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[everythingever]

Just curious what other fellow game developers' views on this are.

So far, there are three schools of thought that I have heard of:

1) When you're imagining things, it's your brain pulling from the pool of data that you've collected throughout the course of your life and creating different combinations of ideas from that data.

2) Every idea that you can possibly imagine exists in some form on another dimensional plane, and when you imagine things, you're actually peeking into that different dimension.

3) There is a spirit called a "muse" that comes to you during moments of inspiration and whispers ideas into your head.


Which do you fall under? Or do you have a different theory from the ones listed above?

[Zorg]

First. I believe everything is a remix. Let's say you start drawing randomly. At some point you will automatically start to find forms in the chaos and push your painting or that particular spot, where you recognized something, in that direction. Or you reject the impression, paint over and repeat.

[Schoq]

the option that doesn't break physics

[nnyei]

I'm partial to 1) as well. The other two options raise more questions than they actually answer.

[gimymblert]

It's exploration of the possibility space inside a triangle define chaos, purpose and order, it's about seeking novelty ie the set of all work that hasn't been done yet, so it's a movement away from existing work. It is constrain and driven by desire to become god, by social norm, human aesthetics and social mediation (participation in a social context).

[everythingever]

First. I believe everything is a remix. Let's say you start drawing randomly. At some point you will automatically start to find forms in the chaos and push your painting or that particular spot, where you recognized something, in that direction. Or you reject the impression, paint over and repeat.

Yea, whenever I'm doing anything creative, it's always some sort of derivative of another idea that I was initially drawn towards. In that sense, I guess I would fall under the conventional school of thought, that creativity only pulls from the information that you already have stored in your head.

the option that doesn't break physics

lol That's what's fascinating about the fact that the laws of physics seem to fall apart when you get to the quantum level. The idea of an infinite multiverse that some physicists are starting to lean towards would make it so that other options that don't seem realistic under the constraints of normal physics suddenly become viable ideas to explore.

I'm partial to 1) as well. The other two options raise more questions than they actually answer.

True. That's why I like them though hehe

It's exploration of the possibility space inside a triangle define chaos, purpose and order, it's about seeking novelty ie the set of all work that hasn't been done yet, so it's a movement away from existing work. It is constrain and driven by desire to become god, by social norm, human aesthetics and social mediation (participation in a social context).

lol wut? It took me like 10 read-throughs but I think I get most of what you're saying. I didn't even think about the participation in a social context part. good point.

[gimymblert]

It seems lately I'm losing words like "by" and even reread don't pick them up

[gimymblert]

In fact I made a similar thread http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=48981.0 once not too long ago

[kriyo_funions]

Creativity is a broad subject with many divisions.  You could say it encompasses everything we do.  Each of them composed of a number of areas that form creativity.  What ever is made/expressed/thought has a creative force behind it.  You find creativity in dance, music, visual art, science, math, conversation, writing.  There are so many interconnected factors that make up your personal creativity.  First of all there's motivation, this could be a number of things, could be subject related, could be based on wanting to express the unfigurable, could be based on the results, could be the hankering desire to explore - play - tinker.  Then there's process, from direct experience I can say it's this for me.

- Immediate inference by stimuli, auditory, visual etc, thereby taking a course of action every moment
- Stimuli can also trigger memories both conscious and subconscious, it could even be muscle memory, so learned behavior
- Which also means it goes into your subtle psychology, what's been impressed upon you, your psycho-somatic state of being

Actually I'm pretty lazy, you could go on an on, cause really it's too broad a thing.  What can you do about being more creative?  The more you experience in actual life and also through written and visual media, the more skills and tools you pick up, the more you are willing to experiment, the more critical you are, blah blah the more creativity comes to you.  IMO stunting your creativity is becoming rigid and stubborn in your ways of thinking and viewing the world, living a very sheltered not very stimulating life style.  They also say stress is predominant killer of creativity, which from my single class of psychology makes sense in maslow's pyramid, so finding fulfillment and satisfaction, dealing with traumatic hindrances - figuring out your shit basically - gives you access to higher levels of thinking.

[J-Snake]

1) When you're imagining things, it's your brain pulling from the pool of data that you've collected throughout the course of your life and creating different combinations of ideas from that data.

2) Every idea that you can possibly imagine exists in some form on another dimensional plane, and when you imagine things, you're actually peeking into that different dimension.

Both points are true and sufficient in order to be creative.

[Pfotegeist]

A mistake that (often in retrospect) carried no risk.

Following a procedure ABCD;  following the procedure loosely enough to make mistakes, getting to "?". Accepting that the mistake was made and not hiding the "?"'s evidence.

[Pfotegeist]

There are more answers.

Creativity in a video game context is known as a feature. (it's really a programmer bug)

[Armageddon]

Creativity is catching the big fish.

[davemakes]

Everything's a remix. Kind of like how writing is just arranging the dictionary in an interesting way. You use what came before to make something new.

[Mariofan0]

Everything's a remix. Kind of like how writing is just arranging the dictionary in an interesting way. You use what came before to make something new.

Pretty much this. I find a good idea comes from taking various parts from elsewhere, and putting them together in new and interesting ways. This is effectively what I do when I brainstorm new concepts for whatever it is I may be working on. Also when I have difficulty doing this I start throwing stuff at a dart board to see what sticks, metaphorically speaking.

[Pfotegeist]

It's the rarest form of energy in the universe.
Imagination is sometimes a synonym for creativity.
Kids claim school ruins their creativity. Hypothesis, teachers are creativity vampires.

[Vivid Foundry]

Creativity is a broad subject with many divisions.  You could say it encompasses everything we do.  Each of them composed of a number of areas that form creativity.  What ever is made/expressed/thought has a creative force behind it.  You find creativity in dance, music, visual art, science, math, conversation, writing.  There are so many interconnected factors that make up your personal creativity.  First of all there's motivation, this could be a number of things, could be subject related, could be based on wanting to express the unfigurable, could be based on the results, could be the hankering desire to explore - play - tinker.  Then there's process, from direct experience I can say it's this for me.

- Immediate inference by stimuli, auditory, visual etc, thereby taking a course of action every moment
- Stimuli can also trigger memories both conscious and subconscious, it could even be muscle memory, so learned behavior
- Which also means it goes into your subtle psychology, what's been impressed upon you, your psycho-somatic state of being

Actually I'm pretty lazy, you could go on an on, cause really it's too broad a thing.  What can you do about being more creative?  The more you experience in actual life and also through written and visual media, the more skills and tools you pick up, the more you are willing to experiment, the more critical you are, blah blah the more creativity comes to you.  IMO stunting your creativity is becoming rigid and stubborn in your ways of thinking and viewing the world, living a very sheltered not very stimulating life style.  They also say stress is predominant killer of creativity, which from my single class of psychology makes sense in maslow's pyramid, so finding fulfillment and satisfaction, dealing with traumatic hindrances - figuring out your shit basically - gives you access to higher levels of thinking.

That's a really cool way of framing creativity, and makes me wish I took some psych back in university.

I think creativity is also linked to humans as social animals, and craving to make sense of external stimuli (through recognizing patterns in visuals and also concepts, for example) and to communicate it. There's also an affective nature to creativity in that it is linked to emotions, thereby helping prioritize certain memories over others. Creativity can thus be the way to express a set of emotional experiences and memories.

By that description, I also thus hold that an open network of people, ie people from different perspectives and specializations, can only expand one's creativity because you're connecting with a lot of diverse experiences, data points, as well as differently prioritized memories. These are all influences, motivations, and inspirations for one's creativity. For example, we consider Da Vinci to be highly creative because he has many varied influences and he did not limit himself within one field, but excelled at visual arts, philosophy, engineering, biology, optics and more, and continually experimented with different techniques. 

[Pfotegeist]

This does make it too broad. Quote: "You could say it encompasses everything we do." I mean I could say "god" is the concept of something encompassing everything.

Creativity is in the hand of the beholder.

An onion is creative, it has a few layers.  What an onion lacks is originality.

[itsyourpalmike]

I definitely have to go with option 1.
Creativity is like being some kind of sorcerer making potions.
The "pool of data that you've collected throughout the course of your life" are your ingredients.
You mix 'em together in interesting ways and see what you get.