The idea for this post came about after a chance remark from my mother during an over dinner chat one weekend. The discussion revolved around our childhood hobbies and pastimes; at a certain point in the conversation, she stated "You liked things that you could use as a spring-board to your own imagination"
This sentence had a great impact on me, to say the least. I feel it is a word perfect description of the majority of activities I enjoyed as a child. I would play with a set of toy dinosaurs, inventing stories and role plays; apparently I invented a RPG-style ranking system without really realising it at the time! I could spend an afternoon pretending that a cardboard box was a battleship. Among other things, I would create my own puzzle books and stories. For some reason it is almost cringeworthy even writing these words, and it certainly shouldn't be. What I have described above is a key form of creativity that tends to be ignored as we move into adulthood.
As a child I wrote and drew pictures constantly. However, I don't think I ever considered myself to be a true artist in the making, because the pictures were always secondary to the story or game which I was inventing. They were in a way illustrations of what was going on in my own imagination, and just a stage in the procedure rather than an end in themselves. In fact, they were more like diagrams than artworks. My family always joked that I liked to draw disaster scenes. Looking back on this, I think I was drawing plans for games before I really realised my love for them.
All of which leads me to speculate about different types of creativity. It is important to recognise that what I have described above may be different to the creativity shown in many other artforms. I did not enjoy Lego as a child, as this involves physically building an object, or creating an artwork. I found this frustrating as the reality of the final creation was never consistent with my original vision. Either that or the object would fall apart before it was even remotely finished!
While video game design is difficult to define, you will no doubt hear many games industry professionals describing the role as 'creating fun'. This is exactly what I used to do when playing as a child; I would create entertainment. It is also interesting to point out that using the creations of another individuals to ultimately make a game, or create fun, could also be a good definition of game design.
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