Making your own games- The gamer's ultimate challenge?

For gamers, games are a lot more than just games. They’re challenges. They’re important mental stimuli. The problems start when the games don’t have the creativity levels required. Experienced gamers are a different species of adrenalin junkies. They’re obsessive, but very focused. They want challenges, and at some point all gamers want to go beyond the boundaries of other people’s imaginations. Whether fighting hideous monsters for magic rings or blowing away whole civilizations, gamers want action. At some point, they usually decide to go and create their own action.


Photo: Ravensky

The mechanics of creative gaming
Games appeal to people for different reasons. When a gamer decides to get creative, there are a few mental drivers which stimulate the creativity:

• Game types: Some gamers are experts in particular areas of gaming, like First Person Shooters, strategy, mission-based games, role playing, etc. The creative gamers usually have a good idea about what they think will make a great game. Interestingly, the best game designers are true gamers. They literally live gaming.
• Technical gaming: Some gamers are also major tech heads. They’re experts in the software, and their love of gaming starts new cycles of gaming software and hardware. These gamers aren’t put off by any technical issues, and will think their way around the problems to create their games. These gamers are excellent for the industry, and if they’ve got the business sense, they can make huge money.
• The gaming champions: These are expert gamers, and their form of creativity comes from the top of their gaming genre. Their creativity is instinctive, and their standards are very high. These guys are quality controls on the gaming industry, and they’re often roped in as beta testers by major gaming firms. When they get creative themselves, they inhale information and learn fast.
• Innovative gamers: These are the people who come up with good game strategies the way other people eat fries. They understand the logic of games, and their creativity produces extraordinary game ideas. What they think of as a challenge usually makes a great game, and more importantly usually also makes a commercially successful game.

The game design challenge and creative gamers
The best game design is based on playability. A game has to be fun and it has to be worth playing by a gamer’s standards. Although the actual process of creating a game is actually pretty complex beyond the tiles and sprites level, gamers, who use their Scenario Editors regularly, develop their games at first on the basis of their own technical skills. Those skills build very rapidly. However ignorant of game design software a gamer is, their natural affinity for gaming makes them quick learners.

Soon, a prototype game is working- more or less. Gamers are their own best critics, and as long as they’re working for themselves, the quality will be high. The beta test version will be full of things they couldn’t have done six months earlier. The production version will be excellent.

The gorgeous witch has swiped the diamond rings, and the gamer’s character is in hot pursuit. Now, what if there was a hidden valley full of vampire beavers…?
Yep, another game is on the way.