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How do you get other people's ideas and turn a part of them into your game idea?

Started by November 14, 2013 05:11 PM
4 comments, last by tom_mai78101 10 years, 10 months ago

I've been trying hard to ask for feedbacks about what they think of my program, what abstract inspirations they come up with the moment they see the actions, and what they do see.

I don't know how to put my question into words people can understand, but the feeling of getting other people's feedback based on imagination and thought-referencing is there.

Example: I see a red ball bouncing up and down, only that it's bouncing higher and higher. What I got inspired by: The Incredible Machines, the item Superball. I am looking for other people's feedback that can replace the boldfaced text.

So hard to convey words from my thoughts, even harder to convey the lack of vocabulary here in this post.

What should I do?

Is inspired the right word? When I think about inspired it means that I want to actually do something now from experiencing something else. If I see a red ball bouncing up and down and higher and higher I'm not really inspired by that. Given your bold text and the situation you describe I think you just want a persons thoughts on something. You'd more ask them what they are thinking about a given scene or image and they can just tell you their thoughts on it.

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Surveys and playtesting are the two standard forms of feedback. In both cases, you give people a seed or trigger to attach a response to, cause humans are way better at responding than coming up with an idea without a context.

Surverys work just as well as a pre-design and mid-design feedback mechanism as they do for a playable alpha or later design-refinement mechanism. A survey can be one question (like a forum thread) or several (like a more formal survey). Survey responses can be public or private. In general, to make a survey, you should start by doing a brainstorming exercise asking yourself what kind of feedback you want. Thought-webbing is my current most-recommended brainstorming method; anyone who doesn't know how to do that is missing out on a useful mental tool. It can also be useful to imagine what survey questions you might be asked about someone else's game, or to look at existing game-related surveys on the web.

From your initial post you sound like you might want to prompt for responses with small gif animations or videos of a game element, then ask the player, "How might you enjoy using this object within a game?" or "What does this object remind you of?" I didn't get a completely clear idea of what kind of feedback you want. Do you want the player's stream of consciousness while they are looking at your game for the first time? This kind of thing is a more standard playtesting topic, and is done by audio and video recording the player while they play the game. There's high-tech stuff like tracking the player's eyes to see what they are looking at on the screen, or lower-tech stuff like telling the player to talk constantly, saying everything that goes through their head.

I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.

From your initial post you sound like you might want to prompt for responses with small gif animations or videos of a game element, then ask the player, "How might you enjoy using this object within a game?" or "What does this object remind you of?" I didn't get a completely clear idea of what kind of feedback you want. Do you want the player's stream of consciousness while they are looking at your game for the first time? This kind of thing is a more standard playtesting topic, and is done by audio and video recording the player while they play the game. There's high-tech stuff like tracking the player's eyes to see what they are looking at on the screen, or lower-tech stuff like telling the player to talk constantly, saying everything that goes through their head.

Those prompt questions are what I feel like wanting to ask to recipients. The feedback I wanted is to first stimulate a context by giving the playtesters the ability to play around the application demo, then try to obtain their responses and thoughts by asking. These responses and thoughts are what conjugates the basis of ideas, ideas that I can refer/consider to and try to morph them into ideas that I can leech upon. A made-up word that describes this is "co-brainstorming inspiration."

However, I'm not looking for standard playtesting stuffs. I'm just purely looking for new ideas that I haven't or am unable to come up with without other people's help.

From your initial post you sound like you might want to prompt for responses with small gif animations or videos of a game element, then ask the player, "How might you enjoy using this object within a game?" or "What does this object remind you of?" I didn't get a completely clear idea of what kind of feedback you want. Do you want the player's stream of consciousness while they are looking at your game for the first time? This kind of thing is a more standard playtesting topic, and is done by audio and video recording the player while they play the game. There's high-tech stuff like tracking the player's eyes to see what they are looking at on the screen, or lower-tech stuff like telling the player to talk constantly, saying everything that goes through their head.

Those prompt questions are what I feel like wanting to ask to recipients. The feedback I wanted is to first stimulate a context by giving the playtesters the ability to play around the application demo, then try to obtain their responses and thoughts by asking. These responses and thoughts are what conjugates the basis of ideas, ideas that I can refer/consider to and try to morph them into ideas that I can leech upon. A made-up word that describes this is "co-brainstorming inspiration."

However, I'm not looking for standard playtesting stuffs. I'm just purely looking for new ideas that I haven't or am unable to come up with without other people's help.

Ah. Well, the design forum here is all about co-brainstorming. I just thought you might have been interested in playtesting because you said "feedback about what people think about your program" which is one definition of playtesting. Co-brainstorming usually happens before there is a program to play. Maybe you meant "what people think about your design or game idea".

Anyway, have you read any "business creativity" books, like A Whack On The Side Of The Head? That kind of book talks about how to guide a brainstorming group to get useful results.

I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.

No, I haven't. The book you've mentioned seems to implicate that I need to have a brainstorming group before I start guiding them to get results. I'm not well-versed with gathering individuals and forming a group that helps with inventing new ideas.

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