Though I really like the process of creating games, I can't think of any interesting idea for a game to make. I made 2 very small games based on my own idea before, but they turns out pretty bad. The only game I made that my friends would even consider playing are tinkered clones of retro games.

I have been making games for about 10 years now as hobby but it wasn't in the last year that I really started to think about what makes a game fun. I always assumed that all it takes is a good idea for a game to be fun, but it turns execution of that idea is just as important.

I started reading this book and it has made me realize how much work goes into making a game fun. By duplicating other games, you can bring in a lot of the mechanics and balance of the existing game to make yours fun without even knowing it. When you create your own idea, you need to balance the game.

This involves taking a look at your ideas and evaluating what makes it fun, what ruins the experience, and what needs tweaking. Then you take that information and make changes to your game and evaluate it again. Your original ideas may not have been bad, they just needed some balancing.

Take a look at the core design values for league of legends, for example. In that article are a few of the many important things to think about when making a game fun. They have a focus on multiplayer, but many of it still applies to single player games too.

I never rely on past ideas for inspiration. When I had those ideas I was engaged to make them, and now that same feeling is gone and won't be rekindled.
All new game ideas I have come from consuming artistic works: games, films, pieces of music and sound, visual arts etc.

Seconding "limiting yourself" as a powerful creative technique. One of my favorite stimuli: Consider a popular game or genre, and ask "What would it be like if it *didn't* have X?", where X is something that appears to be fundamental to that genre. (How would you make a platformer without jumping? How would you make a roguelike without any combat? How would you make a masocore platformer where the player can't die?)

Other suggestions:

• Play games in genres you would never think of playing. (What's fun about them? Is there a kind of fun that familiar games lack? How would you add this kind of fun to a more familiar genre?)
• Play games that aren't videogames. Boardgames are mechanically very diverse; there are lots of ideas in boardgames that are only barely explored in videogames.
• Do things (or watch people do things) that are fun but aren't "games" at all. (What's the fun in not-stepping-on-cracks? What's the fun in a coloring book? What's the fun in making paperclip sculptures?) Find a kind of fun that you rarely see in videogames; make a videogame that has that kind of fun.

Play old games.

Seconding "limiting yourself" as a powerful creative technique.

Thirding and fourthing because I think it is just that important!

I'm a jazz fan and musician. The amount of mileage you can get from a few simple constraints -- a series of chords or a short melody -- is endless. It's going on a tangent within an accepted or acknowledged framework where GREAT ideas are born.

I'm a jazz fan and musician. The amount of mileage you can get from a few simple constraints -- a series of chords or a short melody -- is endless. It's going on a tangent within an accepted or acknowledged framework where GREAT ideas are born.

Once, Mile Davis said something like that : "Why bothering playing all those chords? You just have to play the good ones"

It's a little off-topic, but well, it's a nice quote ;D

Its kind of ironic that limitations can be so freeing, but its really obvious once you see it. Having limitations lets you know where the practical boundaries are in clear terms, and keeps the set of things you need to reason about small and nearby so that it can be considered quickly, allowing you to move forward. When the boundaries are vague or too distant, your considerations are too numerous and far-flung to be made quickly or decisively. You end up becoming paralyzed by the unbounded possibilities, and even when you are able to make a decision, you will often be haunted by questioning whether you made the right call, which will sometimes sing you the Siren's Song of re-doing things, negating the forward progress you might have made.

Browsing sections on DeviantArt, mostly Infographics/Vector Art. Some of the more abstract images sure get my brain juices flowing.

I make the game I want to play. Ideas come to me as I play other games. Not only that video games are always on my mind, and I'm very analytical to the current games I play where I notice how different aspects of the game effect me.

Well, one option to "get" new ideas is to ask for them. I think that there are plenty of people who have loads of ideas for games (like me) who cannot write code or design art for cr4p (like me.) So as someone mentioned earlier, ask your friends what sort of game they want to play, that they presently can't, then work on that. Maybe even in a group which can be a lot of fun.

I think I get my ideas from dreaming about games I'd like to play. If I hunt around and cannot find any game that meets the experience that I'm looking for then I assume I've come up with a new idea (well, usually a hybrid of existing concepts.)