FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Game Ideas from Other Media
 |
 |
Books, movies, television, and other entertainment media can be great sources of inspiration for game ideas, so long as the ideas include plenty of activity. Cop shows from the 1970s inspired the game Interstate '76 (see Figure 3.1). Movies such as the James Bond series often inspire games. Any story containing exciting action with something important at stake can form the kernel of a game. Think over the books you've read and the movies you've seen and ask yourself whether any of the activities in them could serve as the basis for a game.
You can't, of course, steal other people's intellectual property. Even if the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland seems like the basis for a great game, you can't make it without Disney's approval. But you can certainly make a lighthearted game about pirates—as LucasArts did with its Monkey Island series.
You should also look beyond the usual science fiction and fantasy genres and beyond the usual sources like novels and movies. How about poetry? Beowulf's epic battle with the monster Grendel and then his even more terrible battle with Grendel's mother in a cave at the bottom of a lake sound like the basis for a game. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" might make you wonder about cavalry tactics. Would a game based on cavalry warfare be interesting to anyone? It's worth thinking about.
Game ideas can crop up in all sorts of unlikely places. The smash-hit game franchise The Sims was partly inspired by a nonfiction book by Christopher Alexander called A Pattern Language (Alexander, 1977), which is about the way people's lives are affected by the design of their houses. Just as great scientists look at even the most common things in the world—light, air, gravity—and ask how they work, great game designers are always looking at the world and wondering what parts of it they can make into a game. The trick to finding original ideas, beyond the elf - and-wizard combinations that have been done so often, is to develop a game designer's instincts, to look for the fun and challenge even in things that don't sound like games at all.
