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分享提高头脑风暴效率的11个诀窍

发布时间:2013-01-29 10:25:06 Tags:,,,,

诀窍1——规划和回答

创造一个能够基于游戏需求而解决的问题,例如:我需要一款以水下为背景的游戏,这款游戏必须是面向好交际的女性,并且/或者使用多点触控技术。关于这款游戏将出现许多等待解决的分歧。

brainstorm(from scirra)

brainstorm(from scirra)

是的,你已经想出了问题,接下来你需要记录所有可能的问题,你需要在大脑中为下一个理念腾出更多空间,并记录下所有问题的答案。也就是你需要不断地写写写!

诀窍2——记录在你的记忆中

在这个阶段你需要以任何方式,包括写下,打出,画出,建模等等去传达自己的想法(即使只是为了自己),并使用你所拥有的各种实践和快速能力。像我自己就很喜欢用photoshop,我将在此为每个理念标记箭头指向,同时我还会画下我的各种想法,并对此进行分类,从而让自己不会迷失于种种理念中。

如此新理念很快便会诞生,并具有各自的特征,而你也将注意到其它能够开发的内容,并刺激大脑去思考其它理念,不要因为羞涩而约束了自己的创想,尽可能去探索各种可能的想法。

如何记录想法并不重要,你可以先简单地记下,并在之后重新组织。

切记不要自己检查理念,写下愚蠢的理念并为优秀的理念腾出空间,并且有时候愚蠢的理念也会变得非常出色,而如果你身处一个团队,也不要检查同事的理念,因为他们的愚蠢理念其实和你的一样。记录下所有内容并浏览所有有趣理念的集合,如果你能够以一种互动方式进行分析就更好了,就像:“理念1可以如此运行”,“其它理念更适合于iPhone上”,“如此这一理念能够变得更有效,并能帮助我们使用机制x”等等。

“获得最佳理念的最好方法便是想出尽可能多的理念。”

诀窍3——混合理念

另外一个影响问题解决的方法便是使用其它创造性作品去放松或激发大脑的想象。选择一本与你的主题有关的书籍或电影,它们将帮助你在大脑中传输并混合各种不同的理念。

就像当你在城市的街道上行走并看到墙上的画或各种涂鸦时,你便会抹去脑海中有关一般街道的模式。这里存在一些能够吸引你的元素,会让你产生这个地方比城市中的其它场所“更酷”,“更美”的想法。

如果你能够使用其它感官去探索认知便会更棒,即涂鸦墙仅是停留在视觉上,但是博物馆或杂货店却能给予你碰触,闻,感受与观看的机会(这是你之前从未想过的)。这不仅能够扩展你的视线,同时还能为你的问题提供解决策略。或至少能够扩展你的文化范畴。

诀窍4——改变视角

perspective(from scirra)

perspective(from scirra)

Walt Disney总是喜欢在自己的主题公园里转悠着,并弯下腰靠近每个玩具,这便引起了许多人的关注,其中一名项目负责人便问他:“是这些玩具有什么问题吗?你有什么不满意的吗?”Walt Diseney回答道,他希望以孩子的角度去观察这些玩具。

这一例子便证实了创造任何内容都需要通过不同视角进行观察,我们可以站起来模仿角色走路,待在黑暗中,发出各种声音并观察声音的传播,去海边,公园里或者玩具店中思考自己的各种理念。去呼吸不同的空气,感受不同的氛围,你的理念也将变得更有活力。

诀窍5——专注于一个问题

现在你便拥有一个最突出的问题,例如有关一款冲浪游戏的问题。而帮助你找到答案的最佳方法便是,你可以到海边观察冲浪者是如何进入大海,附近的人对此有何反应,冲浪者又是如何离开大海,他们花了多少时间,他们使用的是何种冲浪板,在开始冲浪前他们做了哪些准备等等。你必须了解这些人喜欢什么以及为什么。

focus(from scirra)

focus(from scirra)

如果你的问题是关于游戏故事,你便可以搜索类似的游戏,了解它们是如何描述故事,如何突显特色,但这么做并不是在抄袭,我们只是在学习一些与自己产品类似的多样性内容,要知道,所有专业的游戏设计师都是这么做的。如果困扰你的是机制该怎么办?你可以搜索各种使用了同样机制的不同游戏,基于不同年代,历史以及制作人的游戏,并观察每款游戏是如何利用情节去传达这一机制,同时还可以观察其它并未使用这一机制的游戏,如此你便能够找到一些答案,或者能够改变你在这一头脑风暴阶段中所使用的一些规则。

诀窍6——微笑

我们最好能够轻松地应对头脑风暴,保持微笑,或不时开个玩笑,与大家分享你的美术,机制,技术等,这不仅有助于大脑的放松,同时还能够帮助你从一个全新视角去看待问题。

但我们也需要注意,有些人不喜欢在谈论一些严肃的工作时微笑或开玩笑,这会让他们变得紧张,甚至认为你是个缺少职业态度的傻瓜。对于这种人我们就只能采取循序渐进的方法,让他们慢慢习惯这种娱乐方式,帮助他们放松那紧绷着的大脑。

诀窍7——不要担心成本

你正努力赚取更多利益,你想要创造出更有价值的项目并获得市场上的成功,所以现在你并没有时间去担心成本问题。我们总是很自然地节省铅笔,纸张和胶水的使用,因为我们从小就学习着如何勤俭节约。但对于工作我们却不能如此节约,反而应该使用最好的铅笔,iPad,电脑等能够创造出更优秀作品的工具。

当然了,如果你想在墙上安装多点触摸屏幕的话就不同了,我会建议你满足于当前所拥有的。我们还有很多任务需要执行,根本没有时间为那些得不到的事物哀怨。

诀窍8——空间记录

一开始你就已经知道能够在黑板,计算机,白纸或任何你想要的对象上进行记录。就像一个被黑板环绕的团队便很有趣,但遗憾的是写在黑板上的内容很难保存下来,所以我们就需要养成在擦掉内容前将其拍下来的习惯。

我还想说说Jesse Schell的做法,他购买了巨大的可粘便签(70厘米x75厘米,贵又不实用),然后将其一个又一个地贴在墙上,而当整面墙都被贴满时这些便签便有可能被撕掉,或被其它新便签所取代。

在此我们不能忽视Tom Kelley对于空间记忆的看法,即比起将事物记录在列表上,我们的大脑拥有更棒的储存方式。所以如果Jesse能够将不同便签贴在墙上的不同位置,便能够更好地引导团队进行搜索。

诀窍9——制作列表

list(from scirra)

list(from scirra)

许多头脑风暴都会与编号列表直接联系在一起。关于最佳理念,最有趣的技术,《俄罗斯方块》中最好玩的一个方块,最好看的桃心颜色等等。为什么列表如此重要?原因有两点:

1)列表能够帮助我们更好地参照对象(“第一个理念非常棒,但前提是与第二个理念结合在一起,第三和第四个理念拥有好看的颜色,第五个理念则看起来优点脏。”)

2)从心理学角度来看,人们总是会更加关注于那些用数字区分开来的对象。

编号列表中的名目也很重要,反正使用这些名目总比忽视它们有帮助,这也是我们心理编码的重要组成部分。划分主题能够让你,甚至是你们团队更加重视探索内容。

诀窍10——混合与结合

现在你便学会了制作列表与编号,以下我将列出有效使用这种方法的例子。假设我们需要从头开始创造一款有关忍者神鬼的游戏(并不是现有的游戏):

关于技术的理念

1.网页

2.PC

3.iOS+Android

4.主机

5.多点触控

有关机制的理念

1.2D平台游戏

2.3D打斗游戏

3.创造带有龟壳的电子宠物

4.训练忍者技能

5.以《俄罗斯方块》为主题的游戏

有关美学的理念

1.黑白游戏

2.以日本动漫为主题的游戏

3.所有角色都是动物

4.8位体歌曲

情节理念

1.与四个忍者神龟兄弟进行互动

2.忍者神龟年轻时因为意外而变成乌龟

3.掌握忍者技能的教学

A.你是教师

B.你是学生

4.主题是关于在末日后所有人都变成动物,并在城市街道上打斗着。

5.在孤立的和平世界里,人们通过决斗而变成更强大的忍者。

现在将你自己与这些编号列表或你所创造的内容结合在一起,如下:

–一款以日本动漫为主题的2D平台网页游戏,拥有8位体歌曲,并且是关于在末日后人们在街上打斗的情节。

–一款与《俄罗斯方块》玩法类似的黑白游戏,玩家在游戏中扮演着忍者的学生,并学习全新忍者技巧。

诀窍11——与任何对象交谈。

是的,不管是镜子,朋友,女朋友,小狗,学习小组,公司,甚至是你自己!(每个对象都会有各自的“反馈”。)

如果你选择与自己交谈,我建议你能够选择一个没人会觉得你很奇怪的地方,或者选择一个人潮密集的地方,让你能够淹没于其中,例如在大街上,并且这时候你可以借助电话等帮助,假装你正在于别人通话,虽然这听起来不是很靠谱,但确实是非常有用的。

显然,与别人一起进行头脑风暴会是一种不同的体验。寻找一个搭档帮你完成理念非常有帮助,这比单靠自己更能获得有益的答案,即使你的搭档较为寡言,多个人也是多一份力。而如果你决定与更多人一起合作,我建议最多保持在4人以内(游戏邦注:包括你自己在内),因为太多想法有时候也是一种负担。大团队将讨论更加精确的理念,所以这将是一种更客观的头脑风暴。

当你与别人进行交流时,最好能留意那些试图不去刺激你的人,因为他们有可能去搜索理念中的所有缺口,而这也是完善结构的主要因素,这时候我们不应该去探索失败原因,而是专注于理念的研究(注重品质而不是缺点)。

最后,你的理念有何发展?

对于游戏设计师来说最重要的是,为了防止不能落实其中的一个理念,你需要创造出更多理念,更多主题,并与更多人合作,另一种方法是,你可以尽力在更短时间内不断完善理念,并创造出更多更棒的理念。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

11 Improvements for your brainstorm

The idea of this post is to guarantee that your points come, because you will be needing them for the rest of your life if you wish to continue following this career, therefore, we will help you gathering knowledge for reassuring that you will receive your daily bread.

And where shall we begin? We need to separate in pieces to understand everything, like a famous philosopher thought many years ago, so that we can achieve the separation of statements and to comprehend complex ideas.

First Tip – Formulate and answer

Soon enough i will write ( if haven’t wrote in the meantime that you are reading this) a post exclusively for this tip. For now i will give a brief explanation about it.

Create a problem to be solved based on your game’s needs, for instance: I need a game in a underwater setting, and/or this game must be for really sociable women, and/or use multi touch technology. Under this same game you can have lots of other conflicts that will need to be solved.

Right, you’ve thought about the problem, now take note of all your possible answers, yeah, take notes, the memory is fragile and you need to free more room in your head for the next concepts, so keep writing a list of answers for your problems. There you go… WRITING!

Second Tip – Register in your memory

In this stage you gonna write, type, risk, paint, model, build or do whatever it’s needed to express yourself, even if its only for yourself, use whichever practical and fast abilities you have. I personally like to use photoshop in unison with notepad, where i make arrows pointing to concepts, I draw ridiculously my ideas, and turn up topics on the notepad, with frequency i utilize the fundamental flower to register my idea in a coherent manner, because i tend to lose myself easily inside it.

Accordingly with which i write, new ideas are going to appear, and they will join the dots, you gonna notice that there are some other to be developed, making even unsophisticated drawings you will trigger in your brain other concepts, do not limit yourself by shyness at this point, explore what you have in the manners that you can.

It does not matter how do you register your idea, in a sketchy way, dirty, laid back or semi-organized, later you gonna have time to organize and structure, now it’s time to have ideas on paper, or anything similar.

Remember to not censor yourself, write the stupid ideas to make room for the good ones in your mind, sometimes the stupid idea can turn into an ingenious one, and if you are on a team, don’t censor your colleagues ideas, their stupid ideas are as good as yours. Register everything and see the accumulation of interesting concepts, even better if you analyze things in a interactive way, like: “The concept number 1 will work this way”, “That other one will be more viable for the Iphone”, and “This other will go well with that, and that makes us to apply mechanic x”

“The best way to have good ideas is to have many.”

Third Tip – Art

Another method to be visually influenced in a resolution for your problem, is to use other creative works to relax or activate your brain. Choose a book which has a lot to do with your theme, also a movie, which has nothing to do with it, they will transit and mix many different ideas in your head.

You know when you are walking around the city and you see paintings on wall or grafitti? So, that makes you leave the pattern of common streets, and there, you have something better to comment, something else to call your attention, and makes you have that little space to think that those places are “better”, more “cool”, and “prettier” than the rest of the city.

It is even better if you utilize your other senses to explore your cognition, the painted wall is only visual, but a museum, or a trinkets store can give you the opportunity to touch, smell, feel, and see things that you did not expect for or even acknowledged the existence, amplifying your sight, and giving you strangely possible solutions for your problem. Or at least expanding your cultural repertory.

Fourth Tip – Change your perspective

When Walt Disney used to walk around his park he used to lean down next to each toy, after doing that on many attractions of the park, one of his projectors asked “Is there any problem with the toys? Under them, is there something that you don’t like?” Walt Disney replied that he wished to see the toys from the perspective of a child.

This little history illustrates the change of vision needed to create something, stand up and try to imitate your character walking, stay in dark, make sounds and notice how they propagate, go to the beach, sit on the sand and think about your ideas, do the same in a park or a mall, maybe in a toy store. Feel the different airs, climates, and feelings which those places propose and give more liveliness to your idea, ( Just take care to not point a gun to an police officer with the motif to “feel the adrenaline of that moment”.)

Fifth Tip – Focus

You have an issue to win. Now think about it and see if you can find your answer for a surfing game, for example. The best way would be going to the beach and paying attention to how surfers enter into the sea, how nearby people react, and how they leave, how much time they spend, and the kinds of boards that they use, what do they do before entering. You have to know in a intimate way what those people love and why, you must know them.

If your problem is the storyline, search for similar games, how they are described, and play them with the intention to “pull” interesting characteristics, remember that this is not copying, it is learning with the diverse similar productions, all good professional games do that. What is getting you is the mechanics then? Search for diverse games which use the same mechanics from different years, with different histories and different producers, see how each one applied its plot to the logic of this mechanic, and obviously check other games which does not necessarily use it, you can find some answers, or even the interest to change your actual line of rules as you are on this brainstorm level, which permits you the simple control of rules.

Sixth Tip – Smile

Another important decree on Brainstorming to be recalled is : “Who leaves the rails must replace the train on the rails.”

What does that exactly mean? It means that it’s good to laugh, tell a joke, play with your art, mechanic, technology or aesthetic, its healthy, relaxes the brain and gives opportunities to see things from a new perspective.

Important to remember that some people are not accustomed with smiling and playing when it you are treating with serious works, and that can make them nervous, in a manner that they could think that you are a playful fool with no seriousness. Leave them make this part little by little and they will feel more at ease with the production focused on entertainment, turning the experience more fun.

Seventh Tip – Do not worry about costs

You are trying to win great quantities of money, you want valuable projects and market successes, so now is not the time to worry with costs. It’s natural to save on pen, paper, and glue because we were influenced to always save everything in our society. But do not be selfish, do dignity to your work, write with your best pen, play with Ipads, utilize the computer a lot, whatever makes your work better and makes you feel better.

Of course, if you want a multi touch screen around your wall and that can not be possible, be content with what you have, even being a pencil and a piece of paper. There is too much to be done, it’s not the time to lament for what you wished to have.

Eight Tip – Spatial Notes

You have already seen in the beginning that you can write on a white board, computer, papers, or whatever you want. For a team ambient a whiteboard can be really interesting, but it is kinda hard to store, make a good habit taking pictures before erasing it.

I like to mention how Jesse Schell does, he buy giant adhesive notes (70cm x 75cm – yep, expensive, but not cost saving) and then pastes one to the other on the wall, when there is no more space, it turns to be easier to move or even to put your ideas on the floor, roll them all and save. For the future, when someone search for your ideas about space monkeys from last year, there will be a written document like your ideas have never been stopped, after that you can just continue from there.

Important to mention too Tom Kelley’s vision about spatial memory, our brain has better where things were than the way things were organized in a list. So the Jesse’s practice up there can be really useful if they are put in different places on the wall, so next week the team will record the trail that they followed for the plot, aesthetic, technology, or mechanic of the game.

Ninth Tip – Make List

Many brainstorms will be linked directly to numbered lists. Be it the best idea, the most interesting technology, the most fun pieces for tetris, the most beautiful color for the heart, and so goes on. Why this can be useful? For two things :

A – Lists make easier to reference an object (“The first idea is good, but only if we mix it with the second idea, the number 3 and 4 have really pretty colors, number 5 looks kinda dirty, dunno.”)

B – Dignity(yes, again) because of psychological motifs which I will not lift here, you give more attention to objects separated by numbers.

Spoon

House

Spinach

Woman

Spoon

House

Spinach

Woman

The items in the numbered list seem more important, if you take one of them it is more probable that you miss it, which makes part of our mental programming. Separating topics like this can make you and even your team take more seriously the explored points.

Tenth Tip – Mix and combine

Right, you learned about making lists and numbering them, convinced or not, here are some good uses for them using them with the fundamental flower.

Let’s say that we have to create a game from scratch about ninja turtles ( Not the one that already exist):

-Ideas about technology-

1. Web

2. Pc

3. Ios + Android

4. Console

5. Multitouch

-Ideas about the mechanic-

1. 2D platformer

2. 3D fighting game

3. Create little turtles a tamagotchi pets

4. To train ninja skills

5. Tetris themed game

6. A game with dice and character sheets

-Ideas about aesthetic-

1. Black and White game

2. Anime Themed

3. All the characters are animals

4. 8bit Songs

-Plot Ideas-

1. Interaction about the 4 ninja turtles brothers

2. The teenage years of ninjas who transformed into turtles because of an accident

3. Master teaching ninja skills

A. You are the master

B. You are the student

4. Theme about the fights on the city streets after a post-apocalyptic accident which turned everyone into animals

5. An isolated world of peace where people fight to turn faster into more efficient ninjas.

Now make yourself some combinations with those numbered lists or the ones that you created, like those examples:

-A 2D platform web game anime themed with 8bits songs about fighting on the streets after a post apocalyptic accident.

- A tetris esque game all in black and white which each completed line, the player, as a ninja student, learns a new ninja technique, making a piece for the game (Turning the difficulty up)

Eleventh tip – Talk with something

Yep, exactly this, talk with something. Be that a mirror, a friend, your girlfriend, your dog, your study group, your enterprise, even yourself, anyone! (Each one with their respective kind of “feedback”, obviously).

If you choose to do that by yourself, i suggest you to do it in a place where the people won’t think that you are weird, or where you gonna attract too much attention, you can lose focus, in case that you need to do that on the streets, on haste, use your cellphone and pretend to be talking with someone, it can sound really sick, but it is useful and simple.

Obviously, making a brainstorm with other people can be a really different experience. To find a partner who completes your ideas can help a lot, and will help you to receive some answers swiftly than you would find by yourself, even if that partner is more to the silent side, it can be a interesting help. If you decide to work with more people, try to hold 4 people at the most(including you), when you pass that mark, for big ideas it can be a problem. Big groups have to discuss more strict ideas, maybe in a more objective, following, brainstorm.

Another tip for when you go talk with something, take care with people that will try not to motivate you, they will search all gaps on a idea which will still need to win structure, this is not the moment for searching for fails, but ideas. Search more qualities than defects.

THE END.. so, how are your ideas going?

After brainstorming for many times, in those different manners proposed on this text. You probably had few ideas, what is necessary for a game designer, in case that you had not managed to achieve that, train more, with more themes, other people, in other manners and with time to upgrade that, creating more and better ideas in less time.(source:scirra)


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