Hello Everyone!
Just wanted to ask as a new developer, where or how do you come up with new ideas for games? Whether they’re mobile or console or whatever the case. Do you look around at others work for ideas, or do you just sit for days thinking about it? Just wanted to see what you guys think!
Thanks!
I think the best way to come up with new ideas is to play many games. Analyze the gameplay, combine gameplay elements from different games etc.
Watching youtube gameplay videos help too.
Pretty much what Martin Bean just said.
Playing games and messing with what might work is a great way to come up with ideas.
Also, try thinking up some new one’s too! Think about what would be fun try and prototype it and see if it works! (Those old games had to come from somewhere!)
Game World Audio/Visual Output → Player Input → Character Action → Point Score → Reward/Penalty → Game World Reaction Update → Goto Beginning
Any action the Player takes can be Gamified by adding a Scoring Mechanism (Point value) to it.
If it’s for your own entertainment and maybe some more people, you can get some ideas the way Martin mentioned. But if it’s about going commercial and making good profits I only suggest you to extremely avoid creating games from ideas that you like. You should look into what ideas the current market likes.
I would slightly disagree with this statement as one can interject their ideas into ideas the current market likes. If the Developer of Minecraft didn’t make a game he liked, He may have never been able to sale Minecraft for $2,000,000,000 to Microsoft.
Its about all about understanding ‘Fun’ game mechanics (I narrow it all down to point based collision impact/avoidance and player customization), variable reward schedules, and monetization models. Clicker/Idle/Incremental Games: Cookie Clicker & Clicker Heroes emphasis such mechanics. Finding the next Blockbuster requires daring to be different. Experiment and be first market, not a cookie cutter follower.
Well there wasn’t anything like Minecraft on the market so the creator of Minecraft knew what he was doing. But if someone now likes Minecraft and is hyped to create another one, that’s sorta a dead end and it’s better to look at what the current market “doesn’t” have. I wasn’t clear what my point was. 
The key in each business is to predict the user demand for respective product/service:
1st step- determine the present successful projects;
2nd step- choose one;
3rd step- modified it, BUT DO NOT MAKE CLONE (the biggest mistake). Improve some KEY ELEMENT(S) and put in them your own vision and ideas (The author of Minecraft was copied > 50% of the elements of an old game, but made it as java applet among other important keys’ things);
4th step- IF you are lucky, you will take a part of the pie/donut!
Conclusion:
Remember, no matter what you do, at the end of the day the success of the cases in 99% is ABSOLUTELY LUCK (despite what speaks successful persons enslaved/infatuated of their own inflated EGO)