Overscoping in Game Design: Why I Think Having Too Many Ideas Is Actually a Good Thing

Everybody always says: keep it small. Keep it simple. Don't overscope. Let your game do one or two things. Only.

And at first, I thought: yeah. That makes sense. Don't think too deep or you loose precious time.

Make something you can actually finish. Pick one or two mechanics quickly and focus on making them good and ship the game. Logical.

Letting Ideas Grow

But I do love letting an idea grow into something more naturally.

I love sitting on the balcony with a cup of tea, my notebook and my imagination, and just building game systems in my head. And this quickly turns into:

"Oh, we could do that too."

"This would be lovely."

"And what if we added this?"

"And then this could connect to that..."

And suddenly, the small game concept has turned into a giant mess of interconnected ideas.

For me, this whole ideation process is love for my dopamine-starved brain.

I love the process. I love generating ideas and finding connections that lead to even more ideas. I love building little worlds in my head and scribbling them down in a notebook. And then I love thinking about the rules that make those worlds believable, coherent and, hopefully, fun to interact with.

And the nice thing is: even if most of those ideas never evolve into an actual game, I don't really mind.

I already got something out of it.

The process itself was fun, and training the creative "muscle" too. The imagining, connecting, scribbling and exploring was already its own little reward.

So What Do We Do With All Those Ideas?

I think having too many ideas can actually be useful. It means you have something to choose from.

The trick is to cherry-pick.

Look at all those ideas and find the connections that actually work well together. Find the things that sound fun. Create more. Iterate. Branch out. Then, once you have let the whole thing grow for a while, take a step back.

Take a breather.

And pick the one or two things that you think are the most interesting.

Those become the core of your game.

Then you can concentrate on them. Make them feel good. Make them impactful. Flesh them out properly.

The Ideas Don't Go Away

And suddenly, all those other ideas you came up with are not wasted. They are a library.

Maybe one of them fits perfectly later. Maybe another one gives you an idea for a new mechanic. Maybe half of them never make it into the game at all.

And that's fine.

I don't think the problem is having too many ideas. The problem is trying to build all of them at once.

Let the idea grow. Let it branch out. Let yourself get carried away for a while.

Then sit back, take a breath, and pick the best parts with the most potential for your project.

Maybe that is how you end up with something that would never have existed if you had forced yourself to keep the idea small from the very beginning.



What are your thoughts on this?