Demystifying Creativity: On Originality in Game Development

This book is a study of the psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of creativity, originality, and inspiration viewed from the lens of a seasoned game developer. It introduces the concept of creative sobriety--a practice that advocates better understanding our own sources of inspiration so that we can intellectually drive our creative voice closer to originality.

The creative process is an improvised dance between the conscious and the subconscious mind, where knowledge, experience, intuition, observation, imagination, and projection meet in ways that are completely unique to each person. Presenting practical and theoretical approaches to originality and game concept generation, this book explores the notion of creative sobriety before moving to chapters that blend theory and practice, covering topics such as innovation, the creative process, auteurship, collaboration, and creative vision.

This book will be of great interest to students of game design and creative professionals working within the industry as well as those looking to learn more about the creative process.

Fawzi Mesmar (فوزي مسمار) is an award winning Creative Director, Game designer, Leader, author, public speaker and mentor that has been in the gaming industry for over two decades in a career that spanned The Middle East, New Zealand, Japan and Europe working for companies such as Ubisoft, Electronics Arts, Activision Blizzard King, Gameloft and Atlus to name a few.

As a Game Designer / Director he has worked on over 20 titles that have been enjoyed by millions of players world wide, most notably games in the Mario+Rabbids, Star Wars, Battlefield, Candy Crush, Persona Franchises and many more.

As a manager he was in line management and leadership positions in different companies with varied cultures around the world which created a unique blend in management style; overseeing teams of variety sizes.

As an author, he wrote the first ever text book about game design in Arabic: Al-Khallab on the art of game design الخلاب في فن تصميم الألعاب. Fawzi co-authored 9 comic books under the men of honor series (sold 5 million copies in MENA). He’s a columnist at Pocket Gamer Arabia, and blogs frequently about game design and the business of making games.

Fawzi speaks regularly at many global gaming conventions such as GDC, Reboot develop, Devcom, Gamescom congress, GIC, NZGDC, DWGC, MEGA, MGDC, white nights, Games Forum, Mobile Games forum, Quo Vadis, Pocket Gamer, Casual Connect and many more.

As a mentor, He also frequently holds lectures at game design and development schools such as London university of fine arts, Breda University of applied sciences in the Netherlands, Auckland media design school, NYU, Cologne Design University, Auckland university of technology, American University in Cairo, Berlin Games Academy, Jordan gaming labs, New Zealand lifeway college and many more. He’s currently serving on the board of education at Future games in Stockholm.

He’s also a Google mentor, a jury member at the BAFTAs, IMGA (international mobile games awards) and GDCA (Game developers choice awards) and countless other regional award ceremonies around the world. Fawzi also co-founded the IGDA chapter in Berlin, Germany.

Together with fellow Arab game developers Rami Ismail and Osama Dorias, he’s part of ＂The Habibis＂, a popular podcast about Arab culture, game development and creativity.

Fawzi was the winner of the ambassador award at Game developers choice awards in 2024 and Game Dev Heroes award in 2020 for the category of Game Design for his contributions to the field. Fawzi was named future class by the Game awards in 2022 and he was also one of Gamesindustry.biz 100 game changers of the year 2020.

Fawzi holds a bachelor degree in computer science from the University of Jordan, and a Masters in business administration from Durham University in the UK.