There is no truly creative creativity, at least for what you''re talking about.

I dare say, no ''new'' ideas are ever imagined without some reference to something else.

Take a look at anything you consider to have been made from scratch, or was ''never done before'' and if you look hard enough you''ll see it''s been done many times before, in other contexts...

So there''s nothing wrong with combining old ideas to make a new one, because that''s what everyone does.

G''luck,
-Alamar

I think I agree with Eck. Some people can have ideas outside of all the knowledge already existent.

I also think in order to be really inventive, you have to be careful what you learn about something. After you learn something, it becomes harder to think of alternatives. Some people even say that todays formal education effectively destroys large parts of ones creativity and the ability to understand really new ideas. The same thing could then most probably be said about other areas, like game ideas.

The other problem rests with the rest of society. We live in a mainstream society where everything out of the current trend has a good chance of being rejected. We also live in a marketing society which controls the mainstream, thus shutting of creativity even further. The happy days of yore when new ideas were awarded by the publics'' awe and admiration (or a public burning...) and new games were judged by originality are long since over.

Perhaps a time like this will come again. Let''s all code towards a common goal. Even a slight variation of well-trampled paths can lead us to the light again.

Mark Twain wrote about how there are no new ideas, just reworkings of old ones in his essay "What is Man?". You can read it at http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/mantble.html.

Scott