Challenging creativity

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the creative process of realizing a project in a building game like Minecraft.

Lately, I was occasionally playing Minecraft and I decided to create a huge building in my Minecraft-world. However, the building is not finished yet, because I always came up with a new concept and so I needed to change the shape of my house several times. After each game-session I felt how I was still thinking in a creative way about my next steps.

Minecraft

Building games like Minecraft or The Sims can be a great way to express and train our own creativity. The players of these games can terraform the environment, create and change huge buildings and even decorate them.

The player’s creativity is mostly challenged because these building games do not have a clear end and the players almost have endless possibilities to construct something inside these virtual worlds. Moreover, the players are always able to change their own creations and can even improve finished parts.

At the beginning, the players are entering a more or less empty space, which they can change as they desire. From this point on they can develop their very first idea of their building project and finally start working on it. Over time, the creation is taking shape and the players are able to take a step back in order to look at their very own creations to decide whether they are on the right track or they have to change some parts.

This is a very crucial moment in the process of expressing the own creativity, because suddenly the players are able to see their ideas becoming reality. This transition can help the players to evaluate their own project idea and also enables them to develop even more creative ideas.
Moreover, throughout the whole building process the players are getting constant feedback about their progress. This feedback in return can inspire the players and help them developing new concepts for their building project.

In the end, the whole game becomes a creative environment where the players can express and train their creativity. Moreover, I think that players who play such a creative game on a frequent basis also also more likely to come up with new solutions to difficult problems in their daily life.