[Chapter 3 is printed with permission from A K Peters, Ltd. Game Design: From Blue Sky to Green Light by Deborah Todd.]
Chapter 3: The Yin and Yang of Brainstorming
"Every good brainstorming session starts with a 15-minute discussion of Star Trek."
- Noah Falstein , quoting Ron Gilbert
The truth about brainstorming is this: Brainstorming is not blue sky, and blue sky is not brainstorming. They might have elements in common. And in fact one might beget the other. But still, they are decidedly not the same.
Blue sky is all about the sky's the limit and imagining all possibilities. But at the end of the day the reality is that you can't have everything you want-you can't have all possibilities, and you can't say yes to everything. You can start that way in blue sky. Yet sooner or later, usually sooner, you have to hone in on one idea for your game and turn that concept into a game people will love to play. This is where you start to narrow your focus on what you really want, and can have, in the game. And that's where brainstorming comes into play.
Let's use the metaphor of writing. One way to look at this is that blue sky is much like stream-of-consciousness writing. Whatever you think, you write. No holds barred, no rules, no limits. Just get it out there, down on paper. Brainstorming, on the other hand, is more like editing-it's taking that stream-of-consciousness work and molding it into something that can be grokked by others. You organize the thoughts into some semblance of order, make them cohesive, cut things out, add new ideas where needed, and you have something imminently useable-a good first draft.
Noah Falstein looks at brainstorming this way: "There are a lot of rules you read about brainstorming that are available in non-game books, for example, how to teach corporate executives to brainstorm. I consider those to be training-wheel rules that are good if you've never done it before. But if you have any experience, they can actually slow you down.
"One example you hear about all the time is, ‘Don't criticize; don't stifle the process by judging; every idea is a good idea.' Under corporate circumstances, that might be useful. But all hardcore game designers criticize each other left and right. The difference is they don't take it personally. It's okay to critique. That way only the strongest elements survive."
Falstein sees a strong correlation between the discerning of ideas that occurs during a good brainstorming session and Darwin's "survival of the fittest" postulate. He adds, "Darwinism is very appropriate to correlate with game design."
