Practical Creativity
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended even to people outside game development as a useful, practical perspective on how creativity works.
What it is
Raph Koster's 2014 GDC Next talk on what science says about creativity, with practical steps game designers and developers can use to be more creative. It frames creativity as applying existing patterns in new contexts.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2018 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec supernintendo · 2018-12 · on “Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players”
Same! Never used UOX but ran a few small private servers back in the day using SphereServer and eventually RunUO. While it didn't lead to any professional connections in my case, it was my first foray into programming. Ultima Online in its early iterations was truly a magical game and helped to define a lot of the core design patterns of MMORPGs. The lead designer of UO, Raph Koster, has a lot of great insight when it comes to game design. I recommend his 2014 GDC talk, "Practical Creativity" [1], even to developers who are not interested in game development. [1] [this video]
Recommends runevault · 2025-11 · on “Game design is simple”
I need to sit down and give this a proper read, but anyone who wants more of Raph giving insights into game design should check out this old GDC talk he did about Practical Creativity: [this video]
Recommends wonger_ · 2026-01 · on “Spherical Snake”
I watched this GDC talk recently about practical creativity: [this video] I like his perspective that creativity = using an existing pattern in a new context. You can be more creative by first consuming lots of different patterns in all sorts of contexts (e.g. playing lots of games, and also reading and experiencing lots of topics unrelated to games). Then you try all the different permutations of patterns in your mental toolbox. Kinda like how the sibling comment rattled off different what-ifs. EDIT oh and oblique strategies might be helpful to come up with variations on an existing theme: [LINK]
Recommends wonger_ · 2026-04 · on “An amateur just solved a 60-year-old math problem–by asking AI”
Yeah, I've been grappling with the definition of creativity too. There's a gamedev talk [0] on creativity that gave me useful perspective. Here's what I wrote elsewhere: --- i've been thinking about raph's definition of creativity [0]: permuting one set of ideas with another set of ideas (or trying an idea in new contexts) this is a systematic process, doable even by machine once enough pattern libraries have been catalogued. on a small scale, there's sprint.cards [1] or oblique strats [2]. on a large scale, there's llms... it's freeing to approach creativity as a deliberate practice rather than waiting on some fickle muse. yet it's a bit disappointing to see idea generation so mechanical an
Cites Zardoz89 · 2024-09 · on “Playstation 5 Pro Shows the Futility of the Video-Game Graphics Race”
Almost everyday, it’s the most innovative game development space. You are just out of touch. [LINK] Digest some perspective. [this video]