???2
Many of Miyamoto??™s games draw from this sense of
exploration and wonder that he remembers from
childhood.
Think about your own life experiences. Do you
have memories that might spark the idea for a game?
One reason that childhood can be such a powerful
inspiration for game designers is that when we are
children, we are particularly engrossed in playing
games. If you watch how kids interact on a playground,
it??™s usually through game playing. They make
games and learn social order and group dynamics
from their play. Games permeate all aspects of kids??™
lives and are a vital part of their developmental process.
So if you go back to your childhood and look at
things that you enjoyed, you??™ll ?¬? nd the raw material
for games right there.
Exercise 1.5: Your Childhood
List ten games you played as a child; for example,
hide and seek, four square, tag, etc. Brie?¬‚ y describe
what was compelling about each of those games.
Creativity might also mean pu ing two things
together that don??™t seem to be related??”like
Shakespeare and the Brady Bunch. What can you
make of such a strange combination? Well, the designers
of You Don??™t Know Jack used silly combinations of
Passions and Skills 9
10 Chapter 1: The Role of the Game Designer
high- and low-brow knowledge like this to create a trivia
game that challenged players to be equally pro?¬? cient
in both.
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