Inviting Player Creativity Through Game Mechanics

In this 2017 GDC talk, Matheson Marcault's Holly Gramazio provides an overview of a dozen different techniques that games can use to encourage player creativity, from encouraging people indirectly through adding constraints, to mediating collaborations, to distracting them from the fact that they're being asked to make something at all.

GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.

[ErikPlayLearn]

25:45 competition is NOT the best motivation. Its the easiest for the motivator to create. Its a horrible motivator because it already implies that someone is your competitor, that you want someone to fail, and in many cases it means that players go beyond their own boundaries to succeed, ehoch is unhealthy and destroys even their confidence and fun. And in many czses the amount of losers will be a lot bigger than the amount of winners, which is a source of pain and a source of out-of-game conflicts.