Podcast Archives - Board Game Design Lab · Gabe Barrett

How to Boost Creativity and Avoid Tropes | Jason Perez

·1 hr 6 min·4 clips

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A trope can feel efficient. Jason Perez treats that little rush of recognition as a warning light for designers, because the familiar path is usually the easy one. The conversation keeps circling a useful problem: how do you get past the first idea your brain hands you? Perez and the host talk about changing the angle, bringing in outside eyes, and doing research before a borrowed trope quietly drags old baggage into the game. Tropes are not just tired ideas. They teach players how to read a theme, a character, or a setting, sometimes before the designer realizes what has been smuggled in. Perez's process is blunt in a good way. Name the tropes in play. Ask what they do to the people at the table. Then put in the work to turn the flat version into something with shape. The brain does not love that work. The host connects it to headlines, confirmation bias, and the way people can accept wild claims when those claims let the mind stop spending energy. That part has some bite. The issue is not that designers are lazy. It is that designers have ordinary brains, with shortcuts and messy memories, so the process has to push back. Research, consultation, and collaboration give the first answer something to argue with. That is where the creative work gets better. Near the end, the stakes get heavier. A game based on real life events needs more care, not less, because fantasy can hide what detail work would expose. The takeaway is simple enough to sting: question the easy reference, ask for help, and let research make the table experience deeper.

As heard by us

A grounded look at creativity, tropes, and the work needed to keep ideas from going stale.

Creativity here is treated less like a flash of inspiration than a habit worth practicing. Jason Perez brings a rare mix of psychotherapist, licensed clinician, and game designer, and that blend keeps the conversation tied to how people actually think, fall back on tropes, and…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want fresher ideas and fewer tired tropes, press play here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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