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Practical Creativity

GDC Festival of Gaming · talk · Watch on YouTube

Game designProductivity & self-improvement

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.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended even to people outside game development as a useful, practical perspective on how creativity works.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2018, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “I recommend his 2014 GDC talk, "Practical Creativity" [1], even to developers who are not interested in game development.”

    Raph Koster's creativity talk, useful even beyond game development.

    supernintendo, 2018-12 · Strong recommendation · in “Ultima Online spent years developing a system that was destroyed by players”

  2. “anyone who wants more of Raph giving insights into game design should check out this old GDC talk”

    More of Raph Koster's insights into game design.

    runevault, 2025-11 · Recommendation · in “Game design is simple”

  3. “I like his perspective that creativity = using an existing pattern in a new context.”

    Creativity as applying existing patterns in new contexts.

    wonger_, 2026-01 · Recommendation · in “Spherical Snake”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: raph koster, creativity, game design, gdc, design process

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