an audio. 09:43.880 --> 09:46.960 See, I've sort of simulated generating an idea. 09:46.960 --> 09:48.420 Does it make sense? 09:48.420 --> 09:50.460 Not immediately, not necessarily, 09:50.460 --> 09:52.600 but if you try to put it back into context 09:52.600 --> 09:56.220 and think who and why would play such a game. 09:56.220 --> 09:58.760 Well, for one thing, in this kind of context, 09:58.760 --> 10:01.220 we have a lot of people that have different forms 10:01.220 --> 10:04.040 of vision impairments, are blind, partly blind, 10:04.040 --> 10:09.040 whatever it is, who are not able to play regular video games. 10:09.100 --> 10:11.420 They might find these games more approachable 10:11.420 --> 10:12.700 and be able to play them, 10:12.700 --> 10:15.380 but also given how strained our eyes are 10:15.380 --> 10:16.480 throughout the course of our day, 10:16.480 --> 10:19.780 how much we rely on visual information, 10:19.780 --> 10:22.320 people might want to enjoy audio games in the same way 10:22.320 --> 10:24.980 as they would audio books, in a sense, right? 10:24.980 --> 10:27.700 So now we're trying to make sense of this originally 10:27.700 --> 10:30.200 incongruous idea, place it back into context. 10:30.200 --> 10:32.720 We can try to think of how that actually works in practice. 10:32.720 --> 10:35.160 And I'm introducing that as a new idea, 10:35.160 --> 10:38.500 but I have to mention this has been around for a while. 10:38.500 --> 10:40.720 It's not an innovation that has worked out necessarily 10:40.720 --> 10:41.320 that well. 10:41.320 --> 10:46.060 Here's a Japanese game from the mid-90s, released by Sega, 10:46.060 --> 10:48.800 called Real Sound, Casa Noregreto, 10:48.800 --> 10:50.400 and it was an audio game specifically made 10:50.400 --> 10:55.020 to be equally enjoyable by sighted and non-sighted players. 10:55.020 --> 10:57.340 So just to get that out of the way. 10:58.700 --> 11:00.640 So what are the actual techniques, right, 11:00.640 --> 11:03.320 that I advertised that we'll be talking about? 11:03.320 --> 11:04.480 I'm going to introduce some of you. 11:04.480 --> 11:06.680 You'll notice that they work in different ways. 11:06.680 --> 11:10.360 Some of them rely on generating ideas en masse. 11:10.360 --> 11:11.960 So you generate ideas, essentially, 11:11.960 --> 11:14.040 until you run out of familiar associations, 11:14.040 --> 11:16.400 and then the interesting part happens. 11:16.400 --> 11:21.060 So the quality sort of follows quantity in that case. 11:21.060 --> 11:23.720 I have an acquaintance who teaches a game design program 11:23.720 --> 11:26.120 where he forces his students over the course of the semester 11:26.120 --> 11:28.580 to come up with a thousand game ideas. 11:28.580 --> 11:30.220 So every day you have to produce several. 11:30.220 --> 11:32.640 At some point, you basically cannot think 11:32.640 --> 11:34.440 of regular usual stuff anymore, 11:34.440 --> 11:36.700 and that's when things get interesting. 11:36.700 --> 11:40.160 Well, if you can handle that mentally without breaking down. 11:40.160 --> 11:41.000 So there's that. 11:41.000 --> 11:44.720 Other techniques basically give you one randomized idea. 11:44.720 --> 11:47.200 So the fantastic binomial is one technique 11:47.200 --> 11:49.140 that I'm referencing for that. 11:49.140 --> 11:53.080 Some of these ideas may be focused more on problem solving 11:53.080 --> 11:54.460 and address existing issues. 11:54.460 --> 11:56.620 Other techniques basically just give you an inspiration 11:56.620 --> 11:58.780 or a starting point that you then figure out 11:58.780 --> 11:59.740 what to do with. 12:01.140 --> 12:04.560 I forgot to ask what time am I supposed to be wrapping up? 12:04.560 --> 12:05.400 Sorry to. 12:05.400 --> 12:08.280 Yes, Nada, I will give you a sign with this question. 12:08.280 --> 12:09.120 Okay, good. 12:09.120 --> 12:10.280 So we can move on then. 12:10.280 --> 12:13.540 Now I can actually introduce some of the actual techniques. 12:13.540 --> 12:15.300 So none of these techniques, 12:15.300 --> 12:17.500 well one of these techniques is specific to games. 12:17.500 --> 12:19.740 The others come from way before games, 12:19.740 --> 12:21.520 became a mainstream phenomenon, 12:21.520 --> 12:24.540 but they're really easily applicable to game design. 12:24.540 --> 12:26.820 So the fantastic binomial, 12:26.820 --> 12:28.980 does that ring a bell to anyone? 12:28.980 --> 12:29.880 Not necessarily. 12:29.880 --> 12:32.340 It's a generation technique for ideas 12:32.340 --> 12:36.060 developed by an Italian children's writer, Gianni Rodari, 12:36.060 --> 12:39.080 presumably not a very well-known figure here in Germany. 12:39.080 --> 12:42.680 I know for a fact there's one Italian person in the audience. 12:42.980 --> 12:43.960 Have you heard of Gianni Rodari? 12:44.160 --> 12:44.520 Of course. 12:44.640 --> 12:45.020 Of course. 12:45.100 --> 12:46.340 So in Italy, that's a big name. 12:46.560 --> 12:51.180 Maybe that was because my elementary school teachers were very keen on that. 12:51.940 --> 12:52.560 Okay, yeah. 12:52.780 --> 12:58.480 Because in addition to being a children's writer, he actually wrote a lot about education and creativity and how you interact with children. 12:59.080 --> 13:04.760 And he wrote a book called The Grammar of Fantasy, which has unfortunately only partially been translated into English. 13:05.600 --> 13:07.840 He writes in Russian as it happens. 13:07.840 --> 13:18.060 But so the basic premise is you take two ideas that do not usually go together, and you combine them, and you try to make sense of that, and you see what happens. 13:18.380 --> 13:26.560 So one exercise that Rodari did was you take two people, have them each write a word on a piece of paper without seeing what the other person is writing. 13:27.100 --> 13:34.380 And then you get two words, often a nonsensical combination, but you try to make up a story based on that combo. 13:34.380 --> 13:36.900 So let's take onion and revolution. 13:37.320 --> 13:40.000 Take five seconds trying to come up with a story based on that. 13:41.640 --> 13:42.480 Well, Rodari did. 13:42.660 --> 13:45.560 He wrote an entire novel, or short novel anyway, 13:46.020 --> 13:49.760 about a rebellious onion living, 13:51.760 --> 13:55.760 leading a revolution of vegetables against the oppressive tomato 13:55.760 --> 13:57.020 who was overtaxing them. 13:57.240 --> 14:01.300 So it's very much like a working class struggle leftist narrative, 14:01.300 --> 14:04.640 which explains why the Soviet Union at the time made a cartoon out of it, 14:05.060 --> 14:06.200 which you're seeing a screenshot from. 14:06.700 --> 14:08.060 So you can make an idea. 14:08.160 --> 14:11.660 You can make anything into an idea when you give it enough thought. 14:12.420 --> 14:14.160 That's one technique, 635. 14:14.880 --> 14:17.020 That is actually closer to home. 14:17.540 --> 14:18.800 The original paper is in German. 14:18.980 --> 14:20.940 I don't know if any of you encountered this technique before. 14:22.520 --> 14:23.800 Then you will now. 14:24.180 --> 14:25.780 So it's a group brainstorming technique, 14:26.040 --> 14:30.600 and the basic premise is you group participants in teams of six people. 14:30.600 --> 14:35.500 You give each participant a sheet of paper and five minutes to write down three ideas 14:36.040 --> 14:38.920 relevant to a particular problem on a worksheet. 14:39.360 --> 14:45.740 After the five minutes elapse you pass on the paper to the next person and they have to read your three ideas and add 14:45.800 --> 14:48.100 three more ideas and you do the cycle 14:48.580 --> 14:54.880 for six rounds in total and at the end of it you have over 100 ideas generated over just half an hour. 14:56.160 --> 14:59.560 What happens there is interesting to me. I've tried it with students. 14:59.560 --> 15:01.960 sometimes it works out quite nicely. 15:01.960 --> 15:03.840 People draw inspiration from each other 15:03.840 --> 15:05.140 by reading each other's ideas. 15:05.140 --> 15:08.680 They build on what's already there on the paper, 15:08.680 --> 15:12.220 which allows them to sort of bounce off each other's ideas 15:12.220 --> 15:14.960 without explicitly verbally communicating, 15:14.960 --> 15:17.640 without having any sort of social awkwardness, 15:17.640 --> 15:19.160 which is a big thing in Estonia. 15:19.160 --> 15:20.720 I'm not going into that. 15:20.720 --> 15:23.620 So you can actually have a collaborative environment 15:23.620 --> 15:25.400 without really talking to each other. 15:25.400 --> 15:26.880 That's a nice, I mean, you can talk 15:26.880 --> 15:29.320 and discuss things afterwards as well, obviously. 15:29.560 --> 15:31.860 But so that's what the technique is good for 15:33.280 --> 15:35.280 Another thing I wanted to 15:35.740 --> 15:40.700 Again, I'm not being paid by the company, but play gen is a company based in London, UK 15:41.940 --> 15:46.580 That develops all kinds of gamification and game for learning solutions 15:46.620 --> 15:52.200 One of the things they made was called adding play and it's a card game specifically focusing on 15:53.080 --> 15:55.080 Making games and creating ideas for games 15:55.080 --> 15:59.840 So essentially what happens there is you have four types of cards and each card 15:59.840 --> 16:04.120 corresponds to different elements that could be found in a video game. There's 16:04.120 --> 16:08.560 the game mechanics, so you get different kinds of mechanics, a different mechanic 16:08.560 --> 16:11.760 in each card. What does the player actually do in the game? There's a set of 16:11.760 --> 16:16.460 cards that represent motivation drivers, so what actually keeps the player 16:16.460 --> 16:21.140 playing the game? What keeps them motivated and interested? The social 16:21.140 --> 16:26.980 mechanics, so how do you facilitate social interactions between the players and more 16:26.980 --> 16:32.960 of a sort of relational social process going on there, and what are the victory conditions, 16:32.960 --> 16:36.140 what do you actually have to do to win the game. 16:36.140 --> 16:41.020 And then basically one way you can play it is you randomly draw a card of each type and 16:41.020 --> 16:45.600 then you try to figure out a game idea based on the randomized combination that you got. 16:45.600 --> 16:50.080 Pretty similar to the idea generation machine we saw earlier. 16:50.080 --> 16:55.480 And it's quite fun to play in teams as well, especially if people are into games, so they 16:55.480 --> 16:59.480 would be able to relate these mechanics and these examples to exist in games that they 16:59.480 --> 17:03.300 are familiar with. 17:03.300 --> 17:07.660 One technique I would like to introduce in a little bit more detail is SCAMPER. 17:07.660 --> 17:10.400 Have any of you heard of SCAMPER? 17:10.400 --> 17:14.840 It's not specifically an idea generation technique, it's also a problem solving technique. 17:14.840 --> 17:23.700 And camper is an acronym where the letters stand for substitute, compare, adapt, magnify, 17:23.700 --> 17:27.720 put to another use, and eliminate or minimize. 17:27.720 --> 17:32.280 And I'm going to try and show you how these different verbs can be applied to generating 17:32.280 --> 17:33.600 ideas in games. 17:33.600 --> 17:35.160 Again, those are not my ideas. 17:35.160 --> 17:37.060 Those are just examples I picked up. 17:37.060 --> 17:38.060 So let's say substitute. 17:38.060 --> 17:41.080 Oh, wait, I forgot about the R in camper. 17:41.080 --> 17:42.080 Sorry. 17:42.080 --> 17:43.080 Reverse. 17:43.080 --> 17:44.080 Reverse is the final one. 17:44.080 --> 17:47.500 You take something that's in there, and you change it for something else. 17:47.780 --> 17:52.840 So let's take Tetris and make the Tetromino's physical units, physical blocks. 17:53.160 --> 17:54.280 Then you have analog Tetris. 17:54.420 --> 17:56.220 I don't know if you've had any experience with that. 17:56.440 --> 17:59.280 It has been done at a number of game conventions and exhibitions. 18:00.400 --> 18:07.040 A Tetris game where you physically drag blocks into a container, and you have to put them together. 18:07.140 --> 18:08.160 They don't disappear magically. 18:08.280 --> 18:08.900 That doesn't happen. 18:08.900 --> 18:15.200 but it's a variation of Tetris that is also a kind of exercise as well. 18:15.620 --> 18:16.500 So that's the substitute. 18:17.380 --> 18:21.780 Combine, pretty much similar to the fantastic binomial. 18:22.180 --> 18:24.180 You take two things, mash them together. 18:24.300 --> 18:27.100 Even if it seems counterintuitive, it might actually work out. 18:27.500 --> 18:32.960 So if anyone's played Plants vs. Zombies, the game makes no logical sense whatsoever. 18:33.120 --> 18:35.500 The premise is ridiculous, but it's such a good game, right? 18:35.500 --> 18:37.240 you take a tower defense and a farming simulator, 18:37.740 --> 18:40.260 you develop some kind of storyline around that, 18:40.560 --> 18:41.760 and you have an addictive game. 18:42.420 --> 18:44.120 So there you have it, combined. 18:45.660 --> 18:46.980 A refers to adapt. 18:47.320 --> 18:49.220 So you would take something that exists elsewhere, 18:49.800 --> 18:51.740 and you apply it and adapt it 18:51.740 --> 18:54.720 to whatever the context is that you're in. 18:55.220 --> 18:57.940 So let's say you adapt the distribution model 18:57.940 --> 19:00.080 from TV series to video games, 19:00.140 --> 19:02.660 and then you have, instead of a single purchase model 19:02.660 --> 19:04.800 or a freemium model or whatever else 19:04.800 --> 19:08.480 seems to be trending now, you have episodic games, right? 19:08.480 --> 19:10.900 Like Life is Strange, Walking Dead, 19:10.900 --> 19:13.900 several individual episodes you purchase one by one 19:13.900 --> 19:16.400 that form seasons, right? 19:16.400 --> 19:18.180 Pretty much like television series. 19:19.300 --> 19:20.580 M stands for magnify. 19:20.580 --> 19:22.980 So you take something that is already there 19:22.980 --> 19:25.180 and you make more of it. 19:25.180 --> 19:26.920 Three-sided football or soccer, 19:26.920 --> 19:28.980 depending on where you come from, is one example. 19:28.980 --> 19:30.180 Has anyone played that? 19:31.160 --> 19:32.160 Me neither. 19:32.160 --> 19:37.300 But I did see a match in Germany, as it happens, not actually far from here, in Lüneburg. 19:38.220 --> 19:39.780 It's a very confusing game to play. 19:39.900 --> 19:43.560 So instead of two teams competing, you have three teams, three goals. 19:44.060 --> 19:50.540 It's very unpredictable because teams will form alliances and betray each other just to score against one of the opponents. 19:50.700 --> 19:52.800 And the roles will reverse the next moment. 19:52.800 --> 19:56.200 It's really difficult to follow, apparently very fun to play as well. 19:56.200 --> 20:03.020 So what we've done is we've created an entirely new game by modifying the game of soccer or football. 20:04.240 --> 20:06.160 P stands for put in other use. 20:07.020 --> 20:10.280 Folded is the classic example used in the serious game context. 20:10.720 --> 20:18.740 It's a puzzle game for those not familiar with it, which basically replicates the protein structures found in the human DNA. 20:19.500 --> 20:21.900 You don't necessarily think about it as a player. 20:21.900 --> 20:28.960 But the thing is there was a team of scientists based at a major American University whose name doesn't come up doesn't occur to me 20:28.960 --> 20:32.780 Right now they were trying to decipher the structures of the human DNA 20:32.940 --> 20:40.340 They were stuck for like weeks or months on end and then develop puzzle game based on those problems 20:40.340 --> 20:43.140 And they made its multiplayer competitive 20:43.740 --> 20:49.120 And a lot of these challenges were actually solved by the players within matters a matter of weeks 20:49.120 --> 20:59.120 So you have a puzzle game as a genre that you encounter in video games, you put it into another use, namely science in this context, and they have something like Foldit. 20:59.120 --> 21:01.120 That's the Pien's Camper. 21:01.120 --> 21:06.120 Eliminate. So again, you take something that is there, but you reduce it to the bare minimum. 21:06.120 --> 21:15.120 Let's say you eliminate most of the controls in a video game, and instead of having a complex control scheme, you have something like Flappy Bird, right, just tapping. 21:15.120 --> 21:17.820 Flappy Bird was not the first game to do that, obviously. 21:17.960 --> 21:21.480 There was the Impossible game before that and the Helicopter Flash game before. 21:22.120 --> 21:25.580 Flappy Bird was what really introduced the concept of the one-button game. 21:26.080 --> 21:29.220 And that's a very good example to me of eliminate or minimize. 21:30.220 --> 21:35.440 And I couldn't really find a very persuasive, convincing example for reverse from games. 21:35.440 --> 21:47.080 So I resorted to an obscure RPG game called Tuash, which reverses the logic of all RPG games that I've encountered otherwise, 21:47.440 --> 21:52.220 where you start off real weak, but then the character grows stronger, and you're really powerful at the end. 21:52.960 --> 22:01.100 In that game, you start off real strong, but then you become weaker and have increasing difficulty fighting the monsters and making progress in the game. 22:01.100 --> 22:07.760 And the game itself was marketed as a sort of parable, a metaphor for dementia. 22:08.220 --> 22:11.780 So it's a semi-serious game which basically displays this. 22:12.180 --> 22:19.020 It expresses the desperate state and desperate realization that your cognitive capabilities are declining and they're not coming back. 22:19.660 --> 22:22.860 Not a very fun game to play, but a fairly powerful statement. 22:23.700 --> 22:24.180 So there's that. 22:25.400 --> 22:27.340 Now, I think we have a little bit of time. 22:27.340 --> 22:31.100 So can we try Scamper out real quick and see what happens? 22:31.400 --> 22:38.280 So what's going to happen is in a moment you will see images of the seven famous games on your screen, on the screen. 22:39.100 --> 22:44.160 I'm asking you to choose one game idea and one verb out of the seven verbs in Scamper 22:44.160 --> 22:47.480 and try to come up with a new game idea based on that prompt. 22:48.080 --> 22:50.720 Try to think of a simple one- to two-sentence description. 22:50.860 --> 22:52.160 I'm not asking you for game mechanics. 22:52.280 --> 22:55.200 I'm not asking you for details, just a basic concept for a game. 22:55.200 --> 22:58.220 obviously if you're using combined you'll need two games 22:58.220 --> 23:00.220 but the other one doesn't have to be 23:00.220 --> 23:02.460 from among the seven games on the screen 23:02.460 --> 23:04.040 and let's 23:04.040 --> 23:06.200 actually take 23:06.200 --> 23:07.600 a couple minutes doing that 23:07.600 --> 23:10.580 because it doesn't really take that much time 23:10.580 --> 23:12.440 so here we go, take it away 23:12.440 --> 23:13.560 we have two minutes 23:13.560 --> 23:25.820 I can almost hear you thinking 23:43.560 --> 23:56.900 Also makes for very exciting live streaming. 24:13.560 --> 24:30.280 You know what? 24:30.280 --> 24:30.820 I lied to you. 24:30.880 --> 24:35.440 Maybe we can take one minute, and then you can, if you want to share the idea with whoever's sitting next to you, 24:35.440 --> 24:38.860 maybe we can take another few seconds to do that, to have a little discussion. 24:38.860 --> 24:42.960 but then a few more seconds. 24:54.140 --> 24:55.340 Anyone has an idea? 24:55.480 --> 24:56.100 Lift your hand. 24:56.260 --> 24:56.760 I have the microphone. 24:56.760 --> 24:58.740 Right, so please feel free to shout it out, 24:58.820 --> 25:00.080 or do we use the mic? 25:00.220 --> 25:01.000 Let's do it properly. 25:01.000 --> 25:01.080 Okay. 25:06.400 --> 25:07.960 The first idea that came to me 25:07.960 --> 25:10.240 to combine Super Mario Bros. with Civilization. 25:10.800 --> 25:13.760 And I had some platformer game where you start as a caveman 25:13.760 --> 25:17.880 and going through centuries until you build a rocket 25:17.880 --> 25:19.920 and fly to Alpha Centauri. 25:20.480 --> 25:24.500 So just improving the character with some new technologies, 25:24.860 --> 25:27.480 but as a platformer running from left to right. 25:28.080 --> 25:30.780 That sounds like a really good prequel to Metroid. 25:32.700 --> 25:33.420 Thank you. 25:33.780 --> 25:35.180 Any other ideas you'd like to share? 25:35.180 --> 25:42.920 I thought about breakout but instead of removing a brick every time you hit you 25:42.920 --> 25:47.360 add another one so you can either make something like Tetris where when you 25:47.360 --> 25:51.260 have a full row it removes itself or maybe something creative where you can 25:51.260 --> 25:58.020 build an image thank you this is actually quite interesting I've done a 25:58.020 --> 26:01.640 number of workshops on these idea generation techniques for kids and if 26:01.640 --> 26:05.300 If you have a group of under 12, 13 years, 26:05.300 --> 26:08.040 every group will generate the same idea as you just did. 26:08.040 --> 26:09.400 I don't know why they do that. 26:09.400 --> 26:11.140 And I've never seen an adult person generate, 26:11.140 --> 26:13.020 so maybe you have a very youthful mind. 26:13.020 --> 26:14.320 I don't know what it's about Breakout, 26:14.320 --> 26:17.800 but it's specifically that thing where the bricks multiply, 26:17.800 --> 26:19.420 which could be an interesting game. 26:19.420 --> 26:23.580 So you keep the copyright if you want to make it. 26:23.580 --> 26:26.120 All right, next person. 26:26.120 --> 26:29.620 So I thought of Mario Brothers, and I used reverse, 26:29.620 --> 26:31.420 so I thought of a concept where you play 26:31.420 --> 26:34.540 the enemies I can imagine like a multiplayer game where one player 26:34.540 --> 26:38.680 plays as Mario and has to pass the level but the other one like places all the obstacles 26:38.680 --> 26:41.680 maybe in real time and has to stop him somehow. 26:41.680 --> 26:46.780 This is actually quite cool. There's a fan-based, fan-made game based on Mario called 26:46.780 --> 26:50.820 Goomba's Revenge which has the exact same premise. You are a Goomba and you're 26:50.820 --> 26:54.920 trying to catch Mario as you're running across the level and yeah and there's 26:54.920 --> 26:58.960 Luigi is coming into the picture. It's quite a frustrating game to play but you 26:58.960 --> 27:01.960 look into it and maybe contribute as well. So thanks. 27:03.460 --> 27:08.460 I started also with Super Mario Brothers and I combined the reverse with the 27:08.460 --> 27:14.720 combine to be honest and in my idea you would play also as an enemy type, as a 27:14.720 --> 27:19.280 creature, but there would be a crazy plumber going berserk and you would 27:19.280 --> 27:24.280 have to hide. So you would be actually the creature and I would combine it with 27:24.280 --> 27:30.640 something like Splinter Cell, where you would have to avoid the crazy plumber. 27:30.640 --> 27:35.680 So it's the Mario. Mario, there's the vicious figure, right? There's the, yeah, okay, 27:35.680 --> 27:39.740 he's been harassing all those poor Goombas and whatnot, and eating 27:39.740 --> 27:44.720 all their mushrooms. Okay, that's a good idea, thank you. 27:44.720 --> 27:52.720 I have another one. If you combine the mechanics of Monopoly, so acquiring ground and making profit with it, after all, 27:52.720 --> 27:57.720 with Skyrim, for instance, you have an economy simulation 27:58.740 --> 28:01.860 role playing game, which could alter the story 28:01.860 --> 28:04.840 in the way that you have an influence 28:04.840 --> 28:07.600 on the game's economy, basically. 28:07.600 --> 28:10.660 Right, brilliant, thank you. 28:10.660 --> 28:14.160 So yeah, I mean, we could keep going for quite a while. 28:14.160 --> 28:16.080 This technique is rather productive, I find. 28:16.080 --> 28:17.840 It doesn't really take that much time. 28:17.840 --> 28:21.520 And you can see how it can give you a starting point, right? 28:21.520 --> 28:24.520 It's not exclusively Scamper, but I find Scamper very nice 28:24.520 --> 28:26.320 for these types of workshops. 28:26.320 --> 28:28.860 Feel free to share your ideas with me afterwards as well. 28:28.860 --> 28:32.560 I'd be interested to hear what you came up with. 28:32.560 --> 28:33.260 Oh, yeah. 28:33.260 --> 28:34.300 We've already done that. 28:34.300 --> 28:35.400 Ta-da. 28:35.400 --> 28:38.280 The question that is left unanswered here, however, 28:38.280 --> 28:41.180 is does using a game technique actually 28:41.180 --> 28:44.760 guarantee that the idea I come up with is going to be good? 28:44.760 --> 28:48.100 And the somewhat obvious but still disappointing answer 28:48.100 --> 28:50.680 is no. 28:50.680 --> 28:52.200 It's not enough to come up with an idea, 28:52.200 --> 28:53.780 there's other factors in play, 28:53.780 --> 28:56.960 but if we think about what else do we need 28:56.960 --> 29:00.520 to have a fully functional, vibrant, original idea, 29:00.520 --> 29:03.860 well, if you look into Csikszentmihalyi's book 29:03.860 --> 29:06.040 on creativity, that's the figure better known 29:06.040 --> 29:09.520 in game studies and game design through his flow theory. 29:09.520 --> 29:11.120 He also wrote about creativity. 29:12.460 --> 29:14.660 Well, his argument is that creativity 29:14.660 --> 29:18.100 is a social, interactional process. 29:18.100 --> 29:20.940 Creativity is not contained in the individual. 29:20.940 --> 29:23.700 It's something that arises out of the interaction 29:23.700 --> 29:26.860 between a particular person and a particular domain, 29:26.860 --> 29:31.420 a particular area of expertise such as game design. 29:33.000 --> 29:36.300 It requires development, it requires contextualization, 29:36.300 --> 29:38.920 and it boils down a lot of the time to the interactions 29:38.920 --> 29:42.000 that the creative person has with their field, right? 29:42.000 --> 29:45.320 Other people in their team, the testers, the publishers, 29:45.320 --> 29:48.080 the critics, the game community, right? 29:48.100 --> 29:50.300 It's not enough to just come up with a random idea. 29:50.360 --> 29:51.300 You have to develop it. 29:51.340 --> 29:53.900 You have to validate it through other people's feedback. 29:54.220 --> 29:57.180 And then you might have something interesting going on. 29:59.520 --> 30:03.800 And the other thing is the idea itself may be brilliant, 30:03.940 --> 30:07.400 but it doesn't necessarily translate into a brilliant game every time. 30:07.400 --> 30:10.360 I think you may think to your own gaming experiences 30:10.360 --> 30:14.540 and think of a few ideas maybe of games that were really, really clever 30:14.540 --> 30:16.980 but were not fascinatingly good games necessarily. 30:16.980 --> 30:21.480 I'm into indie games a lot of the time and that's a common problem that you have there. 30:21.480 --> 30:26.860 The idea is brilliant but because of the low production value or any other number of circumstances, 30:26.860 --> 30:29.640 the game never really kind of fulfilled its own potential. 30:29.640 --> 30:30.640 That happens a lot. 30:30.640 --> 30:32.860 So a good idea is not a panacea. 30:32.860 --> 30:34.780 It doesn't solve all the problems. 30:34.780 --> 30:39.380 And also finding an audience that actually responds to the game and reacts to it is another 30:39.380 --> 30:40.380 challenge. 30:40.380 --> 30:44.160 So you need to be sort of market savvy in that regard as well. 30:44.160 --> 30:48.800 So ideation in that sense is just a small part of the game production process, also 30:48.800 --> 30:52.420 a small part of the design thinking process, which I think is a concept that is being used 30:52.420 --> 30:56.900 at this university as well, in user experience design, game design as well, where you have 30:56.900 --> 31:02.580 to find a problem to address that stems from your audience's needs. 31:02.580 --> 31:05.720 You have to define what is the problem. 31:05.720 --> 31:11.280 You have to design a solution to it, prototype, test, do it iteratively. 31:11.280 --> 31:15.140 So every time you find that the audience isn't quite responding to something in your game, 31:15.940 --> 31:16.960 it's just a change. 31:17.100 --> 31:18.200 It's a dynamic process. 31:18.600 --> 31:24.220 So making an idea into a game is a further challenge that is arguably much more complex 31:24.220 --> 31:26.560 than coming up with a good idea in the first place. 31:27.480 --> 31:29.380 So I'm actually wrapping up. 31:29.740 --> 31:32.580 In case you were, I mean, it's been a long day for me as well. 31:32.760 --> 31:33.940 I was barely listening to myself. 31:34.500 --> 31:38.540 So if you were distracted by any factors, short summary of what I've been talking about. 31:38.540 --> 31:42.640 but not every game needs a new original idea. 31:42.640 --> 31:44.940 Apparently I cannot spell either. 31:44.940 --> 31:47.240 But games as a medium and as an art form 31:47.240 --> 31:49.920 certainly do in order to develop. 31:49.920 --> 31:52.220 And we can use various ideation techniques 31:52.220 --> 31:54.900 when we're stuck, when we have the game designer's block, 31:54.900 --> 31:57.380 if that's a thing, to prompt new ideas 31:57.380 --> 32:00.180 when working on a game concept. 32:00.180 --> 32:02.480 And a lot of these techniques essentially boil down 32:02.480 --> 32:05.300 to breaking familiar associations and thinking patterns 32:05.300 --> 32:08.740 and triggering some unexpected associations 32:08.740 --> 32:12.060 that get us thinking in a productive way. 32:12.060 --> 32:15.420 But good ideas themselves are not just something 32:15.420 --> 32:17.400 that arises out of an ideation techniques. 32:17.400 --> 32:20.760 They are rooted in solid knowledge of the domain. 32:20.760 --> 32:23.680 If you're not knowledgeable at all about game design, 32:23.680 --> 32:25.880 however clever the one sentence idea is, 32:25.880 --> 32:28.020 chances are it will be very difficult 32:28.020 --> 32:29.900 to make a good game based on it. 32:29.900 --> 32:34.060 But it's also a social process that relies heavily 32:34.060 --> 32:36.940 on interaction with other people in the field. 32:36.940 --> 32:41.180 And so creating an idea anyhow is just a starting point 32:41.180 --> 32:44.440 in the long and extensive process of making a game. 32:44.440 --> 32:46.420 And that's what I wanted to talk about today. 32:46.420 --> 32:48.980 I'm sorry if I finished too early, 32:48.980 --> 32:50.800 but feel free to chat to me afterwards 32:50.800 --> 32:52.260 and I hope some of these techniques 32:52.260 --> 32:54.440 might be useful and productive for you. 32:54.440 --> 32:55.780 Thank you very much. 32:55.780 --> 33:04.200 Thank you very much. 33:04.280 --> 33:05.860 That was a very inspiring talk. 33:05.960 --> 33:08.700 I at least made 15 photographs, I believe, 33:08.780 --> 33:12.460 of different techniques that you suggested. 33:12.800 --> 33:14.740 I think that's really great, so thank you for that. 33:14.740 --> 33:15.500 Thank you, I appreciate it. 33:15.820 --> 33:19.500 Okay, so any questions or additional game ideas 33:19.500 --> 33:21.200 that burn under your nail? 33:21.200 --> 33:26.360 I think I saw Jens was very excited in the back of me always going 33:27.780 --> 33:29.780 So what's your game idea? 33:33.440 --> 33:35.440 It's not a competition 33:45.100 --> 33:49.180 Right it was like jump up the the career letter right cheat your way 33:51.200 --> 33:57.200 Any more questions maybe or more game design ideas you would like to share? 33:57.200 --> 33:59.200 No. 33:59.200 --> 34:07.200 No? Then we say thank you very much and we will certainly send you a collection of all of the ideas. 34:07.200 --> 34:15.200 Maybe the new designs come up and will be realized next semester and then we will get you to playtest them. 34:15.200 --> 34:20.200 Sounds good. You can also delegate some of your students to come and exchange as well and work on those ideas. 34:20.200 --> 34:25.040 I know someone who's been to Tallinn twice, maybe Linda Pfister, you want to go to Tallinn again? 34:25.040 --> 34:28.040 Well the best is to do it three times, right? 34:30.040 --> 34:32.040 Yeah, that's the magic number, isn't it? 34:32.040 --> 34:34.040 It's the magic number. 34:34.040 --> 34:36.040 Okay, so thank you once more. 34:36.040 --> 34:38.040 Thank you.