Creativity

Creativity, Is essential to the survival of life. All species on our planet have varying levels of creativity that plays an important part in day to day life. I’m not just talking about humans, because I believe that creativity is not just limited to complex feats of imagination that humans achieve. Primates, pigs, dolphins, whales, and many other species have creative thought processes (and this has been proven)! Even the way that a pride of lions hunt and work together in the Serengeti, shows impressive feats of creativity.

I’m taking quite a wide approach to creativity because creativity is a wide and complex topic. If we limited creativity to the arts, the world would be screwed! A single person uses creativity hundreds if not thousands of times every day. Everything we do fundamentally comes down to a creative thought process happening in our brain. I can’t look at a single thing outside my window that has not had some form of creative process go into its construction or purpose.

The human race is famous for two creative wonders; Art and war. While they are completely different in their goal, they are arguably the same in their creative construction. War in its many forms is terrible don’t get me wrong, but the many advances in tactics and technology have been down to great creative minds. Dr. Richard J. Gatling was responsible for the creation of the famous Gatling gun first used in the American civil war, Which went on to spawn many other multiple and single barrelled versions throughout history. The use of tanks in the First World War completely changed the modern day battlefield. In the American war of independence the rebel troops used guerrilla style warfare against the English troops. Small raids from bushes on arms convoys, and the use of flanking tactics, completely changed the way that war was fought. Before that, horizontal lines of troops would battle it out on an open field, with help from cavalry and cannons. Modern day terrorism, and the way enemy troops fight in Iraq and Afghanistan can be linked back to these advances. All this brings me back to my earlier point: creativity is vital for survival. As long as there are creative geniuses around to bring us new ways of killing each other, I see little hope in a peaceful future. Now that I think about it Creativity is not only responsible for our survival, but it is and it will be responsible for our downfall.

Art is wonderful! Art in its many forms is the way of humans expressing their creativity. Without it the world would be a dull place indeed!! Art has come a long way since cave paintings. These days everything in our lives is art. Art is the clothes we wear, the buildings we make, the cars we drive, through to the images we paint. I believe England was at a creative height in the Victorian times! I think we’ve lost a little something since then in our creativity, but I can’t put a finger on it. England and the rest of the world is losing culture, and art has a strong link to culture. This isn’t such a bad thing though. While we are losing a unified culture, all the new sub-cultures popping up all over the place are providing rich pickings for art. Humans will always make art. It is who we are.

Creativity in computer games is vast. Everything that goes into the process of making a game through to the playing of a game is creative. All games are creative, but some more so than others. Games however are becoming less creative as time goes on. I think we are becoming too focused on the target audience and what games have been successful in the past. We are basing new games on the successes of old games. It’s working for now, but soon the audience is going to turn around and say, ‘’hey I want something new’’. This is not the case for every game, but generally I believe this is what is happening. Maybe the initial idea of a game needs more creative thinking before it is put into production. The gaming community needs to stop wondering along like zombies. We need a burst of originality and creativity to be injected into the industry!

This all brings me to my final point:

Creativity in its many forms is what makes this world so brilliant. Creativity needs to be encouraged and set free, but in some cases it needs to be monitored and controlled.