The definition of a game adopted by the IGDA Education Sig is "a play activity with rules that involves conflict", although this is not a universally recognized definition and it would be disagreed with by many.
There is no set language rules in the games industry making it very hard to explain a game to someone who has no knowledge of what the game is about, because there is not set terminology developers must create their own that fits only with their specific game, this means there can be a lack of access to game development and playability.
Games are now trying to be defined by many different people and it seems that there are some things almost everyone can agree on that make a game a game such as, a game is an activity with rules, goals, conflict, decision making, outside ordinary life, offer no material gain, are voluntary, have an uncertain outcome, are inefficient, have systems and are a form of art.
Even with these definitions, there are still issues with many types of games, puzzles lack an uncertain outcome, in sudoku all numbers have a space they need to fit, in RPGs many don't have a definitive end and are more story focused and improvised. In the case of choose your own adventure books, these would not be thought of as games ordinarily, but they fit much of the criteria, by adding character skill checks through things like dice-rolls it could almost definitely be considered a game. Some may consider stories games even though they are usually more linear or interlinked within a game. Play is also apart of games fitting most if not all the criteria to be a game, this creates a paradox where they are both subsets of one another.
"Games tend to be more interesting if you can affect your opponents, either by helping them or harming them" players will play games much differently if they can affect other players, needing to think about protecting themselves from other players and how to outdo other players by affecting their gameplay experience.
One of the biggest issues in game design is the competition between rival companies trying to keep a creative edge over the others, many companies want to streamline to the creative process so that they can maximize production of profitable games in over saturated market, failing games companies were linked to having a lack of a systematic approach to their design process while successful companies had managed to rationalize their design process. Brainstorming is one of the most popular systematic ways of generating new and creative ideas.
Games companies still manage to make a profit by creating sequels for their existing IPs along with trying to create new games that can capture a new audience, idea generation processes can be used to support these creations by allow developers to create tweaks to existing games for sequels and to allow developers to carry out failed ideas in new ways.
In interviews, game designers said that the design process for games was largely an organic one where decisions were made during the process using the developers insights and task specific skills.
The most commonly referred to sources of information by the developers were from the television, movies and other games.
Many developers felt demotivated after large brainstorming sessions, after being criticized for their ideas and then no longer felt an interest in participation with the group. Some designers said that sessions ended with blunt bad ideas and with ideas that would not be useful in a game.
The techniques mentioned in the article are concentration,brainstorming, scamper and ramsey
Concentration : studies have shown that a changing environment leads to the development of new and better ideas, while doing something like taking a walk in an unfamiliar place concentrate on your thoughts and you will find that you are having new and unusual thoughts.
Brainstorming: it is usually broken down into 3 parts , firstly by analyzing time, skills and resources available, secondly the generation of new ideas and building upon those ideas as a group and finally showing the more finalized ideas to another group for feedback and to decide what works and what doesn't.
Scamper: Substitute ideas in existing projects for new ones, Combine 2 existing ideas into a new concept, Adapt old or failed ideas into a new format, Modify outdated or unused ideas, Put previously used mechanics from one project into another, Eliminate already tried concepts and Reverse previously tried ideas and mechanics.
Ramsey: "Ramsey wrote a theory that, if you take a significant amount of information and start looking at it closely and manically, you can find new information or find inconspicuous links."
By looking into a concept intensely one could make strange and unheard of links between parts of a story or idea, this can be handy to create a mechanic related to such a concept. This would be very useful for projects with a defined theme or objective for the designer.
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