Limitless Ideation

The Designer #4: Unearthing Gold from a Mountain of Ideas

This is the fourth issue of The Designer, a brand-new Newsletter for paid subscribers. In addition to more comprehensive design lessons, issues of this newsletter may feature educational videos, interactive assignments, supporting content from the podcast, and other unique posts.

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Brainstorming is my all-time favorite phase in the creative process. This phase of the Core Design Loop is where you both get to explore the most extreme ideas and narrow them down into something concrete that can be prototyped. If there is any “magic” in the creative process, the steps of brainstorming are it.

I will use game ideas as examples throughout this piece. Still, this process works on any creative endeavor, whether starting a business, writing a novel, or even planning the next family vacation.

To make the most of this exercise, pick a new project you are excited about or a goal you want to achieve and use that to perform the exercises below.

The Phases of Strategic Brainstorming

The brainstorming process unfolds in three distinct phases:

1. Creation: Aim for quantity over quality, embracing every idea that comes to mind.

2. Organization: Sift through your ideas, identifying patterns and filling in gaps.

3. Elimination: Select a singular core idea to develop into a prototype.

You can think of these phases as a funnel that starts wide, allowing every crazy idea in, and then slowly shrinks down to the minimum necessary to test a promising concept.

Each phase requires a very different mode of thinking, so it’s important to perform each step in order. Most people are more inclined toward one type of thinking than another, which affects how they participate in each phase. Pay attention to where your mind wanders as you go through the steps below. Analytical folks like myself always look for what’s wrong and often go to the elimination stage too early—don’t do that!

As you become aware of these tendencies, try to resist the urge to jump to your instinctual mode of thinking. After you’ve had some experience with this brainstorming style, it can help you find other people to collaborate with who think differently. Group collaboration presents its own challenges, however, as we tend to suppress our more outlandish ideas when we think others will judge us. Similarly, we tend to gravitate towards the first good idea in the room. The goal of brainstorming is to get past the good idea and get to the great one, so it’s best to do some solo brainstorming before diving into group sessions.

Phase 1: Creation

During the first phase, the goal is to get as many ideas down on paper as possible without analysis. You have to unleash your imagination, letting your mind run wild. Ignore that voice in your head criticizing every idea, and keep writing.

To start, open a notepad, set a 5-minute timer, and write!

Helpful Tips:

• During this phase, my mantra is: “There are no bad ideas.”

• If you pause for more than 15 seconds, you are censoring yourself.

A Personal Example:

Here’s an example of random ideas I generated in one minute for a party game theme to show you how ridiculous/awesome the ideas can be:

• Macadamia vs. Mango: The Final Showdown

• Television Apocalypse

• The Dinosaur Cooking Channel

• Pamphlets for Pirates

• Pad Thai Disaster

• Swordmasters of the Asphalt Empire

• Color Wars: Pink vs. Purple

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Effective Brainstorming Workbook

To assist you in the creation phase, I've included a worksheet designed to level up your idea-generation process. This resource covers all three Brainstorming phases and is available exclusively for our paying subscribers—you'll find it below this article.

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Phase 2: Organization

This phase is where you begin to bring method to the madness. Step back and look at the larger patterns of the ideas you wrote down. Begin to group them on a mindmap or separate sheet of paper. As you notice elements that are missing, write them down. Begin to think about what a prototype might actually look like and include elements that come to your mind. You’ll also want to try to organize things to see how different ideas connect. Ask questions that evoke the experience your player or customer will have.

Sample Questions for Games:

• What might your game look and feel like?

• What might a player think about or experience from the game?

• What elements are needed to evoke those experiences?

• Contradictory, random ideas are still fine at this stage.

Categories for Grouping Ideas

• Core Mechanics

• Setup

• Theme

• Resources

• Components

• Turn Structure

• Victory Conditions

• Level Concepts

• Story Ideas

• Marketing Hooks

Mind mapping—a method for the madness:

Mind mapping is just a fancy phrase for writing out your ideas in a way that highlights their connections. To create a mind map, identify a few primary “idea bubbles” and draw a circle around them. Then, draw lines to new ideas that connect to your original bubbles. There are no hard and fast rules. The idea is to serve your ability to make connections visually. Below is an example of how I might break down a game mind map:

Brainstorming Phase 3: Elimination

Again, you can think of these phases as a funnel that starts wide, allowing every crazy idea in, and then slowly shrinks down to the minimum necessary to test a promising concept.

Now, we’ve reached the bottom of the funnel, and it’s time to bring the critic back online. Start by asking yourself:

“Which of these ideas seem most promising?”

Pick out a core mechanic and the elements that go with it, such as resources, components, turn structure, victory conditions, etc. These will all be helpful when creating your prototype.

To facilitate your brainstorming journey, a worksheet designed to amplify your idea-generation process is included below for paid subscribers. This exclusive resource, along with other editions of The Designer and my archive of articles, awaits your exploration.

Remember, the path from an idea to a fully realized game can be challenging. By embracing each brainstorming phase with an open mind and a spirit of adventure, you're well on your way to designing games that provide players with an awesome experience.

Tip 1: It can be helpful to think of this phase as ending with a hypothesis. This is the core assumption you will test with your prototype. For example: “I believe that a game where superpowered fruits and nuts battle each other would be fun for people to play as a short 15 minute card game.”

Tip 2: Save your Brainstorm notes. We will discuss something called the “Hunan Beef Principle” in a future newsletter, but for now—keep every idea! Unused brainstorming ideas are a great place to find inspiration later. Today's discarded idea could be tomorrow's breakthrough. In fact, Shards of Infinity was built from Ascension ideas that never made it into the game!