Week 20 Creativity

Creativity –for all those that took any sort of art class whether it was fine art at some college or even finger-painting in infant school all of us at one point or another have some idea what the word means and what the word means personally to us.

It’s another one of those ambiguous words that everyone has a vague idea about but it isn’t a word that can be pinpointed exactly by definition. Well for starters I might as well have a look at the word that Creativity stems from which would be quite obviously Create. Humans are the only beings on the planet with extensive ideas and imagination at their disposal. We as a species have harnessed small, quick thoughts and turned them into something imaginative and/or functional, just take a look around your room; every item has been thought up, refined and made by one person or even a group of people. The power of humanities thoughts have given us The wheel, the light, cars and the Xbox 360, if we as a species didn’t the imagination and intelligence to create then we wouldn’t exist as we do today.

I’ve heard the word creativity being said to me all throughout my artistic life and it is always a nice compliment to hear that you’re creative. Creativity can apply to anything as it stems from a creative thoughts process linked to ones imagination, it doesn’t just apply to art which is what it is usually associated with – it applies to creative writing, cooking and even accounting.

Looking at the word Uncreative can help define what the word creative actually means. The word uncreative is linked with words like; undaring, controlled, cautious and conventional – not particularly a nice word to be associated with. This means that creative minds more daring, think out side the box and tend to be more open minded with their thought process and ideas. We wouldn’t of got so many good books/movies and games if no one thought up these ideas and pushed their idea to the limit of their imagination.

Games as a media is ideal for showing creative gameplay, storytelling and art – No other media works quite as well as pushing the boundaries of creative and technical power. The increase of technical intelligence over the up and coming years means that creative thinkers in the industry will have no technical restraints when making a game. As a species I believe that we will only increase in imaginative and push our creative ideas as it seems that every one thinks that everything has already been thought up and done – quite a pessimistic view on the value of our future creative thoughts – I say that they aren’t thinking hard enough.

Certain games have a wonderful creative flow in not only their visual style but also in their gameplay and make use of the technical capabilities very well. Lost Magic on the DS used the DS stylus pen to make the player actually draw the magical runes on the screen, which was quite a dynamic part of the game play. Story line and character development it always seems that any of the Final fantasy series seems to win – hands down, which in my opinion I would agree. For visual style and imaginative character concepts Psychonauts is one that particularly stands out as the whole theme of the game was the mind which allowed designers to create fitting mental environments for the character that the player was in, for example; Milla Vodello is a 60’s-70’s inspired character and her mind is just one big party with dance music, flower themed furniture and bubble blowers. Brilliant! Another title that intrigues me visually is LittleBigPlanet on the PS3, a very interesting visual and playing style where the backdrops look like they are made out of cardboard and you can bounce on oranges etc.

LittleBigPlanet


Games give the designer and in some cases the player to really create and explore more with their ideas and imagination which at the end of day what can be better then that.