3 HN users recommended this talk4 months2018–2026score 4.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Recommended even to people outside game development as a useful, practical perspective on how creativity works.
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.
“I recommend his 2014 GDC talk, "Practical Creativity" [1], even to developers who are not interested in game development.” (HN, 2018)
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]
Raph Koster's creativity talk, useful even beyond game development.
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]
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]
Creativity as applying existing patterns in new contexts.
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 and dehumanized. i am comforted by the value of mushy human abilities surrounding the creative process: mostly 1) taste, the ability to recognize pleasing output, ... [0] [this video] [1] [link] [2] [link]
Raph's definition of creativity as permuting ideas, a deliberate practice.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
5 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Read more
Citations, criticism and jokes