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How Do You Control Your Imagination While Designing Video Games?

Usually, I’d brainstorm a list of ideas for my games on paper. But, if I stopped brainstorming a list of ideas on paper for my games for a while. My imagination goes out of control. What should I do? How do I control my imagination if I take a break to design video games?
 
Don't stop writing your ideas down on paper, even if you take a break from designing video games. Secondly, you cant control your imagination - it happens as it happens.
 
Don't stop writing your ideas down on paper, even if you take a break from designing video games. Secondly, you cant control your imagination - it happens as it happens.
Yeah, but what if I run out of ideas to write down on paper? What if I need to take a break from writing ideas down on paper? So, I can’t control my imagination only when I need to? Not if I want to?
 
I think you're worrying about this too much? The same with your other topics. Work on stuff when you can. If you have an idea, jot it down. If you don't have an idea, then don't jot anything down. You'll need to devote hundreds of hours to each separate "skillset" that you're looking to develop before you actually become good. This means, you'll need to spend a lot of time coding before you become a good coder. You'll have to spend a lot of time writing before you become a good writer. You'll have to spend a lot of time creating art before you become a good artist. There are no 'hacks' to this. It's simple skill-building. When you're just starting to do any of this stuff, you'll find a lot of stuff hard. That's completely natural. Just keep working on it. If you're trying to write something new, but don't have ideas, maybe spend some time fleshing out a previous idea. If you're trying to flesh out something previously written but can't, maybe try writing something new. If you can't come up with anything for previous OR new ideas, maybe try drawing something?

Don't panic if you're feeling unmotivated or can't come up with something immediately. A lot of creativity is letting ideas develop in the back of your lizard brain before it bubbles up to your conscious mind. You can't force that. It just happens naturally. Try going for a walk (or walking your pet if you have one). Try having a shower. Try playing another game. Try doing some housework. Often sitting down and trying to force yourself to do creative stuff makes your brain retreat and your creativity dissipates. By doing something else that occupies you physically but lets your mind wander, or stimulates your creativity through an alternate pathway (often when I play other games, I find myself mentally critiquing and coming up with "better" ways that I would execute/twist the ideas in the game, which I can then use as creative "jumping off" points) you'll find your mind wandering into creative areas.

Again, there's no hacks to this sort of stuff. Becoming good means spending a lot of time being bad.
 

Amon

Member
Secondly, you cant control your imagination - it happens as it happens.
That's not correct. You are always in control of your mind and imagination. You have to choose to let it run free the same way you have to choose when you want to use it.

Think of the subconscious mind as the channel and the TV is your imagination it gets broadcast to. Whatever you feed your mind then becomes part of that channels data which you can then use to your imaginations knowledgeable limit.
 
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